Independent UK
Robert Fisk:
Divide and rule -
America's plan for Baghdad Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas.
The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?
Published: 11 April 2007
Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.
The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.
Good God, do these people go out of their FREAKIN WAY to find the stupidest, discredited tactics just so things will be so f'd up that they will be able to justify our staying there forever?
I'm not even close to being a "military expert", but my guess would be if the tactic has been DISPROVED time after time, in similar situations and occupations,
IT AIN'T GONNA WORK THIS TIME!!!!!
posted by Paddy @ 4:51 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Jackasses.
They've been taking plays from the "Failed Strategies" book since this whole thing began in 2003. Real counterinsurgency warfare - the kind that relies on small, specially-trained teams and not massive arsenals - doesn't make arms manufacturers any money. How are GE and Raytheon going to peddle their wares if there's no great military action that requires their multi-million dollar "smart" bombs?
This sounds ominously like the British use of "concentration camps" in the Boer War to stamp out their insurgency. That war proved really productive too.
just so things will be so f'd up that they will be able to justify our staying there forever?
That's the key to remember; the neos always intended for us to be there forever. When Bu$h says leaving is defeat, he means that quite literally. For them, winning means permanent bases and eternal US military might in the geographical area where once there was a country called Iraq.
The simple answer to your question: yes. They're making all of our concerns self-fulfilling prophecies. They figure if they can remain resolute for long enough, they'll establish some sort of fugged up political leverage and literal foothold in Baghdad
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