Two views of Iraq

We know our great marines and soldiers can take Fallujah, and we wish them speedy victory with a minimum of casualties. The real question is not Fallujah, the question is whether the battle of Fallujah is part of a larger war that we can win. Echoing VFR’s critical comments about the overall direction of the Iraq compaign is a liberal Democratic U.S. Senator. According to the New York Times:

One prominent member of the Senate Armed Services Committee [Jack Reed of Rhode Island] said the increasing mayhem raised questions about whether the United States could win the fight against a wider insurgency, whatever the outcome in Falluja. [Italics added.]

Taking the other side of the question is the top Marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, who says there are indications that the remaining insurgents are running low on weapons, supplies, and morale. “We feel we’ve broken their back and spirit,” he says. May that be true. However, honesty requires us to acknowledge that the same hopes and expectations have been expressed repeatedly in the past. They were expressed after the fall of Baghdad in April and May 2003. They were expressed after the death of Hussein’s charming sons in July 2003. They were expressed after Saddam’s capture in December 2003. They were expressed prior to the handing over of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government in June 2004. And they are being expressed about the upcoming election that will take place in January 2005.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 13, 2004 02:16 PM | Send
    
Comments

This may be the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time…BUT I think it’s going to be a while before we know the outcome. Let’s give our president the benefit of the doubt for the sake of our fine soldiers. I’d hate to think that an Islamic terrorist might read the words on this website and take comfort from them. We have to be successful in Iraq…we HAVE to. We MUST outlast them or kill every last one.

Posted by: Bob Griffin on November 13, 2004 9:01 PM

The insurgency is like a hydra, we chop off a head and another immediately rises in its place. We subdue Fallujah and Mosul blows up.

Posted by: Eugene Girin on November 13, 2004 9:06 PM

I agree with Mr. Girin. But I’m not going to do it in public. Or did I just do that? Cancel that last thought. Semper Fi!

Posted by: Bob Griffin on November 13, 2004 9:18 PM

The idea that frank discussion at this website would have any effect on what jihadists and Ba’athists are doing in Iraq is not, I think, something about which we need to worry. :-)

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 13, 2004 9:59 PM

Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm! (Tape firmly over mouth)

Posted by: David Levin on November 14, 2004 4:21 AM

Remember, Americans won virtually all the battles in Vietnam, but lost the war. Why? The left and the left media combined to convince most Americans the war was morally wrong and unwinnable. Americans have short attention spans and don’t like problematic, drawn-out conflicts. The outcome in Iraq will ultimately be determined by domestic politics in the USA.

Posted by: Harvey Elkblight on November 14, 2004 12:32 PM

Mr. Elkblight suggests that the success or failure of the war in Iraq is a matter of political will. There is doubtless some truth to that. But along with political will comes accepting reality, and part of accepting reality is setting achievable objectives. The problem with the current situation is that we don’t have either of the necessary prerequisites to victory: an achievable objective and the political will to achieve it.

An example of an at least potentially achievable objective: a pro-US Iraqi strong-man, a base in Kurdistan, a middle-eastern cordon sanitaire, and dramatic improvements at the US border.

An example of an unachievable objective: widespread adoption of liberal democracy in the middle east as the Moslem response to American smart bombs, the magical disappearance of the terrorist threat despite wide-open US borders because of a universal world-wide embrace of liberalism.

No doubt Bush personally has the will to pursue his unachievable objective to the end of time. The country doesn’t though, and since Bush is not a leader there is no chance that nation’s resolve will increase. That lack of political will in the end is a good thing in this case, because firm resolve to do the impossible is a sure sign of impending defeat.

Posted by: Matt on November 14, 2004 4:01 PM

That is a superb summary by Matt of the issues that we’ve been discussing at such length for so many months.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 14, 2004 4:09 PM

Matt

Can you please email your summary to the powers that be?

Posted by: Andrew on November 14, 2004 4:20 PM

The problem is that in such a war as this, winning battles doesn’t mean anyhting unless the enemy is destroyed and unless the enemy doesn’t regenerate.

The enemies’ goal isn’t to win battles, it’s to radicalize the populace against us and to bleed us slowly.

Posted by: Glaivester on November 14, 2004 5:59 PM

Sorry, that last post was me. I forgot that I generally don’t use my pseudonym on VFR.

Posted by: Michael Jose on November 14, 2004 7:35 PM

It has been interesting to watch Lt.Gen. Sattler in action. When I was a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry Officers’ Course at Quantico in 1980, then-Captain Sattler was one of my tactics instructors. He was an excellent instructor, and what he taught was useful to me over the next few years as a platoon and company commander in the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. He has gone far - there are not many Lieutenant Generals in the Marine Corps - but I wonder if he doesn’t find his current assignment somewhat thankless.

The Marine Corps breed characters. One of the things I remember best about Capt. Sattler is his curious habit of referring to an appendage he believed all Marines should keep well-exercised as the “pink-helmeted Spartan.” HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 15, 2004 3:47 PM

US MARINE CORPS. SEMPER FIDELIS AND THANK YOU.

Click on “Justice is Served” to see photo.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13592_This_is_For_the_Americans_of_Blackwater#comments

Posted by: Andrew on November 15, 2004 4:05 PM

Small world. 3/5 is the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines I referred to in my previous post. They must be getting sick of Iraq. In Spring 2003, 3/5 participated in the invasion. 3/5 was afloat off Kuwait at the end of Desert Storm in 1991, but did not go ashore during the fighting. 1/5 was the only 5th Marines battalion that fought in Desert Storm. HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 15, 2004 4:12 PM


————

The Marine Corps breed characters. One of the things I remember best about Capt. Sattler is his curious habit of referring to an appendage he believed all Marines should keep well-exercised as the “pink-helmeted Spartan.” HRS

————

I guess some things never change. In Leon Uris’s Battle Cry, a good novel of the Pacific war (though I forget at the moment if it was about the Marines or the Army), in basic training, in order to wean the recruits from calling their rifles “guns,” the drill instructor had them chant:

“This is my rifle,
This is my gun.
This is for fighting,
this is for fun.”

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 15, 2004 4:19 PM

Assuming Centcom’s enemy casualty counts are accurate (and that’s a shaky assumption, as they’ve been known to lie about this kind of thing before), we’ve killed 1200-1600 insurgents. Against this, we’ve lost about 61 personnel killed and another 400-450 wounded, who’ve been shipped out to Landstuhl. In terms of effective attrition, we’ve only attained a 3-4:1 advantage. A counterinsurgency needs to attain a ration of something between 15-20:1.

Most of those we killed in Fallujah were dirt poor Iraqis whose training consisted of being shown which direction to point their RPG or AK-47. It cost the insurgents next to nothing to lose them. It costs us somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 per grunt (more for officers and non-coms). Add onto this all the money we now have to spend on “reconstruction.”

As a famous Greek general once commented, “Any more victories like this, and we’re done for.”

Posted by: Derek Copold on November 15, 2004 4:22 PM

Battle Cry is about the Marine Corps, specifically about the 1st Marine Division (in which the Fifth Marines is one of three infantry regiments) on Guadalcanal in 1942. Uris didn’t make up his jingle. Many a private (and not a few officer candidates) has found himself chanting it with his rifle padlocked to his leg after unwisely calling it the wrong name. It is almost as infra dig to call a pistol a g-n. Machine guns, yes, also howitzers. Personal weapons, never.

Anyone looking for a decent novel about Marines might try one from closer to our own day: James Webb’s Fields of Fire, inspired by his tour as a 1st Battalion, 5th Marines rifle platoon and company commander in the An Hoa Valley in 1969-70.

Mr. Copold’s point is worth thinking about. How long do we want to keep this up? How important is the security of Fallujah to Americans in the long run? HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on November 15, 2004 5:05 PM

I hope there is an actual investigation of why we suffered so many casualties in Fallujah when we had such enormous advantages. We need to know if this was another politically-run war like Korea and Vietnam. Can you imagine how many more American dead there would be if we had the primitive medical resources of the insurgents?

Posted by: Paul Henrí on November 15, 2004 7:07 PM

“That lack of political will in the end is a good thing in this case, because firm resolve to do the impossible is a sure sign of impending defeat.” I must be reading the above comment wrong. Is this a call for an American defeat in Iraq?

Posted by: Paul Henrí on November 15, 2004 7:13 PM

Well, Paul, when you give the enemy something like four to six months’ notice of your intentions, he’s not going to go on vacation. He’s going to set up ambushes, kill zones and booby traps, as well as evacuate his more valuable personnel and equipment. He’s also going to take some time to figure out which sectors have been weakened by our deployment, and attack there: See, Mosul, Baquba, Ramadi, Sammara, and other cities in the Sunni Triangle.

Posted by: Derek Copold on November 15, 2004 7:14 PM

Mr. Henri wrote:
“I must be reading the above comment wrong. Is this a call for an American defeat in Iraq?”

It is a call for an adjustment of objectives from unachievable ones to achievable ones, followed by the accomplishment of the achievable ones.

Posted by: Matt on November 15, 2004 7:47 PM
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