4yrs Since 9/11-What did the US do Right/Wrong Afterwards?What Would You Have Done?
09-12-2015, 12:42 AM
I agree with j that this really depends at what point you intervened.
Probably the ideal point to intervene would have been in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was being drawn up. This strikes me as the biggest, recent fracture point that has most left the Middle East the way it is. But at the same time it doesn't matter how fair you are to all parties trying to play societal Tetris in the Middle East: some motherfucker who once grazed his goats on a shitpile piece of desert over there would be pissed off he didn't get said shitpile back and use that as an excuse for endless war.
One aside here, to disclose my conflict of interest: I do think Israel and the Jews deserve a place that is theirs in Palestine. The war on the United States by the Middle East at large if not Islam at large started in 1968, with RFK's assassination, which was carried solely because of the US's support for Israel. I won't elaborate further on that since I don't want to start race trolling here, but please feel free to take my views with that shading in mind.
Anyway, and more relevantly, post 9/11 I think the appropriate response should have been to bomb the fuck out of that area of Afghanistan which could be said to be linked to Al-Qaeda. And to do it again, and again, and again, for as long as the attacks came from there. There was no earthly or strategic reason to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan and their anti-aircraft ordnance basically came down to a bunch of yokels with RPG launchers whose range is massively less than the effective bombing altitude of even a B-52. Would it have created more recruits for Al-Qaeda? Sure. But would it have created less recruits for Al-Qaeda than 10 years in there? Again, yes.
If forced to go into Iraq and given carte blanche power over the terms of engagement and resources put into it, I would have started from the point of view of Nicias going to Sicily: from the point of view that I was going to found a city among strangers and enemies, and therefore that I had to either control the entire country from the day I set foot in it, or else come prepared to find everything opposed to me.
I would have returned to World War 2 terms of engagement: give notice I'm coming, and after that point, deem anyone standing in my way as an enemy combatant unless proven otherwise, whether wearing a military uniform or not. This would have created big refugee columns, but c'est la guerre and those refugee columns would invariably have been out and away from the war zone. I would have explicitly told my troops to shoot through human shields, on the basis that human shields are fundamentally the same tactic as ransoms: the moment you stop giving into that tactic is the moment they're no longer used - and therefore the risk to said human shields disappears.
I would have played to the West's advantages in combat: superior ordnance, superior technology, and superior range in particular. I would not have ordered Marines to participate in house-by-house clearing; I would rather have levelled the city block, with tanks and/or artillery, standing off outside the effective range of a RPG launcher. I would not have allowed US Special Forces teams and/or their commanders desperate to punch combat tickets or act as glory hounds to do stupid things like engage in pickup or dropoff of a team within range of a RPG launcher (as they foolishly did in Lone Survivor and got another 17 men killed for nothing). I would not have allowed my patrols to take precisely the same route more than once, thus eliminating the effectiveness of IEDs.
I would have, in short, been as ruthless as necessary to achieve the objectives. Those objectives I would spell out quite clearly: the complete destruction of Iraq's military and civilian capacity to resist, using whatever superior tactics I had and without regard for much more than the absolute minima of Geneva Convention strictures. I would not have accepted less than unequivocal surrender from all of Iraq's districts before military operations ended.
I would have been clear with Congress and with the President that this objective could not be carried out with anything short of the complete commitment of the entire US war machine to that objective. Certainly the commitment of three or possibly four times the troop commitment which was used in Iraq. If need be, I would have demanded the reintroduction of conscription to get the job done, because I would remember from my history that the US basically refuses to popularly support a war if it's forced to commit there for more than two years, and the quickest way to win a war is to put more men into it than the opponent does.
I would have secured Iraq's oil fields above all and started extracting oil from them as advance reparations for Iraq forcing me to come over there and clean out their country for them. And lastly I would have committed to Iraq being the major garrison point for the US in the Middle East, as a country whose entire legal and legislative system had to be rebuilt from the ground up. As with Japan, this would include the wholesale rewriting of its constitution and forcing its leaders to publicly admit to the error of any ideology which had led it to war.
I would, in short, raze the country to the ground, secure its borders, and start over again. Because, simply put, there is no other way for an invading force to make its conquest stick where the cultures are completely disparate, as is the case between the West and any nation you pick in the Middle East.
This will sound relentlessly chilling. I know. But war is in our DNA, and if the objective is to win with minimal casualties on our side, you have to be ruthless. I am less concerned about minimal casualties on the other side: as MacArthur said on his farewell address, your job as a soldier is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his. If there is anything contributing to the bloodletting in Iraq and the Middle East, it is the view that you can fight a war half-assed. ISIS is proving the contrary, and the refugee flow from the Middle East is only a symptom, not the cause.
Probably the ideal point to intervene would have been in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was being drawn up. This strikes me as the biggest, recent fracture point that has most left the Middle East the way it is. But at the same time it doesn't matter how fair you are to all parties trying to play societal Tetris in the Middle East: some motherfucker who once grazed his goats on a shitpile piece of desert over there would be pissed off he didn't get said shitpile back and use that as an excuse for endless war.
One aside here, to disclose my conflict of interest: I do think Israel and the Jews deserve a place that is theirs in Palestine. The war on the United States by the Middle East at large if not Islam at large started in 1968, with RFK's assassination, which was carried solely because of the US's support for Israel. I won't elaborate further on that since I don't want to start race trolling here, but please feel free to take my views with that shading in mind.
Anyway, and more relevantly, post 9/11 I think the appropriate response should have been to bomb the fuck out of that area of Afghanistan which could be said to be linked to Al-Qaeda. And to do it again, and again, and again, for as long as the attacks came from there. There was no earthly or strategic reason to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan and their anti-aircraft ordnance basically came down to a bunch of yokels with RPG launchers whose range is massively less than the effective bombing altitude of even a B-52. Would it have created more recruits for Al-Qaeda? Sure. But would it have created less recruits for Al-Qaeda than 10 years in there? Again, yes.
If forced to go into Iraq and given carte blanche power over the terms of engagement and resources put into it, I would have started from the point of view of Nicias going to Sicily: from the point of view that I was going to found a city among strangers and enemies, and therefore that I had to either control the entire country from the day I set foot in it, or else come prepared to find everything opposed to me.
I would have returned to World War 2 terms of engagement: give notice I'm coming, and after that point, deem anyone standing in my way as an enemy combatant unless proven otherwise, whether wearing a military uniform or not. This would have created big refugee columns, but c'est la guerre and those refugee columns would invariably have been out and away from the war zone. I would have explicitly told my troops to shoot through human shields, on the basis that human shields are fundamentally the same tactic as ransoms: the moment you stop giving into that tactic is the moment they're no longer used - and therefore the risk to said human shields disappears.
I would have played to the West's advantages in combat: superior ordnance, superior technology, and superior range in particular. I would not have ordered Marines to participate in house-by-house clearing; I would rather have levelled the city block, with tanks and/or artillery, standing off outside the effective range of a RPG launcher. I would not have allowed US Special Forces teams and/or their commanders desperate to punch combat tickets or act as glory hounds to do stupid things like engage in pickup or dropoff of a team within range of a RPG launcher (as they foolishly did in Lone Survivor and got another 17 men killed for nothing). I would not have allowed my patrols to take precisely the same route more than once, thus eliminating the effectiveness of IEDs.
I would have, in short, been as ruthless as necessary to achieve the objectives. Those objectives I would spell out quite clearly: the complete destruction of Iraq's military and civilian capacity to resist, using whatever superior tactics I had and without regard for much more than the absolute minima of Geneva Convention strictures. I would not have accepted less than unequivocal surrender from all of Iraq's districts before military operations ended.
I would have been clear with Congress and with the President that this objective could not be carried out with anything short of the complete commitment of the entire US war machine to that objective. Certainly the commitment of three or possibly four times the troop commitment which was used in Iraq. If need be, I would have demanded the reintroduction of conscription to get the job done, because I would remember from my history that the US basically refuses to popularly support a war if it's forced to commit there for more than two years, and the quickest way to win a war is to put more men into it than the opponent does.
I would have secured Iraq's oil fields above all and started extracting oil from them as advance reparations for Iraq forcing me to come over there and clean out their country for them. And lastly I would have committed to Iraq being the major garrison point for the US in the Middle East, as a country whose entire legal and legislative system had to be rebuilt from the ground up. As with Japan, this would include the wholesale rewriting of its constitution and forcing its leaders to publicly admit to the error of any ideology which had led it to war.
I would, in short, raze the country to the ground, secure its borders, and start over again. Because, simply put, there is no other way for an invading force to make its conquest stick where the cultures are completely disparate, as is the case between the West and any nation you pick in the Middle East.
This will sound relentlessly chilling. I know. But war is in our DNA, and if the objective is to win with minimal casualties on our side, you have to be ruthless. I am less concerned about minimal casualties on the other side: as MacArthur said on his farewell address, your job as a soldier is not to die for your country, but to make the other poor bastard die for his. If there is anything contributing to the bloodletting in Iraq and the Middle East, it is the view that you can fight a war half-assed. ISIS is proving the contrary, and the refugee flow from the Middle East is only a symptom, not the cause.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm