Powell Doctrine

[Almighty Colin]

Hey Mike, Cool. :-)

I've been a big Powell fan for a very long time. I hope he runs for president in 2008. I hope the State Dept gets the nod on Iraqi reconstruction.

No doubt overwhelming force has been used as a guiding principle in Iraq. Seems maybe the psy ops worked too.

Barry McCaffrey, who started the whole "the US doesn't have enough firepower in Iraq" line was a brilliant tank commander in the Gulf War. He was the commander of the infamous "left hook" maneuver that surprised the hell out of Saddam, flanking the entire Iraqi ground force. Game over.He brought that division further than any mechanized division had gone in a day up until that point. When I first saw him on TV as an analyst, I was pretty excited to hear what he had to say. I was baffled when he thought there was a violation of the "Powell Doctrine". This, in light of the fact that so many guided munitions were being used. Maybe Army guys don't want so much air on ground. Those Republican Guard divisions disappeared in a few days. The Karbala Gap was bridged in hours.

I think Clausewitz and Sun Tzu both discussed the principle of overwhelming force. I don't know how Powell got his name attached to it in the US. He's probably embarrassed by that. In a recent interview someone referred to the "Powell Doctrine" and he said "What you refer to as the Powell Doctrine ... " which to me demonstrates that he doesn't consider himself to be the originator.

Yeah, that the methods used to apply overwhelming force are evolving in the US military is quite evident. With more precision guided munitions used than in any war in history, overwhelming force is now being brought from the air in startlingly short times. Technology driving doctrine and vice versa. We also heard about wave after wave of helicopters being sent out during the week everyone was complaining about a stall period. Just because the ground divisions weren't moving, people concocted a slowdown. Suddenly, troops were "bogged down" and "quagmire" was revived as a weapon in the war of words.

"Shock and Awe" seems to be working as part of the doctine of overwhelming force. Not the definition of "shock and awe" that has become a proper noun meaning big bombs dropping in front of cameras in Baghdad but as defined in the paper by Ullman and Wade.

Shock and awe --> http://www.dodccrp.org/shockIndex.html

Less manpower. I wonder what the next generation of unmanned aircraft will look like.

War = chess. Isn't the sprint to Baghdad that keeps the Republican Guard from moving South like the principle of restriction in chess, where you make a move to restrict your opponent's mobility? Serge's father utilized that on me when we played.



Last edited by Colin at Apr 6 2003, 05:50 AM