I've been exposed to a lot of mil-related stuff, with two OIF tours and time in OEF as a civilian. I've been on the ground with about half a dozen ODAs, picking doors and so on. I can tell you that in 2007-2008 it was obvious that 1) there was no plan for victory...
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Of course not. And which time was that the ODAs fault?
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None of this was the fault of the 18B, whose job was to make sure the 50's headspace and timing were good, etc. But that was not the conversation. You jumped down that Marine pogue's throat for pointing out that the guy up top looks like a fat sack of shit, which is true.
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Replying to @BaruchKogan @Snakeeater36 and
By the way, it's completely irrelevant while being absolutely true. Petraeus and McChrystal were in great shape-so what? Did they win the war, or even have an idea about how to win it?
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Replying to @BaruchKogan @Snakeeater36 and
Milley has a muh long tab... which means what? Be honest, how many team guys have you met in your career who sucked on some level? How many 18As? Most of the good ones I knew were looking to get out after their time on an ODA.
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Replying to @BaruchKogan @Snakeeater36 and
As for winning tactical engagements and physical courage-sure, US SOF had that. Although, let's be honest, if the other guys were not poorly equipped and trained, and teams were regularly losing 6-8 guys per deployment, it might have been a different game.
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Replying to @BaruchKogan @Snakeeater36 and
But moral courage? The willingness to risk your career by sending up an OPSUM saying "we've been training and leading these monkeys on missions for 5-10 years and they STILL suck"? No officer I knew ever had that.
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You been reading the wrong ODAs shit then.
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Replying to @Snakeeater36 @BaruchKogan and
In fact during VSO ops this was a massive issue, and continued to be one, and openly reported.
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VSO was after my time. I have a hard time imagining TLs and team sergeants putting their name to a series of reports going "we failed at the job you assigned us and will continue to do so, because the job is retarded."
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There are writings from the 60s talking about how there's a culture of lying about readiness - how everyone is expected to sign off on exactly what their superiors want to see and no one defies it because he'd be one man and would just get removed.
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Oh, for sure, Vietnam guys wrote/talked about it. When you run your military like a Walmart, what else do you expect?
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Replying to @BaruchKogan @CovfefeAnon and
Still, for every guy who was willing to say, "you know, we did a LOT of lying and killed a lot of the wrong people", there are like 1000 going "we beat the VC and NVA in every engagement! Killed 20 to every one we lost!" It feels better to cope.
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End of conversation
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