RoadDave

With the Iraq War now on a nice simmer, rather than a full boil, we can season the pot for the future.  There is a robust educated class, middle class merchants and the usual smattering of dirt poor, filthy rich, crooks, gangsters, religious zealots, loonies, disenfranchised and just regular strange people.  Sort of like Canada or the US.

As noted in other posts, airlifting a Jeffersonian Democracy into Baghdad for all to use is probably not going to work, as humans always revert to tribal loyalty in times of stress.  But the concept of Iraq being run by the Iraqis is sound.  The US should make sure the lights come on, the water works, the phones ring and the cops are set to keep the gangsters from ripping up everything.  Aside from providing transport to and from the meetings, the US military should keep its mitts off, simply because Iraqis want to run their own show and who can blame them for that.

The danger in the US is lumping Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran and all the other pan-Arabic countries into the same group.  An ‘Arab’ is too broad a definition, often based on physicality, like Caucasian or Black.

For instance:  I am a White Middle Class Canadian Male, For Which I Am Sorry.  This does not mean I burn crosses on lawns, or my ancestors owned slaves, or I go out of my way to trash mosques.  It just means I am a White Guy, prone to baldness and I have the rhythm-recessive gene, which precludes me dancing in public or private.  Politically, I am a Red Tory or a Blue Liberal, Pro Choice, Anglican and Heterosexual. 

Meanwhile, Rob S, a friend of long standing, is also a White Middle Class Canadian Male, For Which I Am Sorry who is also rhythm-impaired, but is Ardently Heterosexual, Politically a Libertarian, Reform Druid, Choice-Neutral and calls the Linux operating system a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  Externally, we could be related and we can finish each others sentences, but we differ on a number of points. (Names obscured to at least try to skirt various slander laws).

Most Middle Eastern people I have met who are not Israeli have a somewhat benign attitude to all mankind.  Live and let live, share what you have and tolerate others as long as they aren’t in your face.  Except to a person they define themselves as Lebanese, or Iranian or Syrian, not always Arab.  Same with us White Folks:  Canadian, American, German, or from Dallas, Texas.  Texas is always a subset.  Don’t ask.

If the US can get over the term ‘Arab’ and worry more about the subsets of Iraqi, then there will be more possibility for success.  There will be endless hours of bickering amongst themselves as this is normal:  Just sit back and let it play out. 

Afghanistan is a reasonable model.  The tribal council, the Loya Jurgha (sp?) acted as a tribal parliament where the tribes came together, all as equals, to figure out their own solution which is working at least OK. 

We can’t hope for much more than OK in the foreseeable future in Iraq, because they have had 30 years of insane dictatorial rule and those who knew anything else are now dead or in exile.  There is a relearning curve that we will have to ride.

Iraqis have the same attitude to great victories as North Americans and Europeans:  They get revenge on inanimate objects. 

Various sports “fans” celebrate by setting fire to postal boxes, tipping over police cars, breaking shop windows and throwing rocks at everyone else.  Looting always figures highly in these celebrations, as if winning, or losing, entitles everyone to steal televisions, office furniture, clothing, rugs and bathroom sinks. 

British Football fans are in a class by themselves, bringing victory rioting to an international level.  Success is measured not in drunkenness, broken windows, or amount of stolen goods, but in deaths and cumulative length of suture materials used.

Iraqi celebrations, although well-intentioned, are simply not up to even the Belgian level.  I think the first Humanitarian Shipment should be some Manchester United Fans and the Detroit Red Wings Booster Club, who can teach the people how to riot effectively.

The second point that really drove home the whole reason Operation Iraqi Freedom existed in the first place, was a video snippet from CNN.  An Iraqi man, not necessarily a wealthy one, ran up to a US Marine and yelled these words, probably the only English he knew::  “Bush Good”

I think that sums up the commonality of all humankind.  Trimmed, waxed, lightly scented, encased in lacy silk, especially if willing and warm to the touch, it is the reason all soldiers fight:  Bush Good.

Is Saddam Hussein dead, along with Qusay and Biday, his maniac sons?  The hellacious big hole left in a suburb of Baghdad yesterday seems to suggest it. 

The story goes that the US had solid, eyes-on-the-prize-holy-shit-that’s-him intelligence from more than one source, cross-referenced with other types of intelligence that Sammy, Q-Tip and Bidet were having dinner at a nice restaurant along with the remaining Generals and some Ba’ath party fun types.  The restaurant wasn’t really a restaurant, more of an armoured bunker a couple of storeys underground that happened to have a wine list and made a mean Club Sandwich, at the street level.

A bomber parked a pair of 2,000 pound bombs in there and followed it up with two more all designed to pierce through floors, then go off.  This effectively cancelled the restaurant’s Michelin Guide ranking of One Star.  The bombs did what they were designed to do, leaving a 60 foot crater that went down at least 20 feet or more.  Anything in there was turned into fragments of meat, bone, skin and hair mixed with bricks, dirt and pulverized concrete.  Talk about a bad rating for a bistro.

The downside, aside from not being able to get a really good Club Sandwich in Baghdad, is that there is no proof.

Benito Mussolini and Carla Petraccia, his mistress, were taken from the palace in Rome at the end of the Italian campaign in WWII, by the citizens.  Both were hung on hooks in the courtyard, beaten, stripped and shot to death.  Then, more citizens came in, saw the bodies, pissed on them, shot them some more and dragged the corpses around by their heels for a while.  The message, although extraordinarily grisly, was simple.  The Boss is Dead.

Hitler, having seen the atrocities committed on Mussolini, promised himself that there was no way he’d surrender.  Suicide and cremation was his deal.  Some scholars believe that the Russians, who got to the Reichstag bunker first in 1945, took the bones away, or kept the bodies, or buried the bodies a number of times, then lost them in 1947, with some parts going into Josef Stalin’s personal collection.  Stalin wanted conclusive, totally certain proof that Adolf Hitler was really dead.  To this day, there are those who believe Hitler and Eva Braun live in Scarborough Ontario, or Oak Park, Illinois. 

The population of Iraq, especially those not educated or wealthy, will never know for sure that Saddam and his sons are really dead.  This proof is also important to the US and future governments of Iraq who will have to deal with the whole population.

If someone has terrorized you and your neighbourhood with death squads, disappearances, midnight abductions, executions, poison gas, informers, torture and brutality for nearly thirty years, you want to see the body.  You need to see the body. 

You want to make sure before you embrace the US troops that anyone even vaguely associated with the previous regime is dead or in jail, so they can’t come back and shoot you in the back of the knees for so much as waving at the troops.  The best proof is a body, head on a stick, on parade, despite the utter inhumanity of the act. 

Those big bombs may very well have ended the Hussein regime, but there needs to be some kind of conclusive, easily understandable, undeniable proof that everyone in Iraq can get their brains around. 

Peasants don’t understand DNA and forensic science.  Hell, Judge Lance Ito didn’t understand DNA evidence and he’s a smart guy.  Show regular citizens committing a few disgusting acts in his palace, like shitting on his bed, or some atrocities on a body, then the message gets out in a way that even the most disconnected can understand. The Boss is Dead.

I watched one of the most entertaining press conferences I have ever seen this morning.  The Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf had been into the minibar again, got liquored up and held a press conference on the rooftop of a building overlooking Baghdad.  The usual suspects were there, except the American media, who have all been kicked out of town, to listen to a drunk propound on the state of the Battle for Baghdad.

According to al-Sahaf, there are no troops in Baghdad, those who were at the airport were all killed and poisoned by the Iraqi Army and the rest just ran away by the grace of Allah to go and hide behind the skirts of Israeli women denying the Arabic homeland.  Sounds like the usual Iraqi Military press conference:  Two parts generic Islam, a dash of slaughter and cowardice, one part anti-Zionist rant and add a Palestinian homeland garnish.  This is the kind of statement you can just about quote without getting up to change the remote.

Except al-Sahaf was on a split screen on CNN.  The other image being a bunch of guys in camouflage, lugging big guns and radios, pouring out of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, shooting up the Presidential Palace.  In the previous hour, one of the Arab networks, in a show of good camerawork, showed a pair of A-10 attack aircraft, flying over Baghdad, shooting up the joint and providing forward air support to an estimated 105 armoured vehicles rolling around in town. 

I am fairly certain the armoured vehicles were from the US as our sole Canadian tank is in for service and a new air freshener at the Bank Street Canadian Tire.  It will be ready around 4 pm today, maybe tomorrow if they can’t get the new oil filter.  This leaves the UK tanks and they’re all down in Basra, shooting the place up, in Northern Ireland, shooting the place up, or parked in front of a pub in Liverpool.  The Russian tanks are all in Russia, the government not having enough money to fire them up, or, local mafia in Moscow have stolen the treads off them.  It must be US tanks as the rest of the coalition members, Chad, Sierra Leone and Bermuda, don’t have tanks.

Had the US forward air controllers been truly on the ball, they would have waited until Minister al-Sahaf was about two minutes into his rant and run a pair of A-10’s, slow and low, right over his rooftop position.  Shoot the windows out of the high rise building right behind the Minister.  No trick shots, nothing exotic, just a simple, “Hi!  How are you!” flyby during his press conference.

The real point is the Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is so far out of touch that he’s closing in on the special reality occupied by Bobcat Goldthwaite, Steven Wright and Carrot Top.  If he’s the best Iraq can put up, Chemical Ali being dead and Saddam Hussein not wanting to accept the Oscar for Best Performance by a Body Double, then the war is essentially over.

Will someone please tell the Iraqi army, militia, and irregulars, special and not-so-special guards to give it up?  The soldiers want to go home.

Now that it looks like regular troops are in Baghdad proper, here’s the way urban war works, more or less.

This is the imaginary construct.  I want you to go around the whole house tonight, open all the blinds and curtain, turn on all the lights, then strip buck naked in the bathroom. 

Your mission, without putting any clothes on, or just saying ˜so what if they can see Mr. Johnson” is to close all the curtains and drapes and turn off all the lights.  Accomplish this without your neighbours getting a peek at the goodies.  Assume that all your neighbours are perverts and are actively looking in all the windows of your house.  For some of us, this is not much of a leap of faith.

So, how to you do it?  Slowly for one.  You think before you turn a corner in the hallway.  Can they see me from the windows over there, or over there behind me.  Do I turn off the lights first, or am I being lit from behind in that other room where I still haven’t turned off the lights.  Could it take a couple of hours of crawling on your belly and sneaking about the house to finally get things buttoned back up?  Easily.

That is the essential of street fighting war.  Enemy snipers are waiting for anything to pop up in a window a half a kilometer away that they can shoot.  Rocket Propelled Grenades, known as the Beirut Knock-Knock, at close range, can rip the tread off a tank or disable a Bradley.  You are now left with soldiers on foot, dismounted, going room to room, house to house. 

Tanks, like the M1A2 Abrams, are too damn big for the back streets and alleys.  The Abrams has a couple of useful features in street fighting, like machine guns, mortars and the sheer mass of 70 or so tons.  Don’t worry about firing the Big Fun Gun, just drive the whole tank over a house.  That tends to deny the enemy the position.

The only way you can call in air support is to find out where they’re shooting at you from.  Which house or apartment?  You do this by being bait and drawing fire.

A skilled enemy, only fires from highly concealed positions and does not fire until they are certain they can kill someone.  After firing, they get out of where they are.  This is Shoot and Scoot fighting, so by the time the helicopter gunships are targeted at your last position, you are somewhere else.  They blow up where you were, not where you are.  Then you sit quietly and wait for the next target to roll in, ride in, or walk in.

The big advantage is you know every street, alley, basement, sewer pipe, rooftop and hidey hole.  Your enemy, the US, does not, so you can dress up like an Iraqi woman and just walk from place to place, with your gun under your robes.

This gives the US some options, however.  As was done in WWII and Viet Nam, assume that all structures hold bad guys.  Churches in WWII were common places for snipers and artillery observers, as they had height as an advantage and could see more ground.  Allies at or near the downtown crosswalk?  Here’s the map reference, drop a half-dozen mortar rounds or artillery shells on that map reference and we’ll slow them down some more. 

This is why so many churches in Europe had their steeples blown off: German observers were probably there, so the Allies denied them the high observation point, by shooting the tops off churches or any other tall structures with their Sherman tanks’ 75 mm Fun Gun.

Urban War is the slowest, most precise and dangerous type of fighting.  Everything in front of you must be assumed to be dangerous.  In the Viet Nam era, the street fighting in Hue taught the US some very bloody lessons.  Even if a building was totally on fire, there was often a crazed opponent, in the basement, blazing away with a machine gun until the upper floors collapsed in on them.  Bullets fired by the crazy still kill, just as effectively as bullets fired by the perfectly sane.

In Somalia, specifically Mogadishu, people with weapons (I will not call them soldiers, as they do not deserve the title) would come running from everywhere, surrounded by family members and civilians, to get in the fight.  The civilians had come to “witness” the battle and the weapons folks had come to use the civilians as cover.  The US took another bloody nose there, as the natural reaction of controlled, trained soldiers is to not fire on women and children.  Of course, this is where the weapon-toting folks hid, right in the crowds.

Can an urban war be won in Baghdad?  Yes, but it takes a very strong willed, disciplined force.  It also takes some very serious decisions to be made higher up.  Namely the use of very intense fire from tanks and conventional artillery.  This will cause the death and injury of hundreds, if not thousands of civilians. 

This will cause extensive devastation of areas of town.  Not just blown out windows and some dust, but whole blocks of apartments, offices, stores, homes, markets, yards and businesses turned into piles of broken bricks.  Think of the photos of Berlin at the end of WWII.  Nothing left intact.

Can the US take that decision?  They should, but will they?  I think they won’t and the price will be paid in lives.  It is always thus.