Ed's Blog

"Some people know everything, but that's all they know."

DEFEATING ISLAMIST-JIHADISM – A Lesson From the Cold War

Every war requires a unique grand strategy, but certain strategic principles never change. They apply to all wars and are essential to victory. So why is the Obama administration deliberately avoiding the one most essential to winning the war with Islamist-Jihadism?

In the sixth century BC, Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War (Sūn Zǐ Bīng Fǎ), “Know thy self, know thy enemy; a thousand battles, a thousand victories.”  (More)

Filed under: Military, Terrorism, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

VIETNAM TO ARIZONA – The Strategy of Moral Misdirection

A Vietnam veteran, on April 30, the 35th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, I reflected on my two tours of duty there. On May 1, “Immigration-Day,” I watched protesters on television march in opposition to Arizona’s new law on illegal immigration and the failure of the federal government to enact “comprehensive” immigration reform. They reminded me of anti-Vietnam-War protests and got me thinking about what they have in common. (More)

Filed under: Military, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

STOPPING IRAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGORAM

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ leaked memo to National Security Advisor General James Jones (USMC Ret) that said the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s continuing movement towards a nuclear weapon capability raised some eyebrows. And so it should. But neither the American people nor the White House should need a memo to alert them to this reality. As Fredrick the Great said “Negotiations without arms are like notes without instruments.” The Obama administration’s Iran policy has no melody because it has no threat of arms. (MORE)

Filed under: Military, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

OBAMA’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS STRATEGY

I wasn’t going to write about President Obama’s new nuclear weapons strategy–a central tenet of which is that the US would not authorize a nuclear strike against a nonnuclear country in retaliation for a chemical or biological attack if that country is in compliance with its nonproliferation obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Then, on Friday, April 9, I listened to Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn tell Laura Ingraham, sitting in for Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, that people like Sarah Palin who oppose the president’s new strategy (principally conservatives) aren’t smart enough to understand it. (more)

Filed under: Healthcare, Military, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MAKING NUCLEAR WEAPONS OBSOLETE

Is making nuclear weapons obsolete really a good idea? Do we want to return to a world were nuclear deterrence no longer exists? It certainly is a grand and altruistic idea, but would it make the world a safer place? For the 45 years of the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United State went to extreme lengths to avoid direct military conflict with each other. We fought each other’s proxies. We fought the North Koreans and the Communist Chinese in Korea and the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army in Vietnam. They fought the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Without nuclear weapons on both sides the likelyhood of a WWII-scale war between us would have been much higher. What would happen in the Taiwan Strait if the US and China did not possess nuclear weapons and a war broke out there. It may not be likely at present, but it could be in the future.

Filed under: Military, , , , , , , , ,

TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT

Target-rich environment is a term that describes a combat situation in which a militarily superior force is presented with a large number of highly desirable, poorly defended high-value targets all at once. In politics, it’s a situation in which a political party, believing it has the superior position, is presented with many things its opposition says or does that are exploitable all at once.

Read my full column at http://ewross.com/Target-Rich_Environment.htm and leave a comment below.

Filed under: Military, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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