In case you don’t realize it, Saddam is playing a brilliant little mental war game. If he doesn’t kill his own people, the allied forces will surely do it for him! Now that we (the allied forces) have cause for not trusting a white flag waved by allegedly friendly civilians, it’s a kill-or-be-killed situation. The suicide bombers, with no regard for their own lives, are reminiscent of the Kamakazis in Japan during WWII. These people will stop at nothing.
So, the question is: If we try not to kill the innocent caught in the middle of all this, will Iraq turn into another Vietnam where anyone could be the enemy via ambushes and booby traps? Or, will we have to just kill as many as we can (on the scale of Hiroshima, as the extreme example) to force a surrender and gain control of Iraq?
In short, is it even realistic to think we can avoid killing as many innocent Iraqi citizens as possible while carrying out our objective? And, do you think our masterminds gave such complications ample considerartion in their war scenarios and deep planning? - Jinx :dubious:
This is the kind of baited OP that any conservative would get a 40 post pit thread pile on for posting.
:rolleyes:
Or, he’s dead.
Or it’s a be more cautious and no one gets killed situation.
No one was holding the families of Kamakazis captive and forcing them to make suicide attacks. There were large numbers of Kamakazis, there have only been two suicide attacks in Iraq that I know of. These people will stop when the regime is no longer in power.
Will it become a jungle battle that costs hundreds of American lives per week with seemingly no real plan or goal that lasts for years? No.
The idea that we need to use a nuke attack to win this war is absurd. The war is going quite well even while the troops avoid civilian casualties.
It’s not only realistic. It’s reality. It’s been happening for two weeks.
It’s one thing to learn from history. It’s another for people to keep using broad analougies as replacements for thought. Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of it. It’ll be another Vietnam! No, it’ll be another Munich! Yadda yadda yadda!
I’ve seen frequent references to the speculation that the Iraq “suicide bombers” are only doing so because their families are being held at gunpoint by the regime. Does anyone have a cite for this please? I think we should all be particularly cautious about stories with no trustworthy cites. This would apply to stories from either “side”. Fog of war, propaganda and all that…
Vietnam was a proxy war that the US fought without targeting the opponents’ proxy. Instead the US fought a counter-insurgency conflict within South Vietnam with destructive results.
The real opponents, of course, were the Soviet Union and China, the proxy North Vietnam. The notion that the Vietnam War was a home grown movement ended with the functional death of the Viet Cong in 1968 Tet Offensive–misreported as a Communist victory in the US.
OTOH, there will be Iraqi loyalist resistance, not to mention Syrian Baathists, all of whom are royally pissed right now. Victory in Baghdad, even the death or capture of the top leadership, IMO, does not mean there won’t be fierce fighting in Tikrit or Basra. I’m not sure about any of this, obviously. I’d love for the Baathist loyalists to start liking puppies and lay down their arms. But, resistance–much of it ugly and urban–is to be expected. That is like Vietnam, sure. Actually, the city fighting thing only happened once in Vietnam. As for resistance, it’s like most wars in that respect.
The Hitler Youth went down fighting in many cases, when the outcome of the war was long decided. That is a frightening parallel between Saddam and Hitler, using children as cannon fodder, BTW.
Another very similiar–but the exact opposite–problem will be ordinary people wanting bloody reprisals against the Baath Party that brutalized them for so long. Mob justice will be hard to prevent.
Ah there’s no justice like angry mob justice!
Seriously though. The issue isn’t how do we separate the civilians from the soldiers. The issue is how do we get the support of the civilians so they don’t become guerillas.
The answer is, of course, to send a clear message that we are only there to remove Sadaam, set up a government that will give the Iraqi people self determination, and go home. That and try not to piss off too many people by blowing up their homes or sending a Delta Force team through their bedroom windows.
I tend to believe that most people are not revolutionaries or radical extremists by nature and given the chance would generally be happy just going to work, raising a family and so on.
Nope, this is not another Vietnam, nor a WW II style of war. You should call this war WW IV since WW III was the Cold War. Our neo-conservatives have gotten their way after 9/11 so you should be prepared for a very long war. Here is a link that might shed some light on this subject. http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/
There are big differences between this war and both Vietnam and World War II Japan.
World War II Japan was a modernized nation that had experience with constitutional government. The militarists had only been running things since the 1930s. Returning it to constitutional government was thus a comparatively simple matter; the Japanese already knew how to do it and there was a substantial faction of Japanese people who already wanted it. Iraq has never had a constitutional government. Authoritarian rule is the only thing they have any experience with. I won’t say democracy is impossible there, but installing it is going to be a lot tougher than it ever was in Japan. The factions are the same as in too many other Arab states: secular dictatorship vs. theocratic rule. Constitutional moderates are rare.
Also (which is a good thing for America) Saddam doesn’t command anywhere near the fanatical loyalty that Emperor Hirohito did. The principal job of his military forces for the last twelve years has been suppressing popular discontent.
The war is similar to Vietnam in some ways, but American policy is crucially different. Vietnam was run on the principle of limited war, “controlled escalation.” We wanted to use just enough force to keep South Vietnam from falling to the Communists, but no more, lest the war spread to China or Russia. By contrast, American policy in Iraq is simple: overwhelming force. We are throwing every conventional weapon we can stuff into the country against Saddam’s military.
I agree, and this really points to the key questions about the postwar…
If most people are happy to be left alone to live their lives, who remains to control the government? The powerful are, almost by necessity, the ambitious–those with a particular vision for the future. Very few people say, “I want to run the country… now how should I do it? Won’t somebody help me out here and tell me the correct way?” You simply don’t gain control of leadership positions with that attitude (except perhaps in hereditary monarchs or otherwise reluctant leaders); people look for direction, strong leaders with what they perceive is the best vision.
Throughout most of history, much of that vision has been concerned with self-interest, or at least certainly prejudiced to the extent that for the “good of the state”, force was viewed as a legitimate method of ensuring the adoption of one’s policies to the exclusion of others. And of course, in certain cases force can be justified, but few modern eyes would pretend that it has always been so in all cases. The operative question in every form of government is the justification of the extent and application of power, and it’s quite clear there are competing views about how much is appropriate in a particular case.
Such is the dilemma that must be answered shortly in Iraq. There are those who would turn it into a democratic republic. No doubt there are also those who would turn it into an Islamic theocracy. I expect there are quite a few who would like to see some borders redrawn as well, along with many other agendas. The worrisome unknown is: will there be an ambitious, persistent vision that rules by virture of force, or will there be compromise and sharing of power? If there can be no compromise for some, will others fight the battle with surpassing persistence to maintain freedom which is so difficult to win, even moreso to keep?
Frankly, I don’t know the answer. But honestly, I’m very, very skeptical that there will be a favorable outcome from all this within the next few years.