As the U.S. military abandons Fallujah, Iraqis proclaim victory

Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | Sat, May. 01, 2004 | Hannah Allam

[expatguy]

"...And there are 20 million Muslims in Afghanistan who greatly prefer the U.S. backed Northern Alliance over the hated Taliban, too. You'd be hard pressed to get them to think that this is a religious war, though the liberal news media would love for you to try...[sic]"

The war just got started and you are already proclaiming victory.

Twenty years living and working in a Muslim country, I speak, read and write their language and I think I have an idea of what the pulse is in the Arab world and NOT ONE Muslim person I personally know thinks this is not a religious war. It is.

My dear Southack, it is a religious war, the sooner you come to the realization of that you will be able to understand what you are up against you will have a fair chance of winning.

This is not a war of conquest nor of gold it is a war of idealogy and that idealogy is Islam.

We are at war against "Militant Islam", we are not at war against an individual or a country but rather an idealogy masked as a religion.

[WOSG]

"It has always been my assessment and that of many others that only 10-15% of the population has been against us. "

You are right.

The fact is, we will have grumblers in Iraq and people who hate the coalition. That's not the problem, just go to a leftist rally and you can feel as much palpable hate for the US military as you'd get anywhere on earth.

The issue is whether they pick up a gun and try to actually shoot at our guys. If we deal enough death to those who rise up, the ones who might want to do so would think twice. Of course you have the challenge of idiots thinking this is "jihad".

So my 2 concerns are how strongly we are dealing with the insurgents, ie, we need to be killing and capturing them (holding them *longterm*); and then creating the conditions for acceptance of our role. They dont have to like us, just respect us enough to do our work.

[WOSG]

ah, 500,000 occupation force is one possible approach.
call it #1.

The other was to has a smaller force and use lots of proxies. That was the DoD plan, ie, let the peshmerga and some of former army help us. That is what we did in Afghanistan. call it #2.

The third approach is to have a force that reflects #2, but then to disband the militias and armies that could make it work, with lack of Iraqi security force and int'l help. ooops, that's what we did, giving us worst of #2 and #1. we've now gotten some unfriendly militias filling in the vacuum created.

I dont think a heavy ocupation force was the right approach at all, but I understand that we need more security forces that are reliable 'in-country'.

[expatguy]

[Blue Collar Christian]

Vietnam? Dejavous all over again?