The effectiveness of increasing the force to space ration in Baghdad

AFP:

An eerie calm has descended on Baghdad during the weekly day of prayers after a Ramadan of unprecedented bloodshed in Iraq, while US troops scoured the city for a missing soldier.

Reports of violence in the war torn capital dropped in the three days since the end of the Islamic holy month, in part because thousands of US troops are deployed in the city hunting a comrade who was kidnapped by masked gunmen.

Police found the bodies of 11 murder victims on Thursday and overnight, a US military spokeswoman said Friday, a toll considered low by the standards of Baghdad's vicious dirty war between rival Sunni and Shiite death squads.

On Friday, US troops were still manning cordons around the Karrada district, where the soldier was kidnapped on Monday, and on the approaches to Sadr City, the Shiite militia bastion where they fear he is being held.

...

That is the way you defeat an insurgency. You put enough force into an area to make it too difficult for the enemy to move or operate. Just bing nice will not cut it when it comes to counter insurgency operations. You have to be able to dominate the real estate.

Comments

  1. BGGB4:02 PM

    Just being nice will not cut it when it comes to counter insurgency operations. You have to be able to dominate the real estate.

    To win a war like Iraq I think you have to do both, no? It's impossible to win a war against insurgents if you can't win the support of the people. Stomping on their customs, beliefs and laws only alienates the people who's support is central to victory.

    Too much commentary on the Iraq war is in either/or terms.

    Arch-liberals want to abandon Iraq completely. Arch-conservatives want to bomb the whole country to oblivion (and then do Iran next). This war is by nature one that must be won with military force. But military force without parallel cultural and political diplomacy results in nothing but the death of innocents and a failure to achieve our goals.

    This is why I think Donald Rumsfeld has been criminally incompetent in his job. He has shown zero concern for any aspect of battle that doesn't involve guns, bullets and bombs. The Iraq war is unwinnable from a strictly military perspective. Rumsfeld should have known this. Sadly, he didn't. And three years, 3000 lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars later, Iraq is still a rudderless, terrorist-strewn mess.

    Rumsfeld should go set up a field office in the Sunni triangle and then see how well nothing but guns and bombs do to protect you and create peace.

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