Back On Topic, was Re: [OT] Vietnam and modern combat

> --- "K.H.Ranitzsch" <KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:

*snip* Blah, blah, blah.

I was speaking to the tactical level. The politics neither interest me nor am
I qualified to pontificate on it, and you certaintly aren't in a position to
speak to either the tactical nor strategic.

Keep it up and we'll start discussing how many German cabinet members were on
Saddam's payroll.

To yank it FIRMLY back on-topic:

Assuming no FTL communications (or relatively slow FTL communications) what
are the implications for political oversight of military operations? I believe
the sort of oversight exercised today where e-mail,
phonecalls, videoconferences, etc are routine between leadership at the
highest level and the political leadership will be more or less impossible.
Media will loose the immediacy and therefore exaggerated impact it has on
operations conducted under the camera today.

How the various powers will resolve that will be interesting to note.

"EuroSocialists United" will likely give wide discretionary powers to the
commisars to alter ROE, and even mission orders. Either that, or it will
attempt to issue detailed complex mission orders to cover every possible
contingency and expect the mission commander to follow it even if it does not
conform to reality.

The NSL have always permitted a certain amount of lattitude in field
commanders and so will likely by most comfortable with this situation of loose
control.

The "French, Spanish, Etc"... I don't know. What sort of discretionary power
did local commanders have in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries when
communications was slow and unreliable?

"Not American Completely" responses will be all over the map, in my opinion.
Depending on the political leanings of the party currently in power and the
personalities involved it could be any extreme. However, the determining
factor (IMHO) would likely be sucess. If a commander does his own thing and
gets back and the public approves of his actions the government calls it
"taking appropriate initiative." If a disaster results, then he's an
"irresponsible undisciplined cowboy" and gets arrested.

Unless of course there are Canadians involved in the
process in which case any deviation from UN-mandated
rules, even deviations which prevent a unit from being overrun like the Van
Doos got later, result in the commander being arrested and thrown out of the
military.

The UNorganized, of course, being a beauracracy unhampered by any
accountability, will insist on local commanders following rules invented in
New York by
swivel-chair legal experts who could not load a plasma
gun much less fire on at a target.

Any other comments?

Like my alternate acronyms?