Then let me be the first in line to call you an utterly, wholly worthless waste of what might have otherwise been useful protein.
I have three friends out there at what is colloquially referred to as the pointy end of the stick. I have not heard from any of them since the “kickoff”, and I check the list of casualties on occasion with a touch of concern.
Please understand I want each and every one of them- and their close friends- to return home safe with all their body parts still attached.
Further understand that I would have been perfectly happy- cheering even- to see the museum carpet bombed if it meant that everyone returned home safe.
By no means did I “dismiss” them as mere bits of crockery. Did you read my post? I know it was long and you kids tend to have somewhat short attention spans these days, but please try and muddle through.
I stated in at least two places my honest opinion- the destruction of the antiquities was a tragedy and a crime, akin to melting down King Tut’s coffin in order to gold-plate a machine gun.
It was stupid and malicious and an irreplaceable loss.
But for you to claim I’m understating the value if these bits of inanimate stone and precious metals, while you yourself grossly underestimate the value of the human, American soldiers’ lives whom you so blithely dismiss as disposable as long as your interests are protected… well, that just screams of hypocracy.
We’re told we should have had more men, so that all the vital points could be covered and guarded within hours of our entering the city.
The reality is that military recruitment is greatly depressed right now and has been for years. One of those friends of mine? He was due to retire after twenty-three years of service, last spring. He was offered generous bonuses- well, generous by military standards- to stay in, a program they call “stop loss”.
You and at least one other person in this thread, when asked why you’re not out there with a rifle, more or less stated that staying here and dusting off your museum bits is more important.
Hypocrite.
We’re told the military should have known beforehand that the museum would be vulnerable, that we should have tasked specific detachments to secure it.
This goes in with the above- you DO understand the concept of “limited resources”, don’t you?
The commanders have limited manpower, and if you’d read my first post, you might get the idea that a good commander does NOT simply distribute his men willy-nilly. Two guys off to this store, four over there to that building, six sent off five blocks away to secure a museum, four more over here to this mosque.
The opposition forces’ playbook calls this “divide and conquer”. Individual or small groups of soldiers without backup and support become vulnerable- to wit, the 504th Maintenence group, or, more tragically Mogadishu.
The wider you spread your forces, the more men- geometrically- you need for security, front line protection and internal supply and support.
To say they should have handled it differently or that conditions should have been different… that’s just worthless, irrelevant armchair quarterbacking.
Perhaps you read the article a few days back where the Iraqui firemen couldn’t fight any of the dozens of fires in the city, because their firetrucks, hoses and equipment had been looted or stolen?
Perhaps the US Military should have conscripted another 20,000 men to not only guard the firehouses, but to help put out the fires. Fires, after all, are a known, expected consequence of bombing campaigns.
Perhaps we should have pulled men off the projects to restore drinking water to five million impoverished citizens, in order to secure the museum. Or tell the crews trying to restore electricity to parts of the city so the doctors at the hospital aren’t working by flashlight and gasoline lantern, that the museum is more important.
You armchair quarterbacks have given them a lose-lose situation: They are being villified for not protecting the museum now, but had they been there, they very likely would have been forced to kill looters at the very least in self-defense. (That is, after all, how one “secures” a building in a war zone.)
In that case, there would be villification for having killed civillians and noncombatants.
Even without that highly likely scenario, someone else would be villifying them for having soldiers “standing around with their thumbs up their ass” when there’s hospitals being looted, buildings burning down, electricity needing to be restored, food and water to be delivered, etcetera, ad nauseum.
The city was NOT secure and was NOT largely safe for US personel at anything less than detachment strength, and the museum was NOT a military or even governmental objective.