militaryhistory

As well as being a part time Writer, I am also an avid reader and love to participate in various forum discussions. One of my favorites is the Arm Chair General forum, which is affiliated with Arm Chair General Magazine, a publication that deals with military history in a very interactive way.

I posted a thread on the Arm Chair General Forum asking the question;”What Should the Response be to The Attacks in Mumbai India?” What the response amounted to was (as I expected) a mixed reaction to an ever perplexing and evolving situation that the war on Terror has become.  The board response amplified what we already know. That the response to terrorism is (and always will be) unclear at best and is potentially disasterous when put into practice.What is clear now, is that the violence of terrorism is not going away, and the potential of new attacks inside the U.S. are still a very real possibility.

So how should the U.S. respond to such attacks. One thing is for sure, the situation in Iraq has proven that going to war without a consenses of the world community and assistance of other nations militaries, is not the best of choices. Going it alone in a war in modern times is always a very bad idea. Two examples that come to mind, is the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The Confederacy fought a war with no true consenus from all southern states and only an outside chance of having the British come to their aid, which never occurred because of their insistence of holding onto the institution of slavery. A choice which would have fatal consequences. The tide of the Civil War would take only two days to turn in favor of the north at Gettysburg Pennsylvania on a hot summer day in July of 1863, it was on those days that they stood alone. Another shining example is the German Army during world war two, one nation with very few if any, interested in assisting a nation out of control, with the entire world against them. A failure just waiting for the right day to happen. June 06th, 1944 was the beginning of the end for the German Army, on that day they also stood alone.

The lesson to be learned here, is that the U.S. can no longer stand alone against terrorism. It is the responsibility of the world community to either increase force against the terrorist or find out what they want and try to get them to the negotiating table. But the later part of this may indeed be very difficult, as the various Islamic radicals do not seem to be on the same page politically and in a more dangerous sense, religiously. Considering this, it may take many years for this situation to cool down militarily. The next President has already assured the American people, that a timeline for withdrawl from Iraq is coming very quickly. This should be good news to those who consider the U.S. an enemy, and yet the attacks go on.