tarball

That international agreement for the treatment of prisoners is the crux of the argument. I don't know the military/marine corps law governing the issue, but we are a party to this agreement: http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con_sp.html. We now all know that forces were spread THIN, but perhaps those units were not. Rather than radio back to determine what to do with those guys, who were holding our propaganda encouraging surrender, "Godfather" summarily tossed them aside. Operationally, we all know why these prisoners were not retained, but perhaps, now in hindsight, we should examine why those prisoners were not afforded proper detention. Hindsight has given us quite a few incidents to review with respect to our treatment of prisoners. While I have faith that 90% or more of our cases of prisoner detention are exemplary, we owe it to ourselves to improve towards 100%. In any case, it is alarming that a few of you are so dismissive of international treaties and laws, such as the Geneva Convention. I suppose there is natural hostility towards the humanist agenda when the subject is war and killing - this is why the officer ranks are supposed to be the gentlemen, those entrusted to ensure that civility tempers unbridaled blood-lust. It is a timeless balancing act amongst the fighting forces of civilized nations.

History has proven your optimism here to be naive. If you spend a considerable amount of time with this age group, which I do and have, you'll see their behaviors as being fairly standard of young men 18-22. I am generally around young people of a higher socio-economic order than shown in the series and these more-fortunate kids display many of the same proclivities seen in the show. Perhaps, for effect, the television series is overstating the behaviors, but I don't see the behavior of the crew in the lead HMMWV, which is the focus of the series primarily, as been outlandish. I've see each of those personalities in get Xers and Yers. Remember, this is through the eyes of a popular journalist corresponding for a "pop culture" magazine - the story is how the "hip-hop, video games and heavy metal" ADD generation went to fight a war. To a degree, the author may be pandering. In any case, the book is a good slice of the war and the series seems to be sticking to the book fairly. I've also been exposed to a fair number of these young men as they've come home and sought their GI benefits... their stories somewhat corroborate the tenor of the book.

It is rare to find such low-hanging fruit as the logical inconsistency you offer here in your statement. If these guys are professional and disciplined, then they WOULD give quarter to surrendering soldiers and make arrangements for their safe captivity under human and civil conditions. Gee, don'cha think this move, coupled with the general chaos of the balance of 2003 in terms of lies, deception and mismanagement towards the conquered people of Iraq, contributed towards the subsequent insurgency? Honestly, a civilized and urbane nation will abide by the commiments it keeps - such as being a signotory to international treaties such as the Geneva Convention. In any case, the attitude displayed towards those prisoners is no different than the other "undisciplined" behaviors you abhor in the book/tv-series. Perhaps it is appropriate that the grunts are cold-blooded killers with no remorse; but, as gentlemen, the officers should have done better. Of course, operationally they could not have, which means the responsibility lies much higher up the chain. That leadership NEVER took responsibility for the problems created by the planning and execution of the invasion and occupation from 2003-2005.

You might be oversimplifying this particular issue.

Good discussions in this thread. I'd like to contribute, if I may: SOME THOUGHTS ON WINNING ASYMMETRICAL WARS I agree with the comments in this thread regarding winning battles and losing wars. Consistently, in recent US history, a powerful military force has bogged itself in low-intensity asymmetrical warfare (the NVA, China, USSR and Iran not-with-standing) and, for various reasons, failed to lower the hammer. What hammer? Study empires and you'll see that imperium was maintained through the use of carrots and sticks. The Romans, Ottoman turks, Mongols, etc.; each ruled with varying degress of tryanny and humanity, but each certainly did not maintain full troop occupation in every corner of their domain - they had to coerce with carrot and stick. While I get the impression, as a bystander, that some of these carrot-and-stick measures are used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the punctuation of the stick might be more of a series of commas rather than an exclamation point. From what I gather, the approach is to deliver a series of studied, measured and nuanced licks wtih the stick rather than a lowering of the boom. Maybe we are working towards a world where, by our example, we do not wish to condone barbarism. However, the great imperia of the past, those on which we reflect on fondly as precursors to contemporary civilization, saw the necessity and economy of total violence in the face of protracted intransigence. Actually, within the last 70 years, the U.S. has used this same playbook (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course there are differences between concluding a 4-year all-out war with cataclysim and bringing about peace in maelstrom such as Iraq. In any case, history teaches us that, sometimes, extreme violence is needed to achieve an objective. Are we willing to go the distance? Should we? LET THAT BE A LESSON Looking at history, in the case of the Ottomans and Romans, subject lands and people usually enjoyed many of the benefits of the occupying civilization so long as they were compliant. However, in order to maintain control, "lessons" where meted to remind the subjected where power lies. These lessons amounted to collective punishment. According to the these examples, you must be willing to use collective punishment, regardless of the facts (i.e. catching dolphins in the tuna net). It seems that the modern approach taken by the west is a continuous experiment to perfect an ethical, moral and humane counter-insurgency approach. Perhaps this experimentation will bear fruit, but whither the costs? As with any type of research, funding is not bottomless; when too much treasure is spent without conclusive results, the experimentation and research ends inconclusively (in failure perhaps?). In these matters, modern civilizations pride themselves in taking moral high-ground. Well, at least this is our espoused theory. By taking moral high ground while your enemy invokes the low-grounds of terror and the like, you end up playing to the enemy's initiative and playbook. Whether benign or not, order in imperia of antiquity always came at the cost of innocents. Some might say that plenty of innocents have paid dearly in Iraq and Afghanistan - but to what conclusion? Where does the boundary of innocence lie? Were the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki innocents? These are certainly matters open to discussion. The history of humanity shows that brute force, regardless of innocense, has produced desired effects. The corporal discipline which is waning in child rearing was always intended to have the same effect - "let this terrible whuppin' remind you to NEVER do this again." In my own experience, I recall that in nearly all cases, this approach is usually effective. EXTREMITY AS ECONOMY So, back to winning asymmetrical wars: When resistance gives way to rooted intransigence, the imperia of antiquity would scortch the earth so as to cut losses and prevail their will. On the methods employed by the Roman Empire, Publius Tacitus said the following: Latin: "Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." English: "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace" While the history of Vietnam and Iraq (perhaps less so Afghanistan) arguably resemble the first portion of Tacitus' remarks, we see a marked failure in these cases to follow through with the subsequent portion of his quip. If war is the business of "...violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will," (Clausewitz) then the compulsion does not seem to be complete in the case of contemporary dontrine and approaches to asymmetrical warfare. We often hear how things are being done "for the people" of an occupied country. However, what the Romans, the Ottomans and Napoleon each did to engender cohesion among "the people" was to hold an entire people accountable regardless of their culpability. Thus, heavy whacks with a big stick are usually seen, in the long view, as cost effective. The common sentiment in the Truman administration, in justifying the use of atomic weapons, was cost-saving. The idea was the countless lives and treasure would be lost in a methodic and convential taming of the Japanese mainland in 1945. THus, The two atomic bombs were big sticks which quelled the fires of that war with two huge puncuations. In the case where "...All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it," (Clausewitz) The might of western military prowess holds, as a weakness, the extention of ideals of morality and civility which to enemies and conquered/occupied people. The official story in Iraq is that the asymmetrical war there is a war of liberation and freedom, However, a liberator isn't if nagging insurgency continues to rage like a california brush fire. Again, you can take the moral high ground, win all the firefights and still lose. $100,000 FLYSWATTER? My long-winded rant above serves as a backdrop and context to the original poster's question/observation about the cost of high-tech and life preservation. Precision pin-pricks and the minimization of "collateral" damage are a testament to our advance in technology and civility. However, the "at all costs" menatality (which was not shared among the greatest of empires of the past) towards saving the lives of the soldiery and innocents dictates that costly flyswatters represent the only way forward in achieving our goals through the violence of warfare. Rather than spraying the entire neighborhood with DDT to kill all of the mosquitoes, the humane and considerate way is to invest in high-tech bug zappers. Clearly our politcal agenda includes preserving our ethics and morality even if it confounds or increases the cost of victory in asymmetrical war. Costly solutions are rarely sustainable for the sort of long-haul most experts predict will be required in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. We have one recent historical example of cutting bait and losses when these costs become too much to bear - will we have a few more in the near future? I don't know. CAVEAT I do not intend to be callous or bloodtthirsty, nor am I cheerleading for pogroms in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am simply pointing out that the experimentations in gentler or reasoned counter-insurgency we are witnessing today will continue to exact greater cost than the "economical" solutions. I'd even go so far as to say I am not a warmonger, but who would I be kidding? I play this wargame simulation, as do you, where death and distruction are the objects of my enjoyment. I suppose I assuage my conscience by assuring myself that it is better to kill pixels than people. Thanks for the discussion, it's an important topic.

If the TC shuts the engine down, he'd hear those other vehicles - otherwise, it is plausable that he could sit there and not notice those other vehicles. Is this T-72 a part of a platoon with those other tanks at the top of the picture? If so, then he'd have radio contact with them and they would have spotted the brads and M1.

The truth is, and by their own admission, Battlefront just doesn't have the resources to do exhaustive hardware compatibility testing. We can either see a hike in the retail price (these guys would have to spread the costs of professional testing across all units sold in order to make their own earnings projections), or we can live with how it goes down now: the first several release versions end up being an extended beta. A guy like me was too stupid to have learned from previous experience that pre-ordering a Battlefront title is a no-no. I should have waited a few months until the game was stabilized. My fault. Now, we could have a more air-tight (but not perfect) game at a higher sticker price, or we can continue status quo. This is the way it's going to be - no wonder so many developers jumped ship to consoles - in fact, I wonder to what extent consoles have lessened quality control at places like ATI and nVidia?

Thank you Steve, that seems reasonable. For the record, I have an ATI card based on their R580 processor (released January 2006). The brand-name for this graphics processor is the Radeon X1900XTX (512 Mb video memory, 650 processor clock, 775 memory clock). Since this processor predates Vista retail by a year, I am not certain if this qualifies as a "recent ATI card" or not. The drivers obviously have OpenGL problems, so I hope ATI steps up and works with you. Otherwise, I guess I'll go back to nVidia after nearly 10 years with ATI. Looking for forward to a fix. I am sorry that you guys had this one slip through the cracks, I am not sure if you would have held up release if you had of known about this Vista/ATI problem, but you certainly would have known how "no go" this situation is. Jeff

Thanks for the update. I am not certain how you can call the ATI cards "buggy" when the problems seem to be limited to the Vista/ATI combination? Don't you mean buggy drivers?

Hammer... If you are running Vista and using an ATI card (using the latest catalyst drivers), you have a problem such that the game crashes when you left click on the map (to select a unit or to do anything else). It makes the game unplayable for those of us with the Vista/ATI combination.

A la Willard in Apocalypse Now: "Never order without playing the demo, never order without playing the demo, you're g'dammned right..." Teething, growing pains, etc. are going to be par-for-the-course. The CM1x series was/is so awesome that I was frothing for CM2x - I let enthusiasm get the best of me. This game will be fixed and it'll be great (carrying on the CM tradition) - but unplayability in the near-term is a kick in the pants. Lesson: Don't order w/o playing the demo. By Fall this game should be right.

Massive, If I wasn't zealous myself, I wouldn't be so upset - nobody likes to open up a toy and have it broken. In any case, I think my idea/suggestion isn't a bad one. Guys like Battlefont.com could use the help of having a wider beta. Fans of niche genres like war/strategy games are zealous enough to buy into such a system - at least it seems that way to me. Believe me, I'm trying to cool down and get perspective. The lead-up and buildup to these games creates a lot of expectation. These guys have acknowledged the problem and are fixing it - there's not much more to expect. A wider number of testers would have revealed this problem (and others). Oh yeah: Grognard This term doesn't have to be derogatory or pejorative - fans of Battlefront games fit the description to varying degrees.

Steve, It's Vista + ATI - perhaps the three of you are on XP and tested on XP. Anyone with a new machine since the start of the year very likely has Vista. Most are using nVidia cards these days, but the ATI folks are out there. Hey, if you didn't run into it you didn't - a professional hardware QA team wasn't likely in your budget. Since "stuff happens," I'll just get over it. Perhaps you could appreciate the once-bitten twice-shy as several of Battlefront's titles did not have a smooth release. I'm going to be constructive rather than rant (which I've done since last Friday - sorry, I'll never pre-order from Battlefront again): Since you have this eLicense thing going on, I wonder if you can leverage it to your advantage? Why not release a paid public beta, which is content-limited to just a few missions and a partial campaign? Perhaps you could limit some of the QB options too. The purpose of this paid-for beta (perhaps you charge 1/2 the normal asking price), is that you'd discover bugs such as those cropping up with this release and you'd have a wide use-base from which to analyze these bugs. Once you are ready for the release version, you change the eLicense such that the those with the Beta licence will need to have obtained a full-release license. The beta guys would be able to get the pre-order deal plus a little something extra (like the deluxe version at normal price). With all the enthusiasts who crowded around in the CMSF forum for years before the release, you would have had quite a number of willing (and paying participants). Since money talks and bs walks - this would probably be win-win for you. Hey, Microsoft Flight Simulator X had a free public beta and it probably served as a great hardware compatibility test for them. Battlefront could easily get away with asking for money as the frea.. uhm, "grognards" who are your fan-base are all zealous - heck, you've got guys who will defend a semi-broken release and jump down the necks of your detractors. With watchdogs like that, you've clearly got loyalty and willing testers. Just a thought. Despite all my rage (I'm still just a... ). oops, I mean, believe-it-or-not, I would have PAID to do the beta thing and would not have been as upset as I am now when the game didn't work with the ATI card. I realize that the only downside of my idea is the bandwidth - you would probably make less money as you'd have to mass-distribute the latest build to everyone - however, aren't there diff-patches that could be used? Here's to a speedy solution to the ATI problem - it has been a real bummer for anyone anticipating this release.

Sounds like another victim of less than thorough testing. However, all of these behaviors may have been reported during testing - it is my experience that sometimes reported bugs and flaws are not sewn up before released date. Thanks rlg for the find/catch.

[ July 31, 2007, 06:30 AM: Message edited by: tarball ]