Well, the reason might be plain and simple, America’s pride in not getting itself out of something it started. The war in Iraq has been raging for almost 5 years and the one in Afghanistan more than that period and the American Military (really the whole American Government) cannot suffer another defeat in the face of seemingly low-tech adversaries. Most of the Western world’s military powers specialize in traditional combat or warfare with the enemy well defined and visible which is very far from the realities of current day war strategies being employed by insurgents and people who are willing to die for their beliefs. The humiliation of defeat is too much to bear for the US military which has a long history of technological superiority yet fails utterly to win against an enemy which fails to fight using conventional warfare methods. Vietnam, Korea, Mogadishu, Afghanistan and now Iraq are just some of the most widely known failures of their technological might.
In Vietnam, where they deny to this day that they lost the war, their military people were thrust into a war of unconventional methods by a people who were fighting and willing to die to get them out of their land. In Korea, they underestimated the might of the Chinese Conscript army which this time was willing to sacrifice as many lives as possible to win even with archaic weaponry. Mogadishu was one of the events that had the best technology in the world against a people who were lawless and considered the gun and the ability to use it as the best negotiating weapon.
Originally posted on March 13, 2008 @ 4:47 pm