The futility of limited war in the Middle East
So last week, before our President headed out for a vacation, he authorized the United States Armed Forces to conduct limited attacks, that Senator John McCain called “pin pricks”, against the forces of the Islamic State, the new Caliphate, which stretches from Syria to the gates of Baghdad. The first strike dented a piece of towed artillery. One piece of artillery out of hundreds that ISIS/ISIL have in their possession. They have former Iraqi tanks and they have car bombs made from our Hummers. But, hey, we got that one artillery piece. On Friday, a drone took out a mortar emplacement and some F/A-18s took out a seven-vehicle convoy.
On his way to the helicopter for his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, the President warned us that US involvement in the war in Iraq was going to take time. But we knew that – the last President told us the same thing. He’s right, it will take a lot of time at this rate. The ISIL released some messages for the president soon after he left for some golf time, they said that they’ll be flying the Caliphate’s flag over the White House, “Today Mosul, tomorrow Seattle” was the quote.
Our troops kicked their asses all over Iraq just a few years ago, but the message from ISIL the other day says that they defeated our troops in Iraq and ran them out.
Let’s look at at Hamas in Gaza for a minute – because some of them are drawing a breath now, they think they’ve defeated Israel once again. By all accounts, Israel destroyed their capability to attack Israel, but Hamas is still holding out for a ceasefire as if they had a bargaining chip left – the only bargaining chip they have is their use of the media against Israel.
Now let’s look at Iraq in 1991 – the US destroyed Saddam Hussein’s capability to attack any other country besides his own, so that’s what he did. And then he’d shake his saber a little and the US would send thousands of troops to operate the prepositioned war machines in Kuwait. The US and UK ruled the skies over Iraq, but that didn’t stop Hussein from taking potshots at our pilots with surface-to-air missiles.
In the 80s, Iraq and Iran threw waves of human flesh against each other for days at a time costing tens of thousands of lives each time as if no lessons had ever been learned from World War One. Neither side gained an inch, but they both declared victory when the shooting stopped.
Now this ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State/Caliphate beast is rolling across Iraq, raping and beheading children, taking slaves, sending tens of thousands of refugees into the mountains under threat of death or enslavement. These creatures are like no other army we’ve ever faced in our history. Even the Japanese knew when they were beat – but it wasn’t a “limited war” that got them to that point.
The problem with fighting these animals is that they never know when they’ve been defeated – unless they’re dead. Can anyone seriously think that once they have their Caliphate and their Islamic government that these people who have been murdering women and children, destroying their own religion’s icons, shrines and mosques that they’re going to go back to stocking shelves at the local market or serving coffee at some sidewalk cafe in Damascus?
Yeah, I know public opinion on a strategy spans from “leave them alone and let them settle it politically” to “nuke them from orbit”, neither of which is very helpful. But limited warfare doesn’t work – look how well it didn’t work on Saddam Hussein in 1991 – we stopped killing Iraqis when the short term political goals were met instead of making the hard choices and beheading the government – because the media was making us look like bullies.
We have to get over our squeamishness for total warfare. We have to embrace our inner-William Tecumseh Sherman and our inner-George Patton and get back to the business of waging war against our enemies instead of waging a public relations campaign. A public relations campaign we can’t win any way we try.
Category: Terror War
Seattle? They want Seattle? Okay, but they have to take San Francisco too. Otherwise, no deal.
San Francisco? Only if they put Granny McBotox in a burka.
And Portland.
Can we give ’em Nooh Yawk City, Chicago and Detroit as well? AWW SHIT, never mind, they already have Detroitistan!
Yeah, they pretty much run Dearbornistan, but go ahead and throw in Los Angeles, Madison WI, Boston, and a few other burbs into that mix as well.
And Tigard, Oregon.
Uhh…I gotta go there next month. Maybe after October?
Could you include Chicago in that bundle?
I’ll pass on that offer, thank you.
I’m allergic to decapitation.
Chuck Todd at NBC is off his meds. Might be saying the beloved Emperor is a boob…nah no way, can’t be.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/08/10/chuck_todd_obama_doesnt_have_a_doctrine.html
I found the video with Pat Buchanan’s answer to John McLaughlin very interesting, as well. Unfortunately, this dilettante occupying the Oval Office doesn’t have the faintest idea how to do anything that will effetively end this bloodbath.
Ex-PH2: I realize it was a typo, but I submit that the only way Obama knows how to do anything is “effete-ively”
Thanks for the inadvertent laugh.
Olda8vr, if that isn’t a Freudian slip, I don’t know what else it could be. Maybe a brainfart. But thanks for pointing it out. Heeheehee.
Hey there, show rspetc (yeah, BO can’t spell “respect”) for da preezie. You do know he’s the 4th best POTUS ever doncha?
Apparently he’s interpreting the list backwards. News flash for the Occupant, 1600 Penn Ave, Wash DC: 4th from the bottom doesn’t equate to “fourth best”.
Someone should clue the POTUS in to the fact that the list runs from best at the top to worst at the bottom – not the other way around.
I forget where I saw this (long ago) and I admit that I’m stealing it but I do agree: “Einstein wasn’t the great genius of the 20th century, Goebbels was”. Now what that means is that the power of propaganda matters and that those who wield it have great influence over world events. Disproportionately, at least in the U.S., those people are lefties with fuzzy headed ideas about how the world works. In order for us to do what is necessary in the fight against barbarism we have to make sure that the propagandists-at the very least-aren’t actively against us. When somebody figures out how to make that happen we should act, but not until then.
I’m starting to believe that the entire doctrine of Counter-Insurgency is flawed.
While you are no longer fighting a government, and you are trying to earn the trust and cooperation of the locals, I don’t think the core of war remains: *To eliminate the enemy*.
Why do we leave while the insurgency still exists? Why do we hand it off to the locals, who would know members of the insurgency and be afraid of them? We see it in Afghanistan, where the ANA has turned turncoat in some areas or has let regions fall back into Taliban hands in others. We see it in Iraq, where Iraqi divisions throw down their arms rather than face ISIS.
If I ever become President, Counter-Insurgency will be just a nicer Total War. Efforts will be made to ensure that the population afterwards will be self-sufficient and free, yes, and there will be no policies of wholesale destruction.
But.
All efforts shall be focused towards the *outright annihilation* of an insurgency.
Camps destroyed. Leaders imprisoned, interrogated, then executed. Nations supporting the insurgency be embargoed. Weapons and fighters going into a country be actively interdicted.
When an insurgency is finally, and well and truly destroyed, then work can truly begin on rebuilding and freeing a nation.
Perhaps it’s harsh, but ISIS would never have existed under my watch.
Sorry, quick edit.
I *do* think the core of war remains. I was caught between saying that and saying that the idea of limited war is foolish.
The rest should be fine.
Yup the truth is Stanger than fiction.
America like Israel and soon Europe will be in a position of killing or being killed. Muslims want what the Koran dictates. A world wide Caliphate under Sharia law. No less. They will kill, maim, murder, rape and terrorize until they are stopped. We feel more safe here in the U.S. with the oceans between us. Unlike Israel who is surrounded by these animals. But unlike WWII, those oceans are easily spanned now. In fact I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that there are terrorist cells already organized on our soil, ready for the call to act. When they attack, the Muslims in this country will support them. They will support them openly with arms or in street demonstrations or as usual, in silence as the, “peace loving Muslims”. It is a lie. There are no peace loving Muslims in my mind. If there are, then they do not obey the Koran they live by or the prophet Muhammed and god Allah they pray to. Their silence speaks volumes about how they feel and believe about American freedom and democracy. They love it here, because we allow them to sit in their Mosques and pray to Allah for victory over the infidels. That’s “us” folks! We are the infidels they want dead and gone. Unless we are willing to face these animals head on and call them what they are and treat them accordingly, they will win. Little by little. A city here and there in Iraq this year until they control all of it because our cowardly president wants to keep them at bay, not destroy them there. Then a city here and there in most European nations. Nations who allowed immigration of Muslims until they are overrun with Muslim ghettos of people who hate them and will soon have a bigger voting block than the natives of those countries. They too are all about political correctness and appeasing the Muslims and not offending their sensibilities. These people have no sensibilities except to the Koran and Allah. In other words only to themselves. They have never and… Read more »
Don’t hold back, Sparks.
I’ve been trying to understand this bloodlust those things have – they aren’t human, any more – because to most of us it doesn’t make any sense.
Someone actually got one of them to answer some questions. He said “We aren’t afraid of death. If we are dead, we go to heaven.”
This martyr complex was the position early Christians took when they were being persecuted by the Romans – if they died as martyrs, they would end up in heaven – but they weren’t actively going around killing other people.
This, however, from the ISers, is different because they are actively seeking out other people to kill. Maybe they think they get ‘points’ for it. I don’t know. But this is not true martyrdom, because they only care about killing and if they get killed along the way, it doesn’t matter.
It does not explain slaughtering people by buring them alive. It serves no purpose other than to create hatred of those who do these thing. It is bloodlust at its worst. It is insanity.
Maybe that’s why I don’t understand it.
Ex-PH2…Thank you. I thought I had written a thread stopper. I must confess though, I too, do not understand that kind of hatred for other people, though I have seen the results of it. Some of the killing there, are those of the very SAME religion but they are tortured and murdered in hideous ways because they have a slightly different way of believing in or worshiping the same Allah. Yes, I too am lost to understand.
Ex: you said, “It does not explain slaughtering people by burying them alive. It serves no purpose other than to create hatred of those who do these thing. It is blood lust at its worst. It is insanity.
Maybe that’s why I don’t understand it.”
It is actually simple. When you do stuff like this, some people are enraged and some people are terrified. Enraged and terrified are easier to defeat then determined people. Remember how the VC treated the people in RVN villes? Same shit, different decade — by the way, same instruction book and,as a country, the US behaves the same old way.
Whose rules of engagement are we using today? ISAF or NATO?
There are people in this country who, because they don’t understand terror, refuse to believe it – “there is no possible way to justify that so it cannot be true”. Terrorists do terrifying things. Because they believe that the end justifies the means. This approach works for them, it would work for anybody who can stomach the means.
I accept the facts and deal with them. There is evil in the world, some people are real assholes and they have to go. We cannot wish them away and they won’t stop even if we ask nice.
I think that most of the people on Jonn’s blog fall into this category. It sucks. But that doesn’t mean that we can get out of it.
I’m going to say the following based on my experience in Iraq in 08-09.
We, meaning the US Military, cannot and will not ever beat the Muslims in a war unless the rules of engagement allow total and complete war.
Won’t happen folks. The culture of the Muslim nations won’t allow it. Everyone is everyone’s family. Kill one who was fighting the Jihad, your guaranteed at least 2 more fighters from that tribe.
You can’t beat that with Hearts and Minds either. By nature, Iraqi’s are corrupt. Their whole culture embraces corruption.
ISIS reminds me of the Mujahideen of Afganistan. We can kill them, burn them, blow them up, or even Nuke them, but, they are like cockroaches. Russia threw thier shit at them and they shrugged it off, scurried away, and prosecuted a war in the same way they are engaging us now. They beat Russia. I’ll leave the rest of that thought to you.
Nailed it.
Scumfucks are leaving their shit hole to make the nice areas in the world just another shit hole. They know exactly what they are doing and western civilization can only retreat so much before their countries aren’t theirs any longer.
Peaceniks sipping their chamomile tea while listening to All Things Considered just don’t want to hear about scumfucks being shot in the face. That is just too reprehensible for them to condone and instead feel the US military should focus on gender equality and same sex benefits.
Western civilization is losing the numbers game, the immigration game, and the cultural game.
Shit is gonna get wild soon.
If you can take something out of this, evil doesn’t win.
We’ll always outman them.
I have argued with the so-called “intellectuals”, right here n these pages, in the past. I would get a wuestion like this: “What does victory look like”. I would explain that victory is when your enemy surrenders, unconditionally, and that is achieved by total war. You worry about the hearts and minds after you achieve victory. Your enemy surrenders only after 1 of 2 things happens; you destroy his will to make war or you destroy his ability to make war. Sometimes you have to do the second thing in order for the first thing to happen. We didn’t win the hearts and minds of the German, Italian, and Japanese people while we were engaged in war against them. You do that shit afterwards. The whole concept of “measured response” is a pantywaist’s wet dream. Your enemy brings a knife, you bring a gun. Your enemy kills one of your people, you kill ten of his.
If you find yourself in a fair fight; your tactics suck.
You seriously think taking part in another full scale ground war in Iraq is the best thing to do?
You’re insane. Terrible idea and article.
Yes. Many of us believe whole heartedly in proportionality – no need to waste any more than exactly what is needed to win. We do not set that amount; the enemy determines how much effort is needed to win.
If we are not willing to do the maximum effort thing against the enemy, then we should not engage in warlike activities at all. “War” is a concept that must either be all out to win or it just isn’t war. The current enemy knows that and is using our collective reluctance to fight to win against us.
Jonn – if the enemy will not accept defeat before death, logically death is the only resolution. Hardly a fun concept, but the “nuke ’em from orbit” comes closer to accomplishing that than the current ‘ignore it till it grows enough to be unignoreable’ (if there is such a word) ever will. Look at the animals surrounding Israel – every truce and peace is merely an opportunity to rearm.
We have to get over our squeamishness for total warfare.
Total warfare with unconditional surrender as the outcome should be our standard conduct. Demolishing the enemy and every place he hides should be the goal of any armed conflict.