WUI (Writing under the influence)

Somebody once said we are all Americans, sometimes born in the wrong places.
On a warm autumn day in 1986, while enjoying beer with my college buddies,
I decided to join my new homeland.

I've come to appreciate the ideals that helped create this great country.
Liberalism, political-correctness, multiculturalism and moral equivalence
are destroying it.

This old house Grovenet Wal*Mart Visiting Poland American wine better than French.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

 

The Surge

He didn't have to but hid did.

The battle started before all units were fully deployed. Early in the morning at 4:00, Turkish forces opened hostilities to interfere with the Holy League's troop deployment. A move forward was made by Charles, the Austrian army on the left, and the German forces in the center.

Mustafa Pasha launched a counter-attack, with most of his force, but holding back parts of the elite Janissary and Spahi for the invasion of the city. The Turkish commanders had intended to take Vienna before Sobieski arrived, but time ran out. Their sappers had prepared another large and final detonation under the Löbelbastei,[4] to provide access to the city. While the Turks hastily finished their work and sealed the tunnel to make the explosion more effective, the Austrian "moles" detected the cavern in the afternoon. One of them entered and defused the load just in time.

At that time, above the "subterranean battlefield", a large battle was going on, as the Polish infantry had launched a massive assault upon the Turkish right flank. Instead of focusing on the battle with the relief army, the Turks tried to force their way into the city, carrying their crescent flag.

After 12 hours of fighting, Sobieski's Polish force held the high ground on the right. At about five o'clock in the afternoon, after watching the ongoing infantry battle from the hills for the whole day, four cavalry groups, one of them Austrian-German, and the other three Polish, totaling 20,000 men, charged down the hills. The attack was led by the Polish king in front of a spearhead of 3000 heavily armed winged Polish lancer hussars. This charge broke the lines of the Ottomans, who were tired from the long fight on two sides. In the confusion, the cavalry headed straight for the Ottoman camps, while the remaining Vienna garrison sallied out of its defenses and joined in the assault.

The Ottoman army were tired and dispirited following the failure of both the sapping attempt and the brute force assault of the city, and the arrival of the cavalry turned the tide of battle against them, sending them into retreat to the south and east. In less than three hours after the cavalry attack, the Christian forces had won the battle and saved Vienna from capture.

After the battle, Sobieski paraphrased Julius Caesar's famous quote by saying "veni, vidi, Deus vicit" - "I came, I saw, God conquered"

[...]

Although no one realized it at the time, the battle shaped the outcome of the entire war as well. The Ottomans fought on for another 16 years, losing control of Hungary and Transylvania in the process, before finally giving up. The end of the conflict was finalized by the Treaty of Karlowitz.

The Battle of Vienna is seen by many historians as marking the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed] The battle also marked the historic end of Turkish expansion into southeastern Europe.

Comments:
The historic reference you mention and the current circumstances in Iraq are apples and zucchinis. A battle in which two opposing forces clearly on a battlefield fighting a significant battle, and the sectarian violence of a civil war (which is the direct result of the US presence in Iraq, but we need that oil, right?). You don't have the American army and all the bad guys (insurgents) line up in a nice battlefield to wage their war. Again, apples and zucchinis.
Unfortunately I see that your views are in the minority in this country. The majority of Americans realize what a catastrophe this President has created by "HIS" war, with the loss of so many American and Iraqi lives, the instability created in the region, the failure to seek out diplomatic resolutions or to bring the international community on board. Yet some die hard W supporters not only will not admit that this war was wrong, but will continue to follow his rhetoric no matter where it leads and try to give support to his outlandish and greatly unsupported plans. When you have to fire the Generals you have and handpick the ones who will follow and agree with your misguided ambitions that would seem to indicate problems, no?
It is irresponsible and an insult to the American lives already lost to think that the problem there was a matter of numbers, that somehow if there were more Americans it would "correct" the wrongs. This "war" of W's does not hinge on adding thousands more Americans to the line of fire, and ultimately even if it did, whose responsibility, planning and decision making was it to move on Iraq? (hint: W)

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWRjYTAzMDlkNWVkOTZkZTU0NGI5NzU3NGI5MDgxYjA=
Particularly:
"In contrast, the troop surges of the Athenians under Demosthenes into Sicily in 414 B.C., the steady increases in the Union Army of the Potomac in Virginia from 1862-64, the British build-ups in Flanders from 1914-17, the French rise to nearly 400,000 troops by 1956 in Algeria, or the American escalation from 1964-67 in Vietnam did little to change the dynamics of any of those wars. In all these cases, tactics went largely unchanged, in the mistaken view that prior failure was primarily due to an absence of manpower.

If the United States sends more troops into Iraq, especially Baghdad, then we must expand the parameters of operations — otherwise, thousands of fresh American soldiers will only end up ensuring the four things we seek to avoid in Iraq: more conventional targets for IEDs when more soldiers venture out of our compounds; more support troops behind fortified berms that enlarge the American infidel profile; more assurances to the Iraqis that foreign troops will secure their country for them; and more American prestige put into peril.

 
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