Fallujah: What's going to happen?

Great Debates
61

Not really - soft targets are hit most often, but hard “secure” targets are still being hit.

If they had 'em, they’ed send 'em (not patch holes with the Black Watch, extend TODs etc)

No shit!

We’re seeing the limits of that power - or at least it’s application. Power to win any battle militarily, no idea or capability to deal with problems that don’t have the decency to present themselves as the conventional military enemy the US has been training to face all these years (and now doesn’t exist anymore)
It only has a hammer - so it looks for nails to hit, present it with a screw and it’s (ehem) screwed
– in short, it’s muscle-bound

62

Slaughterhouse found in Fallujah

And just because I know how much you all love FOX I’m going to link to it:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=285654&page=2

63

I think this is the link you want Rune.

-XT

64

I’m not saying it’s daunting, i’m saying it’s impossible.

trying it would kill more civilians than letting them fend for themselves

65

The Green Zone is pretty safe. A big camp in the middle of the desert beyond mortar range of cover, controlled entrance and exits, run by the thousands of Iraqi security forces we’ve supposedly been training, wouldn’t seem to be too much effort.

But you are right - we’re seeing the US Army up against the political limitations imposed on it. The Rumsfeld, two men and a dog, approach and the delusion of happy, welcoming Iraqi’s.

If the US hasn’t the manpower then it should draft some or make whatevr compromises, concessions and promises it needs to to get international support.

Bush’s approach - stamping his tiny feet and demanding support of right isn’t going to cut it. Admitting he’s made a gigantic error and humbly asking for help might.

66

I’m certainly not disputing these people need dealing with. I’m opposed to making things worse for the sake of doing something - anything!

67

Nice try, shes an Iraqi living under occupation is what I said. Nice to try and take a spin on things.

68

“green zone” + attack gives 64,800 hits on Google
Fox (to follow fashion)

That’s not the point though - set up a camp for 10,000 – say 100,000 turn up, 1,000 of which are bad guys intent on causing touble - people stampede for limited resources, kids get crushed etc. Your poorly trained Iraqi security goons look on - then sell their firearms to the highest bidder. I can see 1001 ways it would go tits-up

69

Ha! I was thinking of it as more of a “Cheap shot” rather than “spin”

But I hope you take my point – if any kind of democracy is to be built in Iraq it needs to include people like Riverbend - whether you think she’s probably a hairy-legged Guardian reader type or not - it’s got to include just about everyone except the total loonies

70

Sorry I wasn’t exactly clear. Yes I referred to Iran, and what I was refering to was not just the fact the Shah was overthrown but that the entire society went from a Western lifestyle to a fundementalist religious state with quite a bit of popular backing.

It is not like every Iranian was unaware of what they were replacing the government with. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was pretty straightforward as to what sort of society he envisioned. The people that over threw the Shah were also out to overthrow Western cultural influence.

The Shah was no democratic leader and there were great human rights abuses under his rule. I did not mean to imply that Iran was the ideal of a Western democracy. But rather a Westernized nation . The images of Iran in the sixties and early seventies show a society that by all looks had all of the trappings of a Western society.

It is one thing to reject the leadership as courrupt, it is another to also quickly overthrow the society as a whole and opt for a traditionalist religious view.
If they overthrew for freedom why give up so much of it to strict religious doctrine? Maybe it wasn’t the freedom of a representative democracy they were after but the freedom to set up a theocracy.

I seriously doubt that the reason people are flocking to the Terrorist cause is not because they lack a vote in a democratic nation. I just can’t see how an imposed democracy some how fixes the attitudes of those Muslims in the region so that they are in line with our views.

.

71

Let’s see, the U.S. Military says:

while a source i quoted previously, an Iraqi doctor working in Fallujah, says:

I no longer trust a single word the US Government says. They have as much standing as the famed Baghdad Bob, former Iraqi Information Minister. I’m not even trusting the “liberal” US media to give me accurate information on Iraq, i find myself trusting more in non-US news sources, Australia, UK, etc. Thanks be to the internet.

72

I think you’re conflating the style and image of the ruler and the oil-enriched elite with the nature of the society at the time. It’s true that the Shah and his allies were struggling to modernise with what oil revenue they hadn’t pocketed or spent on armed forces but that was an internal conflict with traditional forces sharpened by repression and the perceived excesses of the regime.

Iran was not a secular society - it was a traditional society with a modernising, autocratic and increasingly brutal elite.

73

And how many deaths? Handful. Google hit counting proves nothing.

74

Googling and reading the first couple of pages of links proves to me at least that the US cannot guarantee security to Iraqis in a single square inch of Iraq - look at Brutus’s link,

sounds like “we can’t control things in Iraq” to me.

  • look at whose family has just been kidnapped

Handful of deaths?
Take 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 thousand people, hostile (this isn’t a picnic you’re taking them on - you’re flattening their houses and mosques - killing people they know), easily panicked (memories of Abu Ghraib are strong - they expect to be mistreated)

Add a bunch of bad guys embedded in their midst, a few of them fanatics willing to kill themselves and as many civilians as possible just to create chaos.

Try to police it all with too few troops (and low-grade, the best guys are off fighting) and/or a ragtag of Iraqis - poorly trained, very questionable loyalties (probably a few bad guys embedded there too, as has already happened) armed with guns and passes that will sell for more than anything you’re paying them to risk their lives.
It only takes one guard to get killed and the rest get trigger-happy - every civilian approaching is a potential suicide bomber - every fight over a loaf of bread looks like the start of a riot

Add terrible conditions - what are the chances of housing, feeding, treating unknown thousands of people when the track record with the existing electrical, sewage, phone, oil, medical systems have not been exactly great?

Stand well back

Hold enquiry into how this humanitarian diaster was allowed to happen - count the corpses and work out how many died of crush injuries and how many from gunshot.

Find scapegoat

Sounds like a plan to me

75

And just leaving those with nowhere to go to be blown to propaganda pieces is better than trying to do something?

76

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20041111/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_041111084708

And this just in…

1,200 to 3,000? Wasn’t it 5,000 to 6,000 just a couple days ago? Has there been a new! improved! census of Fallujah insurgents just recently? Or might it be, as I suspect darkly, that the numbers shift according to whatever looks more plausible when victory is declared?

Viet Nam all over again, with sand and camels rather than rice paddies and water buffalo.

77

Pretty much

That’s how “lesser of two evils” works - you’re still left with an evil

78

You can be certain, just like in 'Nam, any dead male between 13 and 65 will be counted as an insurgent by the military.

79

Well, trying to protect people in camps rather than shelling them seems the lesser evil to me and it at least shows we care enough to make some kind of effort. Or have we given up on this whole hearts and minds thing?

80

So when did we start on “hearts and minds”?

“Hearts and minds” is a phrase used by the press, including the US press - but I’ve seen no evidence of “H&M” thinking in US military planning or training - in this conflict or any other - that’s my point about the US only having hammer, a damn good hammer, but useless in situations that call for a screwdriver (force, but applied with subtlety)
The “Hearts and minds” phrase comes originally from British campaigns in Malaya IIRC - where it was used with success - and combined with hard lessons learned in N. Ireland has become an important part of UK military thinking (well, when it is thinking)
(" By respecting the Arabs’ devotion to Islam, SAS soldiers gained a lot of respect from the Arabs they encountered")

Contrast this with US tactics, seemly learned from the Israelis (who have arguably been less successful in dealing with unrest though obviously in different circumstances)“With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them.” "“You have to understand the Arab mind… …The only thing they understand is force”

This unwillingness to take a H&M approach, (or take any advice from the British military whilst running to the Israeli “experts” for advice), seems to have been a cause of tension in the “coalition of the willing” from the start - now members of the Black Watch are starting to get killed in an area stirred up by previous US actions, while having to operate under US rules of engagement, that tension has increased.

“Trying” isn’t good enough - you have to be able to deliver - and IMHO the coalition forces are in no position to deliver protection to friendly - let alone hostile civilians.

Even if you think my scenarios for how things would play out in the camps are wildly overblown I still think the point is moot.
How do you get people into the camps in the first place?
“Hello, we’re the US military; you may remember us from such shows as “Abu Ghraib - we torture women and children” on Al Jazera.”
“We’d like you to get on these old buses we’ve hired so we can we can concentrate you in a camp for a while (we tried to build wooden huts to fit in with the barbed wire and watch-towers, cos we knew how good that would look on TV, particularly in the Muslim world - but you’re going to have to put up with tents, bit chilly I’m afraid)”

Where do you put the pick up points and how do you protect the drivers? Do you expect people to walk there?

Where do you site the camp? - Nowhere is secure within Iraq (remember that Abu Ghraib started to come under serious attack from the outside at one point as the rumours started to grow among the locals - and that’s a fortified prison)
Gonna put it in the Kurdish area? or outside Iraq? - that’s like putting out a fire by kicking it all over the forest.
and so on and so on…

And before this thread sinks back into the mists of time I’ll address this:-

Makes me think you haven’t read her stuff

(Ok, she’s missed out a word or two but her meaning is clear)