Operation Swarmer - Why It Will Fail

[Exchanges]

Operation Swarmer, the newest USA-led offensive in Iraq, hopes to rid the country of insurgents.

Here's why I think it will fail:

1. Iraqi troops were used, with USA troops in a "supportive role."

That means every Iraqi troop with friends, family and associates inside Iraq knows the plans and can tell (thus tip off) people who will tell others who will probably get the news to Iraqi guerrilla fighters within 1 to 5 minutes or less.

Therefore, all important members of the resistance regimes can have time to move themselves and the majority of their weapons out of the way before such strikes as OS hit.

2. At best it's playing the eggshell game.

It's nothing more than trying to locate needles in a haystack.

3. Killing and wounding innocents during the massive raids are just causing more bad blood between the Bush administration, allied forces and Iraqis, thus escalating the problem of others joining the insurgents as well as creating more Iraqis who become sympathetic to the cause.

4. Surely, counter strikes against OS will happen, thus more and more innocent people will be killed in terrorist bombings.

Thus, I think OS is just a waste of time. A pipedream. I'd like to know what bozo came up with this strategy.

Thoughts?

x

 

[achilles28]

I think point 3 is the strongest.


The Administration tries to market this erroneous conception of 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' as a fixed group of individuals easily discernable by their patronage and steady numbers.

Of course, this couldn't be farther than the truth.

This is no different than Vietnam where the Americans couldn't differentiate between the NVA and North Vietnamese civilians. Often times, the civilians WERE the NVA but just hid their rifles, put on a farmers hat and ploughed a field.

This is one key reason why urban warfare is a fools game. Can't win. Army can beat an army, but not a people etc.

I imagine a big component of Iraqis insurgents are no different. A loosely organized faction of disillusioned, resentful Iraqis that span across the ethnic spectrum united in their common hatred against the occupation. Some join, some leave. No one keeps a record. There is no centralized command and control leadership. Mostly just small, informal gangs receiving casual guidance from highers up.

And when the Americans come knocking on their door to for intel, what happens?

They hide their rifles, pick up their Korans and make nice. No different.

This isn't an all out assault. This is hit and run urban warfare.



My 2 cents. If the Bush Administration is serious about restoring order in the country, the President needs to take some of his own advice and win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.

What Bush really needs to do is get SERIOUS about restoring water, electricity, oil production, infrastructure and jobs.

THEN Iraqis will start squealing and turn the insurgents in. But until then, Bush has done very little to restore the country he promised to rebuild. Its still shambles. 3 years after the war was declared over.

Theres no one to blame really, but him. And his Administrations total lack of planning.

 

[achilles28]

But yeah. Sorry for the rant there.


I agree. Op Swarmer will do nothing to address the root causes of the insurgency and growing disillusionment with American occupation.

This is a bandaid solution to a gaping wound.

Without a serious and concerted effort on behalf of the Americans to restore Iraqs infrastructure, the insurgency will continue to mount along with the US body count and sectarian violence.

 

[Exchanges]

Quote from achilles28:

I think point 3 is the strongest.


The Administration tries to market this erroneous conception of 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' as a fixed group of individuals easily discernable by their patronage and steady numbers.

Of course, this couldn't be farther than the truth.

This is no different than Vietnam where the Americans couldn't differentiate between the NVA and North Vietnamese civilians. Often times, the civilians WERE the NVA but just hid their rifles, put on a farmers hat and ploughed a field.

This is one key reason why urban warfare is a fools game. Can't win. Army can beat an army, but not a people etc.

I imagine a big component of Iraqis insurgents are no different. A loosely organized faction of disillusioned, resentful Iraqis that span across the ethnic spectrum united in their common hatred against the occupation. Some join, some leave. No one keeps a record. There is no centralized command and control leadership. Mostly just small, informal gangs receiving casual guidance from highers up.

And when the Americans come knocking on their door to for intel, what happens?

They hide their rifles, pick up their Korans and make nice. No different.

This isn't an all out assault. This is hit and run urban warfare.

My 2 cents. If the Bush Administration is serious about restoring order in the country, the President needs to take some of his own advice and win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.

What Bush really needs to do is get SERIOUS about restoring water, electricity, oil production, infrastructure and jobs.

THEN Iraqis will start squealing and turn the insurgents in. But until then, Bush has done very little to restore the country he promised to rebuild. Its still shambles. 3 years after the war was declared over.

Theres no one to blame really, but him. And his Administrations total lack of planning.

Great reply!

Couple things, apart from me using this as an excuse not to go to the gym...

Imagine, if you will, that you live in a small village (called Iraq) where your ancestors lived 100s of years ago. All your grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, mother, father... all related to everyone else.

Now comes an entirely separate ("ruler?") from a foreign country and inadvertantly kills, wounds, maims and otherwise destroys your closest relatives.

Well, love is very strong and deep. And in many cases love and passion outrule reason.

The Iraqis are hot-headed I think, with enormous loyalty. And hearts of warriors.

Bush is talking long term reformation of societal views - that have been in place ever since the days of Nebuchadrezzar - into that of western society, a supposed democratic tribe (right, as long as you're one of the super wealthy elite class).

But what's forming instead in Iraq appears to be old Sicily. It's La Cosa Nostra (meaning: "our own affairs"). It's the Mafia all over again.

3 years of war and Bush hasn't even put the slightest dent in the Iraqi Family.

At the present rate, change is coming only by drops of blood and by attrition - much of that innocent.

How long? That's what I ask.

How long will it take to turn a non-democratic tribe into an emblem of American culture with its paper freedoms.

Another 3-years? 30-years? 300-years? 3000-years???

Even 3000 years is still not as long as that region has been used to living in a barbarous manner.

And if the Adminstration is not willing to paint the entire overall picture clearly, then why fire even another bullet there? Why not invade Communist China and force them to change?

Plus, on the far extreme of the other end, what if enough Iraqis simply don't want to be FORCED to except America's standards of freedom?

What if? Then you have a society that will literally NEVER change fully. The fire of rebellion will always burn.

And, creating that environment is much worse than what is there now and what would be there if every last allied troop was withdrawn just like with Vietnam.

And if the US elected officials are not adequately addressing this "big picture" scenario, then they themselves need to be voted out of office and have others voted in who will.

If this doesn't happen, then America is no better off or freer than Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

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ex

 

[ZZZzzzzzzz]

Friday, Mar. 17, 2006
On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

Not a shot was fired, or a leader nabbed, in a major offensive that failed to live up to its advance billing
By BRIAN BENNETT/AL JALLAM

Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven.

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What’s more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.

The operation, which doubled the population of the flat farmland in one single airlift, was initiated by intelligence from Iraq security forces, says Lt Col Skip Johnson commander of the 187 Battallion, 3rd Combat Brigade of the 101st Airborne. "They have the lead," he said to reporters at the second stop of the tour. But by Friday afternoon, the major targets seemed to have slipped through their fingers. Iraqi Army General Abdul Jabar says that Samarra-based insurgent leader Hamad el Taki of Mohammad’s Army was thought to be in the area, and Iraqi intelligence officers were still working to compare known voice recordings and photographs with the prisoners in custody.

With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

Before loading up into the helicopters for a return trip to Baghdad, Iraqi and American soldiers and some reporters helped themselves to the woman’s freshly baked bread, tearing bits off and chewing it as they wandered among the cows. For most of them, it was the only thing worthwhile they’d found all day.

http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1174448,00.html

 

[Exchanges]

Not to rant here but...

Bush calls people (insurgents) in Iraq "evil."

And herein lies the root of the problem.

Inside America if a person breaks the law, they are apprehended and brought to trial.

But, even if 911 were the work of Bin Laden, the proper democratic response of freedom lovers is to apprehend him then bring him to trial for allegedly executing a terrorist strike against the USA.

Isn't that the message America is supposed to get across as a symbol of democracy and freedom?

Well, then what statement is being told and example being made by killing innocent women and children in Iraq, then sloughing it off as, "Whoops! Heh, sorry!" dozens and dozens of times over again year after year?

Think it over. If it was your brother, mother or child that was killed at the hands of the allied forces, then you're told, "Be like us, free and democratic!" wouldn't think that nation had a screw lose, or at least its leader?

What kind of message is that?

If it is "evil" Bush is trying to erradicate off the world, is "evil" not also called Satan, or the Devil?

Then the question is: How do you win against the Devil? By military strikes?

By going house to house in Iraq year after year killing the innocent along with those Bush deems "evil?"

"So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

"He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

"But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

"Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." - Christ

Is Satan (the enemy) going to be reigned in by weapons of war and soldiers?

If it's judged by God that he (the Devil) remains active on the earth until Judgement Day, then it is not possible to rid of the world of him.

Has "evil" been stopped in Iraq or proliferated since Saddam was removed from power?

To stop "evil" (or, in the case of Bush's perception of Iraqi people he calls "insurgents") must one not seek to understand the nature of it?

I know that a quick response, such as pulling a gun in your own house to defend yourself or family from an intruder come to do them harm is different, and that's not what I mean here.

3-years of attempting to apprehend "evil" in Iraq, when it is (supposedly) Bin Laden who is responsible for 911, is clearly not fathoming the nature of "evil."

And since "evil" was behind 911, WHY spend 3-years in Iraq fighting Iraqis who may very well see themselves as simply defending their own religious beliefs against intruders come to do them harm?

Is that going to find and apprehend the Devil?

Or is it just going to kill more innocent people and Iraqi civilians who fade in and out of being part of the resistance?

I think America's main problem is that they put a guy into office who used to have a severe drinking problem.

There are results of tests done that confirm that alcohol overusage impairs judgement.

Is that what is leading the USA right now - and what is behind the troops being in Iraq - a severely impaired judgement resulting in a major lack of judgement?

Because if it's not that, then let's call it what it is, revenge.

Revenge for the 911 strikes served up military style: Not "spreading democracy and freedom" to the rest of the world.

Just revenge. Revenge and wrath are synonymous.

... Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. Rev. 12:12

Unfortunately in this case even the revenge is misdirected because Bin Laden has STILL not been apprehended.

Oh yeah, try to tell that to some little girl in Iraq who's had her legs blown off in a coalition led bombing raid in the name of freedom and democracy: And as she looks down at her stumps, ask her if she really cares.

Exchanges

 

[Exchanges]

Quote from ZZZzzzzzzz:

Friday, Mar. 17, 2006
On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

With the Interior Ministry's Samarra commando battalion, the soldiers had found some 300 individual pieces of weaponry like mortars, rockets and plastic explosives in six different locations inside the sparsely populated farming community of over 50 square miles and about 1,500 residents. The raids also uncovered high-powered cordless telephones used as detonators in homemade bombs, medical supplies and insurgent training manuals.

http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1174448,00.html

Well then, that should just about wrap it up. They put the insurgents out of business.

Good.

That is, until they are re-stocked.

Now let's just bring the troops home and let the new US-trained Iraqi military deal with the rest of the malcontents.

Unless, the Iraqi military turns into another self-serving "gang" following a corrupt leader who turns into a Saddam wannabe.... Taliban-style.

THEN... well, then the USA just goes back in and starts another 3-year monitoring/war compaign... since the last one(s) went awry.

All is fair in love and war.

X

 

[acronym]

"Hey, are the wmd's over here?"
"No, but it's- warmer."


Presumably, they will distribute the home made bombs and manuals to iraqi trainees, so they know what to look for, and destroy the medical supplies to get a higher body count.


Edit- must have forgotten my anti-cynicism pills this morning.