[quote]JeffR wrote:
gdol wrote:
The killing of Zarqawi is great news, but body counts mean nothing in a war like this, and can even be indicative of losing more than winning.
Can’t go there with you. Perhaps you read the report intercepted from al qaeda? Don’t worry, I posted it to start this thread.
Killing, choking off finances, storming safehouses, and generally making it harder for the bad guys to work their mischief DOES MEAN something.
Read about Vietnam, Malaya, Algeria, or any other counter-insurgency campaign sometime, instead of dwelling on half-baked World War II analogies. You win by providing security, not by annihilating the enemy, and that is something we have not done.
First of all, in our previous discussion, you flew off the handle and made many unfounded assumptions. I asked you to explain your position further. You then went on a “I’ve read X books and therefore am a expert” tirade. You assumed that I was ignorant of history. You dismissed my points as irrelevant because I didn’t reference your favorites at the local library.
I let it pass. Not because I have any doubt as to my erudition. It trully wasn’t worth my effort to change your mind. Further, I’m uncomfortable “name dropping.” However, since that seems to be the way you define informed, I’ll play a little.
Here’s the source that I think sums up my feelings the best:
www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/sepp.pdf
If you take the time to read this, you will find that the Administration, Coalition, and the Iraqi’s have adopted many of it’s precepts.
In summary, the Good Guys are winning.
JeffR
[/quote]
That’s a very good link. Kalev Sepp is a smart guy, former Green Beret, and is now serving, I think, as counter-insurgency adviser to General Casey in Iraq.
BUT - you either haven’t even read the article or are willfully misrepresenting it. About half the things he lists as unsuccessful counter-insurgency practices in the second chart are things we are currently doing in Iraq.
In Vietnam and Afghanistan for example, “Emphasis was on killing and capturing enemy combatants rather than on engaging the population.” Sound familiar?
From the April 26, 2006 Stars and Strips:
U.S. troops entered Mukhisa and the adjacent town of Abu Kharma on Sunday after hearing that the region is home to foreign fighters, members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?s group and financiers behind roadside bomb and mortar attacks, said Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, battalion commander....
One obstacle his troops face is that the two towns? contact with coalition forces over the past three years has consisted of three raids, in which hundreds of townspeople were arrested only to be released later, Fisher said.
?When you neglect a town and don?t engage the population, the terrorists who are here and the insurgents can tell them anything they want, and they will believe it because there is no one else telling them anything different,? he said.
“In particular, Americans and Soviets employed massive artillery and aerial firepower with the intent to defeat enemy forces by attriting them to a point of collapse, an objective which was never reached.”
Hmm, that sounds like us too:
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_6_19_06.htm
I sincerely hope we’re winning in Iraq, and I think there has been some slow evolution by the U.S. military, but we’re still behind the curve in a ton of ways.
You seem like you might be a bright guy Jeffy, in spite of some of what you write, so maybe you grasp this. If that’s the case though, you’re even worse, because you’ve decided your loyalty to Bush and the “conservative” Republican Party are more important than the truth. Which is it Jeff?