Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Point. Counterpoint.
No one ever gave a tip to me when I was buttoned up. I never had an interaction with an Iraqi in an armored Humvee with the doors closed and the windows up. (We didn't have grenade screens in those days. Heck, most of my Humvees had CANVAS doors, if they had doors at all.!)
Part of the solution is going to lie not in making our vehicles invincible. You CAN'T make it invincible to a triple stacked anti-tank mine.
So don't even try.
Rather, the real solution to defeating this measure is not going to lie with the vehicles at all, but outside them.
Dismount.
Get into the communities. Leverage Iraqi contacts.
Yes, we're doing that already, as much as we can. But these knuckledragging trogs in Congress are focusing on the wrong things. And the ignorant press is dragging us along with them, and damaging the war effort, by pulling us into a defensive mentality.
The insurgency will not be defeated by putting an extra armor on our vehicles. The insurgency will be defeated by dismounts. Dismounts out there engaging with the Iraqi people and collecting real-time intelligence.
And THAT is the effort the Media should focus on. THAT is the effort that Congress should focus on.
Where is all the heat forcing colonels to jump through their a**es to develop HUMINT? There isn't much. All anyone wants to hear about is armor this, and armor that.
F**k the armor. Get out and clobber the enemy, and let HIS sorry a** wish he had more armor.
Get back on offense. Close with and destroy the enemy.
Victory in war is rarely possible without incurring risk; but in an endeavor where casualties are an expected cost of success, the proper focus is not upon limiting risk but upon maximizing progress:
"One day, everything changes. The patrols are all in Humvees and they travel fast. The soldiers all look at us with suspicion from the Humvees and we do not understand why. Then I hear of Wahabi in the neighborhood, but I do not report them to the patrols – I cannot, the Humvees travel fast and no one comes to my house any more. More and more, we hear shooting down the street, and one morning a bomb destroys the market where I work. I could get another job in another market, but that market might also be destroyed by a bomb. Only a few Wahabi are where I live, but there is no one to tell – no patrols, no police.
"So I come back to the Air Force. I come back because I want to get the Wahabi out of my neighborhood, get them out of Iraq.
"One month ago, the patrols are back, and they are walking, not in Humvees. Different soldiers from the soldiers in the first patrols, but behaving like them – very courteous, very watchful.
"When the patrol knocks on my door, I say, 'Please come in – I would like some lubricant for my pistol.' The patrol leader looks at me with a funny look, then he smiles, then they all come in and drink tea and I draw a map of where the Wahabi are..."
Of course, casualties are up again. And we all know what that means.
Don't we? Of course we do.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed May 14, 12:47:00 PM:
Brilliantly put. Thank you. Sad to say, but posturing inherent to the election year is destructively intruding on reality, which says quite a lot about the other-worldness quality of American politics just now.
By , at
Wed May 14, 10:48:00 PM:
The analysis quoted and created in the post regarding HUMINT is spot on; an increased focus on electronic intelligence gathering may get lots of info per life lost, but on-the-ground contact can be influential in ways phone tapping isn't. However, regarding the "F**k armor" point, I'd think that (while soldiers spending time out of their vehicles are effective) there's still an argument for having actual doors, such that drivers can't be unseated by pistol fire in crowded urban environments. Soldiers have to get from A to B, preferably quickly and safely, before they can engage in effective dismounts. I hardly think that abstinence-only sex-ed funds are better spent there than in actual doors that fend off more than small bugs or rocks, and preferably small arms fire too.
We can't make all the people totally safe all of the time, but we can prevent some of the people from being criminally unsafe some of the time.
By 
Cassandra, at
Wed May 14, 11:13:00 PM:
We can't make all the people totally safe all of the time, but we can prevent some of the people from being criminally unsafe some of the time.
I agree with you there. However, I think perhaps the determination of what is "criminally unsafe" is best left to the services rather than becoming a political football, as it has been for the past 5 years.
The new MRAPs can withstand a hell of a lot of punishment. But they have their share of drawbacks too.
By , at
Thu May 15, 07:47:00 AM:
As a teenager I watched helplessly as the Democrats and their allies worked hard to lose the Vietnam War. A generation later the offramp to my father's city is labeled "Little Saigon", and our "community" as such things are now labeled, has been gone for thirty years. Loosing hurts Americans, and some American politicians are fine with that.
By davod, at
Thu May 15, 05:39:00 PM:
Just wait until we have a civilian inquest into battle deaths like the Brits do. With an activist Coroner.
