Archive for the 'War & Warfare' Category

I know that the Bush administration has been careful not to call the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq an “occupation.”  Notwithstanding politics, the question should be asked, “exactly who was it that conquered the Iraqi armies?”

The AP is reporting:

Iraq’s prime minister sharply criticized a U.S.-Iraqi attack Monday on a Shiite militia stronghold in Baghdad, breaking with his American partners on security tactics as the United States launches a major operation to secure the capital.

More than 30 people were killed or found dead Monday, including 10 paramilitary commandos slain when a suicide driver detonated a truck at the regional headquarters of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry police in a mostly Sunni city north of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s criticism followed a pre-dawn air and ground attack on an area of Sadr City, stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

Police said three people, including a woman and a child, were killed in the raid, which the U.S. command said was aimed at “individuals involved in punishment and torture cell activities.”

[ … ]

“Reconciliation cannot go hand in hand with operations that violate the rights of citizens this way,” al-Maliki said in a statement on government television. “This operation used weapons that are unreasonable to detain someone — like using planes.”

He apologized to the Iraqi people for the operation and said “this won’t happen again.”

I have been vocal in my call for the arrest or killing of al-Sadr and his henchmen, as well as very aggressive offensives against all enemy in Iraq, whether Shia killing squads or leftover al Qaida.  This is war, and if we do not have the stomach left to fight it as such, then we should bring our boys home.

Now, the PM of Iraq is telling the press and the Shia killing squads that our warring against the enemy “won’t happen again.”  Words cannot express my utter disgust at the U.S. military brass if we cower to this kind of pomp and bloated self-aggrandizement.

The notion that anyone in Iraq should inform the U.S. of boundaries and stipulations in the war on terrorism boggles the mind.  Only in an atmosphere where this sort of arrogance has been allowed to flourish would this even be thinkable.

Who has given the Iraqi PM the impression that he can set our boudaries?

We will be watching closely to see if the U.S. cowers to little bullies.  We should quit trying to be loved and simply wage war.

This from Arutz Sheva:

Brig.-Gen. Noam Feig, head of naval shipyards, said the Naval Commando 13’s operation in Tyre targeted senior Hizbullah operatives responsible for the launch of long-range rockets, similar to those fired at Hadera on Friday. “The goal of the operation was a commando raid against [those] senior Hizbullah operatives,” he said. “Among other things, they were involved in launching rockets at Hadera Friday. The operation brought closure to all other operations.”

Feig stressed that the heroic operation was deemed necessary to combat the threat of long-term rocket launches into Israel, while minimizing the possibility of Lebanese civilian casualties. “The force, under the command of a Commando 13 commander, was made up of three separate forces. Hizbullah’s pattern of operations, hiding in apartments, endangers the lives of Lebanese civilians and necessitates selective and accurate capabilities,” Feig stated.

[ … ]

“The two soldiers were treated in the field by a medical unit under the command of the unit’s doctor,” explained Feig, “and an operation was performed in the field. The force evacuated under fire to the coast, where a helicopter waited, as planned, to transport them back to Israel at 5 a.m. All in all – fighting and presence in the field – one hour and 45 minutes.”

Remember the Zarqawi bombing run and how U.S. forces found him?  Video here.  The U.S. used a standoff weapon (JDAM).  The U.S. used standoff weapons in order to protect the lives of U.S. troops.  Remember also that a child died in the attack on Zarqawi.

I want to make a several brief observations and then follow up with a view towards rethinking just war theory.

1. The U.S. did not repudiate the actions involved in killing Zarqawi because an innocent was killed.
2. The U.S. military leadership chose by their tactics to side with the protection of U.S. troops rather than the protection of possible innocents.
3. The Israeli military leadership chose to side with the protection of possible innocents in the vicnity of the enemy.
4. Yet Israel is challenged every day in the media for the killing of innocents in the vicinity of the enemy.

I prefer to think within the paradigm of “good wars” rather than “just war.”  We need to relinquish this quaint but highly outdated notion of wars as soldiers lining up opposed to each other on a field of battle where innocents are either looking on or completely absent from the vicinity.  Certainly this idea prevailed — for good reason — throughout the First and Second Worlds Wars, the Korean War and even to some degree the war in Vietnam (as well as the first Gulf War).  Today there is such an absence of moral underpinnings in war that the innocent is scattered amongst the warrior.  The warrior puts himself in the vicinity of non-combatants by choice in order to cause collateral damage, thus playing to political sensibilities as we see in the media the continual drumbeat of this country or that country “intentionally targeting civilians.”

When “warriors” do this, they are no longer protecting anyone, and are thus not worthy to be called or considered warriors.  They are terrorists.  The scene now becomes a hazy chaos of terrorists rather than warriors, combatants mixed with non-combatants, murky situations where non-combatants are actively aiding the combatants, and impossible stipulations such as the prevention of all civilian deaths — juxtaposed with the moral duty of a country to protect the safety of its citizens.  Stated simply, the paradigm of soldiers lining up in a field of battle (where a just war may be ascertained based on simple questions like “who is the aggressor?” or “what fixed boundary was violated by some outsider?”) is a paradigm whose time has come and gone.

In the case of the U.S. leadership choosing to use a JDAM to take out Zarqawi rather than bring additional risk to the lives of U.S. troops, I would not have had it any other way.  If keeping a child among the enemy stops your armies from fighting because they might kill the child, it is the enemy who is at fault rather than your armies, and it is a tactic that will cause you to lose the war.  To fail to war against aggressors because of potential collateral damage would be to fail your own people and thus to bring them additional risk and perhaps worse.

It is a matter of keeping in front of you the reason we are at war and who warrants the protection of U.S. troops.  What is most important?  The protection of U.S. citizens or the protection of potential non-combatants?  Remember that this is a salient question for our troops at war right now.  It goes to every part of their existence, from targeting munitions to “room-clearing” and “stacks.”  If a fire team has to delineate between friend or foe upon entering a room, the fire team will likely die due to the time delay and opportunity for the enemy to engage our troops.  This is no theoretical matter to our troops.  Those who want to protect against the possibility of the deaths of any non-combatants must take this into consideration.  Not only would such a policy mean many more U.S. deaths, it would probably mean the end of combat capability and the loss of the war.  No army can fight a war under these conditions.

In the case of Israel, it seems to me that they went above and beyond the call of duty to protect innocents.  It is further than the U.S. went when we killed Zarqawi, and it is further than I would have gone had I been in charge.

As it is, a battlefield operation had to be performed on an Israeli soldier because Israel was concerned collateral damage.  Tell that to the mother of the IDF soldier who had the operation and ask her about priorities.

From the AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Hundreds of thousands of Shiites chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” marched through the streets of Baghdad’s biggest Shiite district Friday in a show of support for Hezbollah militants battling Israeli troops in Lebanon.

No violence was reported during the rally in the Sadr City neighborhood. But at least 35 people were killed elsewhere in Iraq, many of them in a car bombing and gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul.

The demonstration was the biggest in the Middle East in support of Hezbollah since the Israeli army launched an offensive July 12 after a guerrilla raid on northern Israel. The protest was organized by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political movement built around the Mahdi Army militia has been modeled after Hezbollah. 

The biggest mistake of the war was in not killing the al-Sadr militia and either killing or imprisoning al-Sadr himself.  So who is responsible for letting this guy go for three years stirring up trouble?

Why can’t we seem to run this war the right way?

This interesting commentary from Haaretz:

The IDF’s greatest loss was momentum. The first week of the campaign went reasonably well, borne on the wave of the stunning success of the attack of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets. Between the middle of the second week and the middle of the third week the IDF lost a week, not least because of its reaction to the eight Golani Brigade soldiers who were killed in Bint Jbail. That lost week, as the rain of Katyusha rockets continued to fall from on high, undermined the army’s self-confidence and thrust it into a posture of public self-defense. It shifted into recovery mode only because of the time it was granted by Washington. Fear of a large number of casualties was the major factor in the government’s hesitations, for almost a week, about whether to send more divisions into the fray, entailing a call-up of reserve units.

The General Staff admitted the IDF did not work fast enough. They did not grasp the fact that the context had changed and that this was not just one day of battle or a routine-security incident, but a war, which has its own laws. Commanders who were used to operations in the territories did not internalize the need for speed, persistence and continuity. In contrast, the justified criticism that units were not trained for the modalities of Lebanon diminished the importance of the demand to preserve fitness for those modalities: to train for years on end the soldiers drafted annually (as well as reserves) and who “are now in Thailand” not making use of the skills they have acquired, and this on the dubious assumption that they will have time to train for action in Lebanon between the rest of their operational tasks, instruction and exercises. Maintaining constant fitness of all the units for all the scenarios is not possible.

I have studied General George Patton and his history for a good bit of my life.  I will always be a proponent of his philosophy of war.

“Attack rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, without rest, however tired and hungry you may be, the enemy will be more tire, more hungry. Keep punching.”

“In landing operations, retreat is impossible, to surrender is as ignoble as it is foolish… above all else remember that we as attackers have the initiative, we know exactly what we are going to do, while the enemy is ignorant of our intentions and can only parry our blows. We must retain this tremendous advantage by always attacking rapidly, ruthlessly, viciously, and without rest.”

And finally:

“In case of doubt, attack.

I published a fairly bleak commentary late last night entitled “The Future of the War: It Needs to be Decided Immediately,” and another fairly bleak picture of Ramadi a day or two ago, entitled “Ramadi, Iraq: A Mess.”  The one on the future of the war is so bleak, in fact, that I had been pondering whether I should have published it.  After all, we get enough bad news and spinned commentaries as it is.  Not any more.  Just at my lowest (deciding whether to remove the post — I know, a no-no in the web log world), this comes to my attention from the testimony of the brass before the Senate:

The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East told Congress on Thursday that “Iraq could move toward civil war” if the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad is not stopped. “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it,” Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the top priority in the Iraq war is to secure the capital, where factional violence has surged in recent weeks despite efforts by the new Iraqi government to stop the fighting.[ … ]

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Abizaid’s observation when he told the panel, “We do have the possibility of that devolving into civil war.” He added that this need not happen and stressed that ultimately it depends on the Iraqis more than on the U.S. military.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed Abizaid’s observation when he told the panel, “We do have the possibility of that devolving into civil war.” He added that this need not happen and stressed that ultimately it depends on the Iraqis more than on the U.S. military.”Shiite and Sunni are going to have to love their children more than they hate each other,” Pace said, before the tensions can be overcome. “The weight of that must be on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government.” 

However bleak my post was, it is nice to be confirmed by the generals.  I don’t disagree with the thrust of what I read here, but permit me one nuanced modification.  The focus should indeed be on the Iraqis, but as I said in my post noted above, the situation seems to me to be spiraling out of control very quickly.  More is needed in the way of stabilization by the U.S. troops.  We have taken defensive positions in Ramadi, and the death toll in Baghdad is higher than in Lebanon and Israel combined.  The sectarian violence must be stopped in Baghdad, and the fight must be taken to the Sunni insurgents in Ramadi.

What is needed is a large, coordinated offensive by both U.S. and Iraqi troops.  It must be fast, furious and unrelenting.  The results will be similar to what they were after the killing of al Zarqawi and the capture of the intelligence on Al Qaida in Iraq.  The terrorists were running for cover.  When they are running for their lives, they don’t have the time or wherewithal to go on the offense.

The basic problem here as I see it is that while we have been on the offense for much of the time over the last several years, leading to gains and stabilization in all areas (whether power grid reliability, decrease in the death toll, utilities reliability, political advances), we are now on the defensive.

Bad move.  Let’s take counsel from General George Patton.

“In war the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of the offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”

We have the best, most well-trained and well-equipped fighting force in the history of the world.  Let’s quit hand-wringing over “rules of engagement” and unleash them.  In the end, this strategy will not only be victorious, it will save U.S. lives.  Time is of the essence.

Faster … please?

In my post “Winning or Losing in the Middle East?” I pointed out the two different trains of thought emerging on the conflict in the middle east.  One train of thought believes that we are gradually winning, while the other train of thought believes that our presence is like a dam with a gradually enlarging hole; it is doomed to catastrophic failure at some point.

There is good news on one front.  The Sunnis like U.S. presence in their neighborhoods.

BAGHDAD: Predominantly Sunni western Baghdad has long been a battleground for US troops against a firmly entrenched insurgent presence backed by a population that appeared sympathetic to the rebels.Now, however, that attitude is changing as the pace of sectarian violence quickens across the city and raises the grim specter of civil war.For western Baghdad’s mainly Sunni residents, Iraq’s increasingly aggressive Shiite militias and their perceived allies in the post-war government security forces are a greater threat than the once hated Americans.“There are armed Shiites from the Mehdi Army coming with the police and the police commandos wearing black uniforms, talking about getting revenge on the Sunnis,

The AP was reporting earlier in the day that:

WASHINGTON – Evidence collected on the deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot the civilians, including unarmed women and children, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service have completed their initial work on the incident last November, but may be asked to probe further as Marine Corps and Navy prosecutors review the evidence and determine whether to recommend criminal charges, according to two Pentagon officials who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.

My readers know that I have been closely following the Haditha and Hamdania stories.  Note this little remark in the text of the article:

“… according to two Pentagon officials who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.”

I have said it in prior posts and will repeat it here.  “By the mouths of two or more witnesses” is the criteria, and these must be credible, reliable and consistent witnesses.  See my Hamdania Marines and the Biblical Rules of Evidence (a very well-read commentary across the Globe based on Google Analytics).  Things are not to be done in secret.  Things are discussed openly, confessions are not coerced, and a finding of guilt must rely on sure and certain evidence from two or more witnesses.  Anything else is girlish gossip.  I was very disappointed to see that the Marine Corps Times picked this up and ran with it.

Here it is again: ” … on condition of anonymity.”

So who were these “Pentagon officials?”  Let me be the first out of the gate to call them pusillanimous, cowardly weasels.  They prejudiced the case without there having been a trial where witnesses and evidence could be heard and cross-examined.

Cowards.  Who were these “officials?”  These weasels can come do battle with me here at the Captain’s Journal at any time.  Here at TCJ, I am not anonymous.  You see my real name associated with this post.  I am not a weasel.  These “officials” are.

There are two trains of thought gradually emerging concerning the larger war in the middle east.  Israeli PM Ehud Olmert boasts in the superlative:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the war “a marvelous combination of military might and civilian strength” in a speech marking the graduation of students at the National Security College in Tel Aviv yesterday. Olmert said Israel is “winning this battle,” and its success is “nearly unprecedented.”

“Even today, it may be said that the face of the Middle East has changed following the great achievement of the State of Israel, of the army of Israel, and of the people of Israel,” Olmert said, speaking without notes.

Also from within the government of Israel:

Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who said that 300 of the enemy’s forces have been eliminated, revealed that IDF sources estimate the total number of Hizbullah fighters to be 2,000. “The objective is to hit the fighters and the weaponry of the Hizbullah,” Ramon told a Channel 10 interviewer, “and so far, we have done a pretty good job.”

The Strategy Page agrees with this assessment:

Israeli ground operations appear to be using paratroopers and other elite infantry to hunt down and kill Hizbollah rocket launching teams. Hizbollah has not got a lot of trained people. Kill them, and they are hard to replace. There are only so many rocket launcher teams. Kill them, and no one will be available to take the rockets out of their hiding places and launch them. Right now, this battle is being won by the Israelis, because Hizbollah has not been able to launch many longer (over 20 kilometers) rockets at more densely populated areas deeper in Israel. Most of the rockets are short range ones. The Israeli attack on the transportation system in southern Lebanon has made it difficult to move large objects, like big rockets, into position for launch.

But there is a different view of the overall war effort in the middle east (including not just Israel and their battle with Hezbollah, but the U.S. and the war in Iraq).  The National Review editors say:

The administration hopes to forge a meaningful international force to help the Lebanese army police southern Lebanon. We hope it can. But it may be an unachievable goal, given that countries are unlikely to contribute troops unless the environment is more “permissive

The North County Times has this update on a case that I have discussed before:

TIKRIT, Iraq — The U.S. Army opened a hearing Tuesday to determine whether four American soldiers must stand trial for allegedly murdering three Iraqis during a raid where they claimed they were under orders to “kill all military-age males.”

Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber are accused of murder and other offenses in the May 9 shooting deaths near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett are also accused of obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening to kill another soldier if he told authorities what happened.

All four are members of the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division and have been jailed in Kuwait since they were arrested in June. They were moved to Tikrit, the division headquarters, for the Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury proceeding.

The hearing, which is expected to last several days, opened with testimony from two investigators who questioned the soldiers when the allegations surfaced last month. 

Later on down the article there is this little nugget of gold:

The investigator acknowledged that he and his colleagues sometimes resort to “lies, trickery or deceit” to extract confessions.

I have commented before in Hamdania Marines and the Biblical Rules for Evidence concerning how evidence is obtained and what constitutes admissible evidence, so I won’t rehearse what was said in that post.  However, I will point out that lies, trickery and deceipt is still lies, trickery and deceipt, no matter what the reason or supposed justification.  Here is how it works.  “Son, we have signed confessions from two others at the scene who told us exactly what you did, and this being a death penalty case, you will be executed unless you cooperate with us.  If you confess to this crime, we think we can get you life in prison, parolled at 30 years, rather than the death penalty.”  To which the individual agrees to the confession under counsel from his lawyer.

The only thing is that the statement that they had two other confessions was a lie.  There are people in prisons who are guilty, and who were placed in prison by tactics like this, and who in fact deserve to be in prison.  Then there are people who are in prison, and who confessed to a crime, and who are in fact not guilty — and they were placed in prison using tactics like this.  This is true in civilian cases and military cases.

The practice is immoral.  Period.  It might be legal and ethical.  But there is a difference between something being allowed in the sight of the law and something being good and righteous.

This practice is not good and righteous.  Testimony should be given in front of everyone, without compulsion, and always corroborated by two or more witnesses.  Again, repeating the point in my earlier post on the Hamdania Marines, the value of confessions in the western Judeo-Christian tradition was never to convict.  It was always merely to corroborate.  To use lies, trickery and deceipt to obtain alleged “confessions” is the prosecution playing God.  It is the government deciding that the individual is guilty and then using whatever tactics effect the desired outcome (i.e., conviction).  In the U.S., we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.  Coerced confessions accomplish nothing towards proving anything.

This post has been updated with Ramadi is Still a Troubled City.

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Those of you who are consistent readers at my site (believe it or not, there are actually a few of you) know that when I think I see a spade, I call it a spade. Right or wrong, I call it like I see it.

I am a patriot.  This post is not about the war in terms of its rightness or wrongness.  It is about how we are conducting part of the war and the potentially terrible cost to U.S. lives that might result from our current strategy.  It is time to weigh in on Ramadi.  I think it is a mess, and I think that its a mess because of the tactical approach taken by the brass.  This will not make me popular with the brass, but they don’t read my blog anyway, so I have lost nothing and I’ve kept my honesty.

Early on I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but pointed out that this tactic of surgically striking at the insurgents in Ramadi (while also leaving the civilians in the city) was prone to disaster and carried the risk of utter failure.  Now, I feel that it is not only prone to disaster, but will also cost U.S. lives in the future.

I questioned in a earlier post on Ramadi “what kind of strategy digs a hole and puts U.S. troops in it waiting to be attacked,” or something like that (and in fact, the U.S. troops were taking bets as to when they would be attacked).  Now, this from Ramadi:

Ramadi, Iraq – Peering over piles of sandbags in this ravaged city, US Marines sometimes see more gunmen on the streets than municipal employees going to work.  The provincial governor regularly arrives at his office with armed gaurds in tow.

After three years of war in Ramadi, the US military has yet to move from combat to stabilization operations in most of this Sunni Arab city of 400,000 people, the capital of Anbar province.

Here full-fledged combat still rages. Efforts to build a local government have faltered.

In just four months, one Marine has fired 27 rockets. Another estimates he has fired 5,000 rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun. One marksman has 20 confirmed kills. His superiors believe he has probably killed another 40 but they are not sure.

The US military said Sunday that four US Marines assigned to the Regimental Combat Team 7 were killed in action in Anbar province, although it did not say where.

Residents of Ramadi are afraid of even walking near the offices of the Anbar provincial government, which is supposed to administer an area the size of Greece, and with about 1 million inhabitants.

“There’s been a concerted campaign against government officials that’s had some great success … the government center is nearly devoid of governance,