Posted on 12/04/2005 9:17:01 PM PST by ncountylee
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 4 - Marines staked their claim to the abandoned youth center in Husayba last month with a Hellfire missile and two tank rounds that destroyed a corner of the building and part of the roof.
Weeks earlier, residents had forsaken the center to insurgents who were using it as an armory and a staging point for attacks. The fighters fled before the American assault but left evidence that their flight had been in haste, including a half-eaten bowl of fresh figs in a makeshift sniper's roost above the center's theater.
This was the last building in a five-day sweep of the town, a point at which the Americans, in the past, would usually have loaded up their armored vehicles, driven back to their desert bases and prepared for a new raid elsewhere, leaving the door open for a return of the rebels.
But this time the marines immediately began digging in, and Iraqi troops joined them.
Technicians converted the theater's stage into a command center, engineers erected a perimeter of cement barriers to guard against rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and a community relations team took over a warren of rooms near the entrance of the center to receive residents' claims for damages.
Meanwhile, American and Iraqi infantrymen turned some of the remaining space into barracks and began to conduct street patrols in a town that had not had a regular security force, American or Iraqi, in months.
For months, the military has been conducting raids in Anbar Province, the western desert region that has become a wellspring for the insurgency. But the taking of the youth center was one of the first steps in a new approach to taming the area: first sweep a town, then immediately garrison it and begin reconstruction
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
By that, they mean minaret?
Although we would get crucified for it in the world press for being barbarians, I am all for following Vlad the Impaler's lead in dealing with his enemies. Each time we mag one of these pathetic insurgents I say we place their heads on a pole in a prominent place, preferable in the center of town and leave them there indefinately.
All of the worlds conquerers were merciless. They knew that a war with compassion was a losing one.
But we aren't conquerors, we're liberators. If we are brutal, merciless, and ruthless - we may end up leaving behind exactly the kind of legacy we're trying to avoid.
Really?
To the enemy we are not a liberator. The more we use our armed forces to "liberate", rather than utterly annihilate our enemy, the longer this "liberation" will take, and more of Americas finest will die.
The conqerers were merciless and those that were in the path of attacks knew it and scattered instead of giving in to and providing shelter and other comforts to the insurgents. I just wonder how many American lives would not have been lost if we didn't try to placate all of those that did not leave an area where an impending battle loomed near. If the towns were a wasteland, I would almost venture a guess that there would be a lot less IEDs to kill our troops.
"Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach." --Joseph Stalin
He was right.
Hey, what a novel new concept... Run'em out of town and then stay! Wow, amazing...
We tried this approach before. It worked sometimes and didn't work other times.
We no longer "impose" our system. Now we provide the opportunity for other people to adapt and borrow from any system of their choosing. I don't believe people willingly choose dictatorships and brutal regimes. I think people get suckered into creating governments that become brutal, but that they do so out of misplaced idealism. It is that idealism that some brutal few take advantage of to grab power.
Now factor in resupply of the unit in the field (one way or another that's another convoy) and the fact that whatever unit you put in place at the remote location is not available for FOB security or regular patrols in force and I really have to wonder what the point is. We don't have the forces to put a platoon in every village (which is at least what it would take) and that's probably not what we want to do now anyway given that Haji doesn't attack FOBs (except for mortars and rockets) because we would absolutely cream him due to having overwhelming forces in place. Doing something different is not the same thing as doing what is best.
I believe there is a cyclical force to history. We go from periods of expanding freedoms to those of contracting freedoms. Each is a reaction to the other. As people begin to abuse their freedoms, and in so doing turn liberty into license, there is a societal will to check the abuses and establish a more dictatorial regime. In time the Order will chafe the populace, and there will be a societal push for greater civil rights.
No system is perfect, and each has flaws that will become exacerbated to the point that changes must be made. I agree with Marx on that point. Each system produces individuals who are capable of changing the Order under which they live. I call these great figures "epoch-historical." An Order also producers lesser figures, the "world-historical," who can influence the world from within the existing Order. The world-historical are the caretakers. As for the rest of us poor slobs, we are the evanescent.
If the heads are on poles in Syria or Iran, I would agree with you....Vlad put the heads on poles for the "locals" to be afraid..we don't want the locals to be afraid..we want the insurgents to fear us...if we are there occupying the cities, the insurgents will not see the heads of their dead on the poles....we could carpet bomb the cities....but again, we are not fighting the locals, just the insurgents.....
We don't have to occupy every village...most of the insurgents are around Bhagdad and close to Syria...the Kurdish area is almost totally void of fighting.....
My unit was in northeast Iraq near the city of Tuz Khurmatu for a year and we had five killed from IEDs. Tuz was about a two hour drive from Haditha and other cities in Al Anbar province. This is eastern Salah Ah Din province just on the border of Kurdish and Sunni territory. It would be no problem for Haji to relocate to Sunni villages throughout central Iraq and we don't have the forces to occupy all those villages. And that's leaving aside all the other considerations I mentioned.
Our main mission was to keep highway 2, the main road from Kirkuk to Baghdad, open and free from IEDs. To do that we basically had 2 Cav troops for maneuver and the Headquarters troop for combat support and combat service support. There were at least a dozen Sunni villages in our AO that we would have to occupy to try something like this to say nothing of Tuz, which is a city of almost 200,000.
What we are doing works. The enemy can't force us out of the country and he can't stop the democratic process from taking hold. All he can do is try to inflict enough casualties so that the political pressure is turned up and we have to abandon the Iraqis.
It won't work (despite the best efforts of the old fool Murtha and the rest of the Dems).
We need to minimize the target that we present to the enemy and focus on training the IA (which we are doing). We are going to maintain a force in Iraq for a long time, but this just seems like doing something in order to be seen as doing something.
Helicopter out
From every single outpost for every single incident?
There is s reason that we have to keep ground routes open, otherwise we would just move everything by chopper everywhere in the country.
BTW, chopper crews are not thrilled about landing anywhere outside of a secure location. Anytime we called in a medevac from outside of our FOB they would raise a huge stink.
It may be one thing to tell the world we're acting as 'liberators', but it's troublesome if we fool ourselves with this canard. We didn't start off as 'liberators', we started out as conquerers to overthrow Saddam's regime, the Baathists and the Republican Guard, (and find his WMD). We went there to kick arse. "Liberators" are welcomed after they defeat the oppressing government or the occupying army.
Many in Iraq do not welcome us, even some of those who fight with us now. The insurgency exists only because we are too timid to deal with them the way we need to, and so we loose good men and lots of money and wasted time dealing with them with Mickey Mouse rules of engagement. I understand this war is fought on two fronts, in Iraq and in the media. Our government understands this too, and unfortunately they are willing to prolong the war with a 'nice-guy' approach just to please the anti-war rats.
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