Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Like I said, this is our summer of 1863. Nothing new here, except the clarity and will to execute. Thank God for that.
Hell casca, the populace in the North was pretty tired of the war in the summer of 1863. What we need is a Vicksburg or Gettysburg to rally support. The problem is that the media will spin it as a failure.
This was the policy proposed in 2003. Too bad it took so long to implement.
So easy a caveman could do it…
Actually, I didn’t see a lot of facts here, just a lot of suppositions and wishes. As Kilcullen freely admits, this plan hasn’t been in effect long enough to make an assessment of its effectiveness. However, if one key is to have Iraqi forces, police and other, ready to take over patrolling locations US forces have cleared, then the plan is behind the 8-ball, as you know by the recent links I’ve sent you of US generals in Iraq complaining that there are inadequate (ill-prepared or nonexistent) Iraqi forces to take over the areas they’ve liberated. That’s a big hole, hope they get a fix for it.
Also, his use of “irhabi” to describe AQI is strange, to say the least, and implies that he can tell the Sunni and Shi’a who are justly waging jihad and who are not. Whatever else one thinks of Kilcullen’s plan, no kuffar will ever tell a Muslim who is and who isn’t a lawful Muslim.
completely off topic — but I think you’ll like these one…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb7i2pJf6Xc&mode=related&search=
http://dosgringosrocks.com/music.html
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Kilcullen sets the stage for the reader who wishes to understand the facts as they unfold absent agenda-driven spin or media-inspired over-simplification of the narrative better than most. You’re right, the plan hasn’t been in effect long enough for any rational assessment of its probability of success.
Why then do the media and political class treat it as though disaster was a foregone conclusion?
And as for your irhabi point, the “war of ideas” we hear so much about has to include casting a seed of doubt into what is in any case supposed to be an ummah whose religion has been hijacked by extremists that AQI speaks for them. We’ve got to at least put an oar in that water, see who pulls on it.
Even better: “I want to land takeoff from a carrier”
http://www.dosgringosrocks.com/music-15.html
Seems to me that it is a no-brainer… I am probably too simple minded. Seems like the whole of warfare history says when you take a pieces of ground, you need to hold it. Then they bad guys can’t get it back. Might be harder than that… so many things are!
I’m all for casting seeds of doubt into the minds of our enemies, usually in 2,000 lb HE doses, but by using “irhabi” Kilcullen reveals a disconcerting level of either ignorance, or wishful thinking.
Is the Sunni with the AK-47 irhabi for responding to his obligation to repel the infidel who occupies the waqf of the Ummah? Is he irhabi for bombing the Shi’a, who are guilty of shirk, for their attempting to dominate the Sunni of Iraq? Hell, to a Sunni the Shi’a are irhabi just for being Shi’a. The good LTC wants to use that term for AQI, but so do the Saudis, certainly not our friends. When the Saudis think they will gain an advantage by having the USA, kuffars, use the term, something is afoot.
It’s an antiquated term, not in common use in modern Arabic, and though it may be useful in designating a group that is allegedly acting outside of Sharia (which AQI, citing a long string of textual and historical sources, would say it is not–see http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1493), it obscures the reality that mainstream Sunni and Shi’a doctrines all teach the requirement to reject the infidel, his offers of friendship, and any of the infidel’s beliefs and practices that do not accord with Sharia (such as human rights and constitutional democracy), and that it is the duty of the Muslim to repel the infidel from Muslim territory (waqf), and to make the infidel subject to Islam.
Obscuring these core Islamic teachings, then, is either the result of ignorance, or the result of wishful thinking. Neither serves the defense of liberty well.
Zane, are you trying to say that we can’t get there from here?
Casca, you are positively laconic. I won’t say “can’t,” but it’s damned hard to get there if you can’t admit where you are.
Optimists are often disappointed. Zane?
Not so much…
Everybody is in thrall over Yon, but for my money give me J.D. Johannes. Former Marine & TV news cameraman, a couple years ago, he decided to follow his old unit to Iraq, and tell their story. He’s grown since then, and demonstrates a better methodology of taking the temperature of the combat zone than his contemporaries. Today, he’s over at National Review Online bitchslapping Senator Lugar to parade rest.
[...] those who don’t keep track of comments, this read by J.D. Johannes is well worth your time: In his Senate-floor speech Monday, Senator [...]
Zane, it’s as if he wrote this for you:
Iraqis of different sects and ethnicities lived peacefully together in Baghdad for centuries ?
Zane, it’s as if he wrote this for you:
Iraqis of different sects and ethnicities lived peacefully together in Baghdad for centuries — often in the same neighborhoods, and in the same tribes. Even today, it is not rare to for a Sunni head of household, driven from his home by a threat of violence, to ask his Shi’ite neighbor to watch his family’s property for him until he can return.
A Lot has been accomplished in the last year:
The principal accomplishment of the surge to date is solidifying the “Anbar Awakening,” the significance of which has been under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public. If any piece of territory in Iraq qualified as a “terrorist safe haven,” it was bloody Anbar.
The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province — a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand — represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus. These tactics include meticulous census-taking of persons and vehicles; skilled, persistent diplomacy with tribal leaders; incorporation of local intelligence; constant foot patrols in the residential areas from platoon and squad sized outposts; and persistent perimeter control of areas cleared and held.
Lugar is a charter member of the tinfoil hat club, but he’s probably right that domestic politics will put an extremely short timeline on the Petraeus plan. The current effort is the last chance we will have to achieve anything in Iraq.
Et tu, CAPT, are you an optimist or a pessimist when you plan a strike route through multiple SAM rings?
That’s tactics, we were talking strategy
Nice defensive weave there. Just talking about realistically assessing the threat, that’s all.
Lugar is part of the strategic problem the second he opened his mouth on this. Strategically he has perpetrated Information Fratricide (along with Pelosi-Reid et. al.) and are being manipulated by AQI in their attack on the key vulnerablity in our strategic center of gravity: public opinion. The other key vulnerablity is the extreme partisanship and quest for power at all costs on the part of the Left within Congress. It is a significant weakness and easily exploited.