Hi Bill Ulrich; Re: "I'm talking about decimating the Sunni Triangle, that place where 6% of the people spawn 75% of the trouble. ... If the 5% Solution of specifically the Sunni Triangle won't work, do you have an "x < 100%" guesstimate that would? My own opinion is 10%. I'm curious about yours."
(a) Your 6% figure for the size of the Sunni triangle is still laughably low.
(b) By talking about decimating even 6% of Iraq, you're talking about killing 150,000 people. That puts you into the unenviable category of a 2nd class war criminal for the crime of genocide. Do you really think that the US military, the US population, or even just the President, is going to sign up for that?
(c) If you treat the citizens of the Sunni triangle that way, you will have proved (in their minds) to the rest of the Sunnis that you hate Sunnis. They will fight you wherever Sunnis are found. In fact, the Shiites are already marching to Fallujah with assistance for the Sunnis there.
Think about that carefully. There is no % of people you can kill in the Sunni triangle that will pacify Iraq. You have to treat not only Iraq, but the whole Arab nation as a whole. You would have to apply the 5 or 10% solution, not to Fallujah or the Sunni triangle, but to the 150 million Arabs living in (more or less) peaceful countries from Morocco to the Iranian border. What you're asking just doesn't work.
The Shiites don't watch Fox News, they watch Al Jazeera. Have you been to the Al Jazeera website? Did you look at their dozens of photos of dead Fallujah babies? What do you think the Arabs of Iraq are watching on TV? Fox News?
Now can you guess why it is that the Shiites aren't marching over to Fallujah in order to assist the US military in our attempt to pacify the place? I mean Jesus Weeps, what would it take to convince you that these guys are mad at us, and not just the 2 or 6%?
Now think carefully. Why the hell do you think that the Sunnis watch Al Jazeera instead of Fox News? Do you think it might have something to do with the undeniable fact that Al Jazeera is a news show made by Arab speakers for Arab speakers, with a way of looking at things that is common to that of Arab speakers? And that Fox News is made by English speakers for English speakers, with a way of looking at things that is common to English speakers? Think about what I have just written very carefully.
Now think about the same subject some more. You're trying to guess how many Sunnis you can kill in order to make the Sunni triangle pacified, but you're failing to take into account the undeniable fact that a consequence of your actions in the Sunni triangle will be to cause other parts of Iraq to rebel.
All the Arabs speak the same language. They share, more or less, the same religion. They watch similar shows and have similar views. If you want to have a peaceful occupation of Iraq, you will have to cow all the Arabs, not just the 6% that are giving you trouble there.
Think about it this way. You're going to a debate. You are going to argue for the side of the question "the US will help Iraq". The other guy is an Arab and he is going to argue for the opposite. Who will win? Maybe you imagine that you're going to beat him easily, but I say that who wins that argument depends mainly on who is making the decision as to who wins it. Maybe you think you've won in some sort of cosmic sense or from God's point of view. But what people in Iowa think just doesn't matter, as far as the level of violence in Iraq is concerned. What matters is how that debate plays in Basra or Baghdad.
If you make the argument in the US, you will win by a fairly decent margin. If you make the argument among Sunni triangle dwellers, you will lose by a very wide margin. In other Arab parts of Iraq, you may even eke out a victory in places, but as time goes on, and you commit genocide in the Sunni triangle, because of the influences of everything from Al Jazeera to the Arab language rumor mill, you will steadily worsen your situation.
No man is an island. Certainly no city is an island.
It's not like your idea hasn't been tried before. It has. History is long. The US military analyzed the situation years ago and wrote up doctrine on how to combat insurgencies. These are not arm chair theoreticians who wrote these documents. They were written by people who were taught the details of insurgency while saying goodbye to their dead buddies on the battlefields of Vietnam. Here, let me link one in so that you can read it and argue passionately against the doctrine of the US military itself:
COUNTERGUERRILLA OPERATIONS
FM 90-8
globalsecurity.org
Go ahead and read it, it's a short manual. It's almost shorter than what I've written today, and you read that, LOL. Furthermore, it was written by people who are more experienced and informed than I am.
-- Carl
P.S. Even in countries with stark divisions between religious communities, you will have a lot of friendships and intermarriage. Those people in Fallujah have cousins and inlaws all over not just Iraq, but all over the Middle East. |
