ZFBoxcar

keep in mind that its only a temporary imposing of government. The constitution would have heavy American influences, but the government, the first one aside, would be elected by the Iraqi people, and after living under the constitution for a few years, should be allowed to vote to ratify it permanently. I think this is what will happen although of course nobody can know for sure.

Trooth

You have advocated waging all out war with no strategy off limits in Iran and the shelling of Fallujah to kill everyone therein.

Now, we could be arguing semantics here, but to me that is very much "kill them all let God sort it out".

Praxus

You have a habit of wildly misinteripting the things I say. I never said we should shell Fallujah to the ground. I said that when our troops come under fire, they should call in artillery and blast the crap out of everything around them [where the enemies are hiding].

I said no weapons/tactics/strategy should be ruled out for moral reasons.

I am atheist I can hold no such feeling

Trooth

I was responding to :-

That sounds pretty indescriminate to me. I accept your qualification now, perhaps to avoid confusion it would be better to qualify it at the time you said it.


Are there any other reasons?

Fair enough. I'll stick with just plain indescriminate then.

Praxus

Yes militarily it could be a bad decision.

Yes I should have.

Officer of Engineers

LATimes.com

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions

THE OCCUPATION
In Iraq, Talk Tough and Carry a Big Stick
The proud people of Fallouja never felt "conquered" by the U.S. What they understand is the use of force.
By William M. Arkin
William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail: warkin@igc.org.

April 18, 2004

WASHINGTON — During the major combat phase of the Iraq war, which concluded last year, one important corner of the country escaped the ravages of battle: Fallouja. The Army entered Baghdad from the southwest and the Marines from the southeast. In the north, peshmerga fighters and special forces took the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. In the western desert, Army Rangers sought phantom weapons of mass destruction. But with no Republican Guard division stationed nearby, the sprawling western suburb of Fallouja was largely spared — even from the postwar frenzy of looting that devastated other parts of the country.

When occupiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Fallouja, they were stretched thin, with responsibility not just for the Fallouja-Ramadi corridor, which is home to more than 1 million Iraqis, but also for the entire western third of the country. And why were they stretched so thin? Because the U.S. completely misread Iraqi society.

Mistake No. 1 was not understanding the societal importance of force. Mistake No. 2 was not understanding the societal importance of pride.

The U.S. expected that once Saddam Hussein was defeated, the need for force would simply fade away. This was a war against a dictator and his cronies, the reasoning went, not against the Iraqi people. So once the bad guys were removed from power, the rest of the Iraqis would pull together with those who had ousted Hussein to form an enlightened and democratic society.

But things don't work that way in Iraq. As far back as memory extends for most Iraqis, the spoils (and the power) have gone to the tough. Brutality — and the fear it inspires — have been the central organizing principal of Iraqi society. That can't just be turned off overnight.

In a place like Fallouja, which never felt itself to have been "conquered" during the war, it was only a matter of time before the hands-off and "soft power" American approach to peacekeeping would be viewed as a sign of weakness.

In Washington, where I spent last week talking with military types, there was widespread frustration about the situation in Iraq. Our troops today are expected to do it all, and in large measure they succeed. They are unmatched on the battlefield, and increasingly skilled at peacekeeping and "stability operations." One of the strengths of our forces is their inherent humanity and absence of brutality. But in Iraq, that doesn't seem to be enough.

It's no wonder that a lot of soldiers — and many of their commanders too — yearn for a clearer definition of their role. On the battlefield, however awful things get, there is enormous clarity. The purpose is unequivocal and the enemy obvious.

Ironically, some Iraqis also seem to long for the clarity of war. The people of Fallouja weren't physically defeated and haven't been made to pay for their support of the old regime. If you haven't been defeated, and the occupiers seem to want to be friends and to "rebuild," it is no wonder that those who were deprived of the power they once wielded have slowly gained the confidence to retake the offensive — and their country.

The U.S. assumed its offer of peace and hope would be accepted as an act of kindness. But it was tendered to an Iraqi population that has been fighting brutal wars for more than 20 years — in Iran, in Kuwait and within its own borders. Iraq is a country filled with men who have not only lived with but embraced violence.

The president insisted last week that what is happening in Iraq is "not a popular uprising." The latest conventional wisdom on Iraq is that the U.S. will have a hard time winning hearts and minds after so many casualties and so much destruction. This is wrong. It's not that there has been too much force — that is something Iraqis understand.

In its absence, in places like Fallouja, a certain type of Iraqi pride has gone unchecked. And that is the second thing America has ignored at its peril.

The Iraq I got to know during the years following the 1991 Persian Gulf War was an enormously proud country. It was a nation able to overlook its own contradictions and flaws, a place where intense nationalism allowed people to at once loathe and respect Hussein. Throughout Iraq, and not just in the Sunni Triangle, people took pride in Hussein's grand design. Iraq's healthcare systems, schools and socialist infrastructure were unique in the Arab world. Then as now, Iraqis were united in their pride: Their country was the one Arab nation that really stood up to the United States.

If some Iraqis have rallied around Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, it is because he is not George W. Bush, not L. Paul Bremer III, not some American lackey on the Governing Council. And the U.S. needs to understand this if it is to find a way out of the current dilemma.

In the short term, force may be necessary, because it is what Iraqis understand. But in the long term, Iraqis need an Iraqi leader. For now, many seem to be looking for any leader willing to stand up to the occupation — as Iraq, in their perception, once proudly stood up to the world. Sadr taps into all sorts of resentments and fills a vacuum. He is a homegrown leader like Saddam Hussein, a familiar leader who understands force and pride.

The U.S. can probably subdue Fallouja and dislodge Sadr, but it can't truly win the war in Iraq by doing so. The limitation of the American approach is that, as long as no genuine Iraqi leader emerges to lead, there will be no shortage of Sadrs promising the Iraqis what they know best: continued conflict.


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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

__________________
Chimo

Praxus

This just in the Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (AKA "Destroyer of Spanish Economy") has just order Spanish troop withdraw.

Confed999

I thought he wasn't going to pull them until the end of June? If the lying POS doesn't send them to Afghanistan, then the heck with Spain.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Anon

"If this were back in the 1940's Fullujah wouldn't exsist anymore. We would have been hitting it with Artillery and B-17's for the last week."

That was Praxus's original statement, and it is ENTIRELY accurate.

"We need to bring in a few thousand reinforcements to Fullujah, then they need to go into the city, whenever they come under attack they call in artillery and blow the **** out of everyone."

His statement that started all the controversy....and by the way the US did reinforce, and may yet still go in...arty and all. That would make his 'controversial' statement not only a sound military observation, but perhaps even prophetic.


"That sounds pretty indescriminate to me. I accept your qualification now, perhaps to avoid confusion it would be better to qualify it at the time you said it."

There was nothing indiscriminate at all about it. Perhaps your lack of understanding of how artillery strikes are called and executed has you confused. The only 'indiscriminate' part about his statement was 'blow em all up'. By 'all' i would imagine praxus meant 'all' of the enemy fighters.

I on the other hand would have already ordered the whole shithole carpet bombed. Probably because i see the "War Vs Islam" as inevitable, and would rather fight it now while it would be relatively easy....instead of later when it would not.

Frankly, were it up to me i'd abolish all religions. They're all so much ******** anyway.

Now you can call me 'indiscriminate', and you can also know in advance that i don't give a **** what you think.

I'm no facist, i'm just sick of ****ing around while our enemy grows in strength.

Ray

Honduras is also quitting.
of the 30 only 28 will remain.

Australia has 800 men. How many combat troops?

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

Trooth

The forties was one of the most barbarous decades of man's existence, i would not wish to return to such tactics and see no need to in the current situation.

Perhaps i don't understand the finer points of how artillery strikes are called. But i don't remember going to war to fight a territorial battle for complete domination and subjugation of another country (in forties style). We did not go in to set up colonies etc. Therefore mass extermination ain't the option.
Part of the problem with this war is the we all have to have our own reasons, i guess, because the official ones change every week.

[quote]
Frankly, were it up to me i'd abolish all religions. They're all so much ******** anyway.
[/quote[
Fortunately it isn't. It's not that i disagree with your views. But societie's were one person's view is supreme are just plain wrong.

Don't read this then

Are you convinced that your proposed actions would not prove the militants correct and cause more moderates to believe that "the US must be the great Satan, it has just sent a load of heavy bombers to lay waste to a religious site" ?

Confed999

Everyone allways has their own reasons to support or oppose everything, that's nothing new to this war. Here the official reason is still WMD and liberation. It is a valid reason, so there is no point in changing it.
Then they weren't "moderates". Locate the enemy, and destroy the enemy.

Trooth

I have no particular problem with liberation. But i don't class killing people as liberating them. Artillery in cities is going to kill innocent people. We are killing more innocents in Iraq / Afghanistan than we have had killed by the fundamentalists.

I think that is somewhat simplistic. The enemy has less information available to them than yourself, and what they have is more extremely biased.

We in the west (possibly not yourself) receive the news we want to hear. We buy the papers that have similar opinion to ourselves (Guardian left, Telegraph right, for example), visit "friendly" websites and watch / listen to the news programmes that more closely follow our opinion.

I have just got back from LA and was gutted that my hotel room didn't seem to have Fox News available. I hate the station's bias (admittedly i could be out of date on this), but that doesn't make it something that i shouldn't watch, otherwise i will just watch the stuff biased in my direction which confirms rather than challenges my understanding.

With all that in mind, it is easy for anyone to form a wrong opinion (including me though obviously we can be fairly sure i am always right ), be they moderates or even atheists who just don't like having their houses turned to rubble.

Confed999

From what I've seen the maximum in Iraq is 10,000. Who killed who, and who's fault is each one? According to UNICEF Saddam starved that many people in two months.
Simple to say, hard to do. That is still what needs to be done, no matter how simple it seems.
Then you hate all news. There is no such thing as unbiased news, somebody with an opinion wrote every bit.
Then they should have taken care of this themselves. Simplistic, but no less true.

Trooth

My point is that you can only make judgements based on the information you have. Which is of course the underpinning sentiment of propaganda.

Therefore, if the evidence you have is carpet bombing, the opinion you form is that you are to be exterminated.