I thought the Kurds were supposed to be securing themselves, uw?
And the question still stands. There is just no way to guard every mile of desert border and every village unless every village is signed up and trained to guard itself, with local forces. And Iraqis have had forty years training to be either wolves or sheep
This attack occurred outside the Kurdish controlled area. We began reducing troop strength in that area about 2 months ago. We had to. We needed our troops to fight elsewhere.
That is the essential nature of playing the game called whack-a-mole. The conventional troops run around in circles trying to bang the head of insurgents wherever they pop up.
My prayer for that is, God bless those who run around in circles for they shall be known as wheels.
In the meantime, the Iraqi government also has insufficient troops to secure cleared areas like this one. So the moles continue to infiltrate and the game of whack-a-mole continues. And when they can, the moles whack back. And these moles, like all great insurgent and guerrilla fighters, always attack weakness.
The charge of ethnic cleansing is an appropriate one imo. Militant Islam is a world of Jihad or perpetual struggle: First against those who profess to be believers but do not abide all the rules. Those are seen as cancers that must be removed to purify the Muslim state and save the rest of humanity. The second target is those who do not believe at all and refuse to submit. We are in the latter group. Both are considered legitimate targets.
From Sura Mohammed, "... therefore when you meet the unbelievers smite their necks ..."
You said, "Iraqis have had forty years training to be either wolves or sheep."
Musashi ( I think) said,"I would rather live one day as a tiger than a thousand as a sheep."
Musashi also said “Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death."
Certainly the Jihadists accept that. But so do others. It is hardly unusual for humans to accept death rather than renounce a religious belief under threat and convert to another.
I think another Musashi quote applies to the tactic of whack-a-mole, "If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late."
Nadine, the only way for this war to end successfully is for the Iraqi people to accept governance by their elected officials. The single most important condition placed on that acceptance is security. If we are to prevail, Iraq must be won one village, one neighborhood at a time. To do that we must be able to provide security after a military clean-out operation. If the security is not effective, the clean-out fails because the insurgents return.
I shake my head every time I read another military press release claiming we killed 3 and detained 6. This kind of report indicates our leaders are playing whack-a-mole in a war of attrition. There are 150 million Muslim militants, we cannot win a war of attrition against them.
When we see headlines declaring this town and this village are secure and the residents support the Iraqi government I will know we have begun to attain something worthwhile.
While waiting for such headlines, we must refrain from combat ops in locales we cannot thereafter secure lest we confuse the populace with short-lived false hope, only to abandon them to a horrible fate that saps any motivation to help us help them again.
uw |
