What a thread.
@Joe Shearer you started the teasing and
@hellfire you joined in. Now we have 7 pages offtopic.
Hmm. In my personal belief the dissection of all wars should be done in the senior section to avoid the falling of the standard and to attract better posters who can make valid points. Otherwise you will have a discussion going absolutely nowhere.
Hellfire you are right. Wars are decided on political goals and objectives however as you very well know objects of a war and even battle change and can change drastically. Especially when a war escalates. What was the initial objective to capture akhnur bridge ( and akhnur) and cut India from Kashmir turned into a desperate defence for lahore simply bcz the war changed and transformed due to escalation.
I can write many many paragraphs on the war bcz I have studied it a lot. I can write about blunders of both armies on military and intelligence front and how they both lost opportunities.
Joe, I am not sure but I don't know when war became a game of counting losses. If a side has lost 73 soldiers and the other has lost 80,any would say the 80 lost the battle simply counting losses. There is a lot more to war than losses.
6th September is celebrated as defence day of lahore and sialkot which it was...
Quite frankly all these wars have taught me one thing.
Our major cities and capitals are at borders.
Quetta borders Afghanistan
Lahore borders India
Karachi borders sea
Muzzarafabad borders Indian Kashmir.
Heck parachinar the largest city of FATA borders Afghanistan.
In every war especially one we don't see coming we will lose territory on our major cities and capitals and its something we can't avoid. I feel this is a major disadvantage we have with India and Afghanistan. An army making a major thrust against an unsuspecting country is bound to lose territory in its initial stage.
Anyhow again the dissection of the war is to be left at senior section.