From someone who has a clue

There's a lot of good sense in there.

The guerilla, rather than terrorist, nature of the conflict is very important. While there are terrorists and terrorists attacks, the term is applied wholesale to any opposition, even Sadr's people openly confronting US troops on the streets. While they terrorise people in the areas they control, that's gangsterism, not terrorism. When mines are laid along lines of communication it is not terrorism, it's what guerillas do. Car bombs in city centres - that's terrorism. The current administration doesn't seem to be recognising this at all. They seem to treating a war as if it's a US political contest - to be won by sloganising.
 
I could agree with that. If I remember my Iraqi history better, they once had a democracy in Iraq and it was overthrone in a bloody coup that involved Saddam Hussein.

It could also be said if we use the other countries of the region we can clearly see they don't want a democratic government.

It does remind me of Vietnam where we killed some 2 millions enemy soldiers but they replaced them at a far larger rate than we could kill them.
 
CapelDodger said:
There's a lot of good sense in there.

The guerilla, rather than terrorist, nature of the conflict is very important. While there are terrorists and terrorists attacks, the term is applied wholesale to any opposition, even Sadr's people openly confronting US troops on the streets. While they terrorise people in the areas they control, that's gangsterism, not terrorism. When mines are laid along lines of communication it is not terrorism, it's what guerillas do. Car bombs in city centres - that's terrorism. The current administration doesn't seem to be recognising this at all. They seem to treating a war as if it's a US political contest - to be won by sloganising.
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You mean it's not? Goddam. If it was, Dubya would have had it sewn up by now.
 
"Guerilla", like "terrorist", is another catch-all term for the consumption of idiots. The actual combatants include AT LEAST

- the police and soldiers of the provisional government

- opportunist foreign islamofascist invaders, Al Qaeda and others, from a number of countries, including Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Chechnya

- Baathist holdouts, including former members of the republican guard, security services, and party members

- Mercenary bandits armed and funded by the Baathists using looted national treasury money

- Neighborhood vigilante groups formed to defend their own homes and families

- Sunni religious fanatics

- Shiite religious fanatics of various sects

- Kurds

All this is reduced to, in the LME cartoonish version of the conflict, to the U.S. versus "terrorists".
 
from Patrick:
"Guerilla", like "terrorist", is another catch-all term for the consumption of idiots.
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from the original citation:
The idea behind fighting a guerilla army is not to destroy its every man (an impossibility since he hides himself by day amongst the populace). Rather the idea in guerilla warfare is to erode or destroy his base of support.
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This is what has been used in this thread when referring to the current conflict in Iraq. Let's keep it that way.

That said, given this title's thread, I might use it as a catch-all for my thoughts on the whole Iraq imbroglio.
 
I am more in agreement with this article:

The evidence of our continuing, major deficiencies has not been assimilated, and relative to what is required we have done virtually nothing to meet further challenges potentially far worse than that of September 11, and to prepare for the inevitable military rise of China. We have only partially exited the state of "managing" terrorism, even if now we know that terrorism cannot be managed.

This is a failure of probity and imagination comparable to the deepest sleep that England slept in the decade of the 1930s, when its blinkered governments measured the sufficiency of their military preparations not against the threat that was gathering but by what they thought the people wanted, and the people wanted only what they thought the government had wisely specified. We are now entrapped in the same dynamic. Neither the party in power nor the opposition has awakened to what must be done or what may happen if it is not. Neither party, nor the Left, nor the Right, nor the civilian defense establishment, nor the highest ranking military, nor the Congress, nor the people themselves, has been willing, in a war not of our own making, adequately to prepare for war, to declare war, rigorously to define the enemy, to decide upon disciplined and intelligent war aims, to subjugate the economy to the common defense, or even to endorse the most elemental responsibilities of government, such as controlling the borders of and entry to our sovereign territory.

As if all of this has been done, the Left is in high dudgeon, and for fear of higher dudgeon still, the Right dares not even propose it. The result is a paralysis that the terrorists probably did not hope for in their most optimistic projections, an arbitrary and gratuitous failure of will that carries within it nonetheless a great promise, which is that because it has no reasonable basis or compelling rationale, it may quickly be dispelled. And once it is, the weight of our experience, genius, and resources can be brought to bear.
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http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2004/helprin.html
 
merphie said:
I could agree with that. If I remember my Iraqi history better, they once had a democracy in Iraq and it was overthrone in a bloody coup that involved Saddam Hussein.

It could also be said if we use the other countries of the region we can clearly see they don't want a democratic government.

It does remind me of Vietnam where we killed some 2 millions enemy soldiers but they replaced them at a far larger rate than we could kill them.
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Umm, no. Saddam didn't overthrow a democracy. He overthrew a monarchy and helped to establish what the Ba'athists called a 'republic'. He was vice president, and gained power when the president resigned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

As far as Vietnam goes, we were propping up another ruthless dictator there in South Vietnam who was extremely brutal and thoroughly hated by North and South. It's appalling to think you'd claim that we just couldn't kill people fast enough in Vietnam. Would you like to rethink or rephrase that assessment?
 
evildave said:
Umm, no. Saddam didn't overthrow a democracy. He overthrew a monarchy and helped to establish what the Ba'athists called a 'republic'. He was vice president, and gained power when the president resigned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

As far as Vietnam goes, we were propping up another ruthless dictator there in South Vietnam who was extremely brutal and thoroughly hated by North and South. It's appalling to think you'd claim that we just couldn't kill people fast enough in Vietnam. Would you like to rethink or rephrase that assessment?
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You would have thought I'd gone into overdrive on the most basic reasons why Vietnam was wrong lately. Apparently not.
 
evildave said:
Umm, no. Saddam didn't overthrow a democracy. He overthrew a monarchy and helped to establish what the Ba'athists called a 'republic'. He was vice president, and gained power when the president resigned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein

As far as Vietnam goes, we were propping up another ruthless dictator there in South Vietnam who was extremely brutal and thoroughly hated by North and South. It's appalling to think you'd claim that we just couldn't kill people fast enough in Vietnam. Would you like to rethink or rephrase that assessment?
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OK, now I remember. Saddam's cousin was president and Saddam as Vice. Then the president resigned and gave Saddam the control. Which he promply consolidated.

I don't think I need to rephrase. If I remember correctly, they were fighting a guerilla war and they could replace soldiers faster than we could kill them. It's not different than what was said about the resistance in Iraq.

At the end we killed over 2 Million enemy troups and never made a dent. Even today they have almost 1 million reach military age annually with an esitmate of 23 Millions available manpower. We never broke their moral or gained strategic goals. We eventually pulled out and left South Vietnam to defend itself. After we were gone, the North invaded the south again and unified the country under a communist regime. They even renamed the south capital as Ho Chi Min City.

They saw the war as defending their homeland against the American Invaders.

If I am wrong, please correct me.
 
CapelDodger said:
To be accurate, the toll in Vietnam is estimated at 2 million Vietnamese, not 2 million soldiers.
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Oh, OK. I stand corrected on that.

It doesn't matter. I feel another personal attack coming from Evildave, who will say that now I am saying something like "it is ok to kill 2 million people"

:rolleyes:
 
No, I'm saying it's not usually the prevailing doctrine that killing enough people is the right way to go about "winning" something.

At least if you're going to claim you're the "good guys" in a given conflict.

Sounds to me like a poor strategy, if 'strategy' is what you'd call just 'killing people faster than they can be replaced'. Especially if we stuck to a strategy of 'killing them fast' until two million were dead without trying any alternatives.

I know the central strategy for victory had to be something besides a 'high body count', or the war truly was an exercise in futility, and immoral in the extreme at that. A strategy to 'kill people fast enough' would be nothing less than deliberate genocide.

Now if you're advocating genocide as a military strategy, then your opinion does deserve some attacking.
 
evildave said:
No, I'm saying it's not usually the prevailing doctrine that killing enough people is the right way to go about "winning" something.

At least if you're going to claim you're the "good guys" in a given conflict.

Sounds to me like a poor strategy, if 'strategy' is what you'd call just 'killing people faster than they can be replaced'. Especially if we stuck to a strategy of 'killing them fast' until two million were dead without trying any alternatives.

I know the central strategy for victory had to be something besides a 'high body count', or the war truly was an exercise in futility, and immoral in the extreme at that. A strategy to 'kill people fast enough' would be nothing less than deliberate genocide.

Now if you're advocating genocide as a military strategy, then your opinion does deserve some attacking.
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So because I said it is wrong when the soldier in the first story said

. . .So long as there is support for the guerilla, for every one you kill two more rise up to take his place. More importantly, when your tools for killing him are precision guided munitions, raids and other acts that create casualties among the innocent populace, you raise the support for the guerillas and undermine the support for yourself. (A 500-pound precision bomb has a casualty-producing radius of 400 meters minimum; do the math.). . .
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Let me clarify, I wasn't tryint to imply that we lost the war because we couldn't kill enough. That is your statement, not mine. I didn't understand what you were getting at so I couldn't respond.

Now I am assuming you agree Vietnam is a war we lost Then killing large numbers of people doesn't always have a positive effect for you side of the conflict.

This could also be said for the war in Iraq. If the guerillas/terrorist kill X of our soldiers or Y of Iraqis does that mean the war is getting worse and we are losing?
 
I'll just say "Clausewitz" and we can all nod sagely. War is a means to a political end. Just as there are military constraints, there ar political constraints, and they take priority. So strictly military logic cannot absolutely determine military actions. Sometimes killing everybody works and it's politically acceptable, but it wouldn't be in Iraq just now.

Could the US level Falujah? Militarily, more or less overnight, but whether it would be feasible politically is another matter. This side of an election, I doubt if anybody would take the risk. Afterwards, well, it is a nest of evil terrorist foreign Saddamites, and if the people reject their own happiness they deserve to be punished. Usefully, the definition of "levelled" is hazy; was it "razed" or "substantially knocked about"? CNNed or Foxed? Personally, I wouldn't be investing in property in the Sunni Triangle right now.
 
CapelDodger said:
I'll just say "Clausewitz" and we can all nod sagely. War is a means to a political end. Just as there are military constraints, there ar political constraints, and they take priority. So strictly military logic cannot absolutely determine military actions. Sometimes killing everybody works and it's politically acceptable, but it wouldn't be in Iraq just now.

Could the US level Falujah? Militarily, more or less overnight, but whether it would be feasible politically is another matter. This side of an election, I doubt if anybody would take the risk. Afterwards, well, it is a nest of evil terrorist foreign Saddamites, and if the people reject their own happiness they deserve to be punished. Usefully, the definition of "levelled" is hazy; was it "razed" or "substantially knocked about"? CNNed or Foxed? Personally, I wouldn't be investing in property in the Sunni Triangle right now.
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Could it also be said it is not a good idea to level a highly valued shrine when a guerilla leader (Read: Al Sadr) goes into a Mosque and launches attacks from there.

In my opinion, the Iraqi people should be more upset at someone who claims to be working for god is pissing all over the religion.
 
merphie said:
So because I said it is wrong when the soldier in the first story said



Let me clarify, I wasn't tryint to imply that we lost the war because we couldn't kill enough. That is your statement, not mine. I didn't understand what you were getting at so I couldn't respond.

Now I am assuming you agree Vietnam is a war we lost Then killing large numbers of people doesn't always have a positive effect for you side of the conflict.

This could also be said for the war in Iraq. If the guerillas/terrorist kill X of our soldiers or Y of Iraqis does that mean the war is getting worse and we are losing?
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Just getting a clarification is all.
 
evildave said:
Just getting a clarification is all.
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Good, Now I want clarification.

This could also be said for the war in Iraq. If the guerillas/terrorist kill X of our soldiers or Y of Iraqis does that mean the war is getting worse and we are losing?
Click to expand...
 
Well, since we are now 'occupiers' in the eyes of the people we have allegedly 'rescued', I would say that no matter how many Iraqis we kill, we are stuck with the so-called 'insurgency'.

Even if we kill all 25,000,000 of them, that will simply make their territory ripe for occupation by its neighbors, and oh, BTW we're even worse bogeymen to the rest of the world than we are already.

The mistakes and the damage the U.S. has caused in Iraq may simply be irreparable. We're not winning any hearts and minds by blowing up homes and killing people's relatives, and once you've done this, people don't tend to forgive your little 'mistakes'.

If we still want the oil that badly, I recommend using TBMs at least 1000 feet down, from across the border and then horizontal-drilling down to the petroleum. If you look at a map of Iraq's oil reserves, there are big oil fields within easy reach near all of its borders. The investment of the TBM and tunnelling operation would pay for its self 50-fold, and could have been done many times over for the $200B cost of the war. If anyone appears to be mining towards them, simply air-strike and collapse the mine. The oil can be extracted in relative safety. On the surface, Iraq will probably be a permanent war zone.
 
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