Cary

Steve, and others as well: some very thoughtful posts, and I appreciate your forbearance as they began to veer from the topic. Regards, and thanks for the thought. Cary

Steve, In principle I agree. Perhaps it's just a bias of mine that I'd prefer not to categorize einsatzgruppen as soldiers, but calling them "criminals" seems to miss some of their identity as well. In a similar vein, Hezbollah's connections to the Lebanes government seem, by your definition, to leave them dangerously close to being "soldiers." Clinging as we do to our right to bear arms, we in the United States ought to be the among the first to admit that the state's accountability does not alway reach par. [ July 27, 2006, 02:20 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

That's a really good point. I've been wondering lately whether the CMSF maps should be larger to take into account the longer effective ranges of tanks, attack helicopters, AT assets etc. However, perhaps those who are more in the know might say that actual contact and firefight ranges are typically much less than specification ranges? </font>

Just a minor point, but it seems arguable that it's the soldier's job not to be confused with the terrorist, not the civilian's job to tell one killer from another. Certainly the difference can get terribly academic when armed men kick in your door late at night. This may seem a high standard to set for soldiers. But these are men and women whom society has given a huge license. And they've got to earn their big bucks somehow. Apologies, I'm feeling unusually cynical. [ July 26, 2006, 10:24 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

lol Ahhh.. well.. 2 cats, around 10 water guns and two sheets of plexiglass - one to cover the map, the other to prop up over the game when I'm going to be away from the table for more than a few minutes. Now my two year old son is a different story... </font>

That's a good way of putting it, Oren. I guess my question is whether this "chaos" is more prevalent in modern warfare -- counterintuitive, but arguably the case -- and if so, whether that makes modern warfare harder to model at the CM scale. Certainly part of the issue is that much of the technology of modern warfare is optimized to (so to speak) inflict "friction" or chaos on the enemy. And that element of modern warfare is probably something gamers would be justified in wanting to control. Not only that, but it may be that failing to incorporate this imposed friction will force BFC to skew it's depiction of (particularly) American hardware -- the M1A1 and Bradley, notably, to model historical results from the Gulf War or OIF. (Which would make for an awfully nasty CMSF Egyptian army). [ July 26, 2006, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Agreed, there's an interesting discussion in this thread that got lost in the debates and acrimony over current events. I think it's also an interesting point you make that some of the Israeli problems have come from planners who thought they could win from the air.... That said, with apologies to those who'd like to continue this thread, I've started a new thread entitled "modern combat and scale" that picks up on Oren's point and yours in a different way: subtly, both you and Oren, seem to be arguing for a downward shift in scale from the contemporary CM to focus more on the "ground tactics" that might be employed in firefights against a guerrilla force, etc. I'm not so sure I'm all that keen on this kind of company-level scale wargame, but my question is whether it might be be particularly difficult to simulate modern combat at any of the intermediate scales between company and division/corps. In World War II, a game design doesn't lose all that much by abstracting Off-board artillery, counterbattery (such as it was), airpower/FACs, etc. With PGMs, choppers, and well-developed CAS, this seems much more of a problem, potentially. [ July 26, 2006, 04:30 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Oren_M's thread and the latest unpleasantness prompted me to pull out my old copy of Victory Games' Flashpoint:Golan, and think about CM:SF's topic. In general, I think I agree with BFC's skepticism about re-theming to a contemporary Arab-Israeli conflict, though I think some of Oren_M's points are compelling. But Mark Herman's notes in FP:G bring up another potential problem with modern tactical combat, particularly if it is focused on main-force operations. Specifically, it is that it's very hard -- harder than in WWII -- to distinguish between tactical and operational level combat, and therefore, it will be difficult to impose a "ceiling" on the scale of the game that doesn't leave out significant elements of modern combat. In his game, which is admittedly strategic in scale -- Division regiment and battalion -- Herman tries to capture the fact that "long-range detection and firepower have dramatically increased the depth of the theater of operations in modern warfare." "Deep Battle" he argues "waged far behind the front lines can determine the outcome of a campaign even before the opposing ground forces come into contact." As he says, where "in World War II the frontline called the Forward Line of Troops ... is also the Forward Edge of the Battle Area" in modern combats, the two things are no longer the same. It strikes me that this characteristic of modern warfare might be somewhat of a problem given the "ceiling" of scale that makes sense for a CM-styled game. The disjunct between "FEBA" and "FLOT" seems to imply that many of the factors shaping the tactical battle that players control would actually be decided off-board -- in the exchange of decapitating strikes etc. -- and, crucially, out of players' control: In short, "Scuds have hit your divisional command center, game over." seems plausibly realistic as a game dialog. A rather unsatisfying way to end the game, though. (Ok, given recent displays of the accuracy of Soviet-model rockets, perhaps "MLRSs" is more plausible.). To put it more technically, I wonder if there might be real problems and objectionable abstractions in porting the 'grand tactical' scale of CM, where a player is pushing battalions and companies, to a CM:Modern, where it's much harder to separate out the actions and well-being of these mid-sized units from their parents. [ July 26, 2006, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

It's better than that bloody twitch I developed from playing the full campaign of MMP's OCS Tunisia... :mad: </font>

It's a major change to the game design; as Kuniworth notes, it would change the balance in a lot of the scenarios. Have I seen a compelling realism argument in this thread? I'm not sure there is one given the game's level of granularity. Once you decide to go with any "IGOUGO" sequence in a game, you've basically decided that the passage of time will be abstracted; details within that abstraction are arbitrary. Would it be nice to have the option to play with a different mechanic? Sure.... But the game was designed to work without it, and a lot of the scenarios would be broken with it. Sure it's frustrating, but having to plan is always frustrating if you don't do it. Bottom line: nice option, but are there better pieces of code for HC to work on? I suspect so. [ July 25, 2006, 09:52 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'd been thinking for a while about where I disagreed with the posts above. It's nice to have the opportunity and the reason to think hard about the issue.

Liam and Yogi, I'm afraid I disagree strongly with your manichaen viewpoint, not least because it seems to agree with the viewpoint of the jihadis while forgetting some of the crucial insights of Western thinking about justice in war. I suppose in the end, I'm uncomfortable with your viewpoint because it seems to assume that those of "us" wearing white hats somehow avoided the stain of original sin. A lot of my thinking here derives from something George Kennan wrote in 1955 about the utility and dangers of violence: It may not be a particularly optimistic take on human nature, but I think it is a clear-eyed appraisal of the challenges we face. Certainly the more optimistic view, complete with white and black hats, has been a particularly dangerous fiction. The righteous seem quite capable of excusing their own atrocities with gleeful abandon. They forget as well that their crusade will end long before the end of a struggle between good and evil. [ July 25, 2006, 08:37 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" I guess we've gotten more civilized since then.

Wow.... Just wow. So you bust your chops for four years trying to perfect Strategic Command, then convince potential players that the community is a bunch of loudmouthed, arrogant SOBs. Seems somewhat counterproductive. [ July 23, 2006, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

"L’État, c’est moi" was poor policy in 1690. It remains so today.

That would be "Kangaroo Court" in session. Nice job getting your "confession" though. Perhaps a re-education camp would be in order.

You're right to see the links with deterrence theory. But (as if I haven't said enough loony stuff already) I tend to put nuclear weapons in the category of "American Gee-whiz weapons that never worked." With the arguable exception of Hiroshima, the nuclear test of wills never really led to an outcome that wouldn't have been achieved on the ground anyway. That scholars spent so much ink on it in the past 50 years says something about the dangers of a too much education. As to the "War without Mercy" on the Eastern Front... well, as I said, the old "African Way of War" seems pretty smart by comparison. Granted, this give way too much credit to Shaka and his successors. Still, Hitler would have done well to back down when Soviet women showed up on the front-line and in the Soviet factories. As well, tragically, Von Stauffenberg didn't stay with his bomb in July 1944. That he did not risked national annihilation. You are right, though. The US faces a real problem in the age of asymmetric warfare. The jokes about turning the Middle East into a glowing parking lot touch a certain degree of truth. Let me explain what the following documents -- Fred Kaplans gloss on the new counterinsurgency Field Manual and the FM itself -- suggest to me in brief. http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24fd.pdf http://www.slate.com/id/2145175/?nav=navoa Guerrilla wars are won by small groups of grunts on the ground who win the respect and the fear of their neighbors. They win this respect and this fear in great part because they are willing to take the chance that their neighbors will bump them off in the middle of the night, and because they have the faith that if that happens, somebody else will come along and replace them. If they are not willing to take this chance, they will just be hated but not feared. "Neighbors" by the way, is a very non-technical, non-military term, but I think it captures specifically where the "boots" have to be on the ground and their relationship to the population around them. I'm simplifying the lessons of the British counterinsurgency and the abstract above, but I think I capture the essence here. Well, some sacrifices are smaller than they originally seem. I don't have a lawn, and I rather dread inheriting one. Taking Machiavelli as my guide (along with Donnella Meadows) you may be in the best situation, where your lawn both loves you and fears you. [ July 17, 2006, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Keegan's History of War suggests that this African way of war was, overall, pretty smart. (Actually, he talks about the New Guinean way of war, but it's still about waving spears). And there's something too the point that the capital-intensive "American Way of War" is actually pretty stupid -- we haven't really solved the problem where your opponents just surrender long enough to copy your gee-whiz gadgets -- (that might include the one-armed bandit, by the way). Further on that point... there are, we generally think, two great successes of the "American way of war," WWII and the Civil War. But there are two interesting issues about the Civil War -- 1)"Mine eyes have seen the glory..." expresses a particular view of the "cause" -- both sides were swept up in a spirit of sacrifice... 2) The losing side was, increasingly, sitting on a powder keg. 3)Some people could be forgiven for thinking that the south actually won. World War II, meanwhile, has been the subject of this thread. My contention continues to be that, contrary to popular belief, the US did not wind World War II. Whew, back on thread.... I'd argue that the Soviets "proved how tough they were" by storming Berlin. There's no question that they proved their willingness to sacrifice; indeed I agree that they went rather overboard in this regard. But we cannot deceive ourselves even despite Stalin, even despite SHAEF's incompetence the sacrifice for "Mother Russia" was essentially willing -- saying otherwise to a Russian even today is a great way of starting a fight. Conversely, by the way, the Russians lost the Cold War, in the end, because they (actually Honecker of East Germany) couldn't find soldiers willing to pull triggers in Leipzig. No question, the "long peace" had its brutality, particularly at the point when the Europeans "had the gatling." You may be right and somewhere to send the warriors may be crucial to a "long peace." That's a pessimistic view (and a nice justification for the space program, particularly when the planets are uninhabited). I'm not sure though -- seems to me the problem there is less with the warriors than the "civilians" who find gold in the Black Hills or diamonds in the Transvaal. And I'm tempted to believe Hannah Arendt's argument that imperialism and anti-semitism (not necessarily war) led to man-made mass death. I knew I was going to get into trouble here... but I guess it wouldn't be interesting if I didn't. Bomber Harris is an easy case, I'm afraid. The bloke has to make a desperate case that he actually did save some of his own by burning Dresden and Hamburg. There's much reason to doubt him. There was much reason to doubt him at the time, not least that German terror-bombing of London had been notably ineffective. As to mowing your lawn... do you use a rider mower? (Let me avoid wandering way off topic). Very frankly, I have no problem setting the bar as high as I do. I see very few places where setting the bar this high would have prevented the U.S. from getting into a war we should have gotten into, and at least two cases where it'd have kept us from adventures and crusades we could have done without. I would not underestimate the power of the ideas behind the nation-state. One of the real challenges that the United States faces is that we have not thought for a long while what ideals and interests we have that are really worth fighting and dying for -- just toss a missile after a tent and leave the problem for the next administration.... This is a weakness for the obvious reason that we have a poorly calibrated compass for our actions internationally. It is also a weakness, when we wander into s**t, because we have a very hard time understanding those who do have a sense of the the ideals and interests they would die for. I have to emphasize, the problem here is not just understanding the bad guys but the "good guys" as well. And so there are a bunch of naive 18 year olds wandering in a shooting gallery -- or cooped in the Green Zone -- and complaining that their job and the risks they face wasn't worth the offer of free college tuition.. ... sorry... I know many of my compatriots are not as angry as I am about the current state of our country. [ July 19, 2006, 11:31 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Note from the site you cite, Diced, Stevenson's point in Cataclysm doesn't necessarily support you: I might say that "aristocratic war" is all about looking to minimize the "cost of victory" so that that "cost" doesn't stack "the odds against a peaceful future." The problem that Americans, particularly, have to face -- "now that we're in a war, are civilian casualties ok?" Does crossing that first Rubicon mean that we are free to cross the second? I respond as doggedly as I do because I believe the answer is "no." Agreed, the quest for a decisive victory in war is a chimera: Sherman, Grant, or James Gould Shaw didn't get it in 1865, even having accepted that "war is hell." But as to "nonsense" and "never," we owe much of our thought, our technology, and our civilization to Europeans who lived in this "nonsensical" fiction of aristocratic war: the long "peace" between 1648 and 1789, and between 1815 and 1914. (Sorry to all of the multitudes of PC anti-eurocentrists who I just know are lurking nearby, waiting to be offended -- rest easy, I'll say far mor offensive things than praise for Locke, Newton, and Kant). I would give near anything that we live in a century as peaceful. No question, the seeds of destruction were sowed in those periods, but many these seeds were themselves the belief that we could "progress" to the end of war, or, once a war was begun, that it could be the "war to end all wars." Warning... more gasoline for the thread... YMMV As to the 105s and the village: I am going to take your bait. Yes, probably so, perhaps not so much because civilians were killed, but because it was an attempt to fight a war without sacrifice on the part of our soldiers. Frankly, Patton's view that the point of war is to make some other SOB die for his country is dead wrong, and it's particularly, even fatally, misguided in the context of guerrilla war. The point of war is to prove your own and your country's own willingness to sacrifices for its own beliefs and its survival. --- Among those sacrifices, it should be noted, is having the act of killing somebody else on one's own conscience, something that the fly-boys and lanyard-pullers are, terrifyingly, spared --- And if we can't find grunts willing to make that sacrifice, it seems to me a good indication that the war shouldn't be fought, because any "victory" will be particularly short-lived. This is, I am afraid, the true meaning to the phrase "freedom is not free." Is this easy for me to say... perhaps. I can't claim I'd be scrambling for the sharp end. But it seems to approach a truth about the -- harsh -- "ethics" of soldiering, such as there are. As to the Auschwitz mother, I'd like to grant her the moral integrity of not necessarily wanting revenge for it's own sake. The awful truth of the matter, of course, is that she had far more to worry about than Hamburg or Dresden. [ July 17, 2006, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Diced, with all due respect, I have to point out that you're making Thomas Hobbes sound like a liberal humanist and an optimist. (!) Generally this suggests that one's arguments are floating somewhere in "cloud-cuckooland." That's fine. I've been there many times myself, but my experience is that it's not healthy to stay there too long. For what it's worth, Hobbes' argument is that only an armed, organized body can can bring to an end the "war of all against all." Leviathan, needless to say, is not pacifist. That said, it's a part of the American (settler's) cultural heritage that we haven't had to think much about Thomas Hobbes. Even W.T. Sherman didn't really mean what he said when he said "war is hell" (or at least he didn't with respect to White Southerners -- for anyone who lived on buffalo it was a different story). And more importantly, he, like most of us on this continent, never had to face the spectre of the "war of all against all." But part of the danger of the American Way of War (Weigley's book by this title is worth the read) is that it can easily leave the "war of all against all" in its wake -- if we bomb 'em back to the stone age, we end up with a lot of "neanderthals" kicking around. By the way, just to promote a truly off-topic post.... Anybody want to stick up for the Neanderthals? All we know about them is that Cro-Magnons had better publicists. The idea of "Just War" and the idea of "Just conduct in war" has been around a long time, and some true thinkers have spent their life's energy on it. Perhaps part of their wisdom is that we will be in trouble if we ever think we've come to a final answer -- if we cease to think we might be wrong. I don't know that I can abstract this thinking all that well right now -- and there are professionals who have done it much better -- so I'll just make a couple points. You are correct, one thing that has to be said about the Flying Fortress, to say nothing about the PGM and the video feed: the horror of it is that they can deceive us that war is clean -- things look simple and orderly though the missile's suicidal periscope, or from 20,000 feet. Perhaps as because of the temptation to believe in the "surgical strike," somebody has to take the position of the moralist in a debate like this. (And a salute to you, DD, for doing so). Certainly (young?) armed men too easily become thugs. And their leaders bear the responsibility. Vis: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5129350.stm I'm pretty much convinced that Kony's a war criminal, that, at best he deserves to be badgered to death in a Luxemburg court -- gotta love the European flavor of capital punishment for Milosevic -- or to rot for 40 years in solitary. But saying that requires me to accept that there are individuals who have fought in a way that is better. Do they include the fellows with the joysticks? .... Honestly, I don't know. As to armchair generals and wargamers, I think you've mis-stated things: rather than believing in clean war, we're too prone to believing that war is clean. It's easy to forget just how much misery follows war when you're manipulating cardboard chips, or chips of 0s and 1s. As such, it's also easy to forget that specific acts of violence can cause more misery or less. My experience with "professionals in the field" is that they are, generally, trying to carve islands of sanity for themselve in an insane pursuit -- some, of course, fly back to a clean barracks and punch their cards, and need not struggle so hard -- but many have a far more profound challenge. I can respect them they realize that they are taking blood on their hands and because they are trying to relate their ends to their means, and they realize that they might truly do wrong if that proportion is lost. I guess my point, in the end, is that there may be good reason to accept an idea of "aristocratic" war. Europe is probably the most literate, cultured place on earth to actually try out "democratic" war -- perhaps twice, once, in the wars of religion 1550-1648, and once, in the wars of mechanized mass death, 1914-1945. (Ok.. I'll reach desperately to grab a justification for this post in this thread -- particularly on the Eastern Front) Aristocratic conflict may be nasty, but, like democratic politics, it beats the alternative. Now, on this, I may be wrong. A true optimist once wrote: "All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting point. Racial injustice around the world. Poverty. War. When man solves these three great problems he will have squared his moral progress with his scientific progress. And more importantly, he will have learned the practical art of living in harmony." The name of a Philadelphia mayor comes to mind.... And, yes, in my neighborhood once de septiembre brings out small Catholic shrines. [ July 17, 2006, 04:50 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Would that it could be so. But what about those who build the devices, or pay to buy them? Or do we get out of that conspiracy by saying that we're all combatants... But you're right, we've gone far wrong if we can't stop to listen to that point -- at least to wonder at our laminate rationalizations. Similar story floating around about a passenger on British Airways. One hopes that at least some of these stroies are true. I guess the sad irony is that German POWs on work details in the South were still entitled to ride in the front of the bus. Imagine the rage if you were a black soldier pushed to the back. [ July 16, 2006, 09:41 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

My humble, oh-so non-partisan opinion? Not who but what, and the answer is the Presidency. The founding fathers rigged our system basically so a bad or mediocre president couldn't do too much damage. In general a pretty wise decision: democracy is, after all, the worst form of government except when you consider the alternatives. And, all said and done, I'm afraid both Clinton and Junior have done a lot to prove out that maxim. Democrats from FDR through Johnson and then Nixon/Kissinger worked to re-rig the system to give the president a more decisive role in foreign policy. This may have been a good idea for the time, but it is inappropriate now -- decisions just don't need to be made as fast. And the system as it stands now gives any president way too much opportunity to foul things up. (Sure, there's the "terrorist nuke in Baltimore" scenario, but we've got to be realistic, the best decision to be made there involves who goes in to clean up -- I hate to be so brutal, but we know from Katrina that the United States can survive the loss of one of its cities.)

And here, in essence, you and I agree. I just have a teeny problem with the billion or so dollars we funnel to Israel every year: I'm not so sure it's a good idea to sacrifice so much for their freedom. This particularly when bombing Lebanon and reoccupying Gaza will likely "inspire" another 50-100 jihadis in Baghdad. I have all sorts of sympathy for Israel wanting to release its three hostages, but it gets messy when it means that the United States has to spend even more blood and treasure in the shooting gallery. ... apologies, ever so briefly I was on topic.... [ July 14, 2006, 08:15 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

As to the value of human life: I've never been sure what to make of this poem, beyond a reminder to be somewhat humble about what nations and peoples spend their lives on. Requiem for the Croppies The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley... No kitchens on the run, no striking camp... We moved quick and sudden in our own country. The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp. A people hardly marching... on the hike... We found new tactics happening each day: We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike And stampede cattle into infantry, Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown. Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave. Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon. The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave. They buried us without shroud or coffin And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave. -- Seamus Heaney [ July 14, 2006, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

People should be able to choose there own government, right? </font>