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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (119649)	11/15/2003 4:35:12 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

Very nice post Hawk. Thanks. No.. Thank you.. I'm trying to be a "good boy" today.. hehe Hawk

To: FaultLine who wrote (119649)	11/16/2003 12:57:29 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi FaultLine; Re; "It is definitely a repercussion of not actually forcing all the Republican Guard and Fedayeen to surrender." This is a dream wish, a fantasy. Let me quote myself from long before the war: Bilow, September 15, 2002 In urban areas, a losing army has 3 choices, not just two. The third choice is to take off your uniform and hide your gun. This is the choice that is preferred, and it will be the choice that most Iraqi Army soldiers would take, in the event of a collapse of the Iraqi Army. For that matter, it was the choice taken by most of the Afghans who were (forced) to fight on the side of the Taliban. There are very few historical examples of armies that surrendered in droves in urban areas of their own country. The reason is that the soldiers instead melt back into the population. This is a universal fact of human warfare, and is why you won't see huge numbers of soldiers "surrendering" in Baghdad, just as you did not see huge numbers of soldiers surrendering in Afghanistan (relative to the size of the army which was 3 million men. Hell, they couldn't have even fed that many PoWs.) #reply-17992225 A policy of "forcing" the Republican Guard and Fedayeen to surrender was never feasible. The best the US could have done was to turn the war into a war of attrition, rather than maneuver, and grind up the Iraqi forces. That might have resulted in a peaceful occupation similar to that of Germany or Japan, but it would have been far more bloody for the US. -- Carl