Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? | The Strategist

When have we ever prepared correctly for the next war? Indeed, how often have we failed to identify the war we were in? I well remember a video that was presented to our Basic Training Company at Fort Gordon in which a Green Beret officer discussed the nature of insurgency and counter insurgency. However, to be fair, for all the time I was in Vietnam and all the time I spent studying that war thereafter, I fail to see it. It seems a fairly simple and straight forward invasion that could have been countered far more effectively by simply rolling the enemy back up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and marching into Hanoi. It would have taken fewer troops and ended far more successfully. To be honest, the only real insurgency that matters to me is the one being fought by the Left in America. Meanwhile, our Navy sails the oceans of the world launching highly advanced planes and missiles in search of a high tech version of WWII. And our Air Force is doing much the same from land and space bases. Only the Infantry is adapting with boots on the ground, but that's tactically, not strategically.

In my view, we have to plan for all battle spaces, just to maintain status quo. But history tells us we have to fight with what you have. What War was the USA prepared for? Our major enemy is complacency, as we were so many times in the past.

The really scary part is the exponential growth of new technologies which may alter tactics and doctrine.