Back On Topic, was Re: [OT] Vietnam and modern combat

--- "K.H.Ranitzsch" <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:
> Certainly Bush likes to talk the talk...
> Didn't Bush's Administration ignore General
> Shinseki's warning about the
> number of troops needed to occupy Iraq ?

*snip*	Blah, blah, blah.

I was speaking to the tactical level.  The politics
neither interest me nor am I qualified to pontificate
on it, and you certaintly aren't in a position to
speak to either the tactical nor strategic.  

Keep it up and we'll start discussing how many German
cabinet members were on Saddam's payroll.

To yank it FIRMLY back on-topic:

Assuming no FTL communications (or relatively slow FTL
communications) what are the implications for
political oversight of military operations?  I believe
the sort of oversight exercised today where e-mail,
phonecalls, videoconferences, etc are routine between
leadership at the highest level and the political
leadership will be more or less impossible.  Media
will loose the immediacy and therefore exaggerated
impact it has on operations conducted under the camera
today.

How the various powers will resolve that will be
interesting to note.

"EuroSocialists United" will likely give wide
discretionary powers to the commisars to alter ROE,
and even mission orders.  Either that, or it will
attempt to issue detailed complex mission orders to
cover every possible contingency and expect the
mission commander to follow it even if it does not
conform to reality.

The NSL have always permitted a certain amount of
lattitude in field commanders and so will likely by
most comfortable with this situation of loose control.

The "French, Spanish, Etc". . . I don't know.  What
sort of discretionary power did local commanders have
in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries when
communications was slow and unreliable?

"Not American Completely" responses will be all over
the map, in my opinion.  Depending on the political
leanings of the party currently in power and the
personalities involved it could be any extreme. 
However, the determining factor (IMHO) would likely be
sucess.  If a commander does his own thing and gets
back and the public approves of his actions the
government calls it "taking appropriate initiative." 
If a disaster results, then he's an "irresponsible
undisciplined cowboy" and gets arrested.

Unless of course there are Canadians involved in the
process in which case any deviation from UN-mandated
rules, even deviations which prevent a unit from being
overrun like the Van Doos got later, result in the
commander being arrested and thrown out of the
military.

The UNorganized, of course, being a beauracracy
unhampered by any accountability, will insist on local
commanders following rules invented in New York by
swivel-chair legal experts who could not load a plasma
gun much less fire on at a target.

Any other comments?

Like my alternate acronyms?

John



	
		
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