Me hanging my ass in the wind
Aug. 13th, 2004 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumIraq:
An Najaf
Sadr (who bothers me, he bothered me when he was a new face on the block, and nothing I saw while I was in Iraq made him look any better, nothing I've heard of him since has done so either) has tried to give himself a win/win situation (for certain definitions of win).
If he gets killed, he's a martyr and gets some of what he wants. This presupposes a sincere religious belief in behind some of his aims. I think this much is true.
If the US/Iraqis back off, he's pulled an Hussein and lost a battle, but since he's still at large (a la the outcome of the Gulf War, where we stopped when we said we would, did what we promised and he claimed victory because we didn't break the rules and chase him out).
If we attack the Shrine of the Imam Ali, all hell breaks loose and we probably reap a whirlwind of our own sowing.
Can it be fixed?
Maybe. I think I have a solution, but I'm not there and I have a rocker, not a bird, on my shoulders, so the odds are slim I'd be listened to.
Invest it. Go back to renaissance type war.
Clear all the houses in An Najaf which are in 60mm mortar range of the Shrine, take photos of the condition, give a copy to the owners. Promise to pay them if they are damaged (we do this in Germany all the time. If Reforger chews up a guy's field, Finance pays for, cash, on the spot).
Invest the shrine.
Offer an amnesty. If they walk out, right now, we take their picture, fingerprints and parole.
If they wait, they get tried when they come out.
And then we wait. They get hungry, they get thirsty, they can come out. They get arrested, they get tried, and they end up in jail.
Sadr, he gets arrested and then he gets tried. Rebellion, treason, whatever the appropriate charge is. He gets convicted. And he gets prison, so he can't be martyred.
It would be expensive, and it won't be quick, nor all that satisfying, because they will kill Marines. They will destroy houses, and markets and schools and all sorts of things.
But if anything happens to the shrine... they will have done it, and the whirlwind will be less.
An Najaf
Sadr (who bothers me, he bothered me when he was a new face on the block, and nothing I saw while I was in Iraq made him look any better, nothing I've heard of him since has done so either) has tried to give himself a win/win situation (for certain definitions of win).
If he gets killed, he's a martyr and gets some of what he wants. This presupposes a sincere religious belief in behind some of his aims. I think this much is true.
If the US/Iraqis back off, he's pulled an Hussein and lost a battle, but since he's still at large (a la the outcome of the Gulf War, where we stopped when we said we would, did what we promised and he claimed victory because we didn't break the rules and chase him out).
If we attack the Shrine of the Imam Ali, all hell breaks loose and we probably reap a whirlwind of our own sowing.
Can it be fixed?
Maybe. I think I have a solution, but I'm not there and I have a rocker, not a bird, on my shoulders, so the odds are slim I'd be listened to.
Invest it. Go back to renaissance type war.
Clear all the houses in An Najaf which are in 60mm mortar range of the Shrine, take photos of the condition, give a copy to the owners. Promise to pay them if they are damaged (we do this in Germany all the time. If Reforger chews up a guy's field, Finance pays for, cash, on the spot).
Invest the shrine.
Offer an amnesty. If they walk out, right now, we take their picture, fingerprints and parole.
If they wait, they get tried when they come out.
And then we wait. They get hungry, they get thirsty, they can come out. They get arrested, they get tried, and they end up in jail.
Sadr, he gets arrested and then he gets tried. Rebellion, treason, whatever the appropriate charge is. He gets convicted. And he gets prison, so he can't be martyred.
It would be expensive, and it won't be quick, nor all that satisfying, because they will kill Marines. They will destroy houses, and markets and schools and all sorts of things.
But if anything happens to the shrine... they will have done it, and the whirlwind will be less.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-16 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-16 11:46 pm (UTC)After all, it's not the non-lethality that's at issue here. We could, like the Belgians in the Congo, start lopping off arms. You'll note the Belgians aren't in the Congo any more.
If the mission is to peaceably hold Iraq, tactics that lead to a short-lived "military victory", but also lead to even more resentment locally, and even more condemnation globally are worse than ineffective, they actually put completion of the mission further off. Tell me how, aside from your own personal preferences and apparent unconcern for the opinion of other people -- people on whose opinion the success of the mission depends -- just why pursuing a counter-productive tactic would be "reasonable".