The skill it takes

In this post, someone left a comment in response to something I said about the skill shown by the troops in the operations conducted in Iraq. The comment read in part:

Skill is correct.

I am amazed at how much has been accomplished with what's been given.

Going from zero doctrine and training to all that's being done is truly amazing.
And...given the numbers of troops we have here it is another stunning display of American adaptiveness and ingenuity.

Given this what would YOU have done? Say a Colonel was given X town/area which included all the roads, bridges,hospitals, sewers, schools, police, army, Power grid and distribution infrastructure, etc etc you name it. HE is suddenly responsible for all that in the midst of chaotic warfare with competing factions and his limited numbers of troops and $. All that dealing with all major and minor infrastructure looted or destroyed in invasion. Add trying to train and new police and army force of dubious ability and loyalty.

I would say the US has received an amazing return on its "invasion investment".

Yes, what would we have done, if faced with the situation, say, a year ago in northern and western Iraq? If you recall, Mosul was virtually overrun with terrorists last November. They attacked police stations, and the police abandoned their stations to the terrorists.

What would you do in that situation? Would you know where to begin? Would you know who to talk to? You're facing a city seething with armed killers. What could you do, and not get yourself killed on the first morning of the first day?

What's more, there are cities like this all along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Where do you begin to get a handle on the situation?

This is what I meant when I wrote about the skill shown by our troops. They faced this situation, and today, have achieved stunning successes.

Great skill went into building up this kind of momentum. Intelligence, tactics, weapons, strategy.

But there is far more skill that went into this success, skill in a dizzying variety of disciplines.

For instance, M1 tanks have played a role in this campaign. Can you imagine the skill it took to design and build that tank? The skill needed to design its advanced targeting optics and thermal sights? The tank's armor incorporates depleted uranium. If you were faced with just chunks of uranium ore in the ground, would you know how to retrieve that depleted uranium? Wikipedia describes part of the process:

Milled uranium ore -- U3O8, or "yellowcake" -- is dissolved in nitric acid, yielding a solution of uranyl nitrate UO2(NO3)2. Pure uranyl nitrate is obtained by solvent extraction, then treated with ammonia to produce ammonium diuranate (ADU). Reduction with hydrogen gives UO2, which is converted with hydrofluoric acid (HF) to UF4. Oxidation with fluorine finally yields UF6.

(Security Watchtower actually has a nice little graphic on this process!)

The military in Iraq uses satellite technology, in intelligence gathering and communciations. Do you know what went into developing the technology necessary to make this satellite technology possible? Can you fathom the skills needed to design and build the launch vehicles? Their engines, the necessary metallurgy, the guidance systems, mastering the orbital mechanices? Can you understand the skill needed to build the satellites themselves? To harden them for the orbital environment, to build the communication devices to pass data back and forth to the satellite, to create the complex software controlling the satellite, to design their power sources, to design the attitude control systems?

All of this technology mentioned so far involves computers. Do you understand the skill needed to build computers? How about the semiconductor chips that make up the heart of computers? Do you know how to dope silicon to make it a good conductor? How long would it take you to figure out you could use phosporous or gallium? Could you figure out how to make a transistor? Can you figure out how to make it small enough so that you could fit millions of transistor on a single chip?

The military would be nothing without its vehicles. We take them for granted, but do you understand what went in to designing and building the combustion engine? How about the fuel it takes to run the vehicles? Would you know to get the oil out of the ground, and refine it into usable fuel?

The military rules the skies with its airplanes and helicopters. Do you understand how complex today's military planes and choppers are? Can you grasp the skill needed to build their avionics, their targeting systems? Can you begin to understand the skill needed to build smart bombs with their sensor and control systems? Or the GPS-guided smart bomb?

We could certainly go on, couldn't we. But my point is this. Of all the skill and technology mentioned, how much of it was conceived of and developed in the sick societies that produce these murderous terrorists? Answer: virtually NONE OF IT!!!

The technology race is over. Period. Large swaths of the Muslim world are so far behind the dust has settled. They are behind because they keep their people in darkness. Women are not educated. Men are taught merely to hate Israel and hate the West. Ever try to build something with just hate?

How much better could Muslim societies be if these terrorists used their strength and energy to build up their own societies, instead of destroying?

The skills talked about here were developed because people were free to do so. There was an economic system in place that rewarded such efforts. Societies in the West were free, and so knowledge could be disseminated easily.

The terrorists want to destroy what our civilization has built up, and it is our military standing on the front line, showing amazing skill in defeating the enemy. Those skills, and those skills that created the technology used by the military and in our everyday life, came about because of a great deal of hard work. It is easier to destroy, than to build, and there will always be the work of holding back the evil that seeks to destroy.

Freedom is not free.