Originally Posted by Rochard

I'm really a fan of military history; Right now I am reading about the Falklands War.

With the US, we have WWII (won), Korea (draw?), and then Vietnam (utter disaster). But since then the nature of warfare has changed; It's no longer large armies slugging it out but instead one country quickly bringing the war directly to the opposing government - We no longer have to spend three or four years fighting to Berlin when we can bomb Bagdad / Kabul / Damascus on the first day of hostilities.

Some of these smaller countries have ruled with an iron fist for decades and believe they are untouchable, but fail to understand they will never see the first strike coming and by the time they figure out what happened, their command and control is destroyed and communications no longer in existence. These networks take years to build, are quickly destroyed, and never come back up.

This is exactly what happened with Iraq. First strike took out their command and control, and they never recovered. In 2003 the US invaded with 150k troops, taking on the Iraqi armed forces that had 400k members and 600k soldiers in reserves and they were destroyed in thirty days.

Syria doesn't have a chance.