from an exchange with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
robbiesmom
Apr. 29th, 2004 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadger> I think it could radicalize folks toward getting rid of the US army, but
> not toward the sort of go-for-broke fighting I see.
One of the things that I have heard again and again in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Somalia. Heavily armed societies in which honor and community/tribal/clan ties run strong. If there's fighting in a neighborhood, especially an urban neighborhood, men (and often women) don't ask "What's going on?" or "How did this start?" They grab weapons and head out the door. And then they start shooting at whoever is the clear enemy/outsider. Instinctive reaction, screw logic or consequences.
> I wonder why there
> would be *thousands* of former regime folks fighting, even though it is
> a Sunni area, because surely they know that they're not going to win;
I don't think that they believe that. They know that they *can* win. They saw the Somalis win, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and some of them have read books about Vietnam. They know if they kill enough Americans and make the casualites look bad, and get al Arabiyya and al Jazeera to show them on TV, where CNN and the Interneet will pick them up, Americans will get upset and we'll pull our troops out.
We've been there a year and we're hunkering in compounds and firebases. Carbombs and missile/mortar crews can go anywhere they want (apart from our most heavily defended areas. There seems to be very little rule of law in the urban areas. We're losing. We haven't lost, but we haven't accomplished what we *had* to accomplish, which is create stability, isolate the insurgents, and create an effective and credible native government and security service to hand things over to. If we don';t change something in the way we're operating, we'll be right where we are now, or worse, in a year. We will have created the only thind worse than Saddam Hussein's Iraq: an Iraq which is *more* hostile, more unstable, less safe for its inhabitants, its neighbors, and the world, and which serves as a beacon for the antiWestern radical fundmentalist Islamic terror campaign.
> not toward the sort of go-for-broke fighting I see.
One of the things that I have heard again and again in Iraq, in Palestine, and in Somalia. Heavily armed societies in which honor and community/tribal/clan ties run strong. If there's fighting in a neighborhood, especially an urban neighborhood, men (and often women) don't ask "What's going on?" or "How did this start?" They grab weapons and head out the door. And then they start shooting at whoever is the clear enemy/outsider. Instinctive reaction, screw logic or consequences.
> I wonder why there
> would be *thousands* of former regime folks fighting, even though it is
> a Sunni area, because surely they know that they're not going to win;
I don't think that they believe that. They know that they *can* win. They saw the Somalis win, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and some of them have read books about Vietnam. They know if they kill enough Americans and make the casualites look bad, and get al Arabiyya and al Jazeera to show them on TV, where CNN and the Interneet will pick them up, Americans will get upset and we'll pull our troops out.
We've been there a year and we're hunkering in compounds and firebases. Carbombs and missile/mortar crews can go anywhere they want (apart from our most heavily defended areas. There seems to be very little rule of law in the urban areas. We're losing. We haven't lost, but we haven't accomplished what we *had* to accomplish, which is create stability, isolate the insurgents, and create an effective and credible native government and security service to hand things over to. If we don';t change something in the way we're operating, we'll be right where we are now, or worse, in a year. We will have created the only thind worse than Saddam Hussein's Iraq: an Iraq which is *more* hostile, more unstable, less safe for its inhabitants, its neighbors, and the world, and which serves as a beacon for the antiWestern radical fundmentalist Islamic terror campaign.
