The way to win in Iraq

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1) Institute a complete media blackout on the War in Iraq. The Liberal Media has done more damage to our troops than the insurgency and Al Qaeda combined will ever be able to do. Order the troops to shoot journalists on sight.

2) Level Sadr City to the ground, killing all that we find within it.

3) Go from there.

In the Civil War, the Union did not win until General Sherman cut his swath of destruction through the South, finishing it with burning Atlanta to the ground.

In World War II, we did not win until the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To win in Iraq, we must do damage of a level that will prove to the Iraqis they will be much the worse for wear for it if they try to resist.

And without the crybaby liberal media to post stories about US troop plans, secret documents and poor dead babies, no one will be able to complain about it and tie our hands behind our backs again.

Wow

How is it like becoming what you hate?

Last edited by tdbrown82 on 26 Nov 2006, 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Off yer meds again, huh?
I agree that the media (call it liberal or conservative, it really seems to make no difference) needs to rein itself in in many instances. For example, BBC publishing a story on how security regs at Heathrow will be relaxed due to not finding any liquid explosives seems a little... well, frankly, stupid, in my opinion. It's akin to "Hey terrorists... attack us here, please!".
However, it's also brought to light things that deserve to be brought to light. First thing that comes to mind is the Abu Ghraib bit, among others.

As for the other bit... turning Iraq into a sea of molten glass is quite probably the most ret*d thing that the US could possibly do (aside from having gotten involved there in the first place). Talk about terrorist recruitment... that'd be terrorpalooza.
Let me ask you... you come home after a hard day at work, you just want to relax, have some dinner, tar and feather liberals... but when you get home, you find a smoking crater and an Iraqi jet leaving the scene. Your house is gone, your family's gone, you have nothing left except for hatred. Deep, burning hatred. Revenge seems pretty reasonable at that point, I'd imagine. So let's further speculate that you join the army to go kick Iraq's ass. How does that make you any different from the new wave of militants? Every house that gets blown up, every brother or sister that takes a US bullet is just another recruitment opportunity for some extremely angry people.

You want to get mad at someone? Get mad at your "leaders". The same people who've consistently lied to you about why the US is there. The same ones who reduced troop strength and closed bases, preferring technology over manpower. The same ones who sent your volunteer military to invade a country that had nothing to do with the reason they were in the neighborhood in the first place.
The list goes on and on. At this point, I'd like to beat Rumsfeld into a coma with a copy of Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' because he's obviously never read it (something I would expect of a secdef).

edit:

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Iraq is Vietnam, Pt 2.

ok, minirant over, sorry 'bout that.

We just have to ask WWSD What Would Saddam Do?

Although leveling cities on on my "things to do on a Saturday night" list, it's not too cool to do.

We do need to increase US troop involvement in Iraq and focus on getting the situation a bit more stable. THEN we train the Iraqi military and police. We need to also find a way to bring some religious tolerance over there. A lot of the killings going on because of religious hatered.

If worse comes to worse, we can divide Iraq up a la Korea. We would have the Kurdish country, the Sunni country, and the Shia country. We keep troops, and UN forces, on the borders to prevent the sides from going at eachother's throats.

But that "liberal media" is as liberal as the corporations that own them allow them to be. Some stations do have a bias to them (CNN = hippies and Fox News = fundie nutjobs), they report the same things. They just present them in a different tone.

Dead babies are not cool. Collateral damage will happen in war though. It happens. People miss. Intel is never perfect. However, it is still the duty for the media to report it. It is news.

I saw some newscast back in the 50's about how a country was doing. I could not understand any of it since it was all in Russian. That dude with the big moustache looked funny though... People have a RIGHT to know what is going on. This is America. We get to know ALL sides of the story, not just one side or the side that only agress with the government. You many not like the other side of the story. That's cool. You have that right. However, if we take away our ability to see all sides of the subject, we lose one of the fundimental rights of the country. Freedom of the press.

It is not up to the news to decide your opinion of something, it is YOUR'S.

The media is mostly center-right.

Nah, I'm not off my meds

Nor am I honestly in favor of what I just said had to be done to win Iraq.

I admit I posted this topic in as controversial a way as possible to encourage debate.

My problem with Iraq isn't that the war was unwinnable to begin with, but that, as a person who voted Republican in 2004, supports the military fully and thinks that military action against extremist Islam is a necessity, that Iraq has been bungled so horribly that it may well be unwinnable.

And whether the media is "center-right" or not, it's still traitorous and anti-American. I've already posted about the Reuters incidents - high up Reuters executives emailing bloggers and investigative journalists telling them to die and calling them filthy jew pigdogs. Every time the media reports about some scandal where US soldiers may have killed some people, or may have misfired, it gives the antiwar side more grip with which to pull us back, and the terrorists more propaganda to exploit.

I think that at this point, Baghdad itself is certainly lost. My change of heart on this came when I read about the soldiers - shiites, under the shiite prime minister - standing by while shiite mobs burned Sunnis to death.

At this point our only options are either overwhelming, full scale, indiscriminate violence (which would do tremendous damage to our cause and overseas reputation, which doesn't realy need more damage done to it, frankly), or damage control of the measure of calling Baghdad/Anbar Province a lost cause and trying to contain the trouble there.

Collateral damage... razing... massacering (sp?) of civilians... I may be a rightwinger and bit of a hawk, but this isn't anything I want to see, ever. Yes, the wholesale eradication of Sadr City would massively sway the War in the US's favor... but is it worth the cost at this point?

What this war needs is positive pro-US propaganda by the f*****g TON.

Blanket the news with programs, commercials, everything we can think of saying how great and wonderful the US is. Show interviews with Iraqi after Iraqi as they give thanks to the Great Power of the West. Beat this into their heads. AMERICA IS GOOD. AMERICA IS GOOD. THE WEST IS GOOD. AMERICA IS GOOD. If necessary, bribe clerics into preaching pro US sermons, and have anti-US clerics assassinated. But keep a blanket on the whole affair. Let nothing that is anti-US slip through the cracks. This is how we will keep Iraq outside the Triangle of Death under control. They will hear non stop about how good they have it, about how much good we are doing, and how evil the insurgency is. Show footage of US soldiers handing out candy next to footage of terrorists beheading people.

Ugh, it's late and this is all over the place.

Well, that IS one way to win the war in Iraq, no contest, instant victory. However I'd rather not have a billion muslims from other countries jihading on America for committing genocide. Especially with all the abandoned Russian nukes ripe for the taking. Fear breeds hatred, and hatred causes conflict. We rule by fear, we lose in the end.

That and it's not exactly a sought-after solution on moral grounds. ^_~

We joked 2 years ago at work how the Iraqie people had Saddam becasue thats what
they deserved. To hold that powder keg together he had to be tough on the people.
So yes bringing Saddam back is the ideal solution.

Less violence more PR warfare. The terrorists in Iraq are winning because they have popular support. The best way to deal with this is to kill them with kindness. It's all about PR today and the best way to get lots of negative PR is to start the war on questionable grounds. That's the reason we lost in Vietnam and why we may lose in Iraq.

If we wanted to take out real threats we would have invaded Iran and Saudi Arabia and stopped feeding the monsters in Israel.

Or just tell them, front and center, to get their own s**t together.

And ease up on Israel. They're not all like their government.

So the way to defeat terrorism is to think like terrorists, to become terrorists ourselves? Is that what you're saying?

If we were to do as you suggest, this would no longer be America.

Can't we just nuke it and have done with it?

No.

AAAWWWW!! !! Why NOT!! ! It would be FUN!! !!

I tend to agree with this. I don't think countries like the US or UK can fight anything other than a very short war with the type of media coverage we've been getting. My own personal opinion is that certain media organisations have behaved despicably in slandering our troops and spreading foreign propaganda that puts them directly at risk. The people responsible should be shot as traitors. I'm deadly serious about that, too.

As for your approach with regards levelling the city in question, I'd have some sympathy with that under certain circumstances. We are far too soft these days, and though the touchy-feely stuff looks good on TV to wooly-shirted wet-liberals, long term it costs lives.

Unfortunately our own propaganda as regards the "evil" of the Nazis and the glossing over of allied atrocities during WW2 contributes to this, I think. People have this bizarre notion that you can go to war without civilians being killed, and without troops getting carried away and roughing up the odd looter etc. During WW2 we deliberately targeted civilians. Enemy prisoners were, on occasion, summarily shot and towns were shelled as retribution even after the official end of hostilities. Not that any of that is anything to be proud of, but it provides context for what we should expect in war and should allow us to carefully assess whether we really need to be engaging in it. I think if you are putting your troops lives at risk it should be all or nothing.