Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Email of the Day
You've just spent a year in a war-torn country where you, equipped with all the latest gadgetry and high-tech weaponry available to any army in the modern world, were unable to keep the peace in a truly complete way. There are daily explosions, bombings, killings, rocket attacks every day in Baghdad. Yet you do think that the US army is doing a fine job there in a difficult situation. Why not extend the same understanding toward UN troops who work in just as difficult an environment with far more limited mandates than the US army in Iraq in terms of the powers to search, arrest, interrogate, etc.?
From a reader.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, it seems to me that useless is as useless does.
The attacks that the reader mentions in Iraq are all hit-and-run classic guerrilla operations and terrorist tactics--hallmarks of assymetrical warfare adopted by the weaker side.
The weaker side--in this case the Islamist insurgency--adopts these tactics precisely because they cannot successfully close with and destroy the American forces. They cannot hold their own in a firefight. Although they have demonstrated the ability to gather in platoon strength or better in Fallujah and Sammarah, they generally cannot follow up successes. They have no choice but to vanish into the population as quickly as possible or die.
And they sure as Hell can't do anything so bold as to destroy an entire village within small arms range of an American base. They know that American forces would protect the village from aggression. American forces have enough credibility that the insurgent does not even try.
The fact that a mob showed up to destroy a Serb village in the very face of a presence of UN Peacekeepers tells you two things: 1.) The UN Peacekeepers are as useless as a nipple on a napkin, and 2.) UN credibility with the locals is so pathetic that the mob knew the UN would not stop them going in.
Further, if United Nations troops have "more limited mandates" than do American troops in Iraq, and if that is such a problem, then again, that's nobody's fault but the UN's.
Splash, out
Jason
From a reader.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump, it seems to me that useless is as useless does.
The attacks that the reader mentions in Iraq are all hit-and-run classic guerrilla operations and terrorist tactics--hallmarks of assymetrical warfare adopted by the weaker side.
The weaker side--in this case the Islamist insurgency--adopts these tactics precisely because they cannot successfully close with and destroy the American forces. They cannot hold their own in a firefight. Although they have demonstrated the ability to gather in platoon strength or better in Fallujah and Sammarah, they generally cannot follow up successes. They have no choice but to vanish into the population as quickly as possible or die.
And they sure as Hell can't do anything so bold as to destroy an entire village within small arms range of an American base. They know that American forces would protect the village from aggression. American forces have enough credibility that the insurgent does not even try.
The fact that a mob showed up to destroy a Serb village in the very face of a presence of UN Peacekeepers tells you two things: 1.) The UN Peacekeepers are as useless as a nipple on a napkin, and 2.) UN credibility with the locals is so pathetic that the mob knew the UN would not stop them going in.
Further, if United Nations troops have "more limited mandates" than do American troops in Iraq, and if that is such a problem, then again, that's nobody's fault but the UN's.
Splash, out
Jason
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