The mahdi are straight thugs, politically driven and very radical. I've seen some of their handy work, there was an iraqi prostitue that we found after the mahdi got to her. Headless as well as her children. It's just not the islam way so thats the justice they dole out. I am not sure what interest they have in basra but you can bet your a$$ it's not just for sh*ts and grins. It could end up with a big US contingent there to try and put it down, or if the intel says they are after something not so important they may just wait it out. I'll look at the news later and see if I can find out anything, or better yet, I'll holla at some of my boys that are actually over there and get you the real scoop. It will just take a day or so to get back to me.
Wow, thats crazy. I couldnt imagine seeing something like that. I have seen somethings in my life, but nothing like that.
General Petraeus wrote the book on counter-insurgency and believes that you cannot fight one using conventional military force and tactics. He is changing the tactics drastically by getting the US forces to cooperate with the tribal chieftains, interact less callously with civilians, hiring ex-Bathists, and simply bribing the militias (which turns out to be cheaper and more effective than killing them). As a consequence, the fight is turning into more like the Afghanistan fight, where we have always played one faction against another rather than just trying to achieve military supremacy over everybody.
Gen P wasn't there when I was, he was the commander of the 1st Cav at the time. He is good people and I think he will do the right things. A lot of what we did in 05/06 was taken from his strategy though since we followed cav on a rotation. Insurgencies are a completely different animal and historically are never put down in less than 6 years and if they aren't put down in 6, they usually are not defeated. Jury still out on this one. The hiring of the bathhist goes back to what I said earlier, had we not alienated many of these people it would have gone a long way as to cutting the legs from the insurgents. Had we spent more time on intellegence and coralling the people "in the know" instead of chasing WMD's we might not be in such a mess right now.
On this we can agree. We should listen to the Brits when it comes to dealing with third-world countries in Africa and Asia. They have centuries of colonial experience in handling insurgencies, revolts, and tribal warfare. They always manipulated the locals into fighting each other while they got away with the plunder.
One interesting thing about this - we knew this (IN SPADES) after Vietnam. But the way we abandoned that war, and the reaction back home to the war itself, caused the military to choose to focus completely on the USSR and pretend that Vietnam and irregular warfare were an anomoly. All Gen P did was use his PhD to remember what the Army already knew, but had forgotten for awhile.
General Prateus, seemed a bit political yesterday. Is it just me or is McCain really trying to make a case for invading Iran or connecting Iran to Al-Qadea, when the connection doesnt exist. Or does he just really not know that Shiites have no connection to Sunni ran Al-Qadea or is he mixing it up for his on war reasons? And if he doesnt know the difference, then that is another entire discussion on his understanding of foreign policy.
The republicans have made another blunder in failing to recognize that there is more than one adversary in Iraq. They just lump Iran, Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites and Al Qaida all together as The Enemy. I don't know what to make of McCain anymore. The man has always been pragmatic, but he's also impulsive and bears close watching. Half the time, I think he's serious and the other half I think he's just posturing for the conservatives and covertly winking at us. Petraeus is smart and he's walking a political tightrope to stay in command until the democrats get into power. Instead of uniting all of our enemies against us as the Bush administration policy has done, Petraeus is playing them off against each other by supporting the ones who play ball. He will find Obama or Clinton much more amenable to his way of fighting an insurgency than Bush has been. Petraeus' tactics are already working. I think he believes that if the new administration gives him broad authority to negotiate and manipulate more tribal factions into cooperating, then he can redeploy US troops out of country on a timetable that will suit a democratic president.
