Below is an interesting editorial on how to win the war on terror. However, might I just add that Col. Nagl seems to have missed the obvious? The U.S. has committed its blood and resources to protecting not only the United States, but ALL Western nations, so, is it really asking too much for a few more countries to come to our aid with some real manpower to help alleviate our logistical problems? Or, do you other countries plan to reap all the benefits while doing nothing but sitting on your fat asses?
That’s alright… We can win this war without you, but, contrary to popular myth-conceptions about Americans, we DO remember who our friends are, and wouldn’t you rather have us on your good side?
BROTHERS IN ARMS:
We Can’t Win These Wars on Our Own
By John A. Nagl
Sunday, March 9, 2008;
The Washington Post – Page B04
It’s now my job to train U.S. military advisers who are embedded in the Iraqi and Afghan security forces — which often gets me thinking back to my time fighting in 2004 in Iraq’s Anbar province, and the death of Lt. Col. Suleyman.
Suleyman was the best of my Iraqi comrades in arms in Anbar: a fierce fighter, former Republican Guard officer and, like me, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm (although he was on the other side in that one). I called him “Suleyman the Magnificent.” We were like brothers — which is to say, we fought incessantly about how to handle our common mission. Suleyman wanted more trucks and weapons; I wanted sharper intelligence, more patrols and better performance from his soldiers.
Suleyman, whose last name I never knew, commanded a battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (now the Iraqi Army) that was based just west of Fallujah, one of Anbar’s major cities — no easy job. But his problems exploded in April 2004, when the charred corpses of two Blackwater contractors were hung from a bridge within sight of his headquarters. Fallujah soon fell under the control of Sunni insurgents, who bristled when Suleyman defied their demands for weapons and money. Then the insurgents kidnapped one of his officers and told Suleyman to report to a mosque inside the rebel-held city to get his man back. Suleyman bravely did so, and was beaten to death — a killing that was videotaped and sold throughout the streets of Anbar as a lesson to anyone who might consider supporting Iraqi and U.S. efforts to build a brighter future there.
We will not necessarily win if we have allies like Suleyman, but we cannot win without them. The hard lesson of this tragedy is clear: Foreign forces cannot win a counterinsurgency campaign on their own. In Anbar, I spent at least as much time training and equipping the country’s nascent security forces as I did planning and executing raids against insurgents. This indirect approach is the key to winning the long war against al-Qaeda and changing the Middle East for the better.
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Opinionated Infidels