Look man, I've read some of it, put some of it into action. I understand psyop and civil affairs. However if you leave the country you don't have the chance for those programs to work, if no one will leave their house those programs won't work.
Some places, like Anbar in Iraq, like Kabul in Afghanistan the people are ready to listen. They miss their old lives and want the fighting to stop. Yes, men on the ground providing services and infrastructure will help. To get a population to that point you generally have to mess their community up pretty bad first. People will deal with a certain amount of sniping and bombing, I've seen it in the Balkans and the middle east. You have to effect a majority of the people enough to want peace. To do that you break things and kill people. When it comes right down to it I would rather we killed 90% of the middle east than pull out at this point. You spill American blood you pay. Period. I had a buddy and his family up from third special forces group for the long weekend, 18E SF Communications Sergeant, ex-infantry. He says the same thing. The middle eastern mindset isn't the same as ours. Kindness isn't respected, it's often seen as a sign of weakness. I'd say that they are more like the Japanese, if we had to draw a parallel. Death, even by suicide, is respected and honored. Look at the damage and horrific acts we had to carry out to get the Japanese to quit and roll back pacific expansion, culminating with using our nuclear wild cards. This isn't a time to show weakness, it's one of the reason I guess I get so mad at people that want to pull out, even talking about it aids the enemy in this case. They know all they have to do is hold out longer than we do, and kill enough of us, and we'll leave. The answer is to make that idea unpalatable to the enemy, and the population that supports it, willingly or not. If we showed steadfast resolve to stay no matter what, at any cost, I bet you'd see a lot more of Iraq like Anbar, and a lot less like Bagdad. If you get shot at from a Mosque level it. Fallujah should have been bombed into rubble before a single marine or soldier walked it's streets. Look at what we did to Dresden. That's why the Germans were ready for peace, ready to rebuild. We allow world opinion to hamstring us with our ROE, which BTW is WAY more strict than the laws of land warfare require. I know the soft touch has its place, I just don't think we're there yet. > -----Original Message----- > From: Judah McAuley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 12:27 PM > To: CF-Community > Subject: Re: Today's Patraeus: Wow. > > Loathe wrote: > > I was an enlisted airborne infantryman for 8 years and 3 deployments. > I > > spent 2 1/2 years in a special purpose unit. > > > > I it really does all boil down to killing at that level. > > There are good people in the military trying to change that mindset. > Hearts and minds, my friend. Killing will always be part of the job, I > agree. At least a willingness and readiness for it. The only way we win > in counter insurgency though is if we get the people on our side. And > killing tends to do the opposite of that. Take a look at the Army's new > Counter Insurgency manual. I haven't had time to go through a lot of > it, > but it seems to a good start at changing the rules of engagement to try > and make our on the ground soliders into ambassadors there to help the > locals instead of scary guys with guns. > > That's a good thing. > > Judah > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion 8 - Build next generation apps today, with easy PDF and Ajax features - download now http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/coldfusion/cf8_beta_whatsnew_052907.pdf Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:242423 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
