2002-03-29 -

Bloodthirsty Battle Techniques

After getting a hint of it from the new John Ringo book, I've started reading "Sluggy Freelance". Riff works for me. I feel somewhat concerned about this, but not actually moved to action.

I wish that I, too, could roam the streets with an arsenal under my duster, dealing random death to demons, vampires, and other disposable trash.

I've done next to nothing the last couple of days. Thursday night I came home, made dinner, read a little, and went to bed just after midnight. That's way early for me. Today I came home from work, worked out, made dinner, started some laundry, and began writing this diary entry. Then I realized I hadn't done anything to write about. Hmmmm.

I had a conversation with Riff-alike in the office a couple days ago. We were talking about the scoring system, and we both agreed that in a sense it was too accepting of casualties. In a police situation, it very well might be better to fail totally than to have officers killed. I went further and suggested that in some military missions, the friendly body count shouldn't be an issue. Only time should count. Riff-alike seemed to think that this was a madly bloodthirsty notion, but I don't. I'm just looking at the long term.

Whenever you're in combat, people are getting killed. Whether they're attacking, defending, or face down in a bunker waiting for it to be over, the risk is always there. If the tempo of the mayhem is fast enough, it may be better overall to take high casualties to bring the battle to a quick conclusion than to win in a cautious and time-consuming fashion. It may be that if you attack with the 100 men on hand, 50 will die, and people will call the attack a disaster. But if 8 people are being killed by enemy fire every day, and it will take a week to gather the forces for an attack that will win the battle without costing the attacking force anything, the "bloodless" attack ends up being the costlier alternative.

This is why General Patton was a genius and General Bradley was an overrated plodder.

This concludes your topicless military rambling for the evening.

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