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Old 07-03-2003, 04:26 AM
thedrifter thedrifter is offline
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Cool The Guerilla War in Iraq is Underway

06-30-2003

The Guerilla War in Iraq is Underway



By Mark E. Knox



Whether or not Sec. of Def. Donald Rumsfeld and V.P. Dick Cheney will admit this, the United States is involved in an extended, low-intensity guerilla conflict in Iraq.



These guerilla attacks seemed to be isolated to the Sunni areas of the country, including much of Baghdad, but with the ambush of a British Patrol in Basra and the downing of a British attack helicopter by RPG fire as it came to the aide of the ambushed soldiers, the guerrilla war is expanding into Shiite areas as well.



Despite the best efforts of the Pentagon to keep a lid on the news, there are daily accounts of guerrilla attacks against U.S. forces. Supply convoys are sniped at daily as well as patrols in Baghdad. These attacks have resulted in nearly 50 deaths, but many more have been wounded and these figures are pushed into the background as bad press.



The Army is basically using the same type of search and destroy and area sweep tactics as we did in Vietnam. A buddy of mine (Battalion CO) wrote me that said his Brigade Commander is even flying over his companies in a Blackhawk and giving them orders like a squad leader in the sky (how little things change).



It is essential that the American people know how important this war in Iraq is becoming. We are being drawn into a guerilla war and as you know, this is not something our Army is especially good at fighting.



The United States will have to maintain large numbers of ground troops in Iraq (as we do in Afghanistan) due to the quantity of forces required to contain these guerrillas. It takes, on average, one battalion of troops to capture three Iraqi guerillas. A guerilla war is inherently disproportionate because the guerrilla force is dispersed over a large geographic area, and its stealth and mobility requires a much larger force to contain it.



Guerrillas in Iraq are casing the Army, watching our movements and our responses to attacks, choosing the time and place of their attacks and using mobility to evade counterattacks; the guerrillas appear to be outfighting the regular Army forces. Of course this is not the case, yet if the Iraqi guerillas are merely holding their own or even losing in some cases, their continued operation generates a sense of power for the guerrilla movement and weakness for the counter guerrilla force.



The nature of counterinsurgency requires that guerrillas be distinguished from the general population. CENTCOM dropped leaflets telling the Iraqi soldiers to put on civilian clothes and go home, and the US would not taken them prisoner. Now we face the fact that many of these soldiers (turned guerillas) took their weapons home with them, hid their weapons caches for future use, and have blended back into the Iraqi population. Distinguishing them from the local population is an extraordinarily difficult task, particularly when the US troops trying to make the distinction between an Iraqi guerilla and an Iraqi citizen are foreign (to the locals), mostly untrained in the local language and culturally incapable of making the subtle distinctions needed for surgical identification. The result is the processing of large numbers of noncombatants in the search for a handful of guerrillas.



Another result is the massive intrusion of force into a civilian community that starts out as neutral or even friendly, but which over time becomes hostile not only because of the constant intrusions into private homes and businesses, but also because of the inevitable mistakes committed by troops who are trying to make sense of what appears to them an incoherent situation. Many troops are already beginning to grow weary of these opened ended operations and we see such things as in-country pregnancy rates and medical evaluation rates increasing on a weekly basis.



The United States is in a tough spot. President Bush, V.P.Cheney and Sec. of Def. Rumsfeld will not withdraw from Iraq, and therefore the Army must fight this guerilla war. Unfortunately, Rumsfeld seems to be more interested in buying high technology and fighting high tech enemies, in cutting more boots from the Army to pay for these gold plated items, than in retaining the troops needed and in using low technology weapons and low technology counterinsurgency tactics. (I suppose we have thrown METT-T away)



As in Vietnam, we must fight in such a way that avoids four things:



1. We cannot fight a war that alienates the general Iraqi populace sufficiently to generate recruits for the guerrillas and undermine the occupation.



2. We cannot lose control of the countryside; as in Vietnam this will destabilize the entire occupation.



3. We cannot allow the guerrilla operation to tie down large amounts of troops, and undermine the Army's ability to project forces elsewhere.



4. We cannot allow the length of the conflict to extend to such a degree that the U.S. public determines the cost is not worth the prize. The longer the war, the clearer the definition of the prize must be.





This last point is vitally important due because our objectives have not been truly reached.



1. We still have not found the WMD we told the world that Iraq was prepared to use.



2. We have still have not infused any confidence in the population of Iraq (or neighboring countries) that we are doing anything constructive for them. The only people who are truly happy about the US Army being in Iraq are the Kurds. The Sunni population does not like us at all, and while the Shiite population is happy Saddam is gone, they don't want the US Army in Iraq. The Shiites demonstrate on a daily basis, "No Saddam, No Bush."





The strategy we used in Iraq was severely flawed. Cheney?s and Rumsfeld?s core assumption was that once the Hussein Baath regime lost Baghdad (and thus it's center of political power) it would simply disappear. The Iraqi masses would throw up their hands and welcome us as "Liberators." This was truly pie in the sky. Most Iraqis do not look to us as their Liberators; they may not have liked Saddam Hussein, but they also want the United States out of Iraq.



In Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Qaida forces were not defeated in the cities. They declined combat in the cities, withdrawing and dispersing, then reorganized and returned to guerrilla warfare in which we are still involved in today. In Iraq, the guerillas we are fighting are the same troops we encountered as Mujahideen and Fedayeen fighters in Basra, An Nasiriyah, and Karbala. There are still thousands of foreign volunteers in Iraq for which we have not accounted. They have done essentially the same thing, ran away to fight another day.


The "another day" has begun.

Mark E. Knox is pseudonym for a regular contributor to DefenseWatch. He has requested that his real name not be used to avoid possible repercussions resulting from his negative comments. Mr. Knox may be reached by email at mknox@argee.net.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c...46182495529616


Sempers,

Roger
__________________
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY HUSBAND
SSgt. Roger A.
One Proud Marine
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Once A Marine............Always A Marine.............

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