Classic guerrilla war forming in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0920/p01s01-woiq.html

Recent upsurge in attacks against authorities and US forces has parallels, and differences, with past insurgencies.

War is never by the books. Adversaries learn and adapt. The political climate shifts on both sides. Loyalties and alliances couple and decouple. The civilian populace - caught in the crossfire - often remains passive just to survive.

To many experts, the conflict in Iraq has entered a new phase that resembles a classic guerrilla war with US forces now involved in counterinsurgency. And despite the lack of ideological cohesion among insurgent groups, history suggests that it could take as long as a decade to defeat them.

"Guerrilla warfare is the most underrated and the most successful form of warfare in human history," says Ivan Eland, a specialist on national security at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. "It is a defensive type of war against a foreign invader. If the guerrillas don't lose, they win. The objective is to wait out your opponent until he goes home."

From the Filipino insurrection during the Spanish-American War to Vietnam to El Salvador, American troops have had plenty of experience in fighting home-grown enemies that look nothing like a conventional army. As have France in Algeria, Britain in Malaysia and Northern Ireland, Israel in the occupied territories.

Though "counterinsurgency" calls up memories of Vietnam, there may be as many differences as similarities.

more

[aquart]

1. Oh, goody.

They're going to start grading on points for the most ingenious ways to kill us.

Because we have not the smallest right to be there.

[truthisfreedom]

2. the 'thugs held off claims of "guerrilla" warfare months ago by scoffing,

but they're squirming like all hell now. it's so freaking obvious that we are in a total world of hurt that nothing can cover it up... no amount of spin... in fact, i'd say that every attempt to spin the Iraq invasion into something positive for bushco will backfire from now until the day of the election, because every mention of it by Kerry brings it further into the forefront of the news and every denial and spin job by rove/bush/cheney keeps it there and increases their apparent disconnect from reality.

[Veggie Meathead]

4. The more Bush loses control, the more likely it is that he will lash

out in a mad wave of aerial assaults like his mentor Sharon.There will be more home demolitions,disappearances, assassinations etc.Wait until November 2.If Bush wins, these "new products" will be unveiled.

[Cocoa]

3. Scott McClellan's response:

"this story is just pessimistic naysaying by the pessimist hand-wringers that have been wrong all along."

[whistle]

32. That's right, nattering nabobs of negativism

[saigon68]

5. Welcome to IRAQ-NAM

Enjoy the view, Be prepared to stay a while. The friendly natives are here to greet you with candy and flowers.


LOL

[DemoTex]

12. The more things change ...

The more they stay the same.

Saigon68, I cannot believe my fucking eyes and ears from day to day. Not only is the tactical situation much the same as Vietnam, but the lies and white-washing by the fucking politicians is the same, if not more polished for believability. It is fucking mind-boggling. We are now a lost nation (no, we are the lost nation) in a small world that truly hates us.

Should Bu$h win, I must ask: Where shall we go my friend? What shall we do now? We will have lost our nation.

On edit I add: Prepare to be conquered by the rest of the world. We have left ourselves wide open to it.

[saigon68]

14. Demo T ---would add "Those who ignore history"

"Are doomed to repeat it." If the bastards win ---it will be a COLD HARD WINTER.

A RUSSIAN kind of winter.

Freedom as we know it will go into a deep hibernation.

I went to the Packer game today-- there were 350 cops searching and feeling up the fans for fingernail clippers, "Sharp Objects" and all kinds of other shit-- I guess they thought someone would high-jack the place and fly it into the Twilight Zone

It was kind of like taking an airplane-- which I refuse to do. If I have to fly I will drive to Canada. (And as you know I love flying)

The Fuckers who now run this country are a corrupt elite, who arrive at the game in their Limo's and are personally escorted to their $50.000.00 per game skyboxes by what compares to The Black Water USA goons and bodyguard thugs-- these assholes are bigger and fatter than the players and I'm sure they pack "heat" too.

[DemoTex]

16. Man, are we ever on the same frequency.

You realize, don't you, that they are going to cherry-pick writers like you and me and really fuck us. It will happen if the PNAC is granted another 4-year tour. The "underground" part of Democratic-Underground needs to get serious real quick.

[AlCzervik]

6. it's a full scale insurrection and the WH best get used to

having to admit that. No longer is it just a "Few deadenders, Saddam loyallists, thugs." They brought Greorge and may God help us all.

[Maple]

7. Forming???

That's what it's been since day one!

[bemildred]

8. Another attempt to put lipstick on the pig.

Leaves logic and reason behind in a number of cases too,
but that is SOP in putting makeup on a pig. The last sentence
says it all:

"The government must appear to be legitimate,
inevitable, and effective at providing security and
services," says Mr. Pike. "As long as Iran does not stir
the pot, these objectives could be approached by the
end of this decade, with luck."

This means:

1.) We are not in control of out own destiny. What are the odds
that Iran will sit there and allow us "to succeed"? Can you think
of a few other countries that might feel supportive of the Iraqi
resistance?

2.) A decades worth of money to support these imbeciles in their effort.

3.) You still gotta get lucky. Do you feel lucky, kid?"

[Jacobin]

9. Hmmm. let me do the arithmetic

10 years (not 11, see) times 365 days a year times, let's say 3 dead U.S. soldiers a day (assuming it doesn't increase, which it will) give us:

10,950 MORE dead U.S. soldiers and let's see the maimed rate is about 7 to one so we'll have about 77,000 maimed american soldiers.

Assuming the pace of killings doesn't increase (which it will).

So, we're all okay with that? Is that what the articles 'suggests'.

Fuck the media.

[despairing optimist]

18. You left out the domestic US casualties

We're vulnerable here now. It's a holy war and the battlefield isn't limited to Iraq.

In NYC we sleep uneasy. I still wake up suddenly from nightmares involving gigantic explosions thinking the nuke finally arrived and I'm about to be incinerated.

If it does arrive, the rest of the world will say we had it coming, and DU will lose more than a few members.

Sometimes I wonder if New Yorkers are considered as expendable as Iraqis and Afghanis.

The Department of Defense. Defense of what, for whom?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

25. Newsflash: IMHO, you stand a better chance of becoming a casualty...

...due to deliberate actions designed to look like terrorist attacks.

Read the following link and see if anything looks familiar:

Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/>

Excerpt:

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

[despairing optimist]

30. Half of all NYers believe 9/11 involved top-level officials already

and that there's a big cover-up going on. In that case we've already experienced a "fake" attack. What's the difference? We'll be toast anyway, no matter whose toaster it is.

9/11 may have been allowed to happen. From the Wilderness is publishing a book this month about this.

For the Republicans, it's a win-win situation. They hate NY anyway, it's a Democratic stronghold, and they can cry out "Get them back for nuking NY" when we're gone.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. there may be as many differences as similarities

And there are lots of similarities.

Differences? Vietnam was a jungle, this is not idealogical, it is a holy war.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

19. Vietnam was also an urban war

Every day there were mortar rounds fired into cities and towns, snipers shooting at US troops, bombs tossed at US vehicles from girls on bicycles or at sidewalk restaurants and cafes, etc.

And the 1968 Tet Offensive was very much an all-out urban war. Vietcong soldiers stormed the highland towns of Banmethout, Kontum and Pleiku, and they then simultaneously invaded 13 of the 16 provincial capitals of the heavily populated Mekong Delta. The US embassy in the heart of Saigon itself was partially seized by commandos, who arrived in taxis. All out assaults were launched on the outskirts of Saigon by hundreds of troops. The headquarters of both the US and South Vietnamese armies were attacked, as well as the US Army base of Bienhoa. The fighting in Hue raged throughout most of the city with devastating results. It's true that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese took staggering losses by leaving the jungles and coming into the cities and towns. But there are some who believe that this was a turning point, as it demonstrated that we were fighting a people who were willing to take whatever losses were necessary and to take the fight to any place in the country, jungles, cities, and towns.

[coalition_unwilling]

39. "But there are some who believe that this was a turning point"

It was a tactical defeat for the Vietcong and NVA, but a strategic master blow for them, because it showed the American people that there was no "light at the end of the tunnel".

Our military seems really awesome when it comes to tactical victories. Our political establishment since FDR has proven a bit less adept when it comes to strategy.

[number6]

11. izzat all, ...just 10 years

history suggests that it could take as long as
a decade to defeat them :(:(:(

[NNN0LHI]

13. "If the guerrillas don't lose, they win." Kind of says it all n/t

[saigon68]

15. Ho Chi Minh said something like that

He outlasted us---there are 58,000 names on a black granite wall that attest to the folly of that experiemnt,.

Apparently only us here are concerned for the new group who are about to be maimed, killed and blinded.

[DemoTex]

17. Ho Chi Mihn won in 1954: Dien Bien Phu

Exquisite tactics by Uncle Ho put 155-mm cannons behind the military crests of the mountains around Dien Bien Phu. The batteries could fire, but never be hit by counter-battery fire. Those cannons were put in place by cooley labor. The French commander of the primary defensive artillery battery, Piroth, blew his brains out with his service revolver when he realized his deathly mistake.

[Disturbed]

21. Iraq is more important than Vietnam was.

The US will not leave Iraq whether it's a Repub. or Dem admin. The Oligarchy will not allow it.

What is so important about Iraq?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

26. Vietnam was considered to be VERY important in the early 1950s...

...and NOT just because the prevailing line of thought that was known as the "Domino Theory". Vietnam also has about 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves with more likely to be found:

Vietnam
<http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/vietnam.html>

Excerpt:

Vietnam has 600 million barrels of proven oil reserves, and further discoveries are likely. Crude oil production averaged 352,507 barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2003. The country has six operating oil fields, of which Bach Ho (White Tiger), Rang Dong (Dawn), Hang Ngoc, and Dai Hung (Big Bear) are the largest. Most oil exploration and production activities occur offshore in the Cuu Long and Nam Con Son Basin. Vietnam currently has no operating oil refineries - therefore a large portion of its oil production is exported. Export markets include Japan (the largest importer of Vietnamese oil), Singapore, the United States, and South Korea. Vietnam had net exports of an estimated 150,507 bbl/d of oil in 2003.

[DemoTex]

27. The money!

Get it? It is a war for money. So was Vietnam. We are as fucked now as we were then. Only now the middle-class is much more fucked. The middle-class is gone. Bye-bye Ward and June. Bye-bye Momma and Daddy. Bye-bye middle-class dream. It is over. Weep and laugh with DemoTex.

[kodi]

23. bet george washington did too

both mao and ho chi minh admired washington's effectiveness in guerrilla warfare against the british.

[DemoTex]

29. Ho Chi Mihn worked as a bus-boy at the Parker House Hotel ... Boston!

It is on the historic marker.

[Cha]

20. Is the nyt, wapo, et al reporting on this, too?

Or is it still under the radar..about the "decade"?

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

22. F'ing obviousl conclusion from day one

The minute Americans occupied Iraq, every male in the Arab world big enough to carry a rifle becamw a potential soldier in the guerilla war.

That's why so many of us marched in huge demonstrations before the beginning of the fiasco.

The neo-cons have no sense of history and their reality is so skewed by their ideology that they had no clue what they were getting into.

I marched with a lot of people my age (49), who remember Viet Nam very clearly. We saw it coming, especially the vets.

(edited for grammer)

[0rganism]

31. Too bad the administration didn't listen to the focus groups of 10million+

Ya know, a whole lot of people at DU, including myself, had this thing mapped out from the moment the missiles flew.

1. Invasion of Iraq -- Saddam drops quick, no WMDs.
2. Reconstruction is next to impossible due to sabotage.
3. Iraq becomes a haven for terrorists who now have Americans delivered right to their doorstep like big pizzas.
4. Isolated guerilla attacks become more frequent and less isolated, evolving into...
5. Full-scale insurgency against puppet government.
6. Eventually, America will withdraw its military occupation when the situation becomes thoroughly untenable. America's president will declare Iraq a complete democratic success, and hope the news finds a series of celebrity trials and natural disasters to feed its viewers for the next 5 years.
7. Once the invaders have departed, Iraq will begin its 3-way civil war.
8. Turkey will move to occupy NW Iraq to prevent a Kurdish state.
9. Shi'ites in Iran will declare unity with the Shi'a population and invade from the NE.
10. The Sunni population will be stuck in the middle, fighting with Kurds, Turks, Iranians, Shi'a, and the remnants of the occupation government.
11. Everyone will be worse off than before the Ba'athist regime was removed. Arabs and Persians will hate Americans more, there will be more summer camps for young jihadists and terrorist internships, Iraqis will be poorer and more traumatized by the ravages of war, oil will be more expensive than when we started, the national debt will be larger by a trillion dollars, there will be a whole new batch of mass graves, and Arlington cemetary will be fuller by the thousands.

This is not rocket science. Anyone who honestly looked at the situation as it was in February of 2003 could have come to the same damn conclusion. It's not hard to figure out that the American people got sold a half-rack of lies. But why are the Democratic leaders so reluctant to speak the obvious truth? Do we have to rely on Republicans like Hagel and Lugar to get the word out that the Iraq situation is an unmitigated disaster?

John Kerry once asked congress, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" It's time for him to break that line out again.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

34. Any objective, sane observer sees this coming

Too bad that group doesn't include Bush and the Neo-Con whackos that run the defense department.

[Just Me]

24. I

[barb162]

28. "attacking 87 times a day"

"On average, insurgents now are attacking US forces 87 times a day. More than 100 foreigners have been kidnapped, and some 30 of those killed. Attacks on oil pipelines are occurring nearly every day now."

THESE NUMBERS ARE ONLY GOING TO RISE. oUR SOLDIERS THERE ARE IN A SHOOTING GALLERY.

[struggle4progress]

33. kick

:kick:

[reprobate]

35. It appears that we are entering the end game.

As many of us here predictedthis would end up as a guerilla war, with US troops facing the entirety of Iraqi males. This has happened as predicted. Now US troops can't leave their bases.

I have the sinking feeling that we will see increasingly frequent large scale attacks on our bases with increasing casualties until the public has finally had enough. Like viet nam, the end will be a massive and sudden abandonment of iraq.

[0rganism]

36. it may be the end game for us, but it's the opening for Iraq's civil war

Right now, the various sides (Kurds, Sunni, Shi'a) are jockeying for position, to build up a solid advantage for the start of the full-on internal hostilities that will redraw the map.

[reprobate]

37. O, I don't really care. We went in under a lie. I just want US out.

I think the only solution for iraq would be a tri- state gov't. Shias in one place, Sunnis another, and the Kurds in the nort. A loose federation , interacting when needed, but separate the rest of the time.

Just my $0.02 worth

[0rganism]

38. Agreed -- we only postpone the inevitable by our presence.

Ironic how the final justification for invading Iraq will be Saddam's mass graves, when we've done more than our share to generate a whole new batch of mass graves.

[henslee]

40. Like classic rock? And classic cars? Now we got classic guerilla war?