A “holy” site ceases to be one when used as a base camp for death. Is this how to fight a war? To play shoot ‘em up and run back to your respective corners when we have the military might to turn the whole country into a pile of sand in the middle of a pile of sand? George Bush and his politically correct war. Senseless.
The great and powerful Moqtada al-Sadr can thank his lucky stars this isn’t WWII and Bush isn’t Roosevelt or Truman. He and his rag-tag bunch of toy soldiers would’ve been in their graves by now. Instead, they get to fight their way and make headlines all over the world. Unbelievable. A weak enemy dictates when and how and on what terms it will surrender. I long for the 1940s when men were men and nationalism and support for the war were running high. Yeah, I would’ve had a problem with race segregation and all that, but at least I’d be protected from my foreign enemies. Not anymore.
Middle Eastern men are crossing our porous southern border alongside Mexicans. Bush is too politically correct to close the darn thing and put an indefinite moratorium on Arab immigration. No one has a right to come to the United States, and we’re not required to let anyone in. Sometimes we forget that.
Close the borders and start kicking in doors to find the Muslim scourge hiding in our midst, laughing at our stupidity.
If only I were queen of the world!
Addendum: How many of our men died during this pointless scuffle? Even if the number is only “1″, shame on you, Mr. Bush!
Update: Moqtada al-Sadr is still running things. Not even Bill Clinton would put up with this.
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Instead of cloning stemcells, we oughtta be cloning General Patton and his old Third Army. This whole thing woulda been over months ago if “Lucky Forward” were in charge.
Well, ok, maybe not over, but the tangos would sure quake in fear of us.
Just an incoherent, early morning excuse for a thought.
I would like to point out that the tactic you’re advocating only works against a unified government. One good hard hit can convince a central government to back off and to reign in it’s radicals who still want to fight. It’s never the tactic we’ve applied during cleanup and occupation, not in Germany, not in Japan, not anywhere else.
Imagine you’re part of a few groups who are defending an invaded america. Which scenario is more likely to convince you to give up: infernal politicing where all your steady supports tell you to give up and get with the program, or a military assault on your favorite church? I know bombing my church would not convince me at all to give up a losing fight. Politics might convince me to leave my country.
Kyle,
Bombing your “church” would convince you if you were hiding in it and were obliterated in the course of said bombing.
I have to agree with La Shawn, that this is no way to win a war. Sometimes hard decisions regarding these type of icons have to be made.
During WWII the ancient convent at Monte Cassino was bombed because the Allies thought the Germans were using it as an artillery observation post.This was also a difficult decision, but it was felt that it would save lives if carried out (oh, and before you say it, I know that it turned out that Monte Cassino was SUPPOSEDLY not occupied by the Germans until AFTER it was bombed into ruble, but try telling that to the troops on the receiving end of the accurate artillery fire they were getting prior to the bombing).
While destroying the shrine and/or killing Al Sadr, might radicalize a few more, I hardly think it could be any worse than allowing him to keep recruiting, and providing a safe haven for his radicals to run to after they have engaged us in combat.
A few more might be radicalized, like Montie states, if we bomb their holy sites. I agree with La Shawn’s assessment that Bush is playing a p.c. war. I would also like to add that Islam is the number two religion in the world, so ‘a few more’ might be more than we would initially think. As well, there is oil under all that sand; bombing their holy sites would stir up more negative sentiment and prevent any attempts at reconciliation. If there were no oil, we would have bombed them to oblivion by now.
Unfortunately, bombing the temple isn’t up to us anymore. The new Iraqi government seems to be dictating things (as they should). I just hate to think our soldiers might have to fight this Sadr idiot again and again.
The battle in Najaf is just that, a battle- not a war in itself. It’s part of the larger war to establish a free Iraqi government (which is also a battle in the war on terrorism); and the Iraqi government must therefore make the decisions. Were we to clearly override them on this matter, the damage done would be much worse than what we have now. The upside of the situation is that it has clearly demonstrated that Iraqis are indeed making the decisions, increasing the perception in Iraq that the US is there now as an able helper- not an occupier; and that will encourage regular Iraqis who want a free government. The many Iraqis who have joined the Iraqi police and national guard attest to that.
Obviously it would be more popular in the US to steamroll the place; but GW has never been one to let polls decide policy. There are three key spheres of perception at play- those of the bad guys, the Iraqis, and the US. GW has chosen to work within the Iraqi sphere, in order to better build a free Iraq; for that will in the end take care of the other two. Is he mistaken? I don’t think so, as long we stay the course.
First, Mr Sadr needs to see a dentist.
Second, did you know that Sadr and his group of thugs blew up part of that mosque a year ago? It may have been a car bomb, but an Iraqi official was coming out of the mosque when he was killed by a bomb. Sadr and his terrorists do not care about the mosque, they are only using it.
Do you know how they know that they can use it? Because shortly after that bombing a year ago, Bush said something to do the effect of ‘this mosque should be respected as it is a part of Iraqi and Muslim history’. It’s called the Iman Ali mosque. Anyway, I blogged about it a couple of days ago. Go take a look.
Isn’t this the sort of situation bio/chem weapons are designed for? To kill our enemies while leaving their buildings standing? For that matter, a good, solid neutron bomb would do the trick. I can understand not wanting to antagonize the local population by turning the temple into a new parking lot, but we can’t let punk-ass doofs like al-Sadr use these places as sanctuaries, either. Granted, it looks like it’s a moot point in this case now, but we should consider it for the next time al-Sadsack wants to hide in a Mosque.
Tolerance shown for other people’s religious sacraments might go a long way towards reconciliation. Why burn bridges prematurely?
A church or a Mosque or a Temple is only a building, God does not actually live there, such structures are not “Holy Ground”. They are merely a place where people of like beliefs can congregate and worship and if it is destroyed, by whatever means, one can be built in it’s place.
The Mosque in question has only historical and political significance. I can’t even begin to think of a historical building that is worth preserving at a cost of Human lives. The Mosque is being used as a safe haven by men who are killing our soldiers, so I say do what has to be done.
To do otherwise would be the same as allowing NVA and VC safe haven in Cambodia or North Vietnam. It’s called limited war and limited war is ultimately an unwinable war. We have to be willing to visit total war on the badguys or we are merely tilting at windmills.
There is no hope of persuading the tangos to live and let live….they believe that they have a mandate from their god. Compromise is out of the question. So we are forced to make a choice; either lose the fight in the big picture or kill every extremist that rears it’s ugly head. A dead Islamofascist is a good Islamofascist.
That will take years to win, but the alternative is less preferable. Besides, President Bush already stressed realistically that this would be a very long war.
LaShawn, I agree.
Bomb the place.
Then after the area is secured and stable, rebuild it.
Announce the intent to use a neutron bomb if the temple is not evacuated and the fighters do not surrender. Give them 12 hours — and then do it.
Thanks for the comments. By the way, feel free to call my attention to typos. I had a big one sitting in this post ALL day.
It’s important to recognize the importance of a religious shrine to a religion that differs from our own. Religious intolerance breeds situations like we now find in the Middle East, Africa, and Northern Ireland, for that matter.
Load the 3rd Marines up with enough tear gas or whatever. Destroying that shrine would be tantamount to have Muslims destroy the Church of the Nazarene, something all may recall upset the Pope a year or so ago when he “mediated” between the Israelis and several hundred terrorists who took “refuge” in that well known shrine.
Recall when a group of nut nicks took over “the shrine” (whatever it’s called) in Mecca 8-10 years ago? The Saudis rushed it with troops, shot the hell out of the place and killed or captured them to the very last man.
There’s much to be said for good PR when you’re selling soap or used cars. In this case it isn’t PR that’s needed or leveling the shrine, just a carefully planned attack with a force so superior they won’t have a change.
I agree with the “enthusiasm” but a moratorium on “arab” emigration would be racist in nature.
The terrorists we’re fighting, most of which are indeed arabs, represent a small minority of that population of the world’s people. Some of the terrorists are Muslim extremists and are black, living in countries like the Sudan, Kenya, and West Africa where the Muslim religion continues to rapidly spread. Animism as a religious belief , for example, has all but been replaced by Islam in West Africa.
A small minority of Muslim extremists can be found in that group, in addition to those who are Arabs (witness the two bombings of American embassies a few years ago).
Tighten the borders. They caught five members of Hamas in the U.S. today.
I love the philosophy by any means necessary regardless of the secondary consequences…
It shows real clarity of thinking. The war on terror isn’t simply a military strategic battle, it is a propaganda battle as well where we are trying to communicate that American ideals are the superior way to govern a community or a nation. You don’t create many converts destroying sites that even your Iraqi allies believe to be holy.
http://www.dellgines.blogspot.com
Get ready, everybody! HiRez is here to “educate” us.
I’ve been saying “put a bullet in his head” for over a month. Fighting a political war is how we “lost” Vietnam.
Trust I’ll be advised if my tone is ever “educational.” I enjoy the discussion on this blog. Short or too critical posts can be misunderstood, but the acrimony you speak of in a later article is different I think.
I recall in the early days of the “Internet” when usenet was essentially the only feature involving a general exchange of information. Straying into something like a news group dealing with an historical period, particular writer, etc. and making a casual remark guaranteed that the poster discovered what being “flamed” met.
All the stodgy professors in the U.S. frequented their domain of news groups. Some discussions literally lasted years on some minute point. Scholarly, yes, but the acrimony was thick in the air. Times have changed in terms of access and the fact today’s Internet represents the broader spectrum of society.
Including the nuts. And including those of incredible ill will towards others. I’ve seen incredibly nasty posts to personal blogs of some of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-war teenagers or someone simply gone beserk in the world of anonymity that’’s today’s net. It’s been said for years that the impersonal and heavily trafficked freeways of southern Cal. contribute to the number of drive by, anonymous shootings, drivers gone crazy over some perceived slight, etc.
Nuts or someone who chooses the net to “chill out?”
Am uncertain I agree that Vietnam was a “political” war, although may just be second guessing Lee’’s intent (for which I apologize in advance if that’s the case).
Vietnam was the war of my generation. While there are some “hearts and minds” issues involved, the key to each war, its primary intent, is vastly different. If Vietnam was a “political war,” it was lost because of a failured leadership in the elected government at the highest levels. We lacked the resolve and single minded leadership to win in Vietnam.
That’s been said many times and in many ways. We’ve been warned, and rightly so, by the President that the war against terrorism is for the long term, a fact lost to many people. We inevitably are going to make some mistakes at certain times, in certain places, but it’s absurd that any short term concerns get in our way of the broader view.
We were “in” the war in Nam, “out,” back “in” again. Resolve was always a variable. We inserted 500,000 additional personnel at one time, then essentially froze further support. The scale was larger than Iraq or Afghanistan, although there are some similar concerns. We don’t NEED to be concerned about the lack of “support” by our old friends, the French, for example, up to their elbows in self-interest, not the least of which is UNSCAM.
The concern for some unspecified “consensus” is insane. In a war against terrorism we face a variable enemy, sometimes very well organized and well financed, sometimes throwing rocks in the streets. The perceptions of different countries, their people, etc. are inevitably going to vary, whether through design or ignorance.
I remained disheartened and disillusioned in returning from Vietnam. I “opposed” the war at that point, but I didn’t attend the same rallies or speak the same words as a certain political figure (or Hollywood star). Fortunately our life and times have changed. But that politician, Sen. Kerry, DID betray me and others with his words. His period of service over lapped with the 365 days I was there. The present so-called “attack ads” by the Swift Boat Group (or whatever they’re named) speak the most basic thoughts of many of us at the time.
Others, with Sen. Kerry only one, had sharper (and often inaccurate) descriptions of what they’d seen in Nam. I had good reason for not trusting Sen. Kerry at the time when he testified before the congressional committee. Whether the advertisements are understood the same way today is doubtful. Times have changed. Most of the hurt, the way we felt when hippies stood at airport gates and spit on returning military personnel (even draftees) has disapated with time. But it will never be gone and Sen. Kerry chose to wave the flag on his behalf (likley an attempt from Day 1 to head off criticism), and he can bloody well sleep in the bed he made for himself.
Rant ends.
abraxas wrote, “Tolerance shown for other people’s religious sacraments might go a long way towards reconciliation. Why burn bridges prematurely?”
Tolerance ends when the “religious sacrament” is used as a base for America’s enemies. Are we supposed to kill ourselves with our own virtue? Think about that one…
First, thank you for your service to our country, Jerry. I’ve been looking on the ‘net for “fair and balanced” historical info on the Vietnam War to learn more about the conflict. From what I’ve heard (History Channel) and read (Internet) about Vietnam, President Johnson was basically trying to “bomb the North to the peace table” not fight to defeat the North.
President Nixon finally began bombing Laos and Cambodia, via “Operation Linebacker 2″, to try to cut the supply lines to the North and the Viet Cong. But it was too late by then. What I meant with my “political” war comment was that the US was too concerned by domestic and foreign public opinion and Soviet and Red China (who were suppling the North and the Viet Cong) reaction to the way the US conducted the war. So I guess that’s why the US would not invade and capture the North.
Correct me if I have any of this wrong.
Bush is engaging in compensatory moral imaging. He knows that he has squandered our moral capital by commencing an unjust war, so we defer to the “holiness” of the enemy’s shrine to make ourselves look like less of the bad guy. There is no other logical explanation. FDR and Truman would never have had to do this, because there was no question as to the justness of our involvement in WWII. If Bush had been correct, or had fooled enough of the world into thinking we were correct, in invading Iraq in the first place, the shrine at Najaf would be mulch right now.
”Bush is too politically correct to close the darn thing and put an indefinite moratorium on Arab immigration. ”
So you are backing the use of racial profiling?
”Close the borders and start kicking in doors to find the Muslim scourge hiding in our midst, laughing at our stupidity.”
What a generalisation. Maybe im just reading it wrong. Are you saying Islam in general is the scourge? Im sad at the what international terrorism has done to the US. Liberty seems to have gone very much down the pan.
“Are we supposed to kill ourselves with our own virtue?”
Well, I will have to think about it. Thanks for pointing out something I’ve not ever before considered.
Lee: Thanks for your comments, but “I was there and I saw what happened,” just like John Kerry did. We, uh, have different perceptions of what we saw.
My period of 365 days overlapped the period he was there. I’ve elsewhere mentioned I may even have talked to him on the radio because of our two commands. (I never met a Swift boat commander untill after the war and recall the names of none I talked to on the radio during combat operations. It’s simply “likely” I did at some time.
Your comments about the war, i.e., Johnson’s thoughts he could bomb the North out of existence, is only one of a bigger part of the puzzle. There is no easy answer. In fact the variable strategies involved is my own analysis. Although primarily educated in English, I also have an undergraduate degree in history. Unlike many I feel comfortable in leaving judgments to be made by present and future historians, distant from the actual action.
I had under “my command” a pretty good sized chunch of territory. But “my command” was only a limited part of the role of our people in the area. I helped to put out fires.
But I do feel comfortable in saying that Kerry’s comments about deliberately killing civilians, burning villages with no military reason, etc. are false. For one thing the Naval aircraft I summoned, working with a Marine counterpart and Marines on the ground, would have been far more extensive than Kerry’s. Yet I spent most of my time in a bunker, surrounded by tons of sandbags, in 110 degree heat, one light bulb, and three, sometimes four other humans, and some fancy radio equipment.
I rarely ever saw the scenes of combat. But that doesn’t mean Kerry is somehow more qualified than I, or qualified at all, in making the comments he made after the war. Secrets are not well kept in the military. There’s the rumor mill among enlisted personnel, another among non-coms, another above lower echelon officers like myself, etc. etc. But I was the one who ordered, after consulting with my Marine liason, virtually every air strike in my area, adjoining the Delta, and some strikes in the Delta area and in areas where Kerry served.
A Swift boat, or several working in combination, can bring a fair amount of machine gun fire to bear on an area. But we had 3 to 5 “Jolly Green Giants” in the air over the Delta 24/7. I “borrowed” them from time to time, but the primary support I provided was the carrier based fighter-bombers of the U.S. Navy.
I lived in a hole, covered by sandbags, on top of several very ugly red hills with vegetation cleared for 1000 meters or more around them. But I “saw” through what I heard from troops on the ground, their commanders when they returned (lowly Lt. JGs like myself most of the time), and there was much discussion centered on the effectiveness of Navy aircraft, any one of which could do more damage than half a dozen Swift boats. I often sent in two to five such aircraft.
From talking to the Marine ground coimmanders we learned that napalm was substantially more effective than conventional bombs. Thinking of the types of devastation and the effects on civilians (or VC for that matter) is not a pleasant thought. It wasn’t at the time.
When we hit villages, better candidates for conventional bombs, it was more often with napalm because that’s what the aircraft in the air (I usually had five to a dozen in my sector 24/7). Today’s aircraft, even our helicopters, are better equipped and have a diverse and more selective type of armament. We still had some aircraft stuck with rockets which were far less effective than bombs or napalm and were eventually refitted for that purpose.
My sector was terrain which had heavy forest coverage and little open areas. More open areas, like the agricultural areas, found rocket armaments more effective and, to a lesser extent, conventional bombs. Bombs were only of real use when there were targets like permanent bridges or areas where VC tunnelling was known to exist. In dense vegetation napalm was vastly superior because the effectiveness of conventional bombs was restricted by the heavy forestation.
This is allo headed somewhere: napalm is the armament of choice for Hollywood. The effects, as depicted in widespread media coverage, was horrible on those who survived, and there are certain famous photos of children so injured which are burned into my memory and will live with me the rest of my life. But I didn’t need to see those photos beforehand. I knew what napalm did. And by the time I left that duty (I lived on those red hills about seven months of my 365 days), 90% of the available resources were napalm.
If a village, obviously somewhat out in the open, or one along the shore of a river feeding the Delta, or the Delta itself, produced heavy fire on our Marines, we destroyed it with napalm, what was at hand. “Heavy” fire should be emphasized. Virtually every village near a body of water would have a sniper or two. The ground unit (or Swift boat) was all that was needed to deal with that issue. We didn’t drop napalm or anything else on it.
Consider from a practical standpoint the simple fact that it was clearly a waste of assets, concern for civilians not even an issue.
There’s no doubt that Kerry’s Swift boat, through indiscriminate firing with their .50 calibers (I believe they also had one .30) could kill a number of civilians. But I have no knowledge, and this is the source of uproar among those whose duty was on Swift boats, who were always in danger. They were lightly armed, had virtually no armor, and were essentially over sized water skiing boats built out of plywood. In fact they were little more than the PT boats of WWII. They came about out of necessity as the only means feasible of interdicting smuggling through the Delta (and other areas).
Their role was primarily searching literally every small craft travelling south. The numbers that slipped through, especially during the night, was substantial. We never had enough Swift boats to do more than slow the traffic a bit. The option, transport over land, fell into the area of my sector, although usually civilians carried the munitions and our attacks were designed to destroy their military cover.
That, not so briefly stated, is what Swift boats did and why I know something about them. If Kerry killed and slaughtered, indiscriminatlely, civilians, then it was done under his command. We provided only limited “offensive” support as intelligence in the area was limited, in part by the terrain itself. We called in air strikes when our search and destroy groups on the ground were ambushed or ran into a larger opposing force.
Even villages taken over and “occupied” by the VC rarely were without civilians. Some cooked their food, some were “used” by them (use your imagination), some were their spouses who travelled with them (many VC combatants were also women), etc. etc. So an “abandoned to the enemy” village rarely meant there were no civilians present. The VC also didn’t evict them. They usually fled at night and were in no way, in most cases, sympathetic to the VC (any more than they were to various corrupt governments in South Vietnam). The VC stole their rice and raped their daughters.
That’s a long way of getting to the point that when I called for a strike on a village, usually one of more than one aircraft, it was with the knowledge that there likely were a (relatively) small number of civilians present. It was invevitable. The VC were the very ones we wanted to defeat to reduce their support of smuggling overland. The stores of rice and other food stolen would also be a strategic problem. So I ordered napalm on those villages, a sufficient number of planes usually to obliterate them.
Other “communications officers” like myself did the same thing. For one thing it was difficult enough, knowing there were likely civilian women and likely some children, to know their death would be virtually assured by direct account, with few survivors. We didn’t want VC survivors for obvious reasons. We didn’t want civilians to survive for different reasons: such survivors often suffered wounds far worse than death.
Napalm is still in use but has largely been replaced by modern bombs which fragment into thousands of lethal components to wreck their damage. Purely speculation, but the use of napalm I’ve seen in Iraq has large appeared to be selected to create widespread fire. In Vietnam the intent, often described in similar terms, was largely selected to destroy and disrupt the maximum number of enemy by burning them to death.
Swift boats had other missions of course, also made popular in the movies, but hauling spies and snipers around was not their primary role. Often these other roles were conceived by some general in Saigon who had no concept or idea of the appropriate role of a Swift boat. Fortunately, and I heard an awful lot of radio traffic of different kinds, most carried on the mundane, but danger work, of searching thousands of small craft, anyone of which might have a young boy, a grandmother, or a father with a grenade in his hand, waiting until the Swift boat got close enough to throw it.
John Kerry was a hero in Vietnam, no more than many others I knew. I picked up a few medals myself.
What he did AFTER Vietnam, especially the lies he told, and his inconsistent support of the military and intelligence communities of the U.S. in later years, is what should interest us. As a voter Senator Kerry scares the hell out of me when I consider the prospects for his leadership as President.
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