Winning in Iraq!

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

[quote]rainjack wrote:

The role of the military is not that of peace, but that of war. Their job is to kill people and break things. This is why the military is not a good peace keeping force. Everyone in the army is an 11B. In the Marines it is the exact same thing. You are asking people trained to kill and win wars to keep the peace.

Maybe if we were to let the ilitary do what they were trained to do, instead of trying to make friends, the war would be over.

The sad thing about our efforts in Iraq is that they have been tempered by political correctness, and a fear of what the press might say.

It’s much like the kid with a bandaid covering a sore. He is too affraid to just rip it off, so he goes through an entire ordeal not to feel any pain, when the best thing to do is just rip it off and get it over with. [/quote]

I think even more than Vietnam, pure military power is destined to be a guranteed failed strategy. Unlike the VC and the NVA who were actually organized into units and had logistics and bases, but fought unconventionally, the Iraqi insurgency isn’t even all on the same side.

They never actually fight battles, if theres only a dozen or so men, killing them won’t be a D-Day turning the tides event. They are so decentralized and fragmented that surrender isn’t an applicable subject, neither is attacking their supply routes. As for % of the population, it’s probably really low with a larger set of people supportive or indifferent but not actually participating.

Bombing is just going to incite more people against us, and kill more people that are not invovled, which actually strengthens the insurgents.

No one is arguing we need to make friends with insurgents because it’d be wrong to kill them all. If all we had to do was fight harder or kill more, we’d have won in 2003. There isn’t regiments fighters hiding underground or the jungles. Ttrying to beat this insurgency like a conventional army is, at best, a total misunderstanding of the conflict.

122

In the end it all depends on the new Iraqi army. If after we leave they are unable to stop the insurgents without our help then we’ve lost. But if they are strong enough to keep the country stable then our mission was successful.

123

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
You’re so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. If the military doesn’t do nation-building, who is gonna do it? Make no mistake, it needs to be done in Afghanistan, Iraq, and plenty of other places.[/quote]

No - I’m not. IF we want to use post WWII Japan and Europe as an example - we crushed the enemy. We bombed the shit out of them until we took the fight out of them. We broke them with our strength.

Then - after the enemy was humiliated, we went in and started rebuilding.

The failure of this war has been to start the rebuilding before the enemy has been destroyed.

124

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
This is how the allies won WWII, we killed a shit ton of the enemy and broke alot of their shit. I can’t spesk for the other armed services, but I know for a fact that Marines are trained to kill, not make nice with a foreign populace. Period. It’s embedded into the very culture of the Marines. As a recruit, you “attack” everything; the chowline, hygene, fellow Marines with pugil sticks, any problem you might have.

-Bigflamer[/quote]

Good luck with the driveway. I just repaved the walk…

Check out AMGOT (Allied military government for occupied territories)This was the WWII organisation that immediately moved in to prevent a power vacuum. These would not fit your definition of soldiers, but they each had a task to take over a town and to ensure stability.

They used allied soldiers, former policemen, local notables and even the bloody Mafia!, but they got the job done.

125

[quote]semper_fi wrote:
In the end it all depends on the new Iraqi army. If after we leave they are unable to stop the insurgents without our help then we’ve lost. But if they are strong enough to keep the country stable then our mission was successful.
[/quote]

That assumes that “stability” is only a factor with regards to the insurgents. It isn’t.

126

[quote]rainjack wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
You’re so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. If the military doesn’t do nation-building, who is gonna do it? Make no mistake, it needs to be done in Afghanistan, Iraq, and plenty of other places.

No - I’m not. IF we want to use post WWII Japan and Europe as an example - we crushed the enemy. We bombed the shit out of them until we took the fight out of them. We broke them with our strength.

Then - after the enemy was humiliated, we went in and started rebuilding.

The failure of this war has been to start the rebuilding before the enemy has been destroyed. [/quote]

What do you not understand about the difference between conventional and unconventional war? This isn’t the Wehrmacht or the Imperial Japanese Army, or even the NVA: we are fighting a large insurgency that has broad support from a significant minority of the population and can blend in at will.

You can’t “break them with our strength.” Comparisons to World War II are completely worthless; you might as well talk about Agincourt or Marathon.

Maybe this will help:

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/six_easy_paragraphs.htm

127

Rainjack,

You are doing the same thing that has recognized as a problem. You are talking in the language of the past in a situation that it no longer fits.

The problem isn’t that we can’t apply force.

The problem is that it is difficult to figure out the real targets. Even in WWII nobody, on our side, wen’t around purposely bombing civilians. They defined targets and did their best to hit those targets.

Yes, collateral damage is expected. But, at the same time, we are in a new era with many advances. Unfortunately, one of those advances is in communication. Unless you want to inflame the entire Middle East, which would not be a positive event, you do have to be careful.

The scope of the situation has to be recognized, as much as it might feel good to wipe every person in Iraq off the map, thereby winning, the world and even the people of America would recognize that as a complete attrocity of unheard of proportions. You can’t let your hatred blind you.

If the military can’t operate within the reality of today, then it needs to be retrained or reshaped to be able to do so.

Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves mired in situations that the military is not suited to handle, while the leadership talks in a language that is forty years out of date. Hey, that sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it?

Anyway, my take is that the US military follows orders and does what is commanded of it. I think the military is very competent to do just about any reasonable task asked of it. However, it is up to the generals or the administration to figure out what the hell they should do to achieve what they want – if they even know what they want in this situation.

It looks like what they want to do is wait for Iraq to magically become a peaceful place simply because there is a government in place. This dream of peace through an elected government is mighty fucking naive. The habits and thinking of the people need to be adjusted to achieve peace. Maybe somebody is doing good work in that regard and we aren’t hearing about it… at least I hope so.

128

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
What do you not understand about the difference between conventional and unconventional war? This isn’t the Wehrmacht or the Imperial Japanese Army, or even the NVA: we are fighting a large insurgency that has broad support from a significant minority of the population and can blend in at will.

You can’t “break them with our strength.” Comparisons to World War II are completely worthless; you might as well talk about Agincourt or Marathon.

Maybe this will help:

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/six_easy_paragraphs.htm[/quote]

The thing is - we have not tried to use any strength. We have played a PC game so that no one will get too mad at us. We can be much more ruthless and destructinve over there. In fact that is my point - we have not done that.

Strenght wins everytime it is used. Destroying the enemy with exptreme prejudice is a proven winner. We have not tried that, and we should have from the get go. Fuck collateral damage if the goal is the destruction of the enemy.

It wold take less than 30 days to purge Iraq of the insurgency if the the military was not trying to fight a nice war. Close the borders and strangle the insurgency and their hideouts with a bloody grip.

Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

129

[quote]rainjack wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
What do you not understand about the difference between conventional and unconventional war? This isn’t the Wehrmacht or the Imperial Japanese Army, or even the NVA: we are fighting a large insurgency that has broad support from a significant minority of the population and can blend in at will.

You can’t “break them with our strength.” Comparisons to World War II are completely worthless; you might as well talk about Agincourt or Marathon.

Maybe this will help:

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/six_easy_paragraphs.htm

The thing is - we have not tried to use any strength. We have played a PC game so that no one will get too mad at us. We can be much more ruthless and destructinve over there. In fact that is my point - we have not done that.

Strenght wins everytime it is used. Destroying the enemy with exptreme prejudice is a proven winner. We have not tried that, and we should have from the get go. Fuck collateral damage if the goal is the destruction of the enemy.

It wold take less than 30 days to purge Iraq of the insurgency if the the military was not trying to fight a nice war. Close the borders and strangle the insurgency and their hideouts with a bloody grip.

Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

[/quote]

Two points- we don’t have enough people in country to close the border. That’s been an indictment of the war plan from the beginning.

-There are no military targets to attack. It will be all collateral damage. There are no hideouts. The insurgency lives in the population centers, and your plan ammounts to bombing the shit out of neiborhoods. We can’t kill everyone in the whole damn country and then say we liberated it.

130

[quote]rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

[/quote]

Dude that’s fucked up. I thought we were trying to help these people. We’ll just turn them against us so some Iraqi orphan will orchastrate another 9/11 30 years from now.

131

[quote]semper_fi wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

Dude that’s fucked up. I thought we were trying to help these people. We’ll just turn them against us so some Iraqi orphan will orchastrate another 9/11 30 years from now.[/quote]

You actually thought we went into Iraq to help those people?

132

[quote]rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.[/quote]

You sound dangerously close to what we are fighting.

Fanaticism.

The ends justify the means fanaticism.

Dude, do some thinking about the so-called sanctity of life that the right likes to talk about. Really.

133

[quote]vroom wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

You sound dangerously close to what we are fighting.

Fanaticism.

The ends justify the means fanaticism.

Dude, do some thinking about the so-called sanctity of life that the right likes to talk about. Really.[/quote]

Give the guy a break. It’s after 4:00 on a Saturday, he was already 12 cans into the Natural Lite 30 pack when he posted that little tidbit.

134

[quote]Professor X wrote:
semper_fi wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

Dude that’s fucked up. I thought we were trying to help these people. We’ll just turn them against us so some Iraqi orphan will orchastrate another 9/11 30 years from now.

You actually thought we went into Iraq to help those people?[/quote]

Well…yeah. At least that’s why I’m joining, becuase I believe that Iraq can become a successful democracy and the economic powerhouse of the middle east instead of an Islamic dictatorship. That would be a huge blow to the terrorists.

135

[quote]rainjack wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
What do you not understand about the difference between conventional and unconventional war? This isn’t the Wehrmacht or the Imperial Japanese Army, or even the NVA: we are fighting a large insurgency that has broad support from a significant minority of the population and can blend in at will.

You can’t “break them with our strength.” Comparisons to World War II are completely worthless; you might as well talk about Agincourt or Marathon.

Maybe this will help:

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/six_easy_paragraphs.htm

The thing is - we have not tried to use any strength. We have played a PC game so that no one will get too mad at us. We can be much more ruthless and destructinve over there. In fact that is my point - we have not done that.

Strenght wins everytime it is used. Destroying the enemy with exptreme prejudice is a proven winner. We have not tried that, and we should have from the get go. Fuck collateral damage if the goal is the destruction of the enemy.

It wold take less than 30 days to purge Iraq of the insurgency if the the military was not trying to fight a nice war. Close the borders and strangle the insurgency and their hideouts with a bloody grip.

Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

[/quote]

Oh, you’re absolutely right. If we want to commit genocide, we can destroy the insurgency relatively quickly. Check what the Germans did in East Africa at the turn of the century, solved that problem fast. About 95% of the people we kill would be innocents though. But fuck em, it’s just PC to care about people who aren’t American.

Make no mistake though, there’s no middle ground. You either try to control the population and turn them away from the insurgency, or you commit mass murder on an epic scale and rule by fear. Maybe you’d be more comfortable in communist China or North Korea; they’d love your strategy for defeating an insurgency.

136

[quote]tme wrote:
vroom wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

You sound dangerously close to what we are fighting.

Fanaticism.

The ends justify the means fanaticism.

Dude, do some thinking about the so-called sanctity of life that the right likes to talk about. Really.

Give the guy a break. It’s after 4:00 on a Saturday, he was already 12 cans into the Natural Lite 30 pack when he posted that little tidbit.

[/quote]

Let’s hope so.

137

[quote]semper_fi wrote:
Professor X wrote:
semper_fi wrote:
rainjack wrote:
Will innocents die? Yep. But they will die at the hands of attaining a greater good. If that is indeed our goal.

Dude that’s fucked up. I thought we were trying to help these people. We’ll just turn them against us so some Iraqi orphan will orchastrate another 9/11 30 years from now.

You actually thought we went into Iraq to help those people?

Well…yeah. At least that’s why I’m joining, becuase I believe that Iraq can become a successful democracy and the economic powerhouse of the middle east instead of an Islamic dictatorship. That would be a huge blow to the terrorists. [/quote]

You are joining the military…to help Iraq become a democracy?

I know we all have personal reasons. 9/11 probably caused a huge inlux of people initially. However, the world is a little larger than just Iraq and with other problems looming like dark clouds in the future…like Korea, perhaps you should widen your scope a little.

My personal perspective is that when you raise your hand and take that oath, Iraq is nowhere to be found in the words you repeat.

138

“Senior official says Iraq ‘as a political project is finished’”

snip

“Baghdad might be divided between east and west”

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-21T144652Z_01_L10437415_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&archived=False

I sure don’t want to see what ‘losing in Iraq’ looks like if that’s what you characterize as ‘Winning in Iraq!!!’.

139

Dang, JeffR, you’ve been wrong

so
many
times.

you have zero credibility.
none.

just had to bump this for the hilarious post title “winning in iraq”

140

[quote]100meters wrote:
Dang, JeffR, you’ve been wrong

so
many
times.

you have zero credibility.
none.

just had to bump this for the hilarious post title “winning in iraq”

[/quote]

Hey lumpy!!!

Maybe you should start your own thread titled, “Liberals love losing.” Or, “Losing in Iraq.”

You and your pals could have a field day celebrating!!!

JeffR