Just talking TACTICS, not policy: Since when did "democracy" mean telling adversaries your plans?

[UTUSN]

ABC's lead story was that the potential strike on Syria might be "much larger" than what we've been led to believe. Repeating, am NOT discussing the very separate topic of whether or not to do anything, am talking tactics, and, yes, HOW MUCH information do we have a NEED to know, or even whether it's (not) a RIGHT to know, which has a bearing on the recent unpleasantness here about our personal information.

In WWII the byword was, "Loose lips sink ships."

When you're playing strategy games and are playing to win, you don't don't show and tell what you're about.

[delrem]

1. For the US WW2 was a war of defense. No comparison with prep for a war of aggression.

[UTUSN]

2. As I said, tactics/not policy. n/t

[delrem]

7. The tactics of a warmongering despot are ....?

[blm]

3. Unless you're engaged in a leverage match with paranoid Assad and a vain Putin?

A Putin who still needs money and needs to pull off the Olympic games.

[el_bryanto]

6. Nods - this makes a lot of sense. nt

[UTUSN]

9. point

[Skidmore]

4. Sometimes stuff that makes it into the news is strategically planted.

[UTUSN]

11. point

[liberal_at_heart]

5. They are not telling us what they really plan on doing. Most of it is misinformation.

I don't need to know which infantry is attacking which city and what time of the day they are doing it, but I do believe the people have a right to know what we are getting ourselves into especially considering we were told Iraq would only last a few weeks and it lasted a decade.

[UTUSN]

10. point

[Savannahmann]

8. Do you think it's a big secret?

Seriously, do you honestly think that nobody in Syria or Russia is going to be able to make some pretty good educated guesses about what kind of attack we're considering launching?

The capabilities of our missiles have been public knowledge for more than a decade. The abilities of the B-2 Bomber is probably as well known by now to the Russians. They were in Baghdad when we started bombing watching the radar and learning our capabilities. I'd bet they have a way to track the damned things by now. Technical advances have a shelf life you know.

The capabilities of our ships and submarines are similarly known. The exact frequencies of our radars, the detection range, the blind spots, if any. The sonar signatures of our ships and subs are general knowledge to the Russians. Do you think they would not share that information with their ally, and Syria is a Russian Ally if you haven't heard. The only military port the Russians have in a foreign country is in Syria. So if we're dumb enough to attack, we're either going to be firing right over them, or channeling our weapons up a very narrow corridor away from them. Either way, the Russians are not going to sit still and let their ally get bombed.

The Russians are deploying more ships to the Med, but not all their ships. In other words, they've wargamed it out, and they think they have enough to win if the shooting starts. We would not send our ships into that kind of situation without specific orders on when they can fire. Do you think they have?

Tactics are well known by now. This isn't like World War II when we could sneak up and attack an island where they didn't expect us. Our ships are on radar right now. The Russians saw the missile launch from Israel and reported it before we broke the news. Satellites are watching our ships, and the Russians are downloading images and probably electronic noise from the ships and subs.

You guys are making a big mistake, you imagine Syria as a lone rogue nation. They aren't. They are an ally of a major power. An ally of a nuclear power with the capability to destroy our cities five times over. We have one chance, one of getting Russia to reign in Syria, and we're blowing it by going along pretending that Syria is a rogue nation that nobody is going to fight for. Imagine if someone was going to attack Spain, we have a naval base there, don't you think we'd go on alert and be prepared to defend our friend?

There is no way that this ends well, and unlike Iraq we're not going to smite thousands of them without getting our hair mussed. We'll be lucky if mushroom clouds aren't hovering over the cities of the world before it's over.

[JHB]

12. To the extent that citizens have a right to know what they're in for, always.

I can't think of anyone who's asking for an exact list of targets and launch windows. TACTICS are a matter for whenever, if ever, missiles are launched.

So let's talk about neither TACTICS nor policy, but strategy. What's the actual goal, militarily?
What are we trying to accomplish? Will the planned force level accomplish that?
If not, then what? Call it off? Increase the force level?
Even then: What if two months later there's another gas attack? Even if we're 100% sure it was by Assad, do we send another "message"? If he's thumbing his nose at us we might need to send a "stronger message"! What will that entail?

And those questions force us back to policy, politics, and informing the public. The Darth & Chim-Chim Show drove the government's ability to say "just trust on this" so deep into the dirt that even 5 years and a 2-term Democratic president later it still isn't close to peeking above ground level. Particularly when what we're being asked to trust is that it will be quick and cheap (at least for us).
Doubly particular when the arguments are thick with "have to do something" and "send a message" and other nebulous talking head blather.

If you want to send a message about how intolerable it is to use poisoned gas, the most effective way of doing that is to render him incapable of using it again, either by destroying gas stockpiles or his armed forces, or both. And since the forces needed to do that are substantially more than anything that's being talked about, it's a realy important question of how effective some lesser measure will really be. Blowing up some of his arms depots could actually encourage him to use more gas because conventional forces he might have used in their place were turned into scrap metal and meat gobbets. Perverse side-effects like that have been known to happen in war.

"Loose lips sinks ships" was a byword in WW2 because they explained to people the possible consequences of seemingly minor chit-chat, and it was pretty easy to follow the connections. It's not exactly applicable to the question of "what are we being dragged into here?"

[bhikkhu]

13. We have a right to know, and the debate is healthy (at least as far as democracy goes)

I suppose its one luxury of having the hugest military in the world. There was quite a bit of secrecy during WWII, but that one was a war we could have lost. Or at least one that we could have had to settle on much less favorable terms if it had gone differently.

I think the downside of keeping plans and intentions from the public regarding Syria would be huge, while there is likely little cost added by openness.