Logistics and Idiots...

I've been a long-term reader of Countercolumn, one of the better MilBlogs, because the writer is straightforward, a straight arrow and tells it like it is.

He's posted this as a critique of a comment on another blog, a dearly deserved fisking that everyone who thinks that everything took wayyyyyyy to long in New Orleans is because the President screwed up. It's too long to comment on here, and it would be superfilious, since Countercolumn has done the perfect job.

To paraphrase Countercolumn: if you don't know tiddly about logistics, then shut up, because you're worse than making noise. You're opening up your mouth and proving that you're an idiot. Not any sort of normal idiot, but a special kind of idiot: you're an  ass, blockhead, boob, booby, cretin, dimwit, donkey, dork, dumb ox, dumbbell, dunce, dunderhead, fool, halfwit, ignoramus, imbecile, jackass, jerk, kook, meathead, mental defective, moron, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, pinhead, pointy head, simpleton, stupid, tomfool, twit and a yo-yo.

This is not ad hominem here: we're just reporting the facts. The fool claiming to know anything about the military there is the very opposite of what he apparently considers himself to be.

Logistics are the core of American military power. Companies like Dell and WalMart - don't care of you don't like them - have become enormously successful through the application of logistics, and you ignore logistics nowadays at your peril. The defeat of Germany and Japan were not merely the result of superior logistics, but also due to a significant extent to the fact - the fact - that their logistics were completely inadequate to wage the kind of war that they did. The Soviets during the Cold War desperately tried to improve their logistics, but found that they couldn't manage the way the US did, and redid their entire military planning, strategy and tactics as a result: logistics shape the way the military fights, and you ignore logistics at your peril.

But logistics is hard. It is, for many, borrrrrrrrrrinnnnnng. Who cares if there are enough trucks in the military, as long as you can pontificate about MIRVs and MARVs and counter-strike forces and whether carriers are doomed. But that sort of discussion fundamentally points out that the speaker doesn't really have a clue as to what is really, really important.

Logistics. Ignore them at your peril. This has been a public service announcement.

John