If Ramadi falls, 'province goes to hell'

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040712/ts_usatoday/iframadifallsprovincegoestohell&cid=676&ncid=1473

This may be the most dangerous city in Iraq.

Though battles in places such as Fallujah and Najaf have gotten far more attention, the Marine battalion in this provincial capital has encountered the most deadly combat fighting and logged the highest number of casualties of any U.S. battalion since the war in Iraq began.


In the past four months of fighting, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment - nicknamed "The Magnificent Bastards" - has had 31 killed and 175 wounded, roughly 20% of its 1,000-man fighting strength.


Among the latest to die was Sgt. Kenneth Conde, 23, of Orlando. Conde had been wounded in fighting in April and recommended for a Silver Star. He was killed July 1. In an interview a few weeks before his death, Conde described the rebels Marines fight in Ramadi. "They were young just like me. Fighting for something different, something I don't understand, something they believe in," he said. "And that's the worst kind of enemy."

more

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. "Ramadi must hold"

...Maj. Gen. James Mattis, delivered a terse message to a chow hall full of men: "Ramadi must hold."

What does that mean? That we don't want it to establish itself as a fundamentalist Taliban style state? When the majority of its citizens may want that?
Anyway, I read the whole article and it sounds like it's a lost cause:

"...With the transfer of power, Marines reduced patrols of troubled neighborhoods. There's a sense among some Marines that they have ceded these neighborhoods to insurgents. Some worry that rebels are gathering strength.

"They control the whole tempo of the battlefield," says Echo Company Gunnery Sgt. Bernard Coleman, 37, of Hampton, Va. "If they want to wait a month to attack, they can do that. While all that time, we're just waiting. There's always more people out there who hate us."

[amber dog democrat]

10. Vietnam

This SO reminds me of Vietnam. We can NOT militarily win this war. - no one wants to admit it but I think we are already searching for a way out.

[KeepItReal]

15. Someone *did* admit we cannot win - check it out!

" ``We're not at the forefront of a jihadist war here,'' said a U.S. military official in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official and others told The Associated Press the guerrillas have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of U.S. troops that they cannot be militarily defeated."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4290373,00.html

on edit:
This is a DIRECT RESULT of Rumsfeld ignoring the generals who said we needed way more troops to have a chance of pulling off Bush & Co's invasion successfully.

When you see on the news armed Iraqis (not the police or army) walking around in broad daylight in packs with RPG's, that should be your clue that we have acheived a military failure. They are not afraid of the U.S. military and are picking them off and wounding even more every freaking day.

Bush & Co. needs to be brought to justice for what they are doing to our troops.

[amber dog democrat]

16. Unless we want to end up like General Gordon

at Khartoum... we need to be developing , correction, executing an exit strategy.
Its just a matter of time.
All we can do is bomb safe houses, kill families, and hunker down in the Green Zone.
Hardly a winning situation. Thanks for the article. We have LOST this one already.

[IndianaGreen]

20. "They were young just like me."

"They were young just like me. Fighting for something different, something I don't understand, something they believe in," he said. "And that's the worst kind of enemy."

The Marines are not facing the same type of religious fanatics that the Mahdi led against General Gordon at Khartoum. They are facing a nationalist insurgency, the same kind that Marines faced during the Philippines Insurrection.

"I've been here quite a while, I'm ready to go," says Echo Company Cpl. Ryan Pape, 22, of San Clemente, Calif.

We can't win this thing, we already lost this war and the sooner we bring home Corporal Pape, the better off we will be.

[amber dog democrat]

21. The Phillippine war went on for 30 + years

Hell there is still fighting over there. You may be right about the religeous aspect.
This goes beyond jihad. But we need to pull our forces out NOW.

[Barrett808]

34. Not the kind of thing you hear from winning armies

When The Tigers Broke Free
(Roger Waters)

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that's how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.

http://www.murashev.com/dmdl/lyrics.php?song_id=1049

[struggle4progress]

37. But every time I read the papers ...

That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

[Wright Patman]

2. A conqueror he is not

"All we want is to keep each other alive and go home," says Echo Company's Lance Cpl. Jonathan Kaiser, 20, of Montezuma, Iowa, as he works in 130-degree heat to fill sandbags and harden a mortar-firing position inside Combat Outpost.

I'll bet even *, if he could read, would be very disappointed at the lack of conqueror mentality in this young man.

In the old days, you conquered the "heathens" and then resettled yourself and your families into the new province of the empire.

[bemildred]

3. Good read, good reporting.

I feel sorry for these guys, them seem very naive,
and they are deep in a shitstorm.

[NNN0LHI]

5. I felt the same way

Though I avoided clicking on it a couple of times due to the "Domino Principal" type headline.

Don

[bemildred]

6. You have to have a little spin.

The headline is just trying to pretend that the
province hasn't completely gone to hell yet. It's
the "how do you tell someone to die for a useless cause"
thing. There is no way progress will be made without
a massive infusion of force and the use of jackboot repressive
tactics, and even then one is merely buying some time,
keeping the lid on for a while.

The General saying that meme about "Ramadi has to hold" worries
me a bit. If he believes that, he is incompetent. A conventional
warfare model where you take and hold strong points and all that
sort of thing is completely inappropriate for what is going on
in Iraq. It is as the other fellow says, a test of will, a
contest of endurance, and the US will lose as surely as we did
in VietNam, for much the same underlying reasons, and most likely
a good deal quicker.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

9. Ahh yes. The propoganda angle here

Yes. The whole war hinges on Ramadi now. Good morale builder, even if, as you say, your leaders are incompetent.

[amber dog democrat]

11. We held Khe Sahn ( sp? ) for a while too

for all the good it did.

I don't know what our military objectives are anymore than I believe we can achieve them. It seems like we are just stuck - mired down and every KIA and causualty weakens us that much more.

I wonder if Von Paulus's 9th Army felt that way about Stalingrad?

[bemildred]

17. Von Paulus

I don't suppose he was happy. It does seem an apt
comparison in several respects, the contrast of the technical
advantage of the invader against the motivation and
mobilization of the invaded.

Certainly it is the epitome of military stupidity to
throw away strategic assets for tactical goals. Tactics
is supposed to serve strategy, not the other way around.
This is why Generals that lose their forces get fired while
Generals that lose a battle while keeping their forces
intact do not.

The problem in Iraq is that militarily there is no strategy.
The entire war was founded on Dumbsfeld's delusion that tactical
superiority was all you needed.

[amber dog democrat]

19. I truely think this is going to put "PAID" to the War President

Beyond the stuff they are doing here... this war is going to sap the life out of his administration, much the way Vietnam trapped LBJ into a range of choices he did not want to make.

But in the mean time how much more will we throw away in lives? national treasure, international standing?

This whole thing was folley from the beginning.

I really liked your response. It was very poetic.

[bemildred]

22. I trust you are correct.

My sniffers tell me he is toast, there is a smell of
desperate stupidity in the air. It has moved very fast. But
it would not do to be complacent.

I hope the the troops come home, and that they remember who
misused them in this way and why. We need them.

[amber dog democrat]

23. I honestly can't say for sure - yet

This war is not winnable. Any puppet government we leave in place will come undone after we are gone and there are no more humvees or Blackhawks to enforce the rules.

Thngs are going to become very heated up and agitated in the not too far off future. There is such a sense of manifest failure and squandered opportunities coming out of this administration.

Looking objectivly I think we are in the same situation the Soviet Union was when it invaded Afghanistan. Only we have dragged and coerced some allies to share the misrey. I hope all the proffits and oil coming out of this debacle were worth it to someone.

Judging from my military experience, some troops will come home the wiser for it and
some won't. All the same this mess is not worth ONE American life - nor an Iraqi one either.

[bemildred]

24. Worse than Afghanistan in a number of respects.

The enemy is better armed and prepared and had his
strategy planned out before we invaded, and our
supply lines are long and the cost factors very high.

But the analogy is not a bad one.

It seems to me they are just trying to patch things together,
to avoid being kicked out, until November. I sort of wonder
what they expect to do then, or if they are thinking that far
ahead. I think maybe they are completely focussed on the
elections at home, and the main reason to hang in there until
after the elections is because of the effect that an ignominous
withdrawal now would have on those elections.

So I have some hopes that after the elections they will get on
with an orderly withdrawal. Of course it is not clear that we
will not be kicked out by then. We'll have to see how things
look in September when the weather cools down some.

[amber dog democrat]

25. Hmmmm well thanks

The Afghan analogy may be close and in fact better than what we are currently faced with. I agree, it was not as if the Iraqi did NOT know our intentions.

Do you think Iraq will split up along trabal / ethnic lines? its one of those artificial nations created after the First World War, with not a lot of ethnic cohesion?

Just wondering. Yes I think you make a good point here. The current adminsitration seems to be hoping things won't fall apart in a big way just yet.

Its like hoping you can get the car home before it breaks down and costs you a tow on top of repairs.

I am not sure it really matters WHEN the ignominious withdrawl happens. This was a NEOCON production from the begining. I can't see how it can be blamed on Clinton.
Heads are going to roll. Americans don't like losing wars. Only this time, unlike the Vietnam War, there is no liberal defeatist movement to blame. No Jane Fondas

This was their gig - all the way.

Did you ever study what politically happened in Spain after the Spanish American War?

[bemildred]

28. My pleasure.

The occasional good discussion is what I come here for,
and the news.

It's hard to call what will happen when we leave. If I had to
hazard a guess, I would think they stay together, they are stronger
that way, maybe the Kurds will want out, but balkanization is a bad
thing too. The thing one wants is cultural autonomy, the right to
govern your own affairs. Most successful empires are run on that
principle, and having a state for every possible ethnic division is
impractical. What you want is a single world state with federal sort
of autonomy for subgroups that want it enough to set up the necessary
governing structures.

The current boundaries, while a bit arbitrary and drawn for the
convenience of European powers, are not more so than what has been
there in the past. I expect that the first world powers will meddle,
so Iraq will have to fight for whatever unity they manage to hold
on to. Islam is not by it's nature more schismatic than any other
religion, it's attraction is it's simplicity. The core issue or
course is who controls and benefits from the oil. If they can
stick together, they can hang onto and mutually benefit from all
that oil. If they allow the usual divide and rule tactics to
divide them, they are likely to be left out of the gravy train.

I've read Hugh Thomas' history of the Spanish Civil War, and the
introductory part covers the preceding period. I've also read
Woolman's "Rebels in the Rif" on the Moroccan war. I infer you
are thinking of the reactionary and militaristic response to the
defeats of the Spanish American war and the sort of internal
mastication that resulted and whether such things are to be feared
here?

It's not a bad analogy on it's face but it's hard to see how it
might hold up in the future, there are significant differences in
the cultural roots of current American society, and personal
autonomy is a bedrock value of American culture that has yet to
be stamped out at it's roots. Still, it seems like the greatest
danger, that we will not be able to restore the American republic,
that a civil war will destroy it, that we may never have our Prince
to restore democratic rule. An interesting idea, if that is what
you meant.

It must also be considered that the USA is post and not pre-industrial.
The issue is redevelopment rather than modernization.

Did you have some thoughts on that, or were you thinking about
some other aspect of that history?

[amber dog democrat]

31. Great response

I am grappling with a lot of "what ifs", in seeing if I can dream up a plausable scenereo an analogy to what is happening here - not that my ruminations merit attention.

I am very weak in this topic but...

Yes I did think about Spain, after the loss of its Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines, along with the best part of its navy. Spain received a major drubbing from the US.

There was a huge degree of disilluionment in the educated and professional classes in Spain that must have been devestating.
I think the damage to national prestiege was irreparable. It affeted outlook towards the rest of the world - Spain had no basis for optimism or ability to greatly shape or influence world events. I am thinking it weakened and discredited the ruling class and monarchy laying the ground for the socialists to get better established and of course the pendulum would swing the other way under Franco and the Catholic Church.
And thousands upon thousands of people would die in the process.

The impact had to be similar to what happened to Russia after Togo defeated them at Tsushima and the loss of Port Arthur. Since the Admiral went down with his fleet it would be hard to hold him accountable.

Our getting run out of Iraq won't be anything nearly that much a disaster but there will have to be some kind of political consequence.

There is a crisis of confidence in our government looming even larger - there is very little return on what has been invested so far - however I am convinced this war is a cash cow for corporations and certain well connected business folk.

Are we to be like the Roman Empire under the Triumverate - after the Republic is abolished? If the US openly admits it is an Empire - eventually it worries me that a generation or two from now we won't even bother with the pretense of a representative form of government.

The people in power who were the archetects of this failed enterprise are not going to let themseoves be removed from power. If there is a reaction the loss of Iraq I expect more repression here to follow. But what do i Know?

Thanks for the titles, I will look one or two of them up.

[Dhalgren]

4. Excellent article.

This is becoming a ridiculous scenerio for these troops. There is no "end game" to this shit. The insurgents are fighting for their country, whether you like them or not, and the US troops are fighting for...well, their lives. It isn't any more a question of what the outcome will be, only of what the body count will be. This makes me so sad and angry and hopeless. The only encouraging aspect of this article is that these Marines have no "wool" over their eyes - they are seeing clearly and know "the score". It does, however, make me more sorry for their plight.

[amber dog democrat]

12. I bet this will poisen things for generations to come.

From the Iraqis point of view, this is yet another crusade. Its been a while since Saladin defeated the last one, but the out come is so enevitalbe.


Its so easy to start a war. But then what?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Officer looks forward to a bloodbath

"We will be attacked in Ramadi," says Marine Capt. Rob Weiler, Conde's company commander. "We just hope we have the opportunity to kill a great deal of them."

When the officers feel like that, and even feel confident enoug hto have it attributed to them, the shit's about to hit the fan.

[amber dog democrat]

13. Yeah, they will take an honor gaurd with them

but what a freaking waste!

[JoFerret]

8. One in five. Terrible

Those are very bad losses.

[leftchick]

14. Ahhh, I think it is way past time to bring our troops home...

Great article and very frightening for all involved....
<snip>
With a population of 500,000, roughly equal to Oklahoma City, Ramadi spans a stretch of the Euphrates River. The provincial capital was a stronghold of the ruling Baath Party under Saddam. Its chief export was military expertise.


Neighborhoods are filled with retired or former members of the Republican Guard and intelligence services. Marines say unemployment is about 60%. Paul Bremer, head of the U.S.-led civilian administration, disbanded the Iraqi army and until recently refused to assimilate members of Saddam's regime into the reconstituted Iraqi security services.


"They know how to fight and are doing so," says Lt. Col. Paul Kennedy, the battalion commander.


Weapon stockpiles are hidden everywhere. In an ambush April 6, rebels produced a heavy machine gun, similar to a .50-caliber, that shredded a Humvee and the Marines in it.

[Dhalgren]

18. The one phrase that sums this whole shit-bath up:

"They know we know they know...". This should be the title of a History of the Invasion of Iraq.

[DoYouEverWonder]

26. What do folks expect

when you invade a foreign land and become a brutal occupying force?

Did they really believe that the Iraqi people would just lay down and hand their country over to the Americans?

Once again America will learn the hard way, that you can not win a war of aggression on a foreign country's soil. The natives will win everytime because they are fighting for their homes and their families. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

[quaoar]

27. This war is lost

If anyone still thinks Iraq is on the road to a Western-style free-market democracy, I've got some swampland in Montana for sale.

Bush has given us the worst possible situation: Just enough troops to provide target practice for the insurgents.

To control Iraq, we would need to have at least 300,000 troops there. But Bush and Cheney and the neocon cabal decided they knew better than the military professionals and that this was going to be a cakewalk. The neocon slogan at the start of the war was "Real men go to Tehran."

If this war was truly necessary it should have been done right. Instead, this administration's incredible arrogance finds itself surpassed only by its stunning incompetence.

[stanwyck]

29. I keep wondering if my son is there

I read this today and it's been haunting me since. My son, a Marine, is "somewhere" in Iraq. He's currently without email. He's called twice, briefly, but doesn't want to say exactly where he is. My friends are pushing me to take Valium or Prozac while he's over there. So far, I'm self-medicating with a combination of exercise and chocolate.

[bemildred]

30. Exercise and chocolate is the best medicine there is.

Perhaps a carefully measured dose of alcohol or DiPhen or
something to get to sleep.

My sympathies WRT your son, I hope he comes home intact.

I expect that working to throw the responsible fuckheads out
of office would be emotionally rewarding as well. My son is
17, and if they come for him I expect to get seriously worked
up.

[watercolors]

32. Our grandson recently returned

My daughter had been a basket case, had to get meds to help her thru it. She didn't want them, but she couldn't sleep or eat from worry. He will not be voting for bush, that is for sure. He had to grow up fast from the sheltered life he led. He turns 20 this month and knows war is not a game! We certainly have heard a lot from him, he feels its a no win situation, and we have to get out!

[stanwyck]

36. My son is voting for Kerry

he did mention that in his last phone call.

[rfkrocks]

33. I have to say

That after reading this article describe the desparate situation Shrub put us in-not to mention the morality (or lack there of inn this war) the election is going to be close? What do people see in this horrible war and president?

[Geo55]

35. How many times

must humans go through this....
imagine this is a British conscript saying this here in 1775
"They were young just like me. Fighting for something different, something I don't understand, something they believe in," he said. "And that's the worst kind of enemy."

[Barrett808]

38. Latest action in Ramadi: US convoy attacked

Fresh wave of violence in Iraq kills 22

...

In the flashpoint city of Ramadi, clashes between insurgents and US marines left five Iraqis dead and another 21 wounded, hospital and police sources said.

Witness said a convoy of around 10 US military vehicles was moving near the entrance to the city when attackers opened fire with Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

The US military would not comment.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040714/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_worldwrap&cid=1514&ncid=1480