Phil Carter reports on an important piece of news out of the Army War College. Essentially, to quote Phil, “America’s strategy of pre-emptive defense might lead to pre-emptive strikes by terrorists and rogue nations around the world, possibly with weapons of mass destruction. Asymmetric warfare — striking at U.S. weakpoints with unconventional tactics — will also become the norm by which our enemies fight us.”
I’m a little surprised that this is seen as surprising; we have already entered into that era. What else was 9/11? Still, if this raises awareness, I’m glad.
We should also remind ourselves of the lessons learned from General Van Riper’s war game. He managed to pull out something close to a victory for what was essentially the Iraqi side, and some of us were very quick to point at his results during the second week of Gulf War II. Our bad. We need to recognize that the potential for such tactics does not constitute the inevitability of such tactics.
On the other hand, we’d best be ready for ‘em. So, yeah, good exercise.
One Comment
In that war game the Iraqi side was said to have sunk most of our fleet, which was patently ridiculous and due to some exploited limitation in the simulation. I was very surprised that so many news outlets accused the US of cheating to avoid being “out-witted” and losing the game.
And you’re right, asymmetric warfare is already the norm by which our enemies attack us, but long before 9/11 (e.g. USS Cole, Khobar Towers).