Shek

I disagree not only with Plutarch, but with you as well. Especially your assertion that heavy handed tactics are counter productive. Plutarch's numbers aren't being presented in the context of measuring progress in stopping sectarian violence either. Properly implemented  heavy handed down right brutal ruthless use of force is the only thing thats going to save Iraqis from themselves. Its the only thing they understand. When you are in a war, you must not only break the Army, but you must also break its will to fight. These tactics aren't new or particularly creative on my part. In fact they are timeless principles of war that apparently some of us have forgotten. How the heck did Saddam and his Army manage to control the sectarian divide? The solution is right in front of you! Stop over thinking the problem. Heck Iraq is lucky I'm not the CG in the short term because if I was 115 dead a day would seem like picnic. In the long term though Iraq would definitely prosper as most of our prior enemies have AFTER WE BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THEM.

Hey buy guess what? Its ok. Keep theorizing, criticizing and advocating pulling punches. The end result will speak for itself and people will be wishing for the rebirth of  the likes of General Le May to settle this issue. But Shek, thats my 2 cents based on my world view. We live in a Democracy so I'm sure you will express your disagreement both here and at the polls. I'm fine with that. At the end though one of us will be proven right. Also, whether or not you agree, I don't use my military experience as a substitute for logical reasoned analysis of military matters.



DA

Darth,

How well did coercive and brutal tactics work for the French in Algeria?  The British in Malaya?  The British against the Mau Mau uprising?  Not so good.  Compare the British successes after they moved to a "hearts and minds" strategy in Malaya to the lack of success under their "coercision and punishment" strategy prior.  When you look at modern history, brutal suppression has not been as successful as well done counterinsugency campaigns.  However, I am open to you using modern historical examples to demonstrate that brutal tactics can work, and how you would contain the second and third order effects from the 1+ billion Muslims living in this world when they see the Christian Crusaders committing genocide against their Muslim brothers while the puppet apostate regime next door sits back and does nothing to defend the honor of the holy cities.

 

Next, you clearly stated that Plutarch shouldn't listen to the left wing news and blogs, and instead listen to warriors.  I state that this is a fallacy.  You need to listen to all sources to piece together reality.  The press releases from the military don't fully reflect reality, the news stories from the media don't reflect reality, and the propaganda from the terrorists and insurgents don't fully reflect reality; however, the truth does lay somewhere among the amalgamation of all these sources. 

 

Lastly, here's the oped I was referring to earlier.  I really don't much to say about it right now - just wanted to throw it out there for all to see on the board.

 

Shek 

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
November 8, 2006

Iraqis Have To Reach Tipping Point Before We'll See End Of Violence

By William B. Caldwell IV, Guest Columnist

Last month, the Islamic world celebrated Ramadan. Unfortunately, extremist elements in Iraq -- particularly in Baghdad -- used this normally sacred and celebrated time to step up attacks on security forces and innocent Iraqi civilians. More than 100 U.S. service members and three times more Iraqi security forces were killed during October, in addition to scores of civilians.

A couple of weeks ago, I was widely quoted saying that this violence was disheartening. What is disheartening is that a minority of extremist elements in this country are inflicting suffering upon the vast majority of Iraqis who seek unity, security and prosperity. The average Baghdad citizens want jobs, electricity and streets where their children can play without fear. It is disheartening that extremists use a holy time such as Ramadan, when Muslims focus on peace and forgiveness, to try to shatter the collective Iraqi will and derail their elected government.

However, what is encouraging is how hard the government of Iraq is working --

"He later told The Associated Press that he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day ..."

 

 

 

"Previous estimates of Iraq deaths held that 45,000-50,000 have been killed in the nearly 44-month-old conflict, according to partial figures from Iraqi institutions and media reports."

 

 

 

115/day minimum...based on an estimate of a new, increased level of 100/day average.....We'll have to wait another week or two to see where the Turnip Truck Express stops next.

 

 

Stampeding, barefoot, unarmed crowds are mathematically the single greatest threat to Iraq. based upon an 1 man's personal, unofficial estimate, of course...

4. You suggest that Saddam’s example leaves us with a blueprint. However, Saddam’s strength lay in the Mukharbat and their ability to suppress rival factions of the Baathist regime. Even with the long arm of his secret police, Saddam could never defeat his foes, as demonstrated by the deals he ended up having to make post-ODS and prior to OIF with tribes throughout Iraq for marginal compliance, by the rise of the Shia militia, and by the example of the Kurds (and by this, I am talking of his inability to defeat them in the 70s and 80s prior to the implementation of the northern no-fly zone that all but guaranteed that Saddam couldn’t end their resistance). Now, that isn’t to say that he didn’t have an occasional air strike or retributional military operation (as evidenced by his sentence to hang), but this was not the glue that held together the regime’s power.  So, using the blueprint of Saddam, you could expect to be able to reduce violence to a minor level, but you’d always have a source of propaganda for the pan-Islamists.  Furthermore, you have to recall that Saddam built the Mukharbat over decades into the strength that it was.  We would be starting basically at scratch, and who would we use?  We don’t have too many Arabic speaking (and more specifically, Iraqi dialect speaking) operatives to begin seeding our own intel services for widespread use in the Iraq.  In the end, I don’t see us as having the physical capacity to build an apparatus like Saddam, even through proxies, and we would be starting out much further behind than what the Baathists started from many decades ago.

 

5.  Secretary Rumsfeld will leave behind a legacy of a victory in Afghanistan not consummated and a stalemate in Iraq, both products of attempting to cost minimize in a business where you need to resource maximize.  His efforts at "transformation" achieved minimal success, as the military was already moving towards net centric warfare, and these efforts detracted from fighting the war we have, as opposed to the war we want to fight decades from now.  No, Secretary Rumsfeld is not one of the greatest Secretaries of Defense that this nation has seen, and I predict that he will be seen more in the light of Secretary McNamara as the rough draft of history is edited with the passage of time.

I'm still waiting to hear of the PC attack plan that would have quelled
the hatred that has been brewing in Iraq for a long long time.



Fact is Iraq is and always was a long term war.  Build up the
Iraqi's and let them fight it, that's the plan.  Fix mistakes as
they happen, but to expect perfection is ludicrous. Go tell those
slaughtered by Saddam that they cannot have their revenge, see how far
you get.  Come up with a bribery plan, and watch them take the
bribe and do it anyway.  Nothing was going to stop the incessant
slaughter, if we hadn't gone it would still be Saddam slaughtering
everyone else.  We are there to bring effective government to the
country that will eventually turn this war into a police action, taking
decades if not centuries to quell the unrest.  



We could stay there for a decade with a million troops, effective
leadership, and massive success, never solving a single solitary
problem.  Only the Iraqi's can win this war, we are the outsiders.



This is and always was an Iraqi fight, we cannot stop the slaughter
short of sending in millions of troops and putting boots on every
corner, and leaving them there indefinitely.  We are the referee's
on their march toward effective government.  We show them the
rules and keep them playing as fair as possible, penalizing them when
necessary.

 

Not a PC attack plan but if we had gone into Iraq with at least 150,000 more troops, and quelled the looting when it started we might have had a chance to nip the insurgency before it got started.  I think we had a small (maybe very small) window of opportunity in 2003 to show the Iraqis what we could offer them.  Instead we patted ourselves on the backs and shrugged our shoulders about the looting and "stuff happening".

 

Not perfection but not a disaster either, there's a lot of middle ground between the perfect "democratic" Iraq and the mess we have now.

 

Nothing was going to stop the incessant
slaughter, if we hadn't gone it would still be Saddam slaughtering
everyone else.  We are there to bring effective government to the
country that will eventually turn this war into a police action, taking
decades if not centuries to quell the unrest.  

 

I beg to differ about the inevitable slaughter arugment; it's disingenous as the wholesale "slaughter" of Shiites and Sunnis did not exist in Iraq until recently.  Even Saddam as bad as he was, killed more Kurds than Shiites.  You cannot bring effective government to a region that is still in the middle of a war, you have to end the violence first in order for democracy to take hold.

 

We could stay there for a decade with a million troops, effective
leadership, and massive success, never solving a single solitary
problem.  Only the Iraqi's can win this war, we are the outsiders.

Well staying there for a decade with a million troops and massive success would ensure that that decade would at least be a peaceful one.  If they go back to killing each other that is their problem but I think it would be unlikely.

 

At any rate if you knew all along that this would be a long fight and the Iraqis had to take the lead, then why is the Administration not being honest with the American people about the length and cost of the war?

 

 

 

 

 

"The point is that the violence in Iraq is bad no matter how much you want to spin it; it's insurgency and civil war and sectarian violence all rolled into one.  How do we stop the violence?  Or should we?"

The point is that the violence in Iraq is bad no matter how much you want to spin it

 

Iraq civilian death toll hits record

The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 U.S. invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq's sectarian bloodbath.

The U.N. tally was more than three times higher than the total The Associated Press had tabulated for the month, and far more than the 2,866 U.S. service members who have died during all of the war.

The report on civilian casualties, handed out at a U.N. news conference in Baghdad, said the influence of militias was growing, and torture continued to be rampant, despite the government's vow to address human rights abuses.

"Hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad handcuffed, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing," the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq report said. "Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms."

The report painted a grim picture across the board, from attacks on journalists, judges and lawyers and the worsening situation of women to displacement, violence against religious minorities and the targeting of schools.

Based on figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry, the country's hospitals and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, the report said October's figure was higher than July's previously unprecedented civilian death toll of 3,590.

"I think the type of violence is different in the past few months," Gianni Magazzeni, the UNAMI chief in Baghdad, told the news conference. "There was a great increase in sectarian violence in activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal gangs."

He said "this phenomenon" has been typical since Sunni-Arab insurgents bombed a major Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

UNAMI's Human Rights Office continued to receive reports that Iraqi police and security forces are either infiltrated or act in collusion with militias, the report said.

It said that while sectarian violence is the main cause of the civilian killings, Iraqis also continue to be the victims of terrorist acts, roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, crossfire between rival gangs, or between police and insurgents, kidnappings, military operations, crime and police abuse.

Asked about the U.N. report, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called it "inaccurate and exaggerated" because "it is not based on official government reports."

Violence in Iraq is now out of control.  Following the suicide attacks on Sadr City (which killed over 200), Shiite militamen burned six Sunnis to death while Iraqi police looked on.  Sadr has threatened to pull out of the government if Maliki meets with Bush next week.  Sadr's bloc is also now demanding a timetable for US troops to leave.  At least 70 percent of Iraq's population want the US out in less than a year.  At least 3700 civilians died last month, and the new government is helpless to stop the violence.

 

I see US alternatives as follows:

 

1.)  Leave Iraq completely and allow Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other, and trust that Syria and Iran will stabilize the country.

 

2.)  Draw down US forces to 50-60,000 and redeploy to Kurdistan and push for an independent country there that is somewhat friendly toward the US, and allow Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other, and trust that Syria and Iran will stabilize the rest of the country.

 

3.)  Continue to "stay the course", and hope to train an ineffective police force, and pray that somehow democracy will take root, in the meanwhile allow Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other, and trust that Syria and Iran will help in stabilizing the country.

 

4.)  Stage a coup in Baghdad, overthrow Maliki, kill Sadr, and put a Shiite strongman in charge (Allwai) back fully Shiite repression of Sunnis, allow Sunnis and Shiites to kill each other, and hope that the Shiites come out on top.

 

5.)  Talk to Sunni insurgents, cut a deal for the Baathists and back a Sunni strongman to overthrow the Shiite government, kill Sadr, withdraw US troops, and allow Sunni repression of the Shiites to continue.

 

Four of these Five alternatives would call for a withdrawl or reduction of US troops, the fifth option is to continute what we are doing (basically nothing) and eroding our position in the ME.  There is no option that allows for an increase in American force levels as this option is unfeasible.  None of these options is ideal, but we have to be realistic about Iraq's future, they just don't want democracy.