Article

2006-08-23 Iraq

Military Strykers Bring Initial Safety to Baghdad

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by ed 2006-08-23 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11135 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Incredible strykers rule again.

Posted by Captain America 2006-08-23 00:20|| 2006-08-23 00:20|| Front Page Top

#2 Two years ago these smiling Iraqis would have been bitching about "occupiers" and helping the insurgents. There's nothing like a taste of civil war to change perceptions.

Posted by Apostate 2006-08-23 03:19|| 2006-08-23 03:19|| Front Page Top

#3 But hope has often gone sour in Iraq. If the country's political leaders cannot make their own peace, America's latest success in Baghdad could quickly reverse.

That's the "Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud©" syndrome.

Posted by Bobby 2006-08-23 05:56|| 2006-08-23 05:56|| Front Page Top

#4 I think that was a wake up call for Iraqi's. The army said fine you don't want us around see ya then the Iraq people started killing each, boy oh boy the US army not so bad now. :)

Posted by djohn66 2006-08-23 08:34|| 2006-08-23 08:34|| Front Page Top

#5 114th Cavalry

The *what*? Do they mean the 1-14th Infantry, which is a battalion of the 2nd Stryker Brigade?

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2006-08-23 08:45|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2006-08-23 08:45|| Front Page Top

#6 (playing my broken record, again)
Well, duh. Turns out that establishing perimeter control and aggressively seeking out bad guys and their stuff and maintaining presence produces dramatic results. Of course it does.

I well understand the knife-edge trickiness of calibrating our role so as to achieve interim objectives (elections, constitution) while not inhibiting development of Iraqi capacity. But I think we've made seriously bad calls on that tricky issue for some time.

A few weeks back the JCS Chmn, while on a visit up north, explicitly addressed the question, and said a more forward US role would be "too costly". Wrong.

Excessive focus on compelling the Iraqis to start growing up ignored the peculiar US domestic political situation WRT this war, and also underestimated the importance of establishing basic order in Baghdad and other urban areas and cutting the Sunni problem down to more manageable dimensions.

This is not hindsight. These same thoughts were being expressed by others way back to late 2003, and I've heard them from military and civilian types here since I arrived early last year.

Less strategy, less finesse, fewer fine calculations and a whole lot more killin' and ass-kickin' in specific places and times are the "lessons" of the past 2 years. Yet I see no evidence the military or civilian leadership will internalize a bit of it.

Posted by Verlaine in Iraq 2006-08-23 10:06|| 2006-08-23 10:06|| Front Page Top

#7 They won't Verlaine. The civies and REMFs are convinced that complex negotiation and appeasement work every time.

Kill the damn bad guys and you don't have to worry about negotiation. How fucking hard is this concept to grasp?

Next time I hear someone saying we need to negotiate with terrorists I'm gonna "negotiate" with their head and baseball bat.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2006-08-23 10:55|| 2006-08-23 10:55|| Front Page Top

#8 Agree with you Verlaine. The added benefit of the approach you describe is that the bad guys begin to know that they are beaten while reducing the population of frisky ones.

Posted by SR-71 2006-08-23 11:15|| 2006-08-23 11:15|| Front Page Top

#9
Well sure their way (the asshats) hasn't worked! But you know, it's because the right people haven't been in charge. If we just put the right people in charge, and do extra more of what doesn't work, it will work sooner or later. Right?

/sarcasm

Posted by Texas Redneck 2006-08-23 14:49|| 2006-08-23 14:49|| Front Page Top

#10 Basically flooding a high crime area with patrol cars, armored, but patrol cars none the less. Which tells you something. The so called "insurgents" are nothing more than common criminals with a lot of guns.

Posted by pacific_waters">pacific_waters 2006-08-23 21:04|| 2006-08-23 21:04|| Front Page Top

#11 Good catch, pacific_waters. :-)

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-23 21:43|| 2006-08-23 21:43|| Front Page Top

23:53 JohnQC
23:46 Fordesque
23:34 Texas Redneck
23:31 Barbara Skolaut
23:31 Frank G
23:30 Barbara Skolaut
23:25 flyover
23:23 Barbara Skolaut
23:15 flyover
23:13 flyover
23:12 Mike
23:07 Texas Redneck
23:06 Mark E.
23:05 Frank G
23:04 Frank G
23:04 Fordesque
23:03 Duh!
22:59 Fordesque
22:58 Sherry
22:58 Mike
22:53 Alaska Paul
22:15 Jules in the Hinterlands
22:14 trailing wife
22:12 RD