Perception, Perception

Being one of the late end of Gen X, I tend to be very cynical and disgusted with Baby Boomers as a whole. Every war isn't Vietnam and sometimes people do have to die to get things accomplished. Could you even imagine what would happen if we had battles like we had in the Civil War or WWI now? Two specific regiments during the Battle of Gettysburg suffered over 80% casualties. This is an exception, but as a rule any unit that didn't suffer upwards of 30% casualties was a rare thing. But people took that in stride because there was no other way to shape the information. Example: During the Civil War 75% of military age white males fought in the war which was 15% of the white population. Upwards of 90% of the African-American population of military age (and some over and under it) fought. Rather hard to tell someone how the war is going other than the way it is going. But you compare that to now where we have around 125,000 troops in Iraq relative to a population around 300 million. That's about .05% of the population. Big difference. Its also a lot easier to spin the story.

Up until Vietnam, it was all about kicking the other guy's tail on the battlefield. Then, in the late 60's it became about perception. You could still be kicking the other guy's can but if your support structure thought that your butt was being handed to you, then you were becoming hard pressed. As a good example, I'll give you this:

Army A is in a region where Army B is trying to establish control. Army A has driven Army B out of 92% of the territory they are trying to take over. Army B then launches an attack on Army A. Army B does not take any territory in its attack and has 35,000 soldiers killed and 60,000 wounded. Army A suffers less than 4,000 soldiers killed.

Now, in most history text books you would say that Army A was the victor and Army B would probably lose the war within a short span of time. But not when you throw perception into the mix. That example is knows as the Tet Offensive with Army A being the American and S. Vietnamese army and Army B being the NVA. We are taught in school that the Tet Offensive was the turning point of the war. Some people would probably tell you that the US lost that battle and that led to our decline.

War has always been perceived in the wrong way by the people at home. At the First Battle of Manassas, spectators came to watch because they thought a battle would be "romantic." People still didn't have any idea what was involved in war when they began to see the images from Vietnam. Then they saw people bleeding and dying and it hit home as to what war really involved. People still have this glorified notion of war today where they think that an objective can be achieved without people dying. If people do expect dying, they declare it'll be the most horrible thing and that we'll have Civil War numbers again. Then it doesn't happen and the people slip into the woodwork to make morbid predictions later.

To date we have lost about 800 men in Iraq. I respect the opinions of those who feel that its 800 men to many. Opposition to war in the first place I can respect. But for the flip floppers who want to leave because we now have "lost too many" I have no respect and this includes many in the media. The US lost almost the same number of troops during a training exercise for D-Day in 1944 due to swamped boats and malfunctioning equipment. War is a terrible thing and should be used as a last resort but I feel I should remind people of a quote by Gen. William T. Sherman, "War is cruelty. There is no way to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

Marine and soldier blogs report none of the same situations that the mainstream media does. But if you pick up any paper or watch the news tonight, you'll think we're about to have the entire army in Iraq killed and the entire Middle East explode against us. Perception is everything and it is perception that can grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.