Posted on 05/04/2003 3:04:58 PM PDT by WaterDragon
He counts his unit's kills meticulously, each one a tick in black pen on his khaki helmet which is, by now, bleached by the sun and battered from battle. Perched in the turret of his tank, just behind the barrel that is hand-painted with intimidating war cries such as "kill 'em all" or "I'm a motherf***ing warrior", he talks only to those Iraqis with the temerity to approach: he feels vulnerable without a 60-ton Abrams girding his loins. It is impossible to read anything in his eyes because they are always obscured by mirrored sunglasses.
Only in the safety of his unit's headquarters, behind barbed wire and protected by heavy weaponry, does the American marine take off his body armour and helmet. On the streets of Baghdad, out on patrol, he is wary and ill at ease.
Friendly approach: an Irish Guard patrols the streets of Basra Every Iraqi is a potential troublemaker, a possible target. If one fails to stop at his checkpoint, his response will be to open fire. If more than 50 gather to chant anti-American slogans, he will likely flood the street with soldiers. If he so much as suspects that the crowd has weapons he may well consider a full-scale counter-attack.
Still in full battle dress, though the war is over, he is awesome to behold. His President insists that he was never a member of an invading force, that he was a liberator and is now a peacekeeper. Yet much of the time he is loathed, despised and spat upon by those Iraqis for whose freedom he fought. He and his comrades are among the most hated men in the Iraqi capital.
The manner in which the American forces stormed their way to Baghdad may indeed have been awesome. They fought the war with verve, with valour and with steely determination. How they are holding the peace, however, makes a woeful contrast.
British troops, by comparison, are welcomed in southern Iraq with cries of "We love you Britannia, welcome British." In the south, the British not only won the trust of the locals during the war and used it effectively to gather vital intelligence, they kept it in the aftermath. The Americans, hampered by much stricter rules of engagement and with little experience of peacekeeping, are swiftly losing the battle for hearts and minds.
On the streets of Basra, Safwan and Az Zubayr in southern Iraq, British soldiers, with years of experience of dealing with civilian populations in war zones such as Northern Ireland and of peacekeeping in the Balkans and Sierra Leone, are treated as saviours. They have abandoned their helmets in favour of their more people-friendly berets, have taken off their body armour and mingle with the locals. They have helped to set up a local police force and a council to get the city's infrastructure running smoothly.
"Have you met my buddy Ahmed?" says Sergeant Euan Andrews, from the 7th Parachute Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery, as he swings an arm around an Iraqi by his side outside the freshly painted Basra police station.
Ahmed, beaming in a baseball cap emblazoned with the words "City of Basra police" in Arabic and holding a truncheon, punches his new friend in playful camaraderie. "A month ago we were shooting at each other," says Euan, "now we are on the same side."
As Ahmed, chest swelling with pride, steps out to deal with the next car check by himself, Euan gives him an encouraging nod. "They're all getting there," he says. "It will take time. There is still a lot of: 'He is my cousin, my friend, he is ok.' We have had to explain that police must be impartial. But slowly we are getting there."
That afternoon the soldiers are playing football against the locals and in the evening they have volunteered to repaint the local school. The Iraqis loiter to chat as they pass the station, shaking soldiers by the hand and bringing them home-cooked meals. "Our methods of dealing with the locals are very, very different from that of the Yanks," one officer says over a cup of local coffee. ("Awful," he says, "but they like it when we drink it.")
"Unlike the Americans we have taken off our helmets and sunglasses and we look the locals in the eye. If we see one vehicle heading at speed towards a checkpoint we let it through. It is only one vehicle. We call our method "raid and aid" - don't ask me what we call the American way."
In Basra, raid and aid worked. For two weeks the 7th Armoured Brigade waited at the bridge before entering the city. During that time it built up its relationship with those Iraqis brave enough to provide intelligence about the Fedayeen - Saddam's loyalist fighters - who had held the city to ransom.
The result was that when the British did enter, they knew where to go, who to go after and who to trust. For them the rules of engagement changed as warfare became peacekeeping. Now, they no longer automatically return fire. They wait. Often Iraqi gunfire is a sign of celebration at the return of electricity or running water. They know it is not necessarily attacking fire.
The Americans are, admittedly, bound by much less flexible rules. Their Force Protection Doctrine decrees that all soldiers must wear helmets and body armour in a war zone at all times and that gun fire must be met with response. They also have little experience in the peacekeeping arena, and their experience of urban warfare in the battle for Hue during the Vietnam war and more recently in Somalia has left them jumpy.
The British have learned in the past 30 years that good information on the enemy was their best protection and that putting soldiers at risk to get it was justified; jungle ambushes in Vietnam made the Americans obsessed with "force protection".
Since the killing of four American soldiers by an Iraqi suicide bomber 10 days into the conflict, they have become even more wary of locals.
Last week, Americans killed 15 people - among them two young boys - at Fallujah, an impoverished Shia area 30 miles west of Baghdad - when locals became angry at their occupation of the local school. Though the US troops say they fired in self-defence - and may well have done so - television footage of bleeding Iraqis, clearly unarmed, lying on the roads, have shocked Western viewers.
In Baghdad, where the Americans rarely leave their compounds, lawlessness is widespread. On Friday, when locals realised that Saddam's sister owned a lavish home in Al Jadria in the west of the city, they stormed the house. Pianos, furniture and paintings were dragged away by a mob of looters. When US soldiers arrived they stopped only long enough to warn journalists not to remove anything or they would be arrested, then left the mob rampaging through the house. "I'm not going near that lot," one marine said. "I don't feel safe anywhere near them, unless I am behind a whopping big tank."
In the more affluent areas of Al Mansour and Al Kaarada, local families have been forced to build barricades to keep out thieves as the American soldiers refuse to patrol.
In the Shia ghettos of Saddam City and Khadamia, where the Americans are reluctant to go even in tanks, the local imams have taken matters in hand. "Imams have set up local security stations in the hospitals," says Yousef al Alwani. "Guns that have been looted, many from Saddam's palace, are brought to the mosques and from there the imams take them to the hospital and arm the local militia who are now policing us. The Americans don't protect us and they don't help us. What else are they doing but occupying us?"
Cultural background, say military analysts, explains much of the British success in southern Iraq. "Britain and other European nations have imperial traditions," says Stuart Crawford, a retired lieutenant colonel in the 4th Royal Tank Regiment. "As a result, British troops have been inculcated with the ethos and tradition of colonial policing, where small numbers of men would have close contact on a daily basis with local populations. But America is a young country with no colonial past."
In some respects it is a paradox that Britain, which once ruled an empire, should have a more flexible and sensitive army than America.
At the end of the 19th century, the howitzer and the Maxim gun were the equivalent of the cruise missile and the tankbuster. To maintain control yet allow and encourage people to live in their traditional ways, they became accustomed to understanding and respecting local culture and customs. It is a lesson that the American army has yet, it seems, to learn.
And you know, there is a time for criticism, and a time to keep your mouth shut.
This article is a fine demonstration of a breathtaking lack of class, in my opinion.
And this may really make people mad, but the French, historically speaking, aren't the surrender monkeys of the popular image. Verdun was probably the longest, bloodiest battle in history, including Stalingrad. Aside from 1870 and 1940, I'd say they've done rather well on the field.
I agree the French are not as bad as has been said although the Germans did generally outfight them.
I doubt if any troops except maybe the Spartans at Thermopylae, fought better than the French did at Dien Bien Phu. They literally were outnumbered a hundred to one or something close to that.
Total and utter Bull____.
I harbor no illusions about the difficulties and complexities of post-war Iraq, and there areas where the US can be criticized. But I don't believe the above assessment for an instant.
This brave unnamed writer could come to a San Francisco protest and using the same select anecdotal useful idiot logic to conclude that Bush is among the most hated men in America(polling at approx. 75% approval rating).
You stated:
That's odd - the Brits never complained about the tactics of our "mother****ing warriors" when the Yanks whipped Hitler for them...
As if all of our allies in the UK agree with this newspaper article. I suggest you direct your attack to the Daily Telegraph, not the "Brits".
The author has not yet figured out that Baghdad was the center of Baathist power but that Basra and the Kurdish north were subject to repeated Baathist massacres of their Shiite and Kurdish populations.
He is comparing the degree of danger of patrolling the streets of Berlin and the streets of Paris on the week that World War II ended.
That said, the Neville offensive was a rotten idea, but who's to say U.S. troops would not also have mutinied after such a debacle.
In sum, an honest review of history indicates to me that we do not necessarily have a better record in battle than the British or French.
There is a similar story attributed to him in the leftist ezine "Common Dreams":
This ignores the reality that the south of Iraq was never very loyal to Saddom in the first place.
Puuuleeze.
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