Army’s long-awaited Iraq war study finds Iran was the only winner in a conflict

A two-volume Army study of the Iraq war is a deep examination of the mistakes and success of the war effort that also takes aim at critics who would slough off the conflict as they shift to near-peer threats.

The study, commissioned by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno in 2013 and continued under current chief Gen. Mark Milley, was delayed for release since 2016, when it was completed. Some said it was due to concerns over airing “dirty laundry” about decisions made by some leaders during the conflict.

The 1,300-page, two volume history, complete with more than 1,000 declassified documents, spans the 2003 invasion through the U.S. withdrawal, the rise of ISIS, and the influence of Syria and Iran.

“At the time of this project’s completion in 2018, an emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor,” authors wrote in the concluding chapter.

Col. Joe Rayburn and Col. Frank Sobchak, both retired, authored the study.

They note the damage to the political-military relationship that the war has caused, even to the American public.

“The Iraq War has the potential to be one of the most consequential conflicts in American history. It shattered a long-standing political tradition against preemptive wars,” authors wrote. “In the conflict’s immediate aftermath, the pendulum of American politics swung to the opposite pole with deep skepticism about foreign interventions.”

Army’s detailed Iraq war study remains unpublished years after completion
Army’s detailed Iraq war study remains unpublished years after completion
The study highlights key mistakes made by top generals early in the war.

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Other urls found in this thread:

armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/01/18/armys-long-awaited-iraq-war-study-finds-iran-was-the-only-winner-in-a-conflict-that-holds-many-lessons-for-future-wars/
bookstore.gpo.gov/search/products?keywords=iraq
publications.armywarcollege.edu/
youtube.com/watch?v=EbI0cMyyw_M
usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq
youtube.com/watch?v=tcPd6hvlePo
publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3667.pdf
publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3668.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

They also bluntly address naysayers who see the war as an aberration, and look only for the Army to move back to its traditional large-scale warfighting role, as a quick path to losing the hard-earned lessons of counterinsurgency warfare, portions of which will no doubt be part of future conflicts whether with terrorist groups or with nation state near-peers.

“The character of warfare is changing, but even if we face peer or near-peer competitors in future conflicts, they are likely to employ a blend of conventional and irregular warfare — what is often called 'hybrid warfare’ or ‘operations in the gray zone,’ ” authors wrote.

In his foreword to the work, Odierno wrote that “those who rejected the idea that there is an operational level of war in counterinsurgency were wrong.”

He notes that following the war, the United States has entered “another historical cycle” like wars past, where civilian and military leaders debate the utility of land power. And he points directly to an overtaxed Army at even higher troop levels than they are now.

One issue raised repeatedly in the study is the lack of troops — within the deployed brigade combat teams, available for other operations such as the war in Afghanistan, and lack of an operational reserve in theater for responses to major events.

However, the study doesn’t just focus on the military’s failures in seeing the changing nature of the war.

Odierno calls the work an “astonishing story of an Army that reached within itself to learn and adapt in the midst of a war the United States was well on its way to losing.”

Milley’s foreward calls the study a “waypoint” on the Army’s “quest to comprehend the OIF experience.”

He sees the analysis as a start of what will be a lengthy analysis of the conflict.

Army study also shows that water is wet, a clear sky is blue.

“OIF is a sober reminder that technological advantages and standoff weapons alone cannot render a decision; that the promise of short wars is often elusive; that the ends, ways, and means must be in balance; that our Army must understand the type of war we are engaged with in order to adapt as necessary; that decisions in war occur on the ground, in the mud and dirt; and that timeless factors such as human agency, chance and an enemy’s conviction, all shape a war’s outcome,” he wrote.

Highlights of the study include validations of criticisms made at the time the war was being fought, and others that were not foreseen and only understood in the years that followed.

Study authors note that technology could not always make up for manpower shortages, that coalition warfare was “largely unsuccessful” for several reasons, that failing to account for a lack of understanding of the inner workings of Iraqi politics and group struggles meant some military unit actions did exacerbate problems.

And those battlefield commanders who did find innovative solutions to ground-level problems were not only often not commended or heeded in their innovations, they were often penalized for their work that inverted policy to adapt to real time needs of the battlefield.

The “short war assumption” and overly optimistic thinking drew out problems by pushing funding and manning to future projects because victory was always 18 months away.

Everyone knows it was an illegal war with no actual purpose but to benefit a few and all those involved should be hung, great thread OP

at least it looked cool. very aesthetic

The transformation of the Army to create more BCTs resulted in fewer units available for deployment, stretching the active units thin and requiring National Guard units to deploy in a large-scale conflict for the first time since the Korean War.

Half of all brigades in Iraq at the time of the 2005 election were Guard units. While the authors commended the Guard units for their service, they noted that, at the time, they were less experienced soldiers thrust into a critical time of the war without proper resourcing.

And how leaders assessed their own performance during the war suffered from a lack of clear understanding of what mattered.

They leaned too much on “inputs” rather than “outputs,” for example, money spent, Iraqis trained or insurgents killed or captured — rather than whether there was more cooperation with locals or reduced attacks.

“Army leaders have become too enamored with the ‘fetishization’ of statistics and metrics, when they only provide a snapshot in time of a portion of the situation,” authors wrote.

armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/01/18/armys-long-awaited-iraq-war-study-finds-iran-was-the-only-winner-in-a-conflict-that-holds-many-lessons-for-future-wars/

An easy solution to this problem is to invade Iran next.

pfc Willy says its white

ffs, dont give them any ideas

Does anyone know where I can buy a copy to read?
If not then the PDF would be okay I guess

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Or nuke Israel. Really finish the goddam game.

I've been thinking we should invade Algeria.

>Does anyone know where I can buy a copy to read?
Found it:
bookstore.gpo.gov/search/products?keywords=iraq

My unit fought Shiite Iran backed militias in Iraq, Jaish Al Mahdi. Good luck with that. Those dudes even put the whooping on IS. We'd be bogged down forrvery. Send Israel, let them do it

Thanks Bill

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bump

Didn't have to go to school today, kiddo?

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very interesting, seems like America has lost yet another war

>OIF is a sober reminder that technological advantages and standoff weapons alone cannot render a decision

Neither can SF usage, which was pointed out on numerous occasions but taken no notice of. This problem was even worse in Afghanistan.

The win condition ultimately was not something achievable using military means. The performance of the military is orthogonal to the outcome.

>One issue raised repeatedly in the study is the lack of troops
>Study authors note that technology could not always make up for manpower shortages
What do you know? The fucking Marines were right once again with their combined action program’s. And the Army is incredibly retarded when it comes to an over reliance on technology and the autism that is the BCT. All wrapped up with a strategic level military and political command that didn’t know what was right and wrong. Once again proving, the only way to deal with insurgencies, and a very simple one at that, is fucking scorched earth and flooding the AOs with troops. Might always makes right.

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This is true, one of the difficulties with SF was they were were turned into de facto death squads instead of bridging cultural barriers and enabling trusted Iraqis to defend themselves.

At one point there were more Marines speaking Arabic in Anbar providence with Iraqis than the entirety of SOCOM. I think a real part of this whole debacle with SF in Iraq was they were kind of whored out to the CIA and sent on 'Politically Important' missions.

When your base is getting motar'ed every other night I can see were commanders said 'fuck this hearts and minds shit.'


There are going to be some really good books coming out in 10 or twenty years about some of the crazy shit that going on to influence politics on the ground.

The problem is men are expensive.
Simple as that. Government is full of pussies only willing to commit half measures.
Afghanistan would have been done ten years ago if we had actually fully committed our forces, same goes for Iraq ISIS wouldn't have even been able to surface if that was the case.

user when I was in Baghdad with the Army during the Surge that's precisely what we did. Flooded the AO into COPs, it did work to an extent, but you can't scorch earth in an urban environment they will literally fuck you, because you need civilian assets to be with you not against you. It's a tough kind of fight, and unfortunately it took the military too long to learn how to fight COIN.

Special forces are what is “suppose” to provide hybrid warfare capabilities to field commanders by raising and embedding guerrilla forces into the fight. Everything from hit and run local insurgencies, to full blown large scale conventional paramilitary forces. They are suppose to be the insurgents for the insurgents. However, the way they have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, they are pretty fucking useless.

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>2 volumes
>1300 pages
>just to come up with a conclusion that has less insight than pic related

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Hearts and minds is a tactic. It is to be performed onto those who you trust. You are to protect the villages, towns, and cities that support you. To treat them as if they were your own people. While salting the lands for those who do not support you. I didn’t mean scorched earth as in, kill everything, unless you want to commit genocide.

In your experience, were the Iranian trained militants much smarter and harder to defeat than the Sunni militants you fought?

I worked for Kroll at the time of the invasion. This was pointed out by a number of senior SMEs and former American/British officers. There were far too many taskings that would have suited a line infantry unit given to SF commanders, who then made everything as complicated as possible to justify their own existence. Intelligence JNCOs, attached to line units, were invaluable. In SF units they were part of the furniture at best, with a lot of sub-par intelligence produced by SF troopers with little analysis beyond the immediate tactical.

The use of PMCs, across the military capability and effort, came with its own problems. But the one thing that we were good at was identifying trends and producing good analysis. This was absent from a lot of elite outfits.

Which one is it?

There just were not enough units and logistics to support flushing AF and Iraq. The real way to have conquered AF was to have given every family a couple good trucks and send a couple kids to college. Pretty much enabling Afghans to un-fuck their country. That would have 'let the terrorists win' or some shit so we didn't do it.

> study finds globohomo failed again
Oh nooooo!

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Found the actual study
publications.armywarcollege.edu/

thread theme:
youtube.com/watch?v=EbI0cMyyw_M

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We never even fought Sunnis in our AO, it was all Shiite. In fact we allied with the small Sunni minority. From what I know tho, the Sunnis are harder, more dedicated fighters who accept death. The Shiites were very clever and ingenuitive. They we're extremely well armed/funded and their IEDs known as EFPs we're extremely effective. This goes for their snipers as well, which many were rumoured to be Iranian. One man with an SVD, given 200m standoff can terrorize a platoon even with armor. They we're also very effective at using RPGs and disappearing like ghosts before you could see them. You'd be surprised how hard it is to spot where your being shot at from even in an urban environment within 100m, it's very tough. Luckily with urban environments you do have plenty of cover/exfill routes, but so do they

People don't realize that being islamists is ingrained in Afghan culture. They'll identify with the Taliban more than with the US. To change this, the US would have to have invested in their education system and provided them a better paying alternative to joining the Taliban.

Meme

Sorry for grammar errors I'm phone posting

Hard to beat the payday of farming opium and running guns

>SF commanders, who then made everything as complicated as possible to justify their own existence.
My anecdotal experience agrees with you. SF was reclusive and standoffish when they would go into someone AO and pretty much say "Just give us a cordon and stay out of the way." Often it seems they got played intelligence wise they would end up killing some family because a Syrian doctor or some shit was there 3 weeks ago and SF couldn't be bothered to knock and ask some polite questions.
They did good stuff, don't get me wrong, but they fucked up when it mattered sometimes.

well, yeah. the whole point was to level the place so cheney could get haliburton the rebuilding contracts
there were no wmds there and eveyrone knew it

>there were no wmds there and eveyrone knew it
usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq

t. buttmad jew

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>Send children to college
>farm collapses
>people starve

>My anecdotal experience agrees with you. SF was reclusive and standoffish when they would go into someone AO and pretty much say "Just give us a cordon and stay out of the way."

Pretty much my experience as well, did below several times.

>drive 2-5 days into the middle of fucking nowhere
>roads are nearly non-existent or unknown
>just a shit road trip all around
>to pull cordon for ninja ops
>secret squirrels fly in, snag their prizes
>depart in around half an hour
>no thanks, no acknowledgement
>while we had days back to our FOB/COPs

We visited a nearby SF COP once for a mission briefing, where they had their own Pesh private security. They had modern flushing toilets, a great luxury among COPs (we were burn-pitting at the time). Sadistic assholes had locked all stalls from the inside. There was barely two foot clearance between stall door and the ceiling. Climbing through such while holding your weapon, and a shit you haven't taken in a week is not easy.

They actually made obstacles for us in order to take a shit, bunch of dicks.

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A thousand dollar stack still goes a long way in AF.

not trying to troll here but isn't that basically what the Soviets tried to do?

Kek, I remember the insider reports on what Bush's administration were up to while things were quickly going downhill immediately after the invasion. They were completely delusional and would dismiss and fire every one who told them that that the Iraqis weren't falling on their knees in wonder at the American way™, adopting democracy and eating apple pie.

Reminder, for those too young to remember, the WMD claim was about Saddam having a massive active program of WMD manufacture, and NOT about him keeping an eclectic bunch of old chemical weapons that most of the western world gave to Saddam back in the 80s.

Are you talking before or during the war? Because during the war the Soviets basically razed the country like some sort of Saturday morning cartoon villain nation.

They did force-first on a far greater scale than the US has done in Afghanistan. Just compare casualty figures. They also produced some great angsty music.
youtube.com/watch?v=tcPd6hvlePo

The problem with the Soviets wasn't so much the razing part, but more about the leaving immediately after razing said region. They'd just go in, murder everything in sight, and then just leave. Kinda exactly what we do but on a much smaller CNN friendly scale, hence why we sucked ass in Afghanistan.

Cry more Ahmed

Everybody is laughing and no doubt the poster meant it as a joke but Iran has been Enemy Number One for how many years now? It's been under sanctions for 40 years and is under more rhetoric than Iraq and North Korea ever was. It's literally the first target for a president seeking war to boost his ratings.

Well, seeing as how we no longer really require foreign oil. Let Saudi Arabia and Iran duke it out. Fuck it.

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Were they responsible for that base infiltration where they killed many US soldiers? I forgot the name of the incident, but it involved men dressed in US army uniforms with black SUVs tricking their way into a US base which resulted in the deaths of many US soldiers.

>Ahmed
Not a mudslime, subhuman trash.

>The problem with the Soviets wasn't so much the razing part
Wasn't it actually quite a big problem for soviets because their heavy-handedness massively delegitimized the socialists they tried to keep in power and led to constantly high desertion in the afghan military?

Pic related is incorrect; the truth is that NAMBLA needed a new supply of small boys.

That's not how you spell Saud

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>Reminder, for those too young to remember, the WMD claim was about Saddam having a massive active program of WMD manufacture
I disagree, there was a lot of trapzing about with 'evidence' he was building a nuclear program, and he still had chemical weapons. The truth is somewhere in between. The Iraqi goverment know that they had chemical weapons, they earnestly did not know where they had been stashed after '91. Additionally, a buried pile of HEU was discover when a Nuclear Science professor at Baghdad University lead US forces to it. The custom manufactured containers that held them had been sold to Iraq by China in 2001.
Just saying.

There's the added problem that the Soviets technically intervened against the PDPA to depose Hafizullah Amin after Amin couped Taraki, who'd been a favorite of Brezhnev. Similar to the US in Vietnam with the assassination of the Ngo brothers, it creates the impression that the indigenous government is really just a powerless puppet, which damages legitimacy, cohesion and morale, leading to increased desertion and decreased combat effectiveness.
There's also the classic problem that a force that's spread too thin and limited to short-duration incursions can never offer enough security to make working with it an attractive proposition, especially in the face of an insurgency willing to use extreme violence against perceived collaborators. Nor can it deny territory to the insurgent on a semi-permanent basis, which also complicates the security assurance problem. It isn't as reducible to "hearts and minds" as is often claimed.

>mfw no one in this thread actually read the report
>mfw I didn't either

The problem with Iraq is all the Arabs.

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Continuing from , heavy-handedness itself doesn't seem to be the problem. Insurgent violence directed at the civilian population is often frequent and quite brutal, but insurgents (though the proliferation of IEDs and SVBIED has shifted this somewhat) tend to only target you if you did something wrong, like actively assisting the COIN forces, so neutrality/passive support is often enough to avoid becoming a target. By contrast, COIN forces using artillery and air strikes tend to be more indiscriminate, so it's possible to get killed by them regardless of what you do, which drives resentment and greatly decreases willingness to cooperate with COIN forces. Heavy reliance on fire support also leads towards operational slowness, allowing ample time for insurgents and insurgent organizations to disengage.

>Read 1,200 pages of pure black pill fuel for an Iraq War vet.

There are few fucks I have left for the Iraq thing, I don't want to lose what I got.

This reminds me of an anecdote a cavalry scout once told here a few moons ago.
In Afghanistan it supposedly was a constant pain in the ass to get the bodies of fallen insurgents identified for proper burials, because when they showed the pictures of the bodies to the local village elders they constantly justly said "Not one of us, try village next over.", so they changed their tactice to just driving into the villages and dragging the bodies out and only then the women came out and took their dead sons and husbands away. The reason for not wanting to be associated with the insurgents their interpreter explained, was that the soviets put villages where insurgents originated from under strict surveillance and more than occasionally razed some using heavy weapons.

Thanks pal.

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Does this mean that the retarded Neo-Cohens who LARP about how we won the Iraq War will finally shut up now?

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>complicated things to justify their existence
I cannot tell you how painful that phrase is to me. So much bullshit was done, waste committed, people killed because some fat fucks had been doing their shit for three years, and just had to make a career out of their cozy spot. You even see it too this day, people freaking the fuck out over ending Afghanistan. Like, come the fuck on; there are about to be kids born on the day this shit kicked off that will be old enough to join the military. It's not going to get any better

I had an NCO that was infantry in the early years of Iraq. His group did an SF cordon, and after SF left without a hi, bye, or thanks they decided to check out the seen.
In the compound that was raided, any male that could have been assumed to be older than 18 was dead. No one was even sure if the right compound got hit anyhow

Zionist detected

>1 enemy low level drug dealer KIA
>27 Iraqi citizens KIA
>14 of which with skulls “canoed” open
Strategic Seal victory

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Woah, what's going on here? The US military has aircraft carriers. AKM's and SVD's won't work against drones. Why didn't these gun-toting, Quran clutching micropenis Jihadis tremble in their flip flops and just turn over their guns?

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That's the british army, the bottom text should read "I'll stop them with my plastic spoon"

It was never about needing foreign oil, it was about securing the price of oil in US dollars. If Saddam had've begun selling his oil for Euros it may have set a precedent that many oil rich nations would follow leading to a drop in the value of the US dollar because oil is purchased internationally in US dollars. This wouldv'e killed the burger, hence the curbstomping.

Gaddafi wanted to sell his oil for gold instead of US dollars, he was trying to get many African nations to follow his example.

>petrodollars

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Never doubt the effectiveness of a handful of guerillas with AKs. With a small bit of experience they can put some work in on a platoon plus size Element easy.

>how do we stabilize the middle east
>by destabilizing it more

>Le leftist defeatist meme

Even if USG Cogs decided to unanimously turn on its people without any sort of internal strife. there’s the issue of logistics. The strength that allowed WW2 to be won won’t be there, as millions of non-state actors would fuck around with infrastructure.

The fucking gas price is already dropping to begin with. Point where there was a national push to stop fracking? Cause that sure as shit lowered the price.

good. anything bad for israel is good for us.
I hope their syria bullshit bites them in the ass as well.
maybe hezbollah becomes an even bigger player with even more recruits and starts shutting israel down now.
i wanna see some manpads taking down airliners full of jews. or some REAL gas attacks on the people that need to die.

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+1l

>they are likely to employ a blend of conventional and irregular warfare

wow, it's like they didn't know this was a thing as a lesson learned from Vietnam. wtf do they even teach at CGSC?
oh ya I forgot:Gender equality.
My bad.

You’re dumb as fuck

I've said this in other threads, usually with a bit of hate due to the post suggesting that the Russians have done a good thing, which on this board usually lands you the title ratnik, but I'll say it anyways. The Russians have developed, tested, and implemented, a fourth generational style of hybrid warfare that actually works in Ukraine, and it should be something that we could learn from.
>Battalion tactical groups
>Proxy BTG's and insurgencies being organically utilized under central command structures
>Proper use of propaganda and black flag operations
>Proper use of irregular warfare
>Brilliant economy of force structuring, i.e. Utilizing militias and insurgents not as cannon fodder but as screening and forward reconnaissance units, implementing conscripts to roles that best suit them:
>rear security
>flank security
>bulking up units
>This, allowing the professional "tank riders" to perform the more challenging missions, enabling the Russians to use their best units, at the proper weak points to achieve victory without being tied down
The war in Ukraine has been a crazy fucking shitshow, but that shitshow is also a potentially innovative one.

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Very insightful user.

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Surprised at all the in depth analysis of the war in Iraq, the roles of intelligence and COIN all together but it seems, from what I’ve gathered ITT, that COIN is a colossal waste of time, manpower and resources that will almost always end in defeat. Seems that the only way to win at COIN is to not play at all

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>If not then the PDF would be okay I guess
publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3667.pdf
publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3668.pdf

>had’ve

>orthogonal

nigga stop using words that I have to google

That was actual Iranians.

You’re thinking of an early ISIS incident (actually, the first one I ever recall hearing of). They raided an Iraqi army base and it all ended up on liveleak

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The sun will burn out before the neocons stop being assholes.

>One issue raised repeatedly in the study is the lack of troops — within the deployed brigade combat teams, available for other operations such as the war in Afghanistan, and lack of an operational reserve in theater for responses to major events.
With the world at your fingertips via internet, why would any able bodied young man want to enlist just to march around the desert with no clear goal in mind?
This shit is more complicated than the Russian Civil War for Christ's sake when it shouldn't be.
Hell, they're not fighting for the US and they're sure as hell not fighting for freedom either... The whole "We can't just let terrorism grow unchecked" excuse doesn't work because each persons' definition of terrorism varies and the only time it ever bothered us was on 9/11/2001, almost 18 years ago.

It's simple, you want more manpower then you better promise combat, action, and a clear cut definition of who is the enemy and who isn't.
Young men want to fight in wars, they want to die, they want to feel the heat of conflict.
Money, sign on bonuses, and "adventure" just isn't going to cut it anymore.

Reminder that peace is unnatural, our lives in this stagnant state is unnatural, conflict is where humans have thrived since the dawn of our existence.

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I don't think you understand the post you're quoting.

>Reminder that peace is unnatural, our lives in this stagnant state is unnatural, conflict is where humans have thrived since the dawn of our existence.
.....For the security of the Tribe(family). Not to fight for (((clink clink clank clank get the money to the bank))) halfway around the world in a war that most of your own fellow countrymen don't give a fuck about to begin with. Choose your battles son.

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True, but then you also have a big stalemate problem. Hybrid warfare was enough to reach a stalemate, but not break a conventional defense response

DONT WORRY FELLOW WHITE PEOPLE
I HAVE AN IDEA ABOUT HOW WE CAN HELP OUT OUR IRAQI ALLIES
I JUST NEED YOU TO GO A FEW MORE BILLION DOLLARS INTO DEBT

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>Stalemate
The only thing holding Pro-Russian and Russian forces back from marching straight to Kiev is the risk of the conflict escalating to a ground war between Russia and all of Europe. They stopped on their own accord and the Minsk protocols are laughably bad for the Ukrainians. The only place where the Ukrainian military exists is on paper, entire Brigades were wiped out and destroyed during the fighting. Shit is far from being a stalemate.

>Battalion tactical groups
>rear security
>flank security
>bulking up units
>Proxy BTG's and insurgencies being organically utilized under central command structures

The US has been playing with these ideas in Syria but most commands are way to rigid and risk adverse when dealing with non-state actors. No one wants to be person who gave the next ISIS a million dollars in guns and ammo.

I will say the Russians do have an advantage speaking the same language and having the same culture as their proxies I assume.

there were a lot of strange coincidences like that

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