I read a couple of items today seem to fit the current situation in Iraq.
The first paragraph of the first article seems particularly fitting...
quote:In the first phase of the war, cluster bombs were the weapon of choice, and so the United States won. Now we have moved into the phase where the dominant weapon is the truck bomb and that levels the playing field. A classic guerrilla war is taking shape in Iraq and such wars are a contest not of technology, but will.
In this sort of struggle, guerrillas have several inbuilt advantages. They are at home, among friends and relatives, with all the local knowledge (starting with language) that the foreign troops lack. They can wrap themselves in the local flag (or increasingly, in the case of the non-Baathist resistance in Iraq, in the green banner of Islam), options that are simply unavailable to the occupying forces.
And there is something more: The occupiers have to build; the resistance only has to destroy.
There is a key concept of revolutionary guerrilla warfare that has, oddly, no standard translation in English: la politique du pire. Literally, it is the strategy of (making things) worse.
The idea is that the guerrillas, who lack the military strength to beat their opponents in open battle, should concentrate instead on destroying the structures and services on which the population depends.
If their attacks and sabotage make the lives of ordinary people awful, the people will not blame the guerrillas. They will blame the authorities whose duty it is to provide those structures and services � the occupation authorities, in this case.
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The U.S. is already having immense difficulty in persuading other countries to send troops to Iraq to share the burden of the occupation, because, in addition to their original misgivings about the wisdom and legality of the invasion, they now have to worry about a significant toll of casualties.
All the more is this true of international organizations.
For all the rhetoric that ricochets around Washington about building democracy in Iraq like the U.S. and its allies built German and Japanese democracy after World War II, this is an administration that does everything on the cheap, and there is no Marshall Plan in the offing.
On the contrary, the Bush administration was hoping to pay much of the cost of the occupation out of Iraqi oil exports (which is why pipelines are being attacked), and to unload a lot more onto the U.N. and the alphabet soup of humanitarian aid organizations that generally follow in its wake.
It was never likely that the U.N. would let itself be used in that way: The mistrust of U.S. motives and tactics goes too deep in a lot of the members.
...While the last two paragraphs of the next article are quite interesting.
quote:Yesterday's bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.
Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created � not through malevolence but through negligence � precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs.
For example, the American commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, has described the almost daily attacks on his troops as guerrilla campaigns carried out by Baathist remnants with little public support. Yet an increasing number of Iraqis disagree: they believe that the attacks are being carried out by organized forces � motivated by nationalism, Islam and revenge � that feed off public unhappiness.
According to a survey this month by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, nearly half of the Iraqis polled attribute the violence to provocation by American forces or resistance to the occupation (even more worrisome, the Arabic word for "resistance" used in the poll implies a certain amount of sympathy for the perpetrators). In the towns of Ramadi and Falluja, where many of the recent attacks have taken place, nearly 90 percent of respondents attributed the attacks to these causes.
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As bad as the situation inside Iraq may be, the effect that the war has had on terrorist recruitment around the globe may be even more worrisome. Even before the coalition troops invaded, a senior United States counterterrorism official told reporters that "an American invasion of Iraq is already being used as a recruitment tool by Al Qaeda and other groups." Intelligence officials in the United States, Europe and Africa say that the recruits they are seeing now are younger than in the past. Television images of American soldiers and tanks in Baghdad are deeply humiliating to Muslims, even those who didn't like Saddam Hussein, explained Saad al-Faqih, head of Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a Saudi dissident group in London. He told me that some 3,000 young Saudis have entered Iraq in recent months, and called the war "a gift to Osama bin Laden."
Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, told a crowd of 150,000 in a March religious observance that the United States was trying to create a "tragedy for humanity and to spread chaos in the world" and predicted that the people of Iraq and the region would "welcome American troops with rifles, blood, arms, martyrdom."
The occupation has given disparate groups from various countries a common battlefield on which to fight a common enemy. Hamid Mir, a biographer of Osama bin Laden, has been traveling in Iraq and told me that Hezbollah has greatly stepped up its activities not only in Shiite regions but also in Baghdad.
Most ominously, Al Qaeda's influence may be growing. It has been linked to attacks as far apart as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. One suspect in yesterday's attack is Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose camps in Northern Iraq were destroyed early in the war. In recent weeks American officials acknowledged that members of the group had slipped into Iraq from Iran, had begun organizing in Baghdad and were suspected of plotting bombings, including the Aug. 7 attack on the Jordanian Embassy. In addition, Mr. Mir reported that Al Qaeda was carving out new training grounds in the border region between Iraq and Syria.
How could Mr. Bush and those smart people he was to have surrounded himself with not understand the very great chance of a guerrilla war in post-invasion Iraq?
Afterall, I seem to recall that in the conflict in Afghanistan we used to Northern Alliance soldiers because if we put American troops on the ground, it would offer a perfect opportunity to the Islamic groups opposing the United States a chance to fight and kill American soldiers because at last the Americans were there, face to face, and not in a plane or shooting Cruise missiles from far away. Now there are literally thousands of American targets for any Islamist insurgent who can make their way to Iraq to shoot at. Now there are other stationary targets that these same insurgents can bomb because American troops can not protect them all.
Is the hurbis of the Bush Administration that great that they could not have seen the potentially of what was to come, of what is happening now?
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Is this where all of us opposed to the war are supposed to apologise for ever doubting the Bushies? The WMD are piling up, everything is great on the ground, the Iraqi people are happy, terrorism has ended in our lifetimes, everything as the war mongers predicted. Think I'll stay in Canada for awile, I have a feeling that countries opposed to the war have a lesser chance of being a target. Seems Bushco wanted a "War on Terrah" and they have successfully won the first battles, but I have a feeling that a lot of Americans are going to die before this war is over. The Iraqi war just turned into a big recrutment poster, with the saying " We have not yet begun to fight" at the bottom of it.
Hope you all are feeling much safer now.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
quote:Is this where all of us opposed to the war are supposed to apologise for ever doubting the Bushies?
I'm not sure I follow you there.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Just being sarcastic, there were people saying before the war that it would be over quickly, Iraqis would be welcoming the "coalition" as liberators, there would be piles of WMD and it would put us on the road to no more terrorism, and some also said that by now all of the anti-war folk would have to apolopgise for ever doubting Bushco. Well it seems that more of what the anti-war people said is coming true, no wmd, a guerrilla war that has been going on since the coalition attacked, dispite war Rummy has been saying. It also seems like this war has not stopped terrorism, but has in fact brought the factions together, as Hussain never could. It's going to be bleak.
Posted by Veers (Member # 661) on :
Many Americans will die. Before the end of the year the number of American troops killed by hostile fire will probably top 200. And many more will be dead due to accidents and sickness.
There will be more bombings like the one that happened at the UN HQ. More people, mostly Iraqis will die. And the Arab countries will not swing toward democracy like it was predicted.
And it's been 5 months since we invaded...there is no evidence Iraq had WMD.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The very notion that anyone can consider 200 dead soldiers "a lot" shows how incredibly weird and unique modern warfare is.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Times like this, I wish we had Space Marines...
"Die, American infidel!!!" *ratta-tatta-tatta* *AK-47 bullets plink off hardened three-inch-thick ceramite armour plates* "In the Emperor's name, you will be purged." *assault cannon spins up and disgruntled Iraqi is redmisted*
*sigh*
Sorry to be so militant, but willful ignorance always makes me grumpy. Not most of you here on the board, but Bush and Co. and the Iraqi guerrilas.
To the Administration (which I still refer to as the Bush junta), I say there is a time and place for trickle-down economics, and a time and to throw gobs of money at a situation, and this is one of the latter. You need to rearm and re-establish the Iraqui military and get them back in the field. You need to set up a New Deal-like Public Works Administration to employ out-of-work Iraquis to help rebuild and improve on their infrastructure with roads, schools, power plants, and the like. You need to make it so that terrorists shooting RPGs are shooting them at their own soldiers, and blowing up their own power plants. Idiots.
And to the guerrilas, the best way to make sure we don't go away any time soon is to keep shooting at us. The Warmongers in power over here aren't going to pull out like they did last time. If it becomes apparant that a limited war won't carry the day, they're likely to start getting nasty, and to hell with the UN...
Here's hoping Bush and his puppeteers don't get us all killed before his term is up.
--Jonah
Posted by newark (Member # 888) on :
The underlying issue with this administration is their denial of facts which conflict with their perception, their reality, of a situation.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Yes SImon I have thought about that and times have indeed changed. During the American Civil War there could be thousands of combat deaths in a single day, and while horrible, it did not deture Lincoln from pursuing his course.
On the other hand, in the west especially, and in America, the human life has high value placed on it. I was watching Black Hawk Down the other day and at the end they rolled some numbers that said 19 Americans had been killed and that 1000 Solami's had died. Clearly these are hugely different numbers, but the deaths caused a change in American policy and helped to bring on the right-wing backlash against "nation-building."
In fact, Mr. Bush said this on the subject:
quote:Let me tell you what else I'm worried about: I'm worried about an opponent who uses nation building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place.
Funny thing is, that is exactly what we are doing now.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Solami? *giggle*
--Jonah
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Somali?
I keep doing things like that, mixing up two different letters, etc.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The thing is, the claim that the United States can somehow avoid "nation building" is so nonsensical that surely everybody knew it was just campaign trail hot air. NATO didn't intervene in Bosnia or Kosovo because the West is ruled by bighearted liberals. It did it because the former Yugoslavia was ruled by bankrobbing drug dealers eager to pour smack into and remove money from the streets of Berlin and Rome and Paris and Stockholm, and whose tactics for seizing power involved equipping very angry fanatics with very powerful weapons. I mean, the value here should be obvious. Serbia: NATO rained down smartbombs for two months and then put U.S. troops in Kosovo. Result: it is very hard to get truckbombs out of the area and into sensative western financial and political centers. Afghanistan: no one did anything. Result: a smoking crater in downtown Manhattan.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
I don�t think you can so easily dismiss the rhetoric or the ideology behind such statements as simple electioneering.
Afterall, what exatly have we done in and for Afghanistan since we had the Northern Alliance do our dirty work? Is it just that the only natural resources there are rocks and opium?
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Jay, you forgot the pipeline running through Afghanistan of which Enron was a principal shareholder...
--Jonah
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Those who hide in Canada this time, better stay there. There was a good excuse the last time. There are no excuses this time. War was inevitable. There was no peace to begin with. In one assault on the Jappanese home islands we lost 5,000 men in the first hour. Did we quit?
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
I think Canadians also practice sodomy on fucking seals or shit.
Fuck those fucking snow eaters.
Seriously, though, who are you? MIB? Red BWC?
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Just another guy that hates cowards and wants to see this war end so my friends can come home alive this time. Weak willed politicians let it get this far. Nothing against Canada, just those who run out on a fight. When it happened in the 60's there was a good reason. No war is moral, but some are inevitable.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
quote:In one assault on the Jappanese home islands we lost 5,000 men in the first hour. Did we quit?
I'm not usually a fan of resuscitating cliches, but, uh, the "fuck" ???
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Men die in war haven't you heard.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
I must have skipped the chapter on the massive amphibious assault at Fukuoka Harbour when I took a class on the History of the Second World War. The only possible explanation.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Got no idea how bad it could get before its over do you? Professional army now not conscripts. They signed on to do the job. They know.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
The Random Post Generator� is working pretty well I see.
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
There are like two words missing for every one he includes.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Using few words since no one here is worth convincing anyway. The world situation doesn't matter to you since you can run away from it any time it gets a little hot.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
And isn't that exactly what you've been doing? I mean, besides not contributing to anything and just whining about 5,000 dead people on an inland in under an hour.
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
Since this guy joined I haven't followed a single thing he's said at all.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
actualy I realise that I'm going over the edge a little bit. It comes from not being able to do what I want to do which is to go over there myself. So I'll lighten up and stop being a pain in the butt. Frustration and natural born meaness has been getting the better of me lately. I'm a fighter and being out of action is killing me. You guys aren't the problem just me being mean. No apologies from me though. Your ideas still blow.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I am all for buying you a ticket.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
One-way, preferably.
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
Bite a big one. Do you really want to get another contest started? I'm letting you off easy,out of pity for those who have no self respect. Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I think the Universal Translator is malfunctioning, captain!
Posted by Mountain Man (Member # 1114) on :
How about these boys. They are all shook up and paranoid after just a few days. Wait till I really get rolling. P.S. just screwing with your heads a little, since you don't seem to be having any real fun talking to each other any more. Why don't you all start doing that again? I'll play nice a quit then.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Man, that guy must be on some really good drugs.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
oh come now, i'm on tons of better drugs.. and i manage to be more entertaining (and informative)..
Posted by Ultra Magnus (Member # 239) on :
more entertaining
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
(and informative)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mountain Man: How about these boys. They are all shook up and paranoid after just a few days. Wait till I really get rolling. P.S. just screwing with your heads a little, since you don't seem to be having any real fun talking to each other any more. Why don't you all start doing that again? I'll play nice a quit then.
TSN said it best:
quote: If you've got a point to make, make it. Otherwise, fuck off.
Posted by CaptainMike20X6 (Member # 709) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cartman: (and informative)
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