Wampum

Not to be contrary or anything ... but

I've been perplexed for three days now, but listening to Daniel Shore (urk!) drone the CW that Falluja is a battle of encirclement, except that the bad guys seem to have gotten away, the penny dropped.

Who has theater-wide initiative? Red or Blue?

Red caused Blue to draw-down forces theater-wide inorder to mass almost 10% of its effectives in a siege against what has turned out to be a phantom menace. Red traded off freedom of manuver in one locale for freedoms of manuvers in many locales. Red forced Blue to destroy of an entire city. Red forced Blue to expend the logistical reserves, to wear-and-tear its mobile arms assets, and burn a wicked huge stock of ordinance. Red forced Blue to discard an allied political party, and got all of Blue's domestic militia enlisted and officer corp read out of civil society.

The Red player doesn't have to learn how to turn 1k five-man pick-up teams into a symmetric combined-arms counterforce, simply to loose half or more of its effectives in a Western Approved Media and Munitions heroiclly doomed extravaganza. It just has to be able to repeat the exercise of causing Blue to react, to concentrate force in one place, and diminish its forces everywhere else. To force Blue to chase, to abandon garrison-and-community-policing-and-peace for hot-pursuit-with-firepower.

So who won?

Blue, because he moved 10,000 Blue troops and their logistical tail to Falluja and blew the place up, neutralizing about 0.01% of his force-equivalent in Red's forces?

Red, because he caused Blue to move 10,000 Blue troops and their logistical tail to Falluja and blow the place up, at a cost of about 0.01% of his force-equivalent in Blue's forces?

Take a good long look at the triumphalism on display over the next few days. You may want to recall it later.

Posted by EBW at November 10, 2004 07:07 PM | TrackBack