Comments - Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Gracieb

Michael C

Michael C — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Excellent and informative post this!!!

I don’t want to talk here about the rights and wrongs of the war in Irak, or the rights and wrongs of using military force in general terms but in strictly ”art of warfare” terms, this article shows that the American military is finally waking up. AT LAST!!

The British attitude in Basra during the Irak war was exactly what the article is talking about. It’s not about going in there guns blazing and killing everyone, but going softly and using local intelligence, gaining confidence, and getting people ”on your side”.

The result was that Basra and the surrounding area fell to the British with minimal loss of life (just a couple of hundred dead soldiers and minimal civilian casualties, no massacres and a certain degree of respect for the British army’s attitude. The casualties are deplorable, I agree, but far better than the bomb-and-obliterate-everything-in-sight attitude used by the Americans in Baghdad and the surrounding area that led to thousands of deaths for the Americans and civilians too. Shameful.

(This comment is trying to be objective about a strictly military issue, and it has no political point or judgement to make, so it’s only fair to say that I will not answer comments which are pro or anti Western or Muslim. Thanks.)

Grace Calderon

Grace Calderon — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for the lengthy, very informative, and very insightful article, Michael.

I don’t entirely agree with you that the British were very different than the Americans in Iraq. Hehe...

But I do respect your information. It just comes to my mind that Iraq was a joint US-UK invasion and the tactics called Black Ops was both and equally participated in by the two countries.

But let us make this a purely military issue, alright. One of the most important lessons that the Americans learned from the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) here in the Philippines is the fact that insurgencies aren’t quelled through firepower. Revolts are spurned by passionate emotions and triggered by poverty and social injustice.

Here in the Philippines, a good percentage of addressing insurgencies is to address the socioeconomic root of insurgency which is poverty. Hence, rebels are offered a returnees program where leans of livelihood are given to them and their families.

I also was so surprised that the Philippines was able to teach its big brother a thing or two. ;)

Michael C

Michael C — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yep, you’re right about Black Ops being a joint operation, Grace. But it was only a joint operation in theory, as far as the British in Basra were concerned.

This is because (and I don’t know if you were aware of this) the British Military considers the Americans as a cowboy outfit. This was demonstrated by British actions once in Irak, which differed from the Americans’ (and, once actually IN Irak, the Americans couldn’t do anything to stop them).

The British quite simply didn’t enter Basra using overwhelming force. They surrounded it and waited for the enemy to come at them. They also carried out commando operations at night in Basra besed on, amongst other elements, intelligence gleaned from the local population. They finally entered the city after having eliminated many fighters from the outside. Basra was NOT Falluja.

This is witnessed by what a British Commander of a British front-line unit said in an interview for the BBC. (I’m putting it in quotes, because these aren’t his exact words - I’ve lost the article....)

”It’s the same thing almost every day, usually in the morning. There are between ten or twenty of them (insurgents, Al Quaida, whatever) and they shoot at us from that hill over there with machine guns and kalashnikovs, whereas we have tanks, missiles and god-knows what else. They can’t even aim very well. So they oblige us to return fire, and in five minutes it’s all over. It’s like a pigeon-shoot, I know, and I hate doing it, but we can’t let that carry on all day. After all, they might kill one of my men. We send patrols up there at night, and see that they don’t even carry off their dead. It’s a sorry sight”.

Not nice reading, I know, but, as we all agree, war is anything BUT nice...

(And I’m not at all surprised that the Americans are learning from the Philippines. I imagine that the Philippine army has much more experience of this kind of warfare than the Americans).

Seeya Grace!!