Allies

Allies - Trent Telenko writes a column about the US' decisive advantage in military communications and what it means.

It's a piece you need to read on many levels. But since we spend so much time dealing with the la-la-land predictions of of John "Fop and Jaw" Kerry and his minions' claims that the US needs to integrate its defenses with our allies, I thought this bit, quoting Tom Roberts, was particularly on-target:

"Non US forces don't even have digital communications for the most part. In many cases the Coalition forces have to be lent commo gear so that their HQs can talk with US forces. This creates a dichotomous pace of operations in any NATO command as well. Without heavy US liaison elements, the NATO forces don't know what is going on. To a certain extent the Canadian friendly fire deaths by Kandahar two years ago were due to such issues (along with two US pilot's very poor judgments), but you might notice that when US forces swing into an offensive situation either allies get totally integrated into the US force structure (like the Canadian snipers were at Tora Bora or the Aussie SAS is with us Spec Forces) or they get totally out of the way."

This is a point the left never, ever gets; even if the French and Germans were inclined to support us in liberating Iraq (they weren't) and if the bulk of their militaries were field-worthy (other than their special forces and elite troops like Airborne, Marines and Foreign Legion, they are not), neither their troops nor those of any of our other allies are capable of fighting - really engaging the enemy - alongside ours.

Like Howard Dean's phantom "135,000 moderate moslem troops", the capacity for our allies to fight alongside us - to cooperate in any militarily meaningful way - is a chimera, a bedtime story the left tells people to try to convince people that it is remotely competent to comment on defense issues.

People need to know better.

Posted by Mitch at March 25, 2004 05:55 AM