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I wouldn't get too cocky. They've kep the peace there pretty well. They are bloody experienced in using the military in urban zones far beyond US experience - they had all the bloody mistakes and savageries of Northern Ireland for the last 30 years and they took them on board. I'd rate them as the best Western army for using military forces in urban zones...mind you, that should always be the last resport anyway

I wouldn't get too cocky. They've kep the peace there pretty well. They are bloody experienced in using the military in urban zones far beyond US experience - they had all the bloody mistakes and savageries of Northern Ireland for the last 30 years and they took them on board. I'd rate them as the best Western army for using military forces in urban zones...mind you, that should always be the last resport anyway

Actually, they've been up against amateurs for decades - people of the same skin color and religion who killed a few dozen Brits a year for roughly the last 100 years. We're up against professionals who were good enough to take down the entire 9-building World Trade Center complex and a sizable chunk of the Pentagon. Brits are lousy at guerrilla warfare unless they're fighting a few thousand people with surplus weapons. This is why they were mauled and pulled out of Iraq during the 1930's.

Note that British empire is basically a thing of the past. Uncle Sam took most of North America and is still in control of all of it. The Brits lost the heart for this kind of thing a long time ago, and they're projecting their defeatism onto Uncle Sam.

Well it's very different from the IRA isn't it? I mean, from what I've heard there were at the height of it only two thosand IRA fighters. Even so it took decades to put them down. Here you have tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands taking part in the hostilities.

My take is the whole "Army as Urban Police Force" is a total failure. The "New Age" war that everyone from Powell, to Kristol to Condalezza to Rumsfeld want to fight isn't working and won't work.

The way to build a united, peaceful Iraq was to shred them totally. Look at the percentage of German young men killed in WW2. 3.5 million military dead takes the fight out of even angry "moslem youth". This is a pre-requisite for real peace. Look at the dead, on both sides, in the American Civil War. Look at the Japanese dead, including the 80,000 civilians in the two bomb drops.

Sad to say but much more killing was needed. We didn't need to be friends. We needed to be masters. We can be friends with their children or grandchildren, like Japan and Germany. The current generation needs to fear us in their bones, and suffer to the point of complete exhaustion and capitulation. People like Sadr, Sistani and any one else with dreams of power should have been made to exercise some of that deep bowing they are so proficient at the feet of a real American general with blood on his hands.

There is nothing new under the sun. The neos are simply a variation of the "end of History" guys who think they are so clever everything is new. It is not.