Posted on 09/22/2004 10:23:04 AM PDT by crushelits
You have a link for that long account (soldier currently deployed in Iraq)?
I appreciate your concern for the troops on the ground. My feelings for the men and women over there are very similar to yours.
As for the rest of your comments, you're quite articulate -- I guess I'll just have to respectfully disagree if you feel the decision to liberate Iraq wasn't the right choice to make.
and.....I approve this message.
i get your point and certainly agree but i was only addressing the Geneva Conventions rules aspect. :)
Your ideas sound interesting. Have you ever considered a job in Army psychological operations?
Psychological Operations, U.S. Army Special Operations Command
I made no remark about "liberation,"
that decision was made long ago.
Now the question is, how can the mission be achieved at the least cost in American and Iraqi blood and treasure.
And of course, what is the mission these days?
If it is to take revenge on the people of Iraq for every terrorist act anywhere in the world as some freepers' comments seem to indicate, then celebrating every bombing mission in a residential area or every violation of the Geneva Conventions is fine and dandy.
But is "revenge" the mission?
I thought "liberation" and 'democratization" were the two goals of the war--at least the two goals left once it became clear that there was no wmd, no al queda alliance, and no involvement with 9/11.
If the mission really is to make a new state that follows US traditions when it comes to goverment, then it seems pretty clear to me that the bloodthirsty sorts of options/reprisals favored by some freepers, while they may provide some sort of macho testosterone boost, will actually be counterproductive to the achievement of our strategic goals.
I think that the White House is meddling in the military operations in Iraq to a degree not seen since Vietnam. I thought we learned that lesson already.
I take General Conway's statements very seriously because it seems to me that the Marines are practically the only military members that tell it straight without regard to politics.
Conway said that it made no sense to hammer fallujah on the basis of the deaths of 4 "contractors." He pointed out that several GIs were killed around that same time and no attack was ordered to avenge their deaths--and when exactly did civilian contractors become more important than members of our military?
The White House ordered an assault on the city when the commander in the field thought this was a foolish response that would ultimately harm the mission--which he believed was setting up a democracy in IRaq.
Conway was prepared to offer all sorts of reconstruction intitiatives and he had trained his Marines to do a better job with the locals than the Army had...
But that went out the window when the White House, irritated at the pictures on TV of the riots and mutilations of the contractors' bodies, let emotions control rather than logic and the dictates of the mission and ordered a full on assault on a city of several hundred thousand people.
And don't kid yourself, this was NOT a military man's decision made in theater, this is the sort of FUBAR policy that ONLY comes from politicians that have never served in combat or even the military.
So, Conway the good Marine says "Yes, Sir!" and unleashes the Devil Dogs on Fallujah. As expected, the Marines perform brilliantly and kick major ass and quickly come within a few days (hours???) of completing their mission--which was to take control of Fallujah.
Then, as the Marines are ready to achieve victory, Conway is told by the White House to RETREAT and turn the town over to the local hooligans.
This was a criminal policy decision in my opinion, replaying the stupidity of Vietnam and all of the political meddling in that conflict.
This was the worst of all possible worlds because the White House let emotions guide the decision to order the assualt, and then they let politics come into play and they wimped out and cancelled the operation when victory was at hand.
As Conway noted, when you order a Marine assault force to take a city, you better know what you are doing and what is going to happen when the Devil Dogs are unleashed.
So, they send in the Corps, they lose some Marines, they kill some civilians, they kill many of the enemy, and then they do not achieve victory because the White House got scared.
Now, everybody is pissed off, the Marines AND the locals. The US gets a propaganda black eye for the civilian deaths AND they don't take the town.
As was the case so often in Vietnam, the White House snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
Then the Marines are ordered to train the enemy in combat tactics, give them brand new AK-47s, AND put them in charge of Fallujah!!!
--Think about that for a moment...
Conway is right about the whole mess.
So, again, it doesn't matter whether or not one is in favor of the war or not, the US is there, now they need to decide what the mission is and figure out how to achieve victory.
If the mission is "revenge" and reprisal for acts of terrorism against Americans then fine, but don't send in the Devil Dogs and then pull them out when they have already lost Marines AND victory is at hand.
If the mission is "liberation," then you cannot send Marine assault forces into cities, drop 2000lb bombs in residential neighborhoods, and randomly fire .50 cal into markets everytime you are pissed off about something Zarqawi did...
It seems to me that you cannot do both things at once.
The only way to defeat an insurgency is to convince the locals that you are the good guys and will provide the best life for them.
But that is tough to do when the political leadership is more worried about the polls than what their military commanders are telling them and what sorts of strategies the mission dictates.
It is almost impossible if the politicians lose their nerve everytime some Marines start killing people and breaking things.
I think that EVERYONE needs to back off on the petty partisanship and political bullshit when it comes to the situation in Iraq.
The whole "kill 'em all" attitude is fine if you are in the field and trying to keep yourself and your buddies alive, but it has no place for policy makers in the rear--and when it is expressed by people not even in the service from the comforts of their computer terminals it rings even more hollow.
But this attitude has no place in the overall strategy for Iraq if the mission is to "liberate" and create a democracy.
In my view, it is long past the time when someone in the Administration needs to get shit canned. There have been so many things wrong and yet there seems to be no accountability whatsoever.
If you are an e-4 in the field and you rough up a thug in an effort to find out where the IEDs are you get court martialed, but if you are a senior administration official that orders up somthing like the Fallujah fiasco absolutely NOTHING happens to you.
This is bad for morale and really bad for the mission.
And I think it just reeks of Vietnam.
Yea. You and Kerry think a lot alike.
no delta 21,
I think alot like Lt. Gen Conway USMC and I think he has a valid critique of why Iraq is FUBAR right now.
Do you discount his views because he happens to disagree with attacking Fallujah, stopping in the middle of the attack, and then handing the city over to the insurgents?
Do you support calling off an assault when victory is at hand and then training and arming the enemy and giving them back the city?
That sounds like a stupid policy to me, perhaps you can explain why the White House ordered an attack, lost its nerve, called off the assault, and then ordered the Marines to train and equip the insurgents and give them control of the city?
Politics and meddling from the White House have to stop when it comes to in-theater military decisions.
That's a really important lesson that some seem to have forgotten.
perhaps you'd like to read his comments for yourself?
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Sept. 12 -- The outgoing U.S. Marine Corps general in charge of western Iraq said Sunday he opposed a Marine assault on militants in the volatile city of Fallujah in April and the subsequent decision to withdraw from the city and turn over control to a security force of former Iraqi soldiers.
That security force, known as the Fallujah Brigade, was formally disbanded last week. Not only did the brigade fail to combat militants, it actively aided them, surrendering weapons, vehicles and radios to the insurgents, according to senior Marine officers. Some brigade members even participated in attacks on Marines ringing the city, the officers said.
The comments by Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, made shortly after he relinquished command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force on Sunday, amounted to a stinging broadside against top U.S. military and civilian leaders who ordered the Fallujah invasion and withdrawal. His statements also provided the most detailed explanation -- and justification -- of Marine actions in Fallujah this spring, which have been widely criticized for increasing insurgent activity in the city and turning it into a "no-go" zone for U.S. troops.
Conway arrived in Iraq in March pledging to accelerate reconstruction projects as a way to subdue Anbar province, dominated by Sunni Muslims. But on March 31 he was confronted in Fallujah with the killing of four U.S. security contractors, whose bodies were mutilated or burned by a celebrating mob. Conway said he resisted calls for revenge, and instead advocated targeted operations and continued engagement with municipal leaders.
"We felt like we had a method that we wanted to apply to Fallujah: that we ought to probably let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge," he said in an interview with four journalists after the change-of-command ceremony. "Would our system have been better? Would we have been able to bring over the people of Fallujah with our methods? You'll never know that for sure, but at the time we certainly thought so."
He echoed an argument made by many Iraqi politicians and American analysts -- that the U.S. attack further radicalized a restive city, leading many residents to support the insurgents. "When we were told to attack Fallujah, I think we certainly increased the level of animosity that existed," Conway said.
He would not say where the order to attack originated, only that he received an order from his superior at the time, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Some senior U.S. officials in Iraq have said the command originated in the White House.
"We follow our orders," Conway said. "We had our say, and we understood the rationale, and we saluted smartly, and we went about the attack."
The Marine assault on Fallujah in April ended abruptly after three days. Conway expressed displeasure at the order he received from Sanchez to cease offensive operations, a decision that culminated in the formation of the Fallujah Brigade.
"When you order elements of a Marine division to attack a city, you really need to understand what the consequences of that are going to be and not perhaps vacillate in the middle of something like that," he said. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed."
Noting that six Marines were killed and six wounded in those first three days, he added: "We were quite happy with the progress of the attack on the city. We thought we were sparing civilian lives everywhere and anywhere that availed itself to us. We thought we were going to be done in a few days. That's the Monday morning quarterbacking."
The Marine encirclement of Fallujah was highly controversial. Iraqi political leaders and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi accused U.S. military commanders of engaging in collective punishment of city residents.
Although the order to stop the fighting and seek another solution was made above Conway, he was responsible for placing Iraqis in charge of security. He formed the Fallujah Brigade after the head of Iraq's intelligence service, Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, brought a handful of former Iraqi army generals to Camp Fallujah, the Marines' base. The generals offered to set up a force of more than 1,000 former soldiers from Fallujah who would control the city and combat the insurgents, including a cluster of non-Iraqi Islamic militants. In exchange, the Marines pledged to withdraw from the city.
But the brigade never developed as planned. Instead of wearing the desert camouflage uniforms the Marines provided, members dressed in their old Iraqi army fatigues. Instead of confronting insurgents, the former soldiers initially manned traffic checkpoints leading into the city. After a few weeks, even that ended.
Marine officials say they believe that threats, tribal ties and other influences led many of the soldiers to tacitly support the insurgents. The leaders of two National Guard battalions, which had been working with the Fallujah Brigade, were kidnapped. One was beheaded and the fate of the other is unknown. A video of the killing has circulated in Fallujah to dissuade people from working with security forces.
Eventually, the 800 AK-47 assault rifles, 27 pickup trucks and 50 radios the Marines gave the brigade wound up in the hands of the insurgents, according to Marine officers. Marines manning a checkpoint on the city's eastern fringe were shot at by gunmen wearing Fallujah Brigade uniforms.
Conway's chief of staff, Col. John Coleman, said he and other senior Marine officers did not foresee the challenges in getting people from Fallujah to police the city. "I'm not sure we fully understood the hardness of the city, the harshness of the elements operating inside," he said.
Conway insisted the brigade was an experiment. "The early success of the Fallujah Brigade was ultimately its downfall," he said. "You had to have a force that came from Fallujah in order for it to be accepted by the people of all. They're very xenophobic . . . but in the end those were the same things I think that dictated the demise of the Fallujah Brigade. Because they were from the local area, they were emasculated as far as their ability to do something very aggressive."
With no security forces in Fallujah now -- U.S. troops do not patrol inside the city limits -- the area has become a haven for insurgents, Marine officers said. Among the foreign-born fighters believed to be holed up in Fallujah is Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is alleged to have organized car bombings, kidnappings and other attacks targeting Americans and Iraqis.
Over the past week, U.S. warplanes have bombed suspected insurgent safe houses and other targets in the city. Coleman said those attacks have killed hundreds of insurgents.
Conway's successor, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, suggested that another incursion into the city would require not just the approval of Iraq's interim prime minister but also likely would involve the joint participation of Iraqi army units. "When we approach it next time, we will approach it a little bit differently," he said.
But Sattler said he was unwilling to tolerate an insurgent-controlled city. "The status quo," he said, "is unacceptable."
Thanks for your comments.
In all honesty, I get enough doom and gloom and defeatism from the mainstream media. So please don't feel offended if I don't take the time to read your lengthy comments.
This is preceisly the problem General Conway discusses above, those who let emotions and some sort of quest for revenge get in the way of the achievement of the ultimate goals of the mission.
perhaps I am missing something, but is the mission to kill all the Iraqis or is it to "liberate" the Iraqis?
how will making a "parking lot" serve as an example of the benefits of democracy to the rest of the middle east?
Won't this set a bad example?
The mission, in case you have forgotten, is to set up a democracy in Iraq and let the Iraqis serve as an example to the rest of the region of how democracy is better than an Islamic dictatorship.
Saddam killed several hundred thousand Iraqis, will the US military killing ALL of them as punishment for the deeds of others really help to achieve the US's long-term strategic goals in the region?
What did the Iraqis you propose to exterminate have to do with 9-11, Chechnya, or the atrocities of foreign Islamic extremists like Zarqawi--who is from JORDAN.
of course, age and health permitting, if you feel so strongly about this I am sure the Army or the Marines would love to have you.
I am sorry that you take my comments as a lack of faith in the US, the military, or democracy.
That is certainly not how I feel.
If you read my comments again, you will not that my main concern is the political meddling with the commanders in theater.
My argument is that there are some problems in Washington that are adversely effecting the mission in Iraq and the overall WOT.
My other argument is that if one is trying to bring democracy and liberty, advocating the extermination of the Iraqis based on the actions of Saudis, chechens, or various foreign-born extremists in Iraq is not very productive.
On the contrary, it is juvenile, misguided, and damaging to the mission.
And . . . ? Would they be less dead if we killed them with smaller, more "sensitive" bullets?
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