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Originally posted by QRQ 30
General Kimmet's remarks bother me: "Just wait!!!" I am sorry but if I am going to smack someone I'll do it right now and talk about it later. I hope we aren't going to start following Israeli tactics in the West Bank. You can see how successful they have been in bring peace to the area.
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I agree. Kimmet has said two things that really bother me. One is that we will strike at a time and place of
our choosing. As The Reaper pointed out, common sense dictates that there could hardly be a more opportune moment to hit the bad guys than when they are out in the street beating the bodies of murdered Americans with shovels. This fact will not even be lost on the halfwits that comprised that mob. It seems analagous to a playground bully who walks up and punches another kid in the face. Afterwards, the kid runs away. Later, when the other kids find the victim sulking, they tease him. His response is that he's going to get that bully back one of these days, when
he feels like it.
The other statement he is making is that we are going to strike surgically (or something to that effect, can't recall the exact term), yet overwhelmingly. Seems to me that if we go in surgically, it is going to be to grab/kill a few bad guys. I doubt this will overwhelm the city of Fallujah. In this instance, I think the concepts of "surgical" and "overwhelming" are our basic alternatives, and frankly I'm afraid that the descriptive term "overwhelming" is just supposed to put an intimidating wrapper on what is otherwise going to be a pretty low-key operation. I hope I'm wrong.
Quote:
Originally posted by QRQ 30
How many demontrators do you suppose there were.? In a city of 280,000 some want to punish the entire city. Isn't this like killing a man because he has an infected hand?
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I seriously doubt that all 280,000 people in the city knew about the attack. The question is, if they had, what would their reaction have been. As well as I understand, those who were in the area of the attack and were aware of it as it was happening joined in the barabaric parade (or at least a large percentage did). I do think you need to punish the entire city - they at least need to be made to understand that if they tolerate animals like that in their midst it involves a certain danger that when the Americans come for retribution, they may be confused as one of the bad guys.
It would seem to me that when you have a benign population who is more or less sympathetic and helpful to you, but within which a small contingent of goons operates, then it makes sense to appeal to the sympathies of the population and work to surgically remove the malignant element. It is analagous to a cancerous tumor which has not spread. You want to remove the tumor with minimal damage to the surrounding, benign, tissue. Once the cancer has spread throughout the body, however, a different approach is necessitated that attacks the whole body indescriminately. In cities like Fallujah and Samara, I think it is time to consider this approach.
Everyone I know who's been over there says that towns like Fallujah and Samara are infected to the core with the kind of anti-American sentiment that fueled these recent atrocities. We've tried the carrot, it's time for the stick IMO. If the population of these places will not voluntarily break ties with these monsters, then they must be made to do so coercively. This, IMHO, necessitates making the population at large feel the pain of this kind of treachery. There is a certain, psychological, value for us in having the people of Fallujah know that if the bad guys in their midst continue with their depredations, it will bring down our wrath on the whole city at large.
Same goes for Samara, Tikrit, and any of these other cities where the men of our military or CPA contractors have to take extraordinary risks to even drive down the streets.