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Lee Harris: The Lesson of Fallujah
Tech Central Station ^
| April 2, 2004
| Lee Harris
Posted on 04/01/2004 9:31:23 PM PST by quidnunc
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To: Wombat101
I believe Harris alluded to something there and that is that we are the one's with the problem as well with how to handle this.
Harris won't come out and say it, but I will.
We need to overcome our own hangups about ethnicity, culture and "religion" and come to the realization that we are at war against Islam.
21
posted on
04/01/2004 10:51:37 PM PST
by
expatguy
To: expatguy
Agreed. The sooner come face to face with the reality that these guys want us either converted or dead, the easier this whole mess gets cleaned up.
We have the means, what is lacking is the political will.
22
posted on
04/01/2004 10:55:56 PM PST
by
Wombat101
(Sanitized for YOUR protection....)
To: Polybius
You solution is all well and good. The only problem I see is ~ Who is the enemy?
23
posted on
04/01/2004 10:57:32 PM PST
by
expatguy
To: expatguy
The enemy is the city of Fallujah. Potentially the entire Sunni triangle. The enemy also includes radical Iraqi Shiites such as those under Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters today burned US flags and celebrated the Fallujah atrocity committed by the Sunnis they're supposed to hate.
Iraq's very rapidly turning into France - a nation that will never forgive its liberator. Should we be surprised? Many sounded warnings that these things would happen before we invaded. I agree what the lesson here is: the neocon pipedream has died a nasty, just death.
To: quidnunc
Make that town an empty parking lot. Take enough Iraqi oil to pay for doing it. Next town the killers move into, do the same.
25
posted on
04/01/2004 11:03:58 PM PST
by
Waco
To: Filibuster_60
As long as we rely on local Iraqis for HUMINT, many of these thugs will roam free. It's their home turf. The insurgents are fully aware that HUMINT is our weak link. They've infiltrated the local police and have without doubt acted as phony informers. Not a single Iraqi in that town is to be trusted - yet we need to be able to trust somebody if any kind of precision action is to be taken. Once you insist that war has to be a "precision" operation, you have made war impossible.
In my scenario, no HUMINT is necessary.
After enough time has elapsed to allow escape from the city, Fallujah become a World War II urban war zone with the emphasis on artillery and air power.
What about the civilians who are dumb enough to stay behind?
They win a posthumous medal:
26
posted on
04/01/2004 11:06:57 PM PST
by
Polybius
To: Filibuster_60
"...The enemy is the city of Fallujah...[sic]"
Very well, and so we need to kill the enemy and the problem that Harris suggests is that we don't have the stomach for what is required.
Fallujah needs to be wiped off the map and anything less shows our weakness.
27
posted on
04/01/2004 11:11:18 PM PST
by
expatguy
To: quidnunc
Every war needs a Guernica, Lidice, or Oradour-sur-Glane moment. Now I know of a certain town in Iraq that we could make famous ...
To: Filibuster_60
Iraq's very rapidly turning into France - a nation that will never forgive its liberator. Should we be surprised? Many sounded warnings that these things would happen before we invaded. I agree what the lesson here is: the neocon pipedream has died a nasty, just death. So, are you saying that it would have been better to have a Nazi Europe right now instead of a weak, embarrassed and resentful France who won't "forgive us"?
Nations do not go to war to be liked. Nations go to war for their geo-political interests and it was in America's interest to destroy Nazi Germany and to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime.
We did not go to war to "liberate France". We went to war to destroy Nazi Germany.
We did not go to war to "liberate Iraq". We went to war to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime.
But what about "Iraqi Freedon"?
That was the pretext of the war. It was not the cause of the war.
Yes, there are pretenders to Saddam's power in Iraq but those are easier to deal with than the regime that caused 1 million deaths in the Iran-Iraq War, the regime the once threatened to control the majority of the world's know oil reserves and the regime that was actively pursuing the development of WMD's.
29
posted on
04/01/2004 11:26:31 PM PST
by
Polybius
To: Polybius; expatguy
You people don't seem to grasp the fix we're in. There's no way on earth we'll beat an insurgency by deliberately swelling its ranks. As it is, we have barely 20,000 troops on patrol in Iraq at any one time - at most 5,000 in the Sunni sector. Airpower can lay wasteland to entire cities but sooner or later you have to reenter those cities to claim what's left - and that's when the survivors pounce and we'll see many more mutilated Americans dismembered by 12-year-olds. The bomb-them-to-hell option was tried by the Israelis in Lebanon - it didn't work in the long run.
The poltical fallout will be massive. Even those Iraqis that have cooperated will be less inclined to do so - they don't want to look like pathetic puppets. The Saudis will push for an oil embargo. Our coalition partners will completely repudiate our actions.
I've said it on other boards but will say it again: the terrorists who staged this atrocity WANT us to respond the way most Freepers are suggesting.
To: expatguy
You solution is all well and good. The only problem I see is ~ Who is the enemy? Those who stay in Fallujah after they have been told to leave through checkpoints and have been given ample opportunity to leave before the assault begins.
You can only protect civilians to a certain point. After that, you have to fight a war if you ever hope to win a war.
31
posted on
04/01/2004 11:32:15 PM PST
by
Polybius
To: Polybius
Bring your complaints to Bush and Rummy. They're the ones who sold us on being able to pacify Iraq on the cheap - they've been proven right thus far only because most Iraqis don't hate us. You do the math: 100,000 Americans can't control a nation of 25 million Muslims through fear alone.
To: quidnunc
I tired of this weenie crap.
I say (WARNING: This will be an extreme point of view) we pick a place and tell the world we finally mean business and we don't give a CRAP what they think.
Then...nuke it. Yes, I said nuke it. Let the weenies and cowards and appeasers whine and cry and complain. Who cares? Once we proved we are SERIOUS about this war on terror they'll again get yet another chance to declare their loyalty...us or them.
I'm tired of playing "by the rules". Yes, it's an extreme measure. But doesn't this war require an extreme measure to show we are serious?
33
posted on
04/01/2004 11:35:42 PM PST
by
Fledermaus
(Ðíé F£éðérmáú§ ^;;^ says, "I give Dick Clarke's American Grandstand a 39...you can't dance to it.")
To: expatguy
Too simplistic. Were the Fallujah killings motivated by Islamism, or by the desire of Sunni Baathists to take revenge on the guys who derailed their gravy train under Saddam Hussein? It's the latter.
We've got to react, but targeted and surgical. We need to internationalise the occupation and sell Sunnis the idea that they aren't gonna get screwed in a Shia-dominated democratic Iraq.
As for suggestions that we exterminate the town - well, that's really gonna sell American values to the Middle East, isn't it? The neocons got us into the this war so we could set up a beacon of American freedom to the Arabs.
Pie in the sky? Maybe, but if we can't do it then this war will have been totally pointless. They've set the course, let's finish it, massacre or no massacre.
To: Polybius
Of course we didn't invade Iraq to liberate them - but we sure as hell won't be able to stay much longer if we don't continue to pretend it. Saddam's out of the picture, so don't you think it's mission accomplished? Any killings from now on are probably for the sole purpose of humiliating Americans. Or are we to stay until we can finally stop the attacks? That's what the Israelis basically tried in Lebanon for 18 years after their smashing victory in '82, only to end up withdrawing with Hezbollah slapping their rear ends. I'm sure Lebanon's a great model then.
To: Fledermaus
What you said.....
Exactly...
To: Filibuster_60
You people don't seem to grasp the fix we're in. There's no way on earth we'll beat an insurgency by deliberately swelling its ranks. As it is, we have barely 20,000 troops on patrol in Iraq at any one time - at most 5,000 in the Sunni sector. Airpower can lay wasteland to entire cities but sooner or later you have to reenter those cities to claim what's left- No, you don't.
Wars are not won by capturing or occupying cities.
Wars are won by killing or otherwise neutralizing your enemy's warriors.
During the American Civil War, the Union squandered tens of thousands of lives trying to "Capture Richmond" and got nothing for their effort except defeat.
Then came General U.S. Grant who realized that the road to a Union victory was not the capture of Richmond but the destruction of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant went after Lee's Army like a pitbull and followed it to Peterburg while ignoring Richmond.
When the Army of Northern Virginia was destroyed as a fighting force, both Victory and Richmond fell into Grant's lap like ripe fruit.
During MacArtur's Pacific campaign, the Japanese naval base at Rabaul was supposed to be an impregnable death trap for America with over 200,000 of Japan's finest troops defending it. The Japanese boasted that Rabaul would be the meatgrinder that would bleed the American war effort to death.
MacArthur completely neutralized those 200,000 Japanese troops at Rabaul by simply capturing the surrounding areas, blockading Rabaul and turning Rabaul into the world's largest POW camp without the loss of a single American infantryman. Those 200,000 Japanese troops stayed stranded on Rabaul until the U.S. loaned Japan funds to come and evacuate them several years after World War II had ended.
We do not need to occupy cities in the Sunni Triangle. We do not need to be loved in the Sunni Triangle.
The only thing we need to do is to try our best to isolate the enemy warriors and then neutralize them by either killing them in combat or starving the into submission by classic seige tactics.
That is how wars are won.
The fact that the Baathist die-hards are concentrated in cities in the Sunni Triangle makes their isolation and/or destruction that much easier.
37
posted on
04/02/2004 12:19:03 AM PST
by
Polybius
To: Filibuster_60
Bring your complaints to Bush and Rummy. They're the ones who sold us on being able to pacify Iraq on the cheap - they've been proven right thus far only because most Iraqis don't hate us. You do the math: 100,000 Americans can't control a nation of 25 million Muslims through fear alone. If "most Iraqis don't hate us", then we have no need to instill fear in 25 million of them.
As I have been saying, we only have to isolate the Baathist die-hards and then kill them.
38
posted on
04/02/2004 12:22:37 AM PST
by
Polybius
To: quidnunc
1. Stop appeasing DemocRATS and CNN, the ENEMY WITHIN AMERICA
2. Start fighting a War
3. Destroy those who participated, destroy those who gloated, destroy those who justified the murders
4. Start killing first - ask questions later
5. Start Iraq over, this time with real humans
39
posted on
04/02/2004 12:31:01 AM PST
by
Enduring Freedom
(Warrior Freepers Rule The Earth)
To: Filibuster_60
Of course we didn't invade Iraq to liberate them - but we sure as hell won't be able to stay much longer if we don't continue to pretend it. Saddam's out of the picture, so don't you think it's mission accomplished? Of course not. If the Hitler had been killed in the assasination plot of July 20, 1944, would America have declared "Mission Accomplished"?
World War II was not about killing Hitler. It was about destroying the Nazi regime.
The Iraq War was not about killing or capturing Saddam Hussein. It was about destroying the Baathist regime and the Baaathist hold-outs are still fighting.
Any killings from now on are probably for the sole purpose of humiliating Americans.
Can you imagine the World War II generation speaking about giving up the war effort because of "humiliation" because the enemy managed to kill some Americans?
Or are we to stay until we can finally stop the attacks?
In World War II, did we not stay until the Germans and the Japanese stopped their attacks? If this war were World War II, today's date would be December 20, 1942.
That's what the Israelis basically tried in Lebanon for 18 years after their smashing victory in '82, only to end up withdrawing with Hezbollah slapping their rear ends. I'm sure Lebanon's a great model then.
In southern Lebanon, the Israelis had a salient into Lebanese territory while Hezbollah enjoyed a sanctuary in the rest of Syrian-controlled Lebanon.
In Iraq, the U.S. has absolute military control over every bag of rice that goes in or out of the Sunni Triangle.
The strategic situations are totally different. All the U.S. needs to do is to decide if it has the political will to press it's military advantage.
40
posted on
04/02/2004 12:43:55 AM PST
by
Polybius
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