Future War

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Yes, of course, which is why the US should stay there and sort it out."
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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that but as Ollie and others said in the other thread I have become less and less in favour of that as it seems to get worse every day.

"The benefits of hindsight! It's easy now to say that all of this was obvious to anyone, even to people who had no interest in the region or the struggles of the Iraqi people. What did Iraqi dissidents say? What did Iraqi opposition parties say?"
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Well, I'm not sure that it is the benefit of hindsight because I seem to remember reading again and again that nothing but chaos would ensue. Even if there were many people arguing the opposite, I think it was irresponsible to say the least for the US to only believe that side of the argument. I believe that they basically heard only what they wanted to hear. They were reckless and they had no back-up plan.

"I think that we've run into two problems in this thread:

1. Attempting to prove or disprove the legitmacy of the invasion - but I guess I don't mind that because it's important"
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Yeah but every thread ends up being about that. I'm sorry if I derailed it.

"2. Slippage all over the place - Islamists, insurgents, ordinary Muslims, the fertile crescent, the penninsula, whatever else, have all blended in to each other at various points, which has made things more difficult than needs be."
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Yeah.

Probably not that different from Saddam's line ...
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Doesn't matter whose line it is, it turned out to be pretty much true didn't it? That's not a moral judgment, just saying that that is what happened.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
What about specific incidents which have, like Bloody Sunday, lead to a direct increase of tension and the insurgency?

The shooting of protesters in Fallujah on 28th April 2003, and the refusal by US command to pay blood money to the families can and has been seen as the turning point which lead to the insurgency, in that particular city, at least.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
IdleRich said:
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that but as Ollie and others said in the other thread I have become less and less in favour of that as it seems to get worse every day.
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Who the hell is 'Ollie'? ;)
IdleRich said:
Well, I'm not sure that it is the benefit of hindsight because I seem to remember reading again and again that nothing but chaos would ensue. Even if there were many people arguing the opposite, I think it was irresponsible to say the least for the US to only believe that side of the argument. I believe that they basically heard only what they wanted to hear. They were reckless and they had no back-up plan.
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It's also worth pointing out that, quite apart from things like Abu Ghraib and the shooting of protesters - not to mention the disasterously stupid raising of Ol' Glory in Baghdad - that the basic infrastructure reconstruction has been an absolute shambles. Something like $23 billion of Iraqi money is 'unaccounted for' (i.e. embezzled, wasted or simply stolen) - and that was in a Panorama report nealy a year ago, it's probably more than that now. Money has been spend on public swimming pools while operating theatres have raw sewage sloshing around on the floor.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Doesn't matter whose line it is, it turned out to be pretty much true didn't it? That's not a moral judgment, just saying that that is what happened.
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I'm also interested in hearing why people think that Saddam would be/was able to acheive what the American Armed Forces cannot do.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I'm also interested in hearing why people think that Saddam would be/was able to acheive what the American Armed Forces cannot do."
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I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you asking what makes me think Saddam prevented civil war better than the US or how I think he did it?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
vimothy said:
The latter: What has Saddam got that America doesn't?
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Even the slightest compunction about imprisoning, torturing or killing thousands of civillians?
As badly as (some of) the Americans have behaved, they're not half as brutal as Saddam's goons were, are they?
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
vimothy said:
The latter: What has Saddam got that America doesn't?
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The advantage that comes from being a part of the nation you're oppressing. A foreign occupying army is always vulnerable to a) nationalist resentment b) the knowledge your opponent has that you are far from home, in alien terrain, unable to speak the lingo, spending a freaking fortune and liable to be undermined by domestic opinion (surely your 4GW thang is partly about this last point).
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
" Not even the slightest compunction about imprisoning, torturing or killing thousands of civillians?"
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(I think that that should say not at the start)

"The advantage that comes from being a part of the nation you're oppressing"
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I would guess that both of these are correct, along with the fact that after the invasion there was a power vacuum and all hell broke loose. The Americans have to push the jack back in to the box, not just keep it in there in the first place.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
From the Totten article:

“Most, if not all, the terrorists are the old Baath Party members,” Mam Rostam said. “They changed their names and became an Islamist party. But they are the same guys. They have unified with some Sunnis around the Southwest of Kirkuk because they are living in this area. They are making these attacks to make this democratic experiment after Saddam fail.”

I had heard much the same from members of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Suleimaniya. What frustrates them most about the U.S. military strategy is the American prioritization of Al Qaeda. The vast majority of the violence, according to my Kurdish sources, is committed by Baathists and old Baathists under new names. Failure to identify Iraq’s principal terrorist organizations and treat them accordingly is the number one reason why Iraq is such a catastrophe. At least this is what I have been told. Kurdish officials I’ve met who try to explain this to the Americans are dismissed out of hand and ignored utterly.

“So their goals are not local to Kirkuk,” I said. “They are for the whole of Iraq.”

“They want all of Iraq to fail,” Mam Rostam said. “They want the Americans to feel that they are not able to succeed in this area. They want to force the Americans to negotiate with the Baath Party.”

“So they aren’t necessarily targeting you or us,” I said.

“They are targeting anyone just to achieve instability,” Mam Rostam said.

“So there’s no plan other than violence,” Patrick said.

“There is no plan,” Mam Rostam said. “It doesn’t matter where. It’s just random violence. Sometimes they bomb a kindergarten in their own neighborhood. Or a university. Or the civil office. Or a municipality. Or wherever. In these offices there are people of every nationality and religion. There is no way to say there are only Sunnis or whatever in these places. This is a multicultural country. Everyone is everywhere.”
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Even the slightest compunction about imprisoning, torturing or killing thousands of civillians?
As badly as (some of) the Americans have behaved, they're not half as brutal as Saddam's goons were, are they?
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Very true - it seems as though we're criticising the USAF for its harsh treatment of suspects, but at the same time lamenting the lack of a strong-man dictator with the necessary unscrupulousness to thoroughly put down the insurgency.

The advantage that comes from being a part of the nation you're oppressing. A foreign occupying army is always vulnerable to a) nationalist resentment b) the knowledge your opponent has that you are far from home, in alien terrain, unable to speak the lingo, spending a freaking fortune and liable to be undermined by domestic opinion (surely your 4GW thang is partly about this last point).
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Spot on as well - Brecher thinks we should have let the Kurds suppress the rebelion, because they understand the people and the culture, and that they would have happily dealt with baathist militants in a way that the baathists would have understood: with extreme predjudice.

I think that we definitely do have problems fighting 4GW, partly because of what a democracy can and can't stomach, and partly because of what a professional 2GW AF can and can't do in unfamiliar terrain.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Very true - it seems as though we're criticising the USAF for its harsh treatment of suspects, but at the same time lamenting the lack of a strong-man dictator with the necessary unscrupulousness to thoroughly put down the insurgency.
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I think there are several points worth making on this:

- we most definitely SHOULD be criticizing (and, indeed, punishing) all US and UK personel who are involved in prisoner abuses or other human rights violations.The fact there are people out there worse than 'us' does not mean 'we' are above moral judgement for our own actions (although I'm sure you're not saying that);
- what we're lamenting is the lack of *some* kind of political (and military) entity with the wherewithall to stop (or, more realistically, lessen) the horrific violence in Iraq and attempt to instill some sense of national unity and with it the chance for infrastructure rebuilding and economic stability. In a less messed-up world this would be an Iraqi government, proportionally and fairly representing the different factions and sponsored by an America with purely humanitarian interests. It should hardly be worth saying that this is not currently the case;
- it's a tragic indictment of the situation if people are thinking "At least this mess woulnd't have happened under Saddam". I don't think a dictator is what we need here, since it would invariable freeze the ethnic and religious faultlines that are currently - and bloodily - realligning themselves: there'd be no way you could say the whole thing wouldn't flare up again in ten, twenty or thirty years time, with the threat of a fully nuclear-capable Iran, perhaps significant Chinese interests in the area and God knows what else to deal with.
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Interesting (negative) assessment of the surge and Petraeus by Lind, one of the most perceptive 4GW writers:

If we consider the operational and strategic situations in Iraq, we can easily see why no amount of tactical success can save us. Strategically, we are fighting to support a Shi’ite regime closely aligned with Iran, our most potent local opponent. Every tactical success merely moves us closer to giving Iran a new ally in the form of a restored Iraqi state under Shi’ite domination. The more tactical successes we win, the worse our strategic situation gets. This flows not from any tactical failure (though there have been plenty of those), but from botching the strategic level from the outset. Saddam's Iraq was the main regional counterweight to Iran, which means we should not have attacked it.

Operationally, we have been maneuvered by Iraq's Shi’ites into fighting their civil war for them, focusing our efforts against the Sunnis. As I have observed before, we are in effect the Shi’ites’ unpaid Hessians. That is why Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army not to fight us in Sadr City. It is not that he is afraid of us; he is simply making a rational operational decision.
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http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=10710
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Was chatting to some Iranians last night - they said that they regreted overthrowing the Shah, and that the revolution has gone very badly wrong. They (owners of a pizza place a friend works for) said that they accepted that it was their own fault, but that they were hopeful Khamenei would be overthrown soon. They seemed pretty positive about American intervention as well.
 
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