Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Iraq War: This Is the Way We Lose a Guerrilla War

It can be sung to the tune of "This is the way we make a broken heart," which Rosanne Cash and John Hiatt performed as a beautiful duet.

Nothing pretty about what's happening in the Iraq War as reported in this piece from today's Los Angeles Times U.S. Gunships Target Insurgents in Iraq Amid Copter Crash Inquiry (my emphasis):

<< Automatic weapon fire pounded from helicopter gunships and dozens of rounds of air-launched cannon fire sounded like a clock's gong in the night Tuesday as the U.S. military conducted operations throughout this Iraqi capital to root out insurgents.

<< The offensive, which included some of the strongest firepower used in Baghdad since major combat ended in May, came after a similar operation earlier in the day in Tikrit. They were part of military crackdowns in central Iraq, where anti-American insurgent activity has been strongest.

<< "This is war," Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division based in Ramadi in western Iraq, said in Baghdad. "We're going to use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut."

<< "We're not going to prosecute this war holding one hand behind our back," he added. "We're going to use enough in our arsenal to win this fight." >>

There was a famous quote from the Vietnam war in which a soldier tells a reporter that "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Maj. General Swannack's comment could become the Iraq War's equivalent.

We're going to use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut. I guess all that winning hearts and minds stuff will have to wait for a while, huh? And wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the official line was that everything was going great over there, it's just that reporters weren't telling the good news? Now we're firing cannons "throughout" the capital city of the country. How much more progress like this can we stand?


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I say lets bring our boys home, throw nukes and turn the whole place into glass.