welcome to our world, USA....

then it shouldnt be cowardly for us to massacre everyone in fellujah, men women and children, even their pets. why? cuz thats the best tactic to end terrorism there.

but to each his own i guess ...

also, i think IMI suits up bradleys with ERA. US should have a full division of vehicles up armored and suited with passive armor and ERA, armed with OWS...

We're fighting an unconventional, with conventional troops and means.

Originally Posted by rocco

then it shouldnt be cowardly for us to massacre everyone in fellujah, men women and children, even their pets. why? cuz thats the best tactic to end terrorism there.

but to each his own i guess ...

What dropping hundreds of bombs on people who have no defense against it, killing people who arent involved. If we put manpower in then massacred them then they can fight back, thats not cowardly, indiscriminant bombing is cowardly.

It would also be stratigically moronic.

Yeah i hadnt thoughht of that as well. Would win no friends, which is what the US has to do more than anything.

There is more to Iraq than killing people. That's how we got into this problem in the first place. We need to stop the insurgent but at the same time make friends with the locals. We've done this before with Special Forces units, so this is by no means new to us. The problem is we have too many regular army units with not enough training to deal with that problem. We might be great at killing people but that won't make lower the amount of insurgents in the towns.

The only way to stop the insurgent is to get the locals on our side. Which is easier said than done seeing as how most of the people will shoot an RPG at US forces for a $100 or so. They can be bought off because they don't see the "occupational forces" helping them. Not only that, the terrorists in Iraq are more intimidating because they threaten the locals with death and torture.

What needs to be done is more human level contact and liaison building. We're doing this in Afgahnistan and we've done it in Laos and Vietnam (before the conventional war fiasco that occured).

The north and south of iraq seem to be fairly safe, it is just around baghdad that there is most of the violence and that is where the most work needs to be done. Its all well saying you need more heavily armoured vehicles but its by staying in the vehicles and not meeting iraqis on the streets thats alienating them. The problem is that the iraqi citizens from what ive read seem to think of the americans as the agressors who are there for there own economic gains, and that is the viewpoint that has to be changed. Putting more troops on the ground would help as it would allow more soldiers to interact with the iraqis, but america doesnt have a good record of winning over the population. In somalia, in afghanistan only kabul is properly controlled the rest of the country is as lawless as ever. and now iraq.

somalia was a different issue. we really had no reason to be there. it was a civil war and we stepped into the middle of it. sure we were trying to protect the civilian population but that was a hornet's nest waiting to be stirred up. well now that i say that we've done that a few times.

but what's hard for people to realize is that afgahnistan is going to be 10x harder to fight than iraq. we don't realize it yet mainly because there isn't much media coverage on it. but since the country barely has any developed infrastructure and run by warlords we're in for a heck of a fight. i think it's better this way though, we have a lot of SF working there and the last thing they need is a camera critisizing their work.