Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

[RF]

lwd, what you offer is a wish list.

To leave behind a stable state, unlikely to align with a terrorist. That is the spin. So how do you do it - without havibg to go back in again and again, each time it fails..... How do you stabilise the unstabilisable?

Al Qaeda has been taken down a notch? Well, yes it has, at least twice now. But its still there.

[Karl Heidenreich]

lwd:

lwd, what you offer is a wish list.

To leave behind a stable state, unlikely to align with a terrorist. That is the spin. So how do you do it - without havibg to go back in again and again, each time it fails..... How do you stabilise the unstabilisable?

Al Qaeda has been taken down a notch? Well, yes it has, at least twice now. But its still there.

The US is acting in such naive way in both places that it is surprising... even more considering the bitter and terrible experience in Vietman. Such things as to support a "US friendly" goverment, imposed by the force of arms against the wish and will of an important amount of indigenous population is folly, specially in Afganistan or fragmented Irak.

One thing that made Hussein famous was his capacity to hold together such a splitted society as that of Irak. Of course, in order to achieve it he used brutal force and no concience at all.

Non conventional warfare is more than fighting and winning on the ground, as Vietnam showed when the US Army always came out the victor on the battlefield, but more an social issue. And social in both parts: the country in which the fighting takes place and the US.

"Pacification" or "police action" or "limited wars" or "proxy wars" or whatever terminology has shown, clearly, that the US cannot fight and expect to win. Not because of military incompetence (as that of the French in Indochina in the 50ies that ended in Dien Bien Phu, which was clearly a military defeat) but because the US society will not allow a fighting for years... or decades, with a constant flow of coffins flown from the battle to mainland just because liberal press and politicians will cry "defeat" even before the real strategical goals are set for a final confrontation.

The US can win those proxy wars? Yes, but that needs time and that is something CNN and many politicians will not grant. Is it there other solution, another option? Of course, but that will mean the US president will need to take a decision that no one took since Harry Truman. And there is no Ronald Reagan now. Not even Bush could have been tough enough.

When the US and Vietnam met in the Peace talks in 1972-1973 in Paris (I think it was Paris) Colonel Harry Summers met a NVA officer and told him something like this: "You know that you never beat us on the field and could have wiped you out of the face of the Earth", and the gook answer him: "That doesn´t matter, we knew you will never do it, nuke us" and after some seconds he continued: "this is the demostration that force cannot win over an idea". It was when Summers had to admit that the US failed were others had not, so he replied: "That´s trash and you know it. The Khan did a pretty good job in Central Asia hundreds of years ago wiping out the jihad declared against him from Bagdad."

The American problem is the one that they think they can fight all wars on their terms, civilized terms in an antiseptical way, with reduced costs. The hi tech gadgets are available but not the will to choose amongst those options: potracted warfare or total war. That is why Truman fired McArthur in Korea: he was not willing to accept neither, he wasn´t to accept to escalate the conflict in order to win it.

And after more than fifty years from Korea, forty from Vietnam and all the lessons taken, the mistakes are being commited again. Defeat is the only outcome that the US could expect if brave decisions are not taken. Now, Obama is not likely to be the brave leader to taken them. Nothing good can come from confusion, as Maquiaveli warned long time ago.

[Bgile]

Karl,

I agree that the current course in Afghanistan is likely to end the way we would like it to, and I feel the same way about Iraq. However, I disagree that Reagan or any other US president would have ordered the use of nuclear weapons in either country.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Bgile,

And that knowledge is what led to victory to those oposing the US.

[RF]

The US is acting in such naive way in both places that it is surprising... even more considering the bitter and terrible experience in Vietman. Such things as to support a "US friendly" goverment, imposed by the force of arms against the wish and will of an important amount of indigenous population is folly, specially in Afganistan or fragmented Irak.

One thing that made Hussein famous was his capacity to hold together such a splitted society as that of Irak. Of course, in order to achieve it he used brutal force and no concience at all.

Non conventional warfare is more than fighting and winning on the ground, as Vietnam showed when the US Army always came out the victor on the battlefield, but more an social issue. And social in both parts: the country in which the fighting takes place and the US.

"Pacification" or "police action" or "limited wars" or "proxy wars" or whatever terminology has shown, clearly, that the US cannot fight and expect to win. Not because of military incompetence (as that of the French in Indochina in the 50ies that ended in Dien Bien Phu, which was clearly a military defeat) but because the US society will not allow a fighting for years... or decades, with a constant flow of coffins flown from the battle to mainland just because liberal press and politicians will cry "defeat" even before the real strategical goals are set for a final confrontation.

The US can win those proxy wars? Yes, but that needs time and that is something CNN and many politicians will not grant. Is it there other solution, another option? Of course, but that will mean the US president will need to take a decision that no one took since Harry Truman. And there is no Ronald Reagan now. Not even Bush could have been tough enough.

This really encapsulates the problem - namely finishing the job properly. Toppling Saddam and removing Taliban from government in Afghanistan are the easy bits. But there was no clear cut US strategy to deal with the crucial immediate aftermath of the open warfare, no strategic or tactical planning for the future. So the highly desirable initial goals, once achieved, are then screwed up by the politicians. The perfect example of this was Desert Storm - half a victory. What was needed was absolute victory, as per FDR's speech to Congress on 8 December 1941. In other words Kuwait City should have been merely the first objective for Desert Storm, not the last, which should have been Baghdad. But John Major persuaded George Bush senior not to truly finish the job. So the second attempt started in 2003. We are still there. Should have been sorted in 1991.

[lwd]

lwd, what you offer is a wish list.

Actually part of one but isn't that what all objectives are.

To leave behind a stable state, unlikely to align with a terrorist. That is the spin.

??? Not by my understanding of the term "spin" but that may be a British vs US defintion problem. Care to explain?

So how do you do it - without havibg to go back in again and again, each time it fails..... How do you stabilise the unstabilisable?

It's not at all clear that it is "unstabalisable" or that the US will have to go back "again and again" indeed

Al Qaeda has been taken down a notch? Well, yes it has, at least twice now. But its still there.

That's the nature of such organizations. Cannot the same be said of the IRA?

[lwd]

... This really encapsulates the problem - namely finishing the job properly. Toppling Saddam and removing Taliban from government in Afghanistan are the easy bits. But there was no clear cut US strategy to deal with the crucial immediate aftermath of the open warfare, no strategic or tactical planning for the future.

I'm not sure no planning is quite right. The problem was the idealogical aversion to "nation building" resulted in a simple in and out plan. Whose deficienicies became very clear once the "in" was accomplished.

So the highly desirable initial goals, once achieved, are then screwed up by the politicians.

The problem isn't that the intial goals were screwed up it's that they didn't really understand what the ramifications of those goals were.

The perfect example of this was Desert Storm - half a victory.

That was the price of the coalition.

.... In other words Kuwait City should have been merely the first objective for Desert Storm, not the last, which should have been Baghdad. But John Major persuaded George Bush senior not to truly finish the job. So the second attempt started in 2003. We are still there. Should have been sorted in 1991.

Many in the US and Britain saw that unfortunatly the Saudis and other important members of the coalition didn't.

[hammy]

The US , and it's allies , do not appear to study history , or if they do , regard it as irrelevant to present events .

Iraq is merely lines drawn on a map by Mr Sykes assistants at the British Foreign office , and those of Monsieur Picot of the French Foreign ministry , in the course of dismembering the remains of the old Ottoman empire and allocating the spoils to the victorious allies , late in WW1 , prior to the peace treaties which followed .
While educated members of the ruling classes in both Britain and France imagined that the new Iraq was a natural successor to Biblical states such as Ur and Babylon , and the later Mesopotamian Arab civilisations centered on Bagdad , few were aware that the new boundaries , by drawing straight lines on the map , were cutting across natural boundaries and populations on the ground , nor that populations of Kurds in the north , and Marsh Arabs in the south , would be included as incompatible minorities within the new "state" , nor that a mixed shiite and sunni muslim state would be bound to be permanently in tension .

Or , maybe they didnt care . Or , maybe this is the old British tactic for colonial management , Divide and Rule .

Iraq was then run as a puppet state by Britain , principally as a strategic necessity as the source of the royal navy's fuel oil , until shortly after WW2 .
Saddam was merely the last of a series of Dictatorial strongmen since , and it is interesting that he gave his elite divisions names like "Hammurabi" and so on because he resembled nothing more like , than those ancient potentates .

Jolly good riddance to the chap , say I .

The mistake I feel was in staying on as occupiers in Iraq after the second war .
Had Bush and Blair called an Immediate full meeting of the Organisation for Arab Unity and addressed them along the lines of
" Following 9/11 we've had just about enough of this ! -- we've now got rid of Saddam , the rapist of Kuwait , now you lot are bloody well going to go in there , get your armed forces into the towns , keep the peace , and then get a plesbicite sorted out and new boundaries drawn where they ought to be -- or else we'll do it ourselves and occupy all your oil fields to pay for it " ,
then , I think that despite a lot of complaint the Arab nations would have acceeded to Western demands , and the Western coalition units could have been withdrawn to remote locations while Arabs policed Arabs in the urban districts .
Sure , there would have been some trouble , but not to the level there was , and I think by now we would be pretty much out of there .
But Commercial interests and Foreign relations and vested interests got in the way , as they always do .
The West's policy in the whole Middle East area is to have everybody there at loggerheads with each other , with wise old Uncle Sam and the British and French "Arabists" playing referee , power broker and arms peddlars .The last thing anyone in power in the West wants is for Arabs to be empowered and sitting down together to make their own decisions .
At the end of the day , several hundred thousand "Iraqis" died . " So what ? " asks the cynic .
Several thousand U S and Allied soldiers were killed or maimed . " So there's some sort of shortage of urban poor people to go in the military ? " asks the cynic .

As for Afghanistan , that is a "state" defined by the borders of it's neighbours , the ungovernable mess of hostile territory left in the middle . Again , an even worse mish-mash of mutually inimical and homicidal populations , away from the cities and the plains things are no more advanced than in the novels of Rudyard Kipling , a hundred years ago .
Except that the weaponry ( on both sides ) has got a lot more lethal .
The place was unable to be subdued by Alexander the Great , nor by anyone since .
Britain gave up a century ago , and merely recruited numbers of the hostile young savage hillmen from the tribal areas of what is now Pakistan into the Frontier force regiments , with wages and pensions for doing what they were already doing , except these were turned loose to inflict mayhem among their neighbouring troublesome rivals , which they did , with enthusiasm , and with occasional homicidal excursions into our World Wars , for more than a century .
With a "political officer" and/or "British Resident" breathing down the neck of all the local tribal chiefs this ensured periods of relative quiet at least , and left the lower lands of NorthWest India at peace , while the Afghan side was told they would be left alone if they left us alone .

it is Instructive to remember that the one thing which seems to have acted as the final straw as far as the West was concerned in the present chapter of the conflict there , triggering our Intervention there with ground forces , was not the advance to power of the Taliban ( who were initially viewed , at least in Britain , as a clean living , anti drug , koran studying bunch , alright MAYBE a bit fanatical and not up to speed on the womens rights bit , but hey , what do you expect , after all Cromwell's Ironsides stabled their horses in churches , and that turned out all right in the end , .. hmmm ? ) .

Then the "Buddas of Bamiyan" episode occurred , the ancient giant carvings into the cliff face along the old trade road , shelled and explosive charge blasted to bits , -- because young men are silly and vandalise things , " for a laugh " , in this case egged on by some ignorant fanatical muslim mullahs , to whom these things represented an imaging by the sinful hand of man of things that are holy , which is forbidden by the revelations of God , as given to Mahommed , and written in the holy Koran .
And suddenly the Museum-going , archaeologist respecting , "civilised" West decided that these were not "Clean young men , if (regrettably) a bit on the extreme side" but " Extremist Islamic Fundamentalist Fanatics Who Are Evil " , whereas the truth of course is that they were both these things in part at the same time , but uneducated adolescents mostly bored out of their minds with dull and poverty filled lives up on some dusty high place , for whom this was fun , and as natural for them as kicking a ball about would be for Western adolescent males .

The present general situation , where British garrisons routinely hide in makeshift forts ( which mostly appear to be poorly laid out - plainly fortification and field engineering are discarded items for study in todays army )
with occasional foot patrols into the surrounding country , as if this was the moors around Crossmaglen in Northern Ireland ,
is both useless and stupid , for , being besieged ( and we ARE being besieged ) our only purpose there is to act as bait for what is called Al Quaida . Whatever that is / was .

As Orde Wingate demonstrated in Palestine in the troubles there in the 1930s with his Night Patrols , the only way to fight Guerillas is to get stripped down to light Infantry kit and then get out there amongst the enemy , where your superior command and control , fitness and training and weapons expertise and higher technology can be used to beat them .
The same lesson applies from Kenya with the Mau-mau problem , from Malaya with the communist chinese insurgency there , and from the Green Berets actions in the indochina conflict including Vietnam .
The problem is not with the Afghans resident in the area ( those who have not wisely decamped elsewhere that is ) but with the hillmen coming down from the high country along the border with Pakistan , their cousins who live over the border in Pakistan , the Uzbeks and the other tribes of hillmen living along the northern border with what used to be Russia , and every Islamic fanatic/bored young man in the muslim world , who fancies going there for a bit of fun and adventure so he can strutt his stuff back at home afterwards .
In Britain now each of our fatal casualties is sombre national news , as if it was the evening of the first day of the Somme , while the contingents returning from tours of duty there are paraded through the streets ( and last weekend , in front of a Football crowd , for Gods sake ! ) as if Waterloo had just been won , all in an attempt to ; -
A ) Make the current government/Gordon Brown look bad , while ;-
B ) Drum up support for what both the Army and the public ( those with a brain ) fully realise is an unwinnable war , carried on at a dreadful cost in human life and suffering , and of course , money .
Making the streets of Britain safe is what we are told they are doing there .
Nonsense .
Us being there is precisely what is provoking any trouble which happens here .
That and the Israelis , some of whom appear to have become as bad as the SS in the way they treat some of the Palestinians , but we musn't say anything bad about them , because we are all so guilty about what happened to the Jews in WW2 . No wonder the Arab world views us as hypocrites , and , provoked to madness , attack us .
Short of a revolution here , though , things are not going to change , whoever the next Government here may be .
And whatever " achievement " eventually transpires in Afghanistan will be good until the next tribal uprising , religious crusade or Army coup-de-etat .

Merry Christmas !

[Bgile]

Funny in all that not one mention of 9/11. A lot of young men enlisted in the armed forces of the US after that, and it's still much in our minds over here, reminded every time we see an old photo of New York City. I think people just felt they had to do something about it, even if it wasn't the right thing. Actually, probably nothing is the right thing.

I hate to imagine what is going to happen when some of those bored young men blow up one of our cities.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Bgile:

Funny in all that not one mention of 9/11. A lot of young men enlisted in the armed forces of the US after that, and it's still much in our minds over here, reminded every time we see an old photo of New York City. I think people just felt they had to do something about it, even if it wasn't the right thing. Actually, probably nothing is the right thing.

I hate to imagine what is going to happen when some of those bored young men blow up one of our cities.

Sixty eight years ago, when the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor, the US recruit offices barely handed the avalanche of recruits, enough to fill some sixty Army divisions, four Marine divisions and at least eight Air Forces and several fleets. As far as I know, the US Army still has ten divisons and the intent is to cut at least two of them.

The people has changed from 1940 to now. The way to get things better is to have, in the first, a good leader, like Ronald Reagan. But with the last incompetents as Clinton, Bush and this "do good" commie there is little hope left. Not a problem: my country is in it´s own decline and prone to be "eaten" by the resurgent left of Latin America.

Best regards,

[lwd]

.... The mistake I feel was in staying on as occupiers in Iraq after the second war .
Had Bush and Blair called an Immediate full meeting of the Organisation for Arab Unity and addressed them along the lines of
" Following 9/11 we've had just about enough of this ! -- we've now got rid of Saddam , the rapist of Kuwait , now you lot are bloody well going to go in there , get your armed forces into the towns , keep the peace , and then get a plesbicite sorted out and new boundaries drawn where they ought to be -- or else we'll do it ourselves and occupy all your oil fields to pay for it " ,
then , I think that despite a lot of complaint the Arab nations would have acceeded to Western demands , and the Western coalition units could have been withdrawn to remote locations while Arabs policed Arabs in the urban districts .

It's not clear that this would have worked even if it was politically feasable which it wasn't.

Sure , there would have been some trouble , but not to the level there was , and I think by now we would be pretty much out of there .

Actually we'd probably be back with an even worse mess to clean up.

But Commercial interests and Foreign relations and vested interests got in the way , as they always do .

As well as domestic politics and some common sense.

...Then the "Buddas of Bamiyan" episode occurred , the ancient giant carvings into the cliff face along the old trade road , shelled and explosive charge blasted to bits , -- because young men are silly and vandalise things , " for a laugh " , in this case egged on by some ignorant fanatical muslim mullahs , to whom these things represented an imaging by the sinful hand of man of things that are holy , which is forbidden by the revelations of God , as given to Mahommed , and written in the holy Koran .
And suddenly the Museum-going , archaeologist respecting , "civilised" West decided that these were not "Clean young men , if (regrettably) a bit on the extreme side" but " Extremist Islamic Fundamentalist Fanatics Who Are Evil " , ...

It was hardly sudden to anyone paying attention. Well before the budda incident it was clear that they were not nice people. The AQ training camps on the other hand were what really reulted in troops on the ground.

[hammy]

Funny in all that not one mention of 9/11. A lot of young men enlisted in the armed forces of the US after that, and it's still much in our minds over here, reminded every time we see an old photo of New York City. I think people just felt they had to do something about it, even if it wasn't the right thing. Actually, probably nothing is the right thing.

I hate to imagine what is going to happen when some of those bored young men blow up one of our cities.

Actually it is in there , in the suggestion of what Bush/Blair could have thrown down on the table to the Arab world after 1992 .
As a friend and ally of the U S it may assist you if I state our take on the events of 9/11 which is that generally here we feel that what happened that day , though very shocking for you all , was damn all compared to what the Luftwaffe did here in Britain in WW2 .
Even in my own , very provincial , city there were some raids , and I can show you some of the many still empty sites here where the bombs fell , even today . My college years were spent in Coventry , where the whole centre was bombed out and rebuilt after the war . That was destruction , what you in the US got was a flea-bite on an elephant .

America itself got away without a scratch in both world wars , probably unfortunately , because it meant that the last good dose of trouble you really experienced on your own doorstep was during your Civil War , and you as a people have long forgotten what war is really like , and you think you are all untouchable and invulnerable and that it is never going to happen to you lot .

That arrogance is why the US is hated all over the world , despite all the good things that the US does , and why you are derided when you storm into someone elses country and treat them with all the superior contempt of victorious Union troops addressing a bunch of freed Alabama negroes , the error that was made by your Marines in Somalia .

I well remember the day of 9/11 here and one of the guys who works for me calling up the steps to turn on the Radio to listen to the BBC " because it sounds as if the yanks have copped a right packet this time " . So you did . I'm not glad you did , and I'm sorry for the poor people who lost their lives so terribly , but thumping Iraqis or Afghans as a response is about as logical as kicking the cat . The " Global War on Terror " is fightable , and you make progress in the early stages , but it is unwinnable in the end because your enemy vanishes like mist . "Fishes swimming in the sea" , remember ?

And what in Gods name did the US think they were doing with the Guantanamo thing ? I just hope to God that your guys did actually get some useful intel out of it all , because the cost to the USA in terms of antipathy generated is very great .
I have also watched with horror some of the stuff your own forces have been putting on U tube .
The US soldier throwing a grenade from his Armoured Personnel Carrier into the flock of sheep , with the shepherd nearby , all sheltering from the sun under the roadside trees .
The US soldier on a roof in a town with a loud-hailer , calling out a blasphemous parody of the muezzin making the call to prayer from the nearby mosque .
The Abu Ghraib prison business was bad enough , but is no-one from the US military watching , and more importantly , deleting this stuff ?
Where the hell are your officers ?
I can think of few things ( to paraphrase Admiral Yamamoto ) more likely to fill our opponents with a terrible rage .
I think we'd all better pray real hard that we've yet to awaken the sleeping Giant .

[Bgile]

Hammy,

It's amazing to me that you think because we didn't experience the Blitz we aren't allowed to get upset when something like the attack on the Twin Towers happens to us. By implication, you wouldn't be upset if they'd crashed an airplane into a building with 3,000 of your countrymen, since it was just a flee bite on an elephant and was therefore insignificant. Just what proportion of Englishmen alive today experienced the Blitz? I'm guessing it's pretty small.

The rest of your venting at my expense is obviously in keeping with your impression of my country as a whole. I'm not proud of the actions of some of my countrymen or our leadership, and I'm sure your soldiers would never do such things because of their high sense of moral superiority.

I guess my reaction to your post is just because of my inherent American arrogance, but I can't help myself. I was probably born that way.

[Karl Heidenreich]

Bgile:

I do not think US soldiers behave better than any other soldiers of western societies. In Italy the US soldiers did use to execute Germans prisioners on the spot and did so in France before the Germans got the oportunity to do so at Malmedy. Killings took place also in the Pacific landings and firing upon japanese sailors at the water.

We have also to acknowledge that the Germans, even with the Blitz, didn´t even got near to the RAF night bombings or the Eight Air Force strategic bombings: Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Munich, etc. etc. Just look at the civilian casaulties on each side: the US only casualties were at Pearl Harbor and Germans triplicate or quadruplicate the British.

And we have My Lai, of course.

As I say always: morality is a slipery road and not one contender, ever, could claim to be pristine and "generaly" superior on moral grounds. War is Hell as Sherman once said and everybody whatever is required to win.

Best regards,

[RF]

lwd,

political spin is the line of propaganda taken to put an interpretation on events, usually cast by a ''spin doctor'' as the propaganda minister is now called. These are techniques used by our Labour Government to manipulate and focus public opinion in Britain to make them look good. All techniques pioneered by Dr Geobbels.