Posted on 06/04/2004 12:12:40 PM PDT by TexKat
I don't know what the marines are thinking. but what has happened in Fallujah is not out of line with their small nations doctrines. I gues they can kill 'em/kiss'em/ or both.
Perhaps you need to go back and read again. No one said the Marines made a military decision. What I read said that Pres. Bush said it was a military decision.
I gather that you don't know much about the military. In the USMC one of the first things you learn at Boot Camp is the chain of command. Any potential Marine or any Marine can tell you exactly how the chain of command goes from himself to the President of the United States, rank by rank person by person. The President is the Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces of the US. When he makes a decision that is directed at the military through the chain of command, it is a military decision.
In this case a damn good military decision, even if the troops at the front don't understand it.
Will it also let them restore Saddam?
>>"Rope-a-dope. It's how Ali took the championship from Foreman in Zaire."
Some additional corroboration on this:
The Fallujah Brigade: How the Marines are pacifying an Iraqi hot spot. From The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1145450/posts
Email from Dave (Marine in Iraq) June 2, 2004
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1147082/posts
"Go home? OK, 1/2 you guys, out through Syria, pick up at the Port of Beiruit. The rest of you, pick up at Tehran International Airport."
Well, it may be a small distinction, but it was *dictated*, or at very least its being made was prompted, by the Iraqi Governing Council and Bremer. Or so it seems.
I have a passing familiarity with the chain of command and was not aware of the Iraqi Governing Councils position in it, though admittedly their approval and consent is (evidently) required.
You may call it a military decision, but I still think it was a political, butt-covering one - or certainly appears that way. At any rate, it's done now. I suspect there'll be others.
Funny stuff -- but the situation in Iraq will be a mess for years to come. The interim govt. cannot survive without the US military. The moment we left, inevitably, all hell would break loose. So we have to stick around; however, as long as we stay, the interim govt. will be seen as our puppet.
So we can't leave, and we can't stay. It's a classic SNAFU.
So I guess Germany and Japan were SNAFUs, since we didn't leave in 1945?
The short-term thinking I see here is just incredible.
Or you give the Marines clear orders and let them carry them out rather than change them when local politician complain about their future. That’s Vietnam.
” They’re already calling the shots.Interview by Lee Rodgers with someone (Michael Ledeen?) this am. Explained some of the screwing around in Fallujah.
A local station here has a recently retired Marine officer that is still in contact with people in the military in Iraq. He claimed, at the time, that the Marines were NOT happy campers because they’d intended to go in and mop up. He claimed their pull-back consisted of their biting their tongues and doing what they were told.
Then Bush had his speech and claimed that the pullout was a military, not political decision.
Then the guy today, who claimed it was all about the Iraqi Governing Council not wanting the Marines in there. Supposedly, they all threatened to resign if they were not pulled back. Bremer pitched a fit (with us) and *poof* the Marines were pulled back.
Hmmm. ”
Ahem. It WAS a military decision. The Marines in Fallujah received orders they disliked from CENTCOM HQ. Commander, United States Central Command, issued those orders. Most likely, he did so after consulting with Paul Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council. Only a Grade-A moron of a combatant commander does not listen to advice from all quarters--and this administration doesn't put Grade-A morons into senior military billets. Sometimes, a wise combatant commander will listen to advice that runs contrary to "established wisdom" and then make a decision that his subordinates dislike. The only response I have to that is "tough s**t." I seem to recall that "USMC" stood for "U Signed the Motherf***ing Contract" (well, it did back in the Marine Corps I belonged to).
It is their country. Unless you are willing to take the approach that we took in WWII, ie blaming the population for the behavior of the country under the dictator, then what else can we do? More concretely, in WWII we blamed the Germans for Hitler and the concentration camps.
We decide that our battle this was with Saddam not the Iraqi people in general. Now as I have said elsewhere, if we give them an easy peace this time and then they say habor or support terrorist that make a chemical attack in the Paris Metro, we will be back and our battle will be with the Iraqi people. But for now, we do not have the political will for that approach, even if it is your personal opinion.
“Ahem”, if CentCom had it shoved down their throat with an order to cooperate with Bremer, it was not a military decision.
Not at the movement. Not regarding our military operations there.
But this story implies otherwise, that the Governing Council had a veto. Wonder if the Marines who sacrifice their lives in Fallujah knew that…
Again you forget we are talking about the US military here. The US military unlike other countries are subordinate to civilian commanders.
So as you were reminded the Marines had their orders. That is their job. They are not to know or consider where their orders came from. They only need to recognize them as legal orders and they follow them.
I agree with your general point. But I think for now you would agree that while the attack that got the US into the War on Terror was as bad as the attack that got the US into WWII, the enemy in WWII accomplished a good bit more evil than this enemy has to this point.
Also it is easier to say that a political philosophy should be outlawed than to say a religion should be banned. This is particularly true of a nation founded partly to allow people to be free to practice the religion of their choice.
So I would guess that we the Islamofascists accomplishing as much evil as the national socialists did, there would be more will to stamp them out. This is not to say this group now is not as evil or vile as the group from the 1930s and 1940s, but they are not as effective YET and are harder to target because they are not entire nations. But if Islam continues down the road it has been on, the public in general may decide it like national socialism has to be stamped pretty much out.
The CIC is the one politician that sets the policy that tells the U.S. military what to do.
All this, it's the CIA, it's the DOS, it's the DOD or Bremer or the ICG, is BS.
Who is Michael Ledeen (sp?)? How do you spell this guys name? How does he know that the IGC did not want the Marines to finish-off Falujah? How does he know that everybody -- what's that about 20 guys -- on the ICG threatened to resign? How does he know that Bremer "pitched" a fit?
Do you think that it wasn't the CIC who made the final political decision on what the Marines objective was in Falluja? Do you think that what finally occurred in Fallujah is the wrong decision?
Your post doesn't really confirm anything. It only raises a lot more questions.
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