Posted on 04/01/2004 9:31:23 PM PST by quidnunc
The Bush administration has promised to respond to Fallujah. But how can a civilized nation such as our own respond to what had happened there this week? We cannot do to them what they did to us. They know that, and we now know it too. We cannot dismember bodies, and hang them from telephone lines. We cannot cheer and yell when men who have done nothing to hurt us are butchered like animals. We cannot do to them the things that they have done to us. We cannot pay them back in kind.
Yes, we can declare our intention to hunt down those responsible for such atrocities. We have announced that we are determined to bring the culprits to justice. But what does justice have to do with Fallujah? Where do any of our civilized ideas of justice fit into a world in which such things not only happen, but are celebrated?
I have only heard verbal reports about what happened. I have not been able to bring myself to look at the pictures of what was done there. I have to keep it at a distance from my consciousness, as I suspect many other Americans must do as well. But those who set out to reconstruct Iraq from the ground up need to stare at those ghastly images for as long as it takes for their message to sink in.
There are laws that govern the development of civilized life, just as there are laws that govern the natural order, and those in the Bush administration who supposed that democracy would spontaneously emerge from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein chose to ignore these laws because they did not fit in with their ideological illusion. Over and over again, we heard from the administration that all human beings are alike, and that we all want the same thing.
The American engineers whose bodies were torn apart did not want the same things as the mob that savaged them. They had come to Iraq to lend a helping hand, and perhaps to make a few bucks. They wished to do no one any harm. Like the brave American soldiers who have given up their lives in the defense of the Iraqi people, they expected to live out a full and rather ordinary life. They never imagined that their deaths would occasion dancing in the streets and delirious shouts of joy.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at techcentralstation.com ...
Harris won't come out and say it, but I will.
We need to overcome our own hangups about ethnicity, culture and "religion" and come to the realization that we are at war against Islam.
Once you insist that war has to be a "precision" operation, you have made war impossible.
In my scenario, no HUMINT is necessary.
After enough time has elapsed to allow escape from the city, Fallujah become a World War II urban war zone with the emphasis on artillery and air power.
What about the civilians who are dumb enough to stay behind?
They win a posthumous medal:
Very well, and so we need to kill the enemy and the problem that Harris suggests is that we don't have the stomach for what is required.
Fallujah needs to be wiped off the map and anything less shows our weakness.
So, are you saying that it would have been better to have a Nazi Europe right now instead of a weak, embarrassed and resentful France who won't "forgive us"?
Nations do not go to war to be liked. Nations go to war for their geo-political interests and it was in America's interest to destroy Nazi Germany and to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime.
We did not go to war to "liberate France". We went to war to destroy Nazi Germany.
We did not go to war to "liberate Iraq". We went to war to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime.
But what about "Iraqi Freedon"?
That was the pretext of the war. It was not the cause of the war.
Yes, there are pretenders to Saddam's power in Iraq but those are easier to deal with than the regime that caused 1 million deaths in the Iran-Iraq War, the regime the once threatened to control the majority of the world's know oil reserves and the regime that was actively pursuing the development of WMD's.
Those who stay in Fallujah after they have been told to leave through checkpoints and have been given ample opportunity to leave before the assault begins.
You can only protect civilians to a certain point. After that, you have to fight a war if you ever hope to win a war.
Exactly...
No, you don't.
Wars are not won by capturing or occupying cities.
Wars are won by killing or otherwise neutralizing your enemy's warriors.
During the American Civil War, the Union squandered tens of thousands of lives trying to "Capture Richmond" and got nothing for their effort except defeat.
Then came General U.S. Grant who realized that the road to a Union victory was not the capture of Richmond but the destruction of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant went after Lee's Army like a pitbull and followed it to Peterburg while ignoring Richmond.
When the Army of Northern Virginia was destroyed as a fighting force, both Victory and Richmond fell into Grant's lap like ripe fruit.
During MacArtur's Pacific campaign, the Japanese naval base at Rabaul was supposed to be an impregnable death trap for America with over 200,000 of Japan's finest troops defending it. The Japanese boasted that Rabaul would be the meatgrinder that would bleed the American war effort to death.
MacArthur completely neutralized those 200,000 Japanese troops at Rabaul by simply capturing the surrounding areas, blockading Rabaul and turning Rabaul into the world's largest POW camp without the loss of a single American infantryman. Those 200,000 Japanese troops stayed stranded on Rabaul until the U.S. loaned Japan funds to come and evacuate them several years after World War II had ended.
We do not need to occupy cities in the Sunni Triangle. We do not need to be loved in the Sunni Triangle.
The only thing we need to do is to try our best to isolate the enemy warriors and then neutralize them by either killing them in combat or starving the into submission by classic seige tactics.
That is how wars are won.
The fact that the Baathist die-hards are concentrated in cities in the Sunni Triangle makes their isolation and/or destruction that much easier.
If "most Iraqis don't hate us", then we have no need to instill fear in 25 million of them.
As I have been saying, we only have to isolate the Baathist die-hards and then kill them.
Of course not. If the Hitler had been killed in the assasination plot of July 20, 1944, would America have declared "Mission Accomplished"?
World War II was not about killing Hitler. It was about destroying the Nazi regime.
The Iraq War was not about killing or capturing Saddam Hussein. It was about destroying the Baathist regime and the Baaathist hold-outs are still fighting.
Any killings from now on are probably for the sole purpose of humiliating Americans.
Can you imagine the World War II generation speaking about giving up the war effort because of "humiliation" because the enemy managed to kill some Americans?
Or are we to stay until we can finally stop the attacks?
In World War II, did we not stay until the Germans and the Japanese stopped their attacks? If this war were World War II, today's date would be December 20, 1942.
That's what the Israelis basically tried in Lebanon for 18 years after their smashing victory in '82, only to end up withdrawing with Hezbollah slapping their rear ends. I'm sure Lebanon's a great model then.
In southern Lebanon, the Israelis had a salient into Lebanese territory while Hezbollah enjoyed a sanctuary in the rest of Syrian-controlled Lebanon.
In Iraq, the U.S. has absolute military control over every bag of rice that goes in or out of the Sunni Triangle.
The strategic situations are totally different. All the U.S. needs to do is to decide if it has the political will to press it's military advantage.
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