The Solution:
Posted on 08/17/2004 5:30:09 AM PDT by Truth29
GUNS INTERRUPTED
By RALPH PETERS
August 17, 2004 -- BRITISH military wags define ex perience as the ability to recognize a mistake the second time you make it. By that measure, we now have abundant experience in Iraq.
We're in Najaf. Again. Once again our troops performed superbly, cornering Muqtada al-Sadr and his gang while inflicting lopsided casualties on these enemies of a rule-of-law Iraq. And once again the cease-fires and negotiations have begun, undercutting our military's achievements.
We could have eliminated Sadr a year ago, when he first embarked upon his campaign of terror. It would have been easy. But our political leaders, exaggerating the possible consequences, lacked the fortitude to take care of a small problem before it became a big one. Now Sadr's a very big problem.
We had another chance this spring, when the Army brought Sadr's Mahdi Army to the brink of annihilation. Again, our civilian leaders folded, choosing to defer the problem until Iraq's interim government took over. Sadr became a greater problem still, attracting many who previously had doubts about him. A Shi'a religious outlaw who started out with minimal support could claim he'd defied America. And he was right. Despite the accomplishments of our troops, the transformation of the Pentagon's neo-cons into neo-Clintons threw the fight to Sadr, just as they folded in Fallujah when faced with Sunni terrorists. The Bush administration tossed away essential victories, one after another. We've become the enemy's best recruiters.
This month, at the request of Iraq's interim prime minister, our Marines went into Najaf to finish Sadr and his gang. The Marines performed superbly, methodically tightening the noose around the terrorists. Army reinforcements rolled in for the final push. Our troops would do the heavy lifting, then Iraqi forces would clean out any dead-enders from the shrine of Imam Ali, a sort of Shi'a Vatican.
But in unconventional warfare, he who hesitates is truly lost. We have conditioned ourselves to fight slowly, to be cautious both of casualties and of collateral damage. We've trained ourselves to use a scalpel even when we need a sledgehammer. In today's irregular conflicts, we must win fast. No matter how high the short-term cost, victory is cheapest in the end. And our forces are fast. At the strategic level that spans oceans. At the operational level that sweeps across borders. Even at the tactical level, when armored maneuvers and open country are involved.
But in this urbanizing world, our enemies fight from cities. Despite real progress, urban combat remains the American weak spot. Our doctrine tells us to go slowly and methodically. In a vacuum, that would make sense. But we don't fight in vacuums. Our troops fight in streets and alleys, amid civilian populations, against unscrupulous opponents determined to run out the clock until the political referees toss a flag. A hostile media not only magnifies American errors, but invents American atrocities. Our allies panic, followed by our own leaders.
The new American way of war is to quit on the edge of victory. This really isn't hard to figure out: When we fail to win fast, we lose. Our military is slowly digesting the lesson, but our political leaders ignore the truth entirely. They don't want "excessive" casualties or collateral damage. So we dither. And, over months and years, the casualties and damage soar beyond what a swift victory would have cost.
Now the feckless dithering in the White House and the Pentagon has resulted in an even more difficult situation in Iraq, with the addition of yet another political layer. By delaying resolute action against Sadr until sovereignty was handed over, we gave a minority of Iraqis a veto over what must be done to protect the majority. Interim Prime Minister Iyan Allawi looked as if he had the will that our own leaders lacked. But faced with the need to placate a conference of disparate parties convened to choose a national assembly, Allawi, too, has been forced to back down. Instead of victory, we've got another round of truce talks. While Sadr transforms himself into a hero.
A point may come soon when it just won't be worth risking the lives of our troops any longer. If we cannot fight to win, we're foolish to spend our soldiers' blood for nothing. If Iraq lacks the will to save itself, our troops won't be able to save it.
And then there is the bogus issue of mosques, which our leaders approach with superstition, not sense. While Najaf's Imam Ali shrine truly is a sacred place, the fact is that there are mosques and there are mosques. Our unwillingness to target even a derelict neighborhood mosque packed with ammunition, weapons and terrorists is not only militarily foolish — it's based upon the assumption that Muslims are so stupid that they don't know the rules of their own religion. That's nonsense. They know that mosques aren't supposed to be used as bunkers. But they're not going to shout it from the rooftops to help us out. Were we to destroy a series of local mosques used by terrorists throughout Iraq, there would be an initial outcry — which the media would exaggerate. But it would blow over with remarkable speed. The only lasting effect would be to put the terrorists on notice that we won't let them make the rules any longer.
Make no mistake: It's our folly and moral cowardice that encouraged our enemies to make widespread use of mosques. We created this monster, as surely as our timidity inflated Sadr. Prime Minister Allawi may yet summon the courage lacked by President Bush (and certainly by that human weathervane, John Kerry). But if Allawi folds and lets Sadr walk again, it means our troops are merely pawns in a game we're determined to lose. Our troops deserve better. We need to let them win.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
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(When we fail to win fast, we lose. Our military is slowly digesting the lesson, but our political leaders ignore the truth entirely. They don't want "excessive" casualties or collateral damage. So we dither. And, over months and years, the casualties and damage soar beyond what a swift victory would have cost.)
Maybe somebody at the Pentagon would heed this advice.
The Solution:
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"Maybe somebody at the Pentagon would heed this advice."
Unfortunately the Pentagon is following orders. If it were left up to them that mosque, along with Sadr and his boys would be nothing but a smoking memory.
Excellent!
Thanks for the ping, Tolik.
Don't you think so??? ;-)
I bet the Muslims would show restraint if the tables were turned and our fighters were holed up in Holy sites.
Don't you think so??? ;-)
Oh.. I'm SURE they would :P
/sarcasm off
ping
In Iraq, it appears that "holy site" is a cliché, not an actual place of religious significance. Liberals have taught them well:
"For the children...."
"The homeless...."
"Women and minorities...."
"Holy site...."
ad nauseum
BTTT
If it were up to me, that mosque would be a smoking crater. But seeing that it's the "Shiite Vatican," maybe the restraint is justified. If you listen to what some of the Iraqis are saying, they're getting angry at Sadr now for staying in the mosque. The majority of them are starting to realize that he's not such a holy man after all. I think we should keep him bottled up there and let the Iraqis negotiate. They aren't going to give him amnesty this time and the normal "street" Shiites are all going to be furious with him for defiling their shrine.
I predict that in the end he will surrender to the US forces, with his hands in the air crying like a baby and asking them not to hurt him. And I hope the media gets a picture of that so the Iraqis can see it too.
I've said it before, America isn't fit to be an imperial power. It is paralyzed by political correctness, and these wars of liberal imperialism, where we rush around the world to make Hutu love Tutsi at gunpoint can only end in humiliation.
That particular mosque is important enough not to destroy. Of course, air-dropping live pigs from a couple of thousand feet into the courtyard wouldn't count as destruction, now would it?
* * *
I am increasingly troubled by Peter's anti-Bush tone. Always below the surface in Peters' commentaries, constructive criticism would be welcome and useful if this former Lt. Col. had a better understanding of geopolitical concerns that have a direct bearing on our success. For instance, Peters has never acknowledged that Turkey influenced the conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the consequent delay in opening a northern front that might well have wiped out many of the Ba'athist terrorists who melted away from their army units before they were engaged and destroyed.
I also derive little comfort from Peters' grasp of how the battlefield has changed since the First Gulf War, because of our greater joint force integration and our improved technological improvements in weapons and communications. Parroting Gen. McCaffrey for whom Peters worked, he rarely fails to call for more troops, as if the Russian experience in Afghanistan or the Johnson ramp up in Vietnam were worthy models.
Our forces have never been overwhelmed in battle, due largely to advances in command & control, speed & agility, and firepower & precision targeting. Thus, in my mind, putting a US soldier on every Iraqi corner merely creates myriad easy targets. Further, Peters' recommendations have often militated against a viable US Forces exit strategy, without contributing substantially to solving the security problem, the success of the interim Allawi government, and the prospects for the upcoming Iraqi elections. Rumsfeld was right in training Iraqi security personnel and transferring responsibility progressively as they demonstrated their ability to handle it.
Meanwhile, Peters writes above "A hostile media not only magnifies American errors, but invents American atrocities." I agree completely, except Peters was one of the first members of the hostile media who inflamed and amplified the Abu Ghraib abuses in a transparent desire to tarnish the SecDef and the Bush administration, exclaiming that the abuses dishonored every soldier who ever wore the US uniform. Balderdash. Bottom-line, Peters did enormous damage to the US, our forces and the Bush administration -- without any supporting evidence of wrongdoing at the top.
Nevertheless, our enemies domestic and foreign -- not least of which are the radical Islamicists who we are fighting -- used Peters' words for their own purposes. Presumably, Peters like Kerry would now acknowledge he was "over the top" in his exaggerated claims, but Peters has yet to come forward with that acknowledgment and put it in writing in one of his columns. In my book, he's AWOL.
Saw the alligator crawl on Fox that somebody's offering a peace deal to Al Sadr...maybe Iraqi govt.? Hasn't anyone bothered to read the fine print in the Koran where it says it's okay to lie, cheat, and sign fake peace treaties with the infidel? This is so not going to succeed.
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