Another miss in Sadr City
April 14th, 2008, 1:40 pm · 3 Comments · posted by jhogg
There’s a choice bit of newsy cotton-candy at the Washington Post about how the U.S. and Iraqi forces are back in Sadr City. This would be extraordinary news if they had asked why this trip into Sadr-ville as opposed to the bajillion other trips.
Always fans of glorious military battles, the American public, aided by news services that really are ignorant about war, like to think these forays into guerrilla territory are some sort of frenzied armored lozenge rammed down the throat of hell where snarling demons chomp at the heels of soldiers.
The truth (always more mundane than reality) is that when the superheroes barreled into Sadr City they probably found……
barbers, shop keeps, mechanics, children, bums, restaurants, tailors, etc…
These sorts of wars make for boring reporting, atrocious fiction and movies like “Jarhead,” which four whole people went to see. We love to think of the military charging bravely through the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge because it sounds exciting and we get to ignore the grimmer details. But, these grand “decisive battles” just aren’t happening in Iraq. No matter who wishes it were so.
To get a better idea, a friend of mine who spent time in Vietnam described the experience as “months of boredom followed by a few minutes of sheer terror.” Unfortunately, guerrillas are very, very, good at using those few minutes to kill lots of people.
But this is where people foul up. There isn’t and won’t be any excitement in Sadr City. Guerrillas don’t fight when they’re outnumbered. Instead, the U.S. and Iraqi forces will go in there and make a lot of noise, they’ll probably rough some people up, somebody in a tank will accidentally smash grandma’s falafel stand, someone will impose a curfew, then lift it, then impose it again, they’ll bottle up an area of 2 million people and set up one entrance and exit point making it hard to bring in supplies or food. Then, to claim success, they’ll snatch up about 20 people that the press releases will call senior leaders and scram.
Once they leave, the Mahdi Army will help rebuild grandma falafel stand, they’ll deliver food and medical supplies, and once the U.S. and Iraqi forces shove off and leave a mess, the local guys will wind up looking like the Eagle Scouts.
I realize the Petraeus policy has been a sensible form of counter insurgency looking to avoid just this sort of scenario. But a platoon of infantry in the heart of Sadr City doesn’t have time for that touchy-feely crap. They’re well aware that a good number of eyes on them aren’t friendly.
Thing is, the Mahdi Army knows that, too. In fact, they’re probably counting on it.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
They are back in Sadr City because over 300 rockets and mortars were fired from there into the Green Zone, where all the diplomats, state department officials and politically privileged contractors live. Like the pooh water being given to our troops, where nothing was done about it until some enterprising fobbits replaced the water designated for an ice sculpture at a KBR bigwig party with the pooh water, the neocons only react to threats that personally affect them. A mortar attack on the green zone while they are in the middle of an American propaganda push to support the war here in the states would naturally lead to some serious reprisals.
But I seriously doubt that an American patrol went into Sadr City, which has a population of close to 800,000, the majority of them hostile to our guys. Most reports are of hellfire missile or air strikes into residential areas to combat the attacks on the green zone. The Americans have taken no casualties in Sadr City recently.
General Dave Petraeus has done wonders and gave the Bush administration a much needed lull in which to accomplish some
political shoring up in Iraq, and they have done………nothing. The Bush administration then responded in their usual cowardly fashion and hung the good general out there to fend for himself when he made his report in Washington. Letting the democrats snipe at a successful American general may do wonders for their political cause come November, but it also makes it crystal clear that there will be no leadership coming out of the White House until next January, when the new president is sworn into office. And by that time, all of Petraeus’s hard fought for gains may have to done again, and this time with less resources.
This is what I’ve been saying since the fall of 2003, when Rumsfeld was posing as the worlds most phony Field Marshall, that the solution to Iraq would not start until the Bush administration was gone. They have no plan for Iraq, the only plan they have is to start a war with Iran, hoping that all their crimes in Iraq will be glossed over in a wave of
patriotism.
Our guys in Iraq are magnificent. They have no mission, they are being treated as spare parts, they are steadily being lied to by the worst group of senior officers ever to disgrace the American military and they are still performing at a high level. And they are at great risk, for according to both the American Conservative magazine and the foreign press, Cheney’s recent trip to the Middle East was to gather support for his upcoming attack on Iran. It would ruin the American economy and put both the fleet in the Persian Gulf and the Army in Iraq at high risk, but since when has Cheney ever given a damn about Americans anyway?
April 15th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Wonderpig, I think I love you.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Thanks, Anonymouse, for the kindly sentiments. I was beginning to think nobody was reading this blog.
The War Nerd, Gary Brecher, has written an in depth article on the recent doings in Basra. He always comes up with information that I haven’t seen anywhere on the net, but it always seems to ring true. Of course, what Mike Yon writes is almost the direct opposite of what Brecher writes, and what Mike Yon writes seems to ring true as well.
And of course, most of what’s coming from the pentagon is about the same as what’s coming from the pro-Arab sites; must be assumed to be untrue due to the level of continuous falsehoods being issued as news. Absolutely shameful to have Americans doing that, the American military used to have a high degree of integrity in the higher ranks. How much of this is the neocons doing and how much of this is the failure of the American military system is difficult to ascertain, especially looking at it from the outside.
Once again, a warning that there are numerous swear words in Brecher’s article.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=18297&IBLOCK_ID=35