Posted on 10/19/2023 5:50:06 AM PDT by FarCenter
In the coming days, Israel may launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in response to the shocking pogrom carried out against Israelis on Oct. 7. The looming operation has led many to search for precedents in military history. There is one recent urban conflagration with great relevance to the impending assault on Gaza that, though unlikely to provide comfort to anyone, may offer some historical grounding. That is the U.S.-backed Iraqi campaign to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State in 2016-17.
I was a minor participant in this titanic affair, serving as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian medical group then embedded with the Iraqi Army. From January to June 2017, I accompanied Iraq’s 9th Armored Division as it slowly encircled Mosul from the west before finally throwing all of its American- and Soviet-made tanks into the dense concrete jungle along the Tigris river at the battle’s climax that spring. It was a formative experience as a younger man, and one that taught me the brutal nature of urban combat first hand.
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Rather than sending its own troops back into Iraq, the war-weary U.S. would seek to win “by, with, and through” its local proxies while “leading from behind.” In practice this meant funding, equipping, and providing U.S. air support to Iranian-backed Shia militia groups—the same groups that had previously carried out attacks on U.S. soldiers—which formed the backbone of Iraq’s new Popular Mobilization Forces. At the same time, small groups of U.S. special operations soldiers began training elite Iraqi commando units in anticipation of an eventual push to drive ISIS out of Mosul. The approach meant that Iraqi and Kurdish forces would do all the fighting and dying while the U.S. provided logistical, intelligence, and—most crucially—air support. It was a strategy that would prove to be devastatingly effective.
What is needed is a megatankdozer big enough to be impervious to IED’s. Just drive it around and bulldoze everything flat.
The article was obviously written by an anti-American surrender monkey.
Gotta deal with the tunnels. Some of them are a couple of hundred feet underground. Dozer ain’t gonna handle that.
At the time of Mosul, there was a dvd released that documented the struggle for that city.
I recommend viewing it.
Tunnel not much good when entries/exits are buried under yards of collapsed buildings. It won't get'em all, but it will certainly slow them down.
Never once does he say the war against ISIS was unnecessary or evil. He says the war against Haza is even more necessary. He is simply describing the inevitable carnage that resulted in Mosul and will result in Gaza. He even takes pain to describe US efforts to limit that carnage. I think it is an article worth reading and worth reposting.
That's what artillery is for. With current ground and air drones and sensors assisted with reconnaissance in force... just do as the Russians... probe, find resistence, drop ordnance and make rocks bounce for 24 hours and move forward 500 meters...rinse and repeat.
24 hours of artillery daily for a week will make most men go crazy. There is no amount of training that can prepare a man for 155mm explosions dropping all around you for day upon day...anyone that thinks you have to go door to door doesn't have the stomach to do what needs to be done.
They should start at the northern end of Gaza and everything south or Tyre and flatten it out, mine it with claymore,pressure plates and antipersonel ordnance and salt the earth.
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