Westmoreland, Abrams and Petraeus, Views of War

Abrams represented change in military thinking that has carried over, belatedly again, into the contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But not in the beginning. Shock and Awe was the order of the day at first in Iraq; search and destroy with armor and airpower won the day to Baghdad. Of course the enemy waited and watched, and invented the roadside bomb. General David Petraeus was brought in when old techniques were found lacking. He had read the Book of Abrams, and paid attention.

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New RV Friends in the snow below Donner Pass

He didn’t specify which branch of service he was in, but we guessed it was the one that tends to be secretive. After several, appropriately vague, stories about his ventures there, we shared our experiences being lost in Laos on the spiders web of the Hoh Chi Minh Trail, and we could tell he knew all about the anti-personnel “bobmbies” we were worried about.

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