Photo: Sgt. Johnny Winnick, with sniper rifle in Iraq. Credit: Winnick family

must be a hard place to stand, if you watch a guy hang around in the sand with his mates at the side of the road knowing thats where a roadside bomb could kill your friends. If you mission is to stop these kind of things happening you are going to have slip ups... unfrotunatly the slip ups are people...

Why don't they just stick the lawyers and risk-adverse commanders in that position and see what they do. Either they will do like Winnick, or they will end up dead.

It seems to me our armed forces are undertaking a task very different from the one I faced in Desert Storm or across the then inter-German cunducting excersies in anticipation of a Warsaw Pact invasion of central Europe. We had a very clear understanding of the Pact's war machine, tactics and the ground we were prepared to fight on. Conveniently Saddam acquired a mostly Soviet equipped military and adopted much of their playbook at the time of my service. We consequently knew well how to engage their sizable but identifable enemy force in kinetic battle.

After seeing the US forces flee the field in Vietnam, Lebenon, and Samilia Saddam thought that he could defeat us in Kuwait. After failing to delay the speedy route of his army and more significantly inflict the populary expected casulties on US forces needed to make US popluar will to fight yet again fold like a cheap suit, Saddam knew he had to change tactics from kinetic battle to long drawn out insurgency to defeat US will.

The fight in Iraq and Afghanistan seems now to reflect that lesson and by blending Jihadist into civilian garb it really places our forces in a new and difficult position. It seems most regard this as an impossible to engage in much less prevail in. From what I've observed since the troop surge and in particular the change in command and strategy to General Petreaus' COIN Counter Insurgency has yeilded IMO remarkable results on the ground. I came to this conclusion in large measure from reading Michael Yon's recent book "Moment of Truth in Iraq". http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

I didn't live through the Vietnam conflict and do recognize certain similarities, however, I also see significant differences. One difference being after the US lost nearly all of the goodwill gained from removing Saddam's regieme, our al Qaeda foes have treated the Iraqi people vastly worse and convinced many former insurgent fighters to work with the US and Iraqi national forces to clear their neighborhoods of a more horrific presence, AQI Al Qaeda in Iraq. While I respect the draftee American military for their service in South East Asia, I marvel at the modern all volunteer military who sign up for repeat tours of duty knowing the nature of this enemy and desiring to both protect their countrymen over here by defeating the enemy over there.

Even if successful militarily, I do wonder what difference will be made so long as martial funadmental Islam remains tolerated?