US Troops in Iraq: Have the Hunters Become the Hunted?

pinochet

[pinochet]

When I heard on the news that a couple of American soldiers had been killed, adding to the mounting toll, I felt really sick. It seems that the Islamo-fascists have the edge, and are simply selecting their targets at will, and shooting them like ducks. That situation is simply intolerable. I hope that by critiquing the military strategy, I do not appear as if I am being a Monday morning quarter back.

I supported the Iraq War. But I feel that it was waged in a politically correct way, to appease the anti-war crowd. Some war supporters want to compare this occupation to the US occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II. That comparison is not entirely accurate. Germany endured a totally crushing defeat, under the punishing assaults of Gen. Patton, and the savage brutality inflicted by Russians under Gen. Zhukov, who annihilated the German forces. In the end, the Germans who were under US control, were thankful that they were under American rather than Soviet occupation. In Japan, the civilian and military resistance was devastated, by the firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of two atomic bombs. In the end, the Japanese emperor, who was worshipped by his people as a god, helped the US occupation by requesting his people to submit to MacArthur's forces. His influence was critical in ensuring that US forces did not face resistance in the Japanese countryside by remnants of the imperial army.

But the situation in Iraq is different. The US measured its victory, not by totally crushing the Iraqi army and taking hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, but by quickly capturing major population centers like Basra and Baghdad. The defeated forces were allowed to slip into the countryside, instead of being arrested and held in their hundreds of thousands in POW camps.

Now, the fedayeen and other Baathist/Islamist forces are leisurely taking their time, and picking out the US soldiers, one-by-one, and hunting them down like ducks. Jeez, some of these soldiers are 19 and 20, and some of their comtemporaries in the suburbs are still playing the Sony Play Station Video game. They are kids, for heavens sake. And recently, I heard over the news that the US plans to use former members of Saddam's ruthless intelligence service, the Mukarabat, to help in keeping the peace. Have the war planners gone out of their minds?

We must never forget the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, that "there is no substitute for victory". All Baath Party senior officials, and as many former Iraqi army members as possible, as well as the Mukarabat, need to be rounded up and put in camps for de-nazification (or de-baathification). If the US needs to recruit a new Iraqi army, it should do it from jobless Iraqi civilians who were never beneficiaries of the Saddam regime. Then, there should be an all out effort to wipe out all resistance to the occupation, by yanking it by the root.

[pinochet]

This one-by-one targetting is a war of attrition, and the Islamo-fascists who are engaging in it, cannot be allowed to win. And there needs to be an absolutely determined effort to stop the Islamic fanatics that are pouring over the border from Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Doesn't the US have real time satellite technology, that can spot the foreign fanatics who are spilling into Iraq? If they are spotted, surely, they should be driven back over the border where they came from, by straffing carried out by Warthog jets and attack helicopters.

There is no substitute for victory.

[Voice in your head]

Rather than rebut, I will just post this link. It is better than any response I could have written.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-082603C