The US Marines have warned the islamic militants to lay down their arms and leave Fallujah…this is being ignored. Therefore, an assault on the city (of 300,000 people) is being planned…my big fear is that this city will be defended building by building,…just like the Russians defended Stalingrad.
Such massive street fighting will likely lead to enormous US casualties…noy 4-4 deaths a week, but possibly hundreds!
Can the US stand this level of casualties? When would the news od thousands of dead and wounded start to hit the US public?
And, do the US forces in Iraq have enough reserves to conemplate thistypeof action?
I have a very bad feeling about this! :eek:
An Arab irregular army standing its ground and fighting to the last man against a vastly superior foe? Uh, no. Not a chance. A diehard here and there, sure. But as a rule, they will shoot 'n scoot.
Also as a rule (confirmed by Al Arabia footage), some of them will fire off AK’s into the air. (Whaddya mean those bullets come down?). One will make sure the camera is watching him, then fire off a RPG round down the street, without bothering to use the aiming device or backup iron sights. We will probably get a bunch that just stick their AK’s over an obstacle, willy-nilly fire off a magazine, then skeedadle. The Red Army these folks are not.
Stalingrad was a brilliant and daring operation by the Red Army. They had reinforments and whatnot, and more importantly, they had a plan. It wasn’t just ‘Let’s fight in this city until we are all dead’. It was, ‘Let’s fight in this city until most of us are dead, but the rest of the army shows up and hands jerry his ass’. I think it is safe to say that there will be no enveloping pincer movement by other elements in Fallujah.
P.S. What is with capitalizating Stalingrad?
The losses in and around Stalingrad were counted in the millions, and you’re talking possible hundreds? Where is the comparison? In what way do you consider hundreds “enormous US casualties”? More are killed every day on US roads – are those “enormous US casualities” too? What do you mean by “Can the US stand this level of casualties” Military speaking; it’s peanuts. Politically; who knows.
ps. These days it’s called Volgograd :), or VOLGOGRAD if you insist
What makes you think they don’t have a plan? If you’ve noticed the coordinated attacks and car bombings lately…it is not haphazard.
Hell, if the militants in Fallujah have a plan, that at least means that someone in Iraq has one…
We don’t need no stinking plan. Only pussies need plans. Saddam had a plan. Didn’t help him much.
Well, other than planning on finding a magic lamp somewhere, what workable plan could they have? These guys are cut off and isolated. They are equipped with only man portable weapons. They have no supplies to speak of. They have no reinforcements enroute.
This will be no Stalingrad. I remeber when people were calling Baghdad the next Stalingrad, and a few days later American forces were tearing around on ‘Thunder Runs’ through downtown Bagdhad.
For a city to be properly defended for long periods of time, many things need to happen. You need troops. You need supplies. You need lines of communication. Even Leningrad recieved some reinforncements and additional supplies. Fallujah will get neither.
At best, they will not run away until fired on. Hey, that is what irregular forces do. (Or they become dead.)
:rolleyes:
Really? And what are they all building towards? What is the so-called ‘center of gravity’ that all these ‘coordinated’ attacks are aimed towards?
Will Fallujah Be a Stalingrad?? :rolleyes: Please. Get real. It won’t even be another Baghdad. Different kind of war, different stakes…and no Stalin to order the populace to fight to last man, woman and child. It might be bloody…I could see our casualties being even as many as a hundred with perhaps a thousand or so Iraqi’s. Thats hardly comparable to the millions that died in Stalingrad.
-XT
It snows in Fallujah? Well, I’ll be goll danged!
America does not have the guts to see Americans being killed in large numbers but it seems like it has no problems with killing innocent Iraqis in large numbers. I do not believe the Americans will suffer a high rate of casualties but that they would rather obliterate Falluja from the air killing as many innocents as needed. I think it would resemble the Warsaw ghetto rather than Stalinngrad. And just as shameful.
Ya, just like the way we indiscriminately bombed and shelled Baghdad. Oh, wait…
Be for real, Sailor. When was the last time the US bombed any place the way you are describing? Vietnam? The US isn’t going to bomb the shit out of Falluja, though I have no doubt innocents will die if we are forced to go in there. For an American citizen, you sure don’t know a lot about the US tolerence for casualties either. We’ve never shied from casualties, we just don’t feel the need to throw men away to no purpose if there is another way (i.e. we use artillary and air power when we can). You sound like the stereotypical non-American railing at the fact the US doesn’t stand up and fight like a man, breast to breast, blah blah blah. Thats strange coming from someone who IS a US citizen (at least I assume you are).
-XT
You lost me. Are you saying that we have never just dropped bombs or tomahawks in hope of killing someone?
If so…I suggest you read up on the attempts to kill Saddam early in the war.
Just how do you think the majority of civilian casualties in happened?
Bullets?
Please insert Iraq in my above post where it fits.
Thank you.
We dropped percision guided bombs to try and kill Saddam Reeder…as you well know. We took out a single frigging house, not an entire city block. I didn’t say that innocents wouldn’t be killed…I said they most likely WOULD. But there is no way Falluja is going to remotely resemble the bombed out hulk that was the Warsaw ghetto…which WAS bombed and shelled totally indiscriminately, again as you well know.
We simply don’t bomb like that anymore. Unfortunately when you initiate ANY kind of combat in a city people are going to be caught in the cross fire and killed. Even with the best precision bombs targetted on military installations people are going to die because they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
-XT
Where do you GET this from? First, Americans seem to have handled the latest round of casualties just fine - polls still show overwhelming support for ‘staying the course’ in Iraq.
Second, Americans haven’t ‘obliterated from the air’ ANY city in this war, nor are they going to. Why in the hell do you think the Marines were working their way through the city on the ground in the first place? If the U.S. wanted to ‘obliterate’ Fallujah, it would have been a smoking hole a long time ago. The fact is, the modus operandi for the U.S. military is to risk additional military lives to PREVENT the obliteration of civilians. That you can’t see this speaks volumes for your bias.
This doesn’t mean civilians won’t die. When the enemy uses civilians as shields, they force your hand. There could indeed be thousands of Iraqi casualties, and hundreds of U.S. casualties. But every effort will be made to limit civilian casualties as much as possible, even if it means more dead U.S. soldiers.
IIRC Fallujah has always been a very violent place – there’s a reason Saddam got most of his bully boys from there. It will probably be a thorn in the side of anyone who runs Iraq. I’m betting the U.S. planners are thinking a little beat-down on the place would be a good move in the long haul, and that letting them get away with defying the U.S. without a strong response would be Asking For It from those inhabitants of Fallujah who may be properly characterized as violent scum.
Ahh…sort of like the response to the killing of Heydrich. How dare they stand up against us!
You’re right on. We should make the analogy complete. Let’s act like Heydrich. Let’s anhilate every fucking one of them. I’m not sure if we could do it; oh wait, we have nuclear weapons, we could.
Yet for some reason we don’t. Oh wait, that’s right, we’re NOT FUCKING NAZIS and your analogy is IDIOTIC POLEMIC.
You seem to miss the point.
He was talking about beating them down.
Give me a break.