A STUDY ON REDUCING RADICAL ISLAMIC STRONGHOLDS LIKE FALLUJAH - FR EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

Volume V of the Dragon's Fury Series of Novels ^ | 22 Sep 2004 | Jeff Head

[Jeff Head]

A STUDY IN REDUCING ISLAMIC RADICAL STRONGHOLDS AND MINIMIZING AMERICAN CASUALTIES:

What follows is something I wrote not long after the Fallujah incident when the Americans there were killed and butchered and the islamic radicals made a party out of it.

I commented to my wife at the time that we are in a war with gruesome, fierce, and dedicated radical islamic enemies as committed to their cause and willing to kill and die for it as any of the Nazis and Japanese our fathers fought. Also willing to indoctrinate their youth and have them particpate directly in the bloodletting.

Oh, they are mad (as in rabid)...they are tyranical...they are animals...and they are a blight to civilized people and reason...but they are not cowards and they are not unwilling to die.

I figured, like our fathers before us, that it was time to grant them their wish and make sure we kill as many of them, and those who give them sanctuary, support and who abbett them as possible...and to do so while minimizing our own casualties and sending the correct messages to any who would particpate with them against us, or support them.

I happened to be at a part of the Dragon's Fury Series story where I could work something into the plot in that regard...and what follows is a fictional study in how we could reduce such enemy bastions like Fallujah...or others at a future date.

--------------- REDUCING AN ISLAMIC RADICAL STRONGHOLD ---------------

June 18, 2010, 17:22, local time
Secure Command Bunker
The Eastern Outskirts of Tehran
The former Iran

Hasan al-Askari Sayeed had just finished conferring personally with General Abdul Selim, his young Tiger of Islam. He was not happy with the content of the conversation, or what it would mean to the Greater Islamic Republic and his continued faithful dream of a world united under Islam.

The western Allies were advancing rapidly on Tehran.

Selim had performed brilliantly in his defense of the Tabriz gap between the Caspian Sea and the Azerbaijan Sea. His twelve divisions had held up almost forty allied divisions for two weeks as Russian, European Union and supporting American forces assailed his positions.

Sayeed had thought that the young General would be successful and was in the act of thanking Allah for the great victories the General was winning when news of the allied breakthrough at the Dez River Pass had been reported to him. Thirty divisions of American, British and Israeli troops had broken through the pass and had quickly advanced on and attacked Qom yesterday. It was immediately clear to Sayeed, and to Selim, that Qom was falling.

Selim's forces were ordered into a fighting withdrawal towards Tehran in an effort to keep the forces under Selim’s command from being surrounded, and to allow time to get as many in Tehran as possible to join with Selim's forces in defense of the city.

But it was now clear that Selim and his forces were not going to make it to Tehran in time.

Surprisingly, in Qom and elsewhere, many citizens were going over to the infidels, abandoning the true faith for the hope of the freedoms and secular allurements the westerners, and particularly the Americans, promised.

“A free society,” Sayeed muttered to himself.

“Free to do what…sin, to profane Allah and his ways?”

Regardless of the reasons, many of the students and their families and many of the more liberal clerics were apparently jumping at the opportunity to align themselves with the invaders.

The great Imam and Ayatollah never considered for a moment the possibility that the many freedom protests that had occurred in Iran itself in the 1990's and early 2000's before his meteoric rise to power had simply faded undercover rather than been extinguished. He never considered the help he had received from the Chinese and the impact it had had on those who might otherwise have opposed him. Many of those opposition leaders simply ceased to exist, either by his hand or by the hand of those supporting him.

But others, and their followers, had never been stamped out, and they had bided their time patiently, realizing that, with the success of Sayeed over the last five years, any attempt at resistance or insurgency would be doomed to failure.

But now that the Americans and their allies had broken into the former Iran, into the heart of the Greater Islamic Republic itself…the opportunity for resistance to what Sayeed had sold as pure and unadulterated Islam had arrived. That message of resistance to Sayeed and of acceptance of the western invaders was finding very fertile ground in the hearts and minds of many more people than Sayeed would have ever imagined.

And many of them knew the deepest secret that existed in the Greater Islamic Republic today…Medina and Mecca had already fallen. Their faith was shaken, their future was completely unsure…and they had lost their zeal and their commitment…doubting themselves and their religious tenets.

Despite the fact that he would not countenance the effectiveness or the reasoning of the insurgents, Hasan Sayeed knew the dark secret too…and he was deeply troubled by it.

“Am I to be tested like father Abraham then…who was forced to send one son into the desert and tempted to sacrifice another on the altar,” he asked himself.

“Oh Allah, where is your pavilion?

“How could you forsake all of us?

“How could you forsake me?”

Medina had fallen in a rather normal and uninspiring fashion. Though Sayeed was terribly upset by the actions of his forces in that area who had retreated past the city in front of the enemy onslaught…and then been destroyed when they were caught in the open by several waves of the damnable American Hail-Storm missiles…he was thankful that the city had remained intact and been preserved for the faith.

But the story of the fall of Mecca haunted him.

Over one hundred thousand GIR forces, consisting of infantry, mechanized and armor units supported by limited air support, with all of their equipment, and plenty of ammunition had retreated into the city on June 4th. The population had fully and completely supported the GIR forces, with many faithful within the city who had made their pilgrimage there joining the ranks to fight in defense of the holy city.

U.S. and U.K forces had surrounded the city and cut off all retreat or access to or from it by the morning of June 6th. They had set up checkpoints on all major access roads and ringed the city with men and steel. Within two days, they had dug in and the defenders were completely cut-off with no hope for support or relief. Outside of divine assistance, it was clear that the western forces would be content to simply starve the defenders and inhabitants out.

That was when things had gone even more terribly wrong.

During the mid-afternoon of June 6th, the Americans sent a unilateral peace and cease-fire delegation of ten personnel into the city under a white flag. They indicated that they came to negotiate some way to keep from damaging or destroying the many holy shrines within the city and to save as many lives as possible.

They were admitted into the city by the defenders.

The delegation included a General of the United States Marines, the provisional head of the new Arabian government-appointed by the Americans, two senior career diplomats-one from the U.K. and one from the U.S., two translators thought to be CIA operatives and a team of four Marines to provide security.

The delegation had the power to offer a complete ceasefire, food and medical supplies for all in need and an honorable handling of the GIR forces who were expected to all surrender unconditionally.

The entire team had been taken to the central part of the city and admitted into a large outer courtyard at a mosque there. Two of the security detail had accompanied the peace representatives and translators into the courtyard and the other two members of the security team had stayed outside with the vehicles. A delegation of the city leaders and military leaders of the GIR forces met the U.S> General and the diplomats within the courtyard and negotiations began.

The GIR leaders made their position clear, swiftly and brutally. First, the American signal battalion on the outskirts of the city had lost contact with the delegation.

Then, allied airborne surveillance had picked up a brief exchange of automatic weapons fire, first within the courtyard and then outside, next to the vehicles.

One of the marines near the vehicles had the time to report into the mouthpiece of his communications set.

"We are under attack…"

This was followed by more automatic weapons fire and then a few seconds of silence. After that, of a sudden, there was a horrendous uproar and wild celebration. Literally tens of thousands of weapons were fired into the air. The celebrations turned into an orgy…and orgy of mutilation.

All ten members of the delegation were decapitated, their eyes gouged out and replaced by horse dung. The bodies were literally torn limb from limb…and then, in a manner reminiscent of a similar occurrence in the town of Fallujah, Iraq, during operation Iraqi Freedom in the spring of 2004, the mutilated body parts were hung from bridges and light posts around the central portion of the city.

The heads were placed in one of the allies' vehicles and sent careening out of the city towards the allied lines. The entire thing was captured live on a television broadcast within Mecca and then picked up by allied forces…including one enterprising WNN crew that snuck some of its personnel into a restricted area just behind allied lines.

Within hours, the whole world had witnessed the orgy of mutilation in Mecca.

Major General Lender, who commanded the United States Marine who had surrounded the city, had wasted no time in coming up with a plan to deal directly and harshly with the atrocity, and the defenders in the city.

America had learned from its experiences and horrors of this war, she had learned from Fallujah of Operation Iraqi Freedom, she had learned from 9-11 and from the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, she had learned from the initial World trade Center bombing in the early 1990's, she had learned from Beirut and from countless other terrorist and extremist attacks.

There could and would be no negotiations with terrorists or their Jihad cousins in this war. America and her allies knew from harsh experience that those operating in such a fashion understood and respected but one thing.

The official request for retaliation and pacification literally flew up the channels to the White House where President John Bowers reviewed the request the afternoon it arrived, consulted with the entire National Security Council that evening, and then approved it…with no alterations.

The next day, all allied sniper teams and probing forces were withdrawn to the perimeter around Mecca.

An ultimatum was issued at 12:00 noon the next day, June 7th.

The GIR forces and those who supported them within Mecca had 24 hours to do the following:

1. Anyone desiring to leave the city who was a non-combatant could leave the city on the main roads and be processed through the checkpoints. Noncombatants were defined as women and children, where males under the age of 13 were defined as children, and males over the age of 65 were also included. No weapons would be permitted. Anyone known to be a leader or collaborator of terror, jihad or GIR official-regardless of age or gender-would be detained.
2. Any male combatant between the ages of 13 and 65 who wanted to surrender was directed to one of four separate gathering points outside the city. The surrender was unconditional and combatants would be subject to indefinite detention and intense interrogation.
3. Anyone seen with a weapon would be killed on sight.
4. The blood of any non-combatants who were either forced to stay, or who decided of their own accord to stay, would be on the hands of the combatants who elected to fight.
5. After 24 hours, the city would be reduced and destroyed.

Most of the combatants and their families did not believe the Americans and British would follow through with these threats…and if they did, they presumed that there would be a harsh house to house, door to door, urban struggle for the city where they could severally bleed the allies and obtain for themselves their paradise through Jihad.

Sayeed himself believed this would be the case…and longed for the films of the Americans taking terrible casualties in the holy city. Films he believed would be used to bolster and enrage Islamics everywhere.

All of them were terribly mistaken.

Over 200,000 civilians in the city chose to escape and to follow allied directions. They came in long lines and convoys all that day and throughout the night, most with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

At the same time, more than 25,000 combatants surrendered…not wanting to fight in a cause that was doomed, no matter how gallant the religious respective.

But in the end, over 75,000 combatants and an estimated 65,000 civilians remained in the city and around the holy shrines, fortifying them all for the expected ground assault…that never came.

With no more talk, with no more fanfare, at noon on June 8th, 2010, the bombing began.

Waves of B-52H bombers performed the most intensive bombing raids since the Vietnam War… all concentrated on the one, city. Wave after wave, the bombers came throughout the 8th, 9th and 10th of June…non-stop.

Interspersed in with the ARC LITE bombing was the use of dozens of newly developed MOAB II area demolition bombs. Mammoth 60,000 pound bombs that were delivered by specially configured C-17 Globe Master transports, dubbed B-17 IIs. Each of those behemoths was capable of completely reducing entire city blocks. They were known as poor man's mini-non-nukes and they had devastating effect.

By the morning of the 9th, first hundreds…and then thousands of inhabitants and combatants began exiting the ruined city. Any who came out with weapons in their hands, or who otherwise attempted to fight were immediately shot down and killed.

Quickly enough, all who came out were unarmed and nonbelligerent.

By the afternoon on the 9th, no major structure was left standing in the city. By noon on the 10th, when the bombing campaign ended, not one stone was left upon another within Mecca.

An eerie silence fell across the face of the countryside in and around the holy city. There was not so much as a cry or a moan coming from the ruins. Heaven seemed to have answered the assault with a dead-calm.

That afternoon, allied scout, EOD and medic teams entered the city. Over a two day period, fewer than 500 injured were pulled from the mounds of rubble. By the 14th of June, all rescue and recovery efforts ceased. The allies did not intend to rebuild Mecca…they intended to send a message.

Over one hundred U.S. Army D-9 caterpillar bulldozers then appeared on the perimeter around the city and converged on it. They literally covered over the debris and smoothed it out in two days time. A flat, desolate landscape then occupied the ground where once Mecca stood. All debris, all ruined or discarded weapons-all bodies-had been buried there.

Atop this soil the allies liberally sprinkled salt and then soaked the ground in swine fat. Around the perimeter of the once great city, and interspersed every five hundred yards within, the following metal signs were erected:

Here stood Mecca, until it was occupied by barbarians, terrorists and desecrators and those who harbored them, who then committed atrocities against the United States of America and the United Kingdom and their allies.

Now there is nothing here but a desolation of pig-fat and salt.

Let the fate of this once great city be a clear message to all those who would desecrate that which is holy and who would consider committing similar atrocities against United States or United Kingdom forces, personnel or civilians.

To the innocent we allowed to escape we say-De Oppresso Libre!

To the barbarians who died here we say-Sic Simper Tyranis!

Sayeed could still see those signs in his mind's eye. He could not help but mourn the loss of the city and could also not help but wonder how he could motivate the faithful to keep on fighting…to find strength in praying five times a day to such a place, a place that was now nothing more than a smoking, smoldering wasteland.

THE DRAGON'S FURY SERIES OF NOVELS
A Techno-thriller series about American and World War

[Jeff Head]

IMHO we need to have the will, and the grit to conduct such an operation and inform the world and these radical terrorists and their supporters that we will do it as often as necessary to break their will and preserve American and allied life. Plain and simple, no apologies.

Perhaps after the election we shall see something akin to it.

[Jeff Head]

God bless you and your compadres my friend...and keep you.

No prisoners.

[Jeff Head]

Perhaps a bit smaller yield...or maybe a small, low yield Mr. Neutron.

[MileHi]

I'm not sure we have that sort of resolve. We should have done that in Fallujah. But I think you have described the only workable solution for these scum.

FReegards.

[Travis McGee]

No neutron bomb. The entire point will be to bluntly craterize as much of mecca as possible, to make the point in a way which is beyond dispute.

Allahu akbar means "our god is greater (than your God). Craterizing mecca makes the point that allah is a mirage, a fraud, non-existant. Radical muslims truly believe that their allah would swat down ICBMs like flies. If allah can't prevent the kaaba rock from disappearing in a flash, to be replaced by an enormous crater, a nothing, a void...then allah is a fake.

Muslims are on a total power trip, and the power comes from allah's black moon rock. Erase the moon rock, erase allah.

This is a far better outcome than striking the major arab cities, which radical islamists would not care about, that would just be more martyrs for allah.

It has to be mecca.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Jeff Head]

As respects Mecca...if it comes to that (and that is where it is headed), I agree that its utter destruction, particularly in a scenario like the one I describe, neutralizes the very thing that drives them to being radical and their Jihad.

A neutron is more in for a place like Fallujah, or other urban area where our forces are relatively near in terms of cordoning off the place.

[Jeff Head]

We are going to have to develop it...just like we did in WW II.

[Jeff Head]

You are welcome.

[Squantos]

A good collection of ideas we've seen discussed here at FR before......:o)

I like the final solution of D9's ! You have to read Humblegunners home page on Mo Hommad for a grin.

Stay Safe.......Y

[editor-surveyor]

Thanks for this excellent food for thought!

[editor-surveyor]

Jeff, how long before the printed edition of vol 5 is out?

[Lurker]

I like your idea.

And I hope someone in the Pentagon has this OPPLAN in a filing cabinent somewhere.

L

[Jeff Head]

I am getting the printed proof Volume V tomorrow (second go around) and expect to approve it. Once approved it should be about ten to fourteen days before the online sites have it in stock.

[Jeff Head]

Should have been pulled out, dusted off, and implemented in Fallujah long ago...and then held over for any other radical enclaves begging for the same.

[Jeff Head]

You are very welcome my friend.

[Centurion2000]

Good excerpt, only one small change I would have done. Instead of wave upon wave of bombers it would have been 10 ICBM's of SS-18 Mod4 (25 Megaton) missiles followed by 10 MX cobalt-salted missiles with a firestorm type burst pattern. Then followed up with the pig fat and salt and the signs.

I'm still gonna buy the books, but this would have been a nice permanent solution with a little more cleansing involved.

[Jeff Head]

Oh...that's just the end of Mecca in the books...not the end of the story. This happens early on in VOlume V. Lots and lots more comes after this particular part.

[Centurion2000]

SWEET

[Rome2000]

Hey Ragheads, what's in the box?