The U.S. military has never been very good at half-@ssed warfare, which is exactly what's being done there now. Using U.S. Marines as a well-armed Peace Corps is a disgrace.
I posted this suggestion on another thread . . .
If it were up to me, all U.S. military personnel in Iraq would be packing up right now for an immediate shift to facilities outside populated areas. They would then carry out a limited number of functions, including: 1) combat support for Iraqi military/police personnel in roles that Iraqis can't carry out themselves (air support, for example); and 2) protection of Iraqi-led efforts to construct/reconstruct critical infrastructure.
Item #2 would most likely put U.S. troops in harm's way, but I would add an interesting angle to our work there. Once the U.S. oversees a construction project and provides protection for the duration of its development, we're done with it. And I mean DONE. If it gets blown up or sabotaged some other way the following week, then tough sh!t . . . the Iraqis can figure out a way to cope with that problem, or they can live in a sh!t-hole filled with malfunctioning/nonexistent infrastructure.
If the U.S. has to do any more than this, then Iraq isn't even worth saving under any circumstances. And I say that even if it means that "letting nature run its course" would result in the starvation of 30+ million Iraqis.
There was a great article posted here a while back about an Army officer who has had the most success in Iraq with limited casualties, and this was pretty much his approach. A group of tribal leaders came to him and complained that they had no electricity or running water in their village, so he told them that he'd bring in food and water, but only if he could get their assurances that the soldiers in his command wouldn't be attacked.
This worked for a few days, until a couple of his men were wounded or killed in an ambush. He pulled all of the people and equipment providing humanitarian aid out of the village and told them that he'd give them a week to think about it -- and that if anything like that happened again, he'd pull them out for a month. At the time the article was posted, it was indicated that he never had a problem after that.
The U.S. military has never been very good at half-@ssed warfare, which is exactly what’s being done there now. Using U.S. Marines as a well-armed Peace Corps is a disgrace.
Actually we’ve been (and are) pretty good at this sort of thing
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Wars-Peace-Small-American/dp/046500721X/ref=sr_1_2/104-6805483-7224733?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178292552&sr=1-2
Product Description
Reviewed and debated everywhere, this book has become a key volume in the case for a new policy of interventionism.
America’s “small wars,” “imperial wars,” or, as the Pentagon now terms them, “low-intensity conflicts,” have played an essential but little-appreciated role in its growth as a world power. Beginning with Jefferson’s expedition against the Barbary Pirates, Max Boot tells the exciting stories of our sometimes minor but often bloody landings in Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. Along the way he sketches colorful portraits of little-known military heroes such as Stephen Decatur, “Fighting Fred” Funston, and Smedley Butler.
From 1800 to the present day, such undeclared wars have made up the vast majority of our military engagements. Yet the military has often resisted preparing itself for small wars, preferring instead to train for big conflicts that seldom come. Boot re-examines the tragedy of Vietnam through a “small war” prism. He concludes with a devastating critique of the Powell Doctrine and a convincing argument that the armed forces must reorient themselves to better handle small-war missions, because such clashes are an inevitable result of America’s far-flung imperial responsibilities.
Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (Hardcover)
by Robert D. Kaplan (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Grunts-American-Military-Ground/dp/1400061326
Product Description
In this landmark book, Robert D. Kaplan, veteran correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of Balkan Ghosts, shows how American imperialism and the Global War on Terrorism are implemented on the ground, mission by mission, in the most exotic landscapes around the world.
Given unprecedented access, Kaplan takes us from the jungles of the southern Philippines to the glacial dust bowls of Mongolia, from the forts of Afghanistan to the forests of South America–not to mention Iraq–to show us Army Special Forces, Marines, and other uniformed Americans carrying out the many facets of U.S. foreign policy: negotiating with tribal factions, storming terrorist redoubts, performing humanitarian missions and training foreign soldiers.
In Imperial Grunts, Kaplan provides an unforgettable insider’s account not only of our current involvement in world affairs, but also of where America, including the culture of its officers and enlisted men, is headed. This is the rare book that has the potential to change the way readers view the men and women of the military, war, and the global reach of American imperialism today.
As Kaplan writes, the only way to understand America’s military is “on foot, or in a Humvee, with the troops themselves, for even as elites in New York and Washington debated imperialism in grand, historical terms, individual marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors–all the cultural repositories of America’s unique experience with freedom–were interpreting policy on their own, on the ground, in dozens upon dozens of countries every week, oblivious to such faraway discussions. . . . It was their stories I wanted to tell: from the ground up, at the point of contact.”
Never before has America’s overarching military strategy been parsed so incisively and evocatively. Kaplan introduces us to lone American servicemen whose presence in obscure countries is largely unknown, and concludes with a heart-stopping portrait of marines in the first battle in Fallujah. Extraordinary in its scope, beautifully written, Imperial Grunts, the first of two volumes, combines first-rate reporting with the sensitivity and insights of an acclaimed writer steeped in history, literature, and philosophy, to deliver a masterly account of America’s global role in the twenty-first century.
• Imperial Grunts paints a vivid picture of how defense policy is implemented at the grassroots level.
• Kaplan travels throughout the world where U.S. forces are located. This is not just a book about Iraq or Afghanistan.
• Rather than debate imperialism, Kaplan relies on a keen understanding of history, philosophy, and in-the-field reporting to show how it actually works on the ground.
• Imperial Grunts escapes Washington and shows us what it’s like to live with the grunts day to day.
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The thing is too many (fine) folks he don’t really understand that this is a counter-insurgecy war (on a global scale)
So yes U.S. Marines are going to be used as a well-armed Peace Corps. As they have been for most of our history.
Are you a military strategist or did you just spend a night at a Holiday Inn?