Shock and Awe: I Think Not.

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So far in the this so called 'gulf war 2' there have been 15 British casualties. However, strangly, none of these have been killed by the enemy. First and American chopper drops out of the sky with 8 commandos and then two surveillance helicopters collide in mid air.

Let us not forget the grenade incident and the as yet speculate 'friendly fire' problem with an RAF unit.
Call me skeptical, but fnd the whole allied movement in Iraq to be a disaster. And I do not say this in a way that takes the mickey, but in a way that disgusts me.
All 15 of the British dead have come from the south west of England, my area, and one of the Commandos who died was a relative of a friend of mine.
This war is barely a few days old and already there is terrible suffering both out in Iraq and back home where i live. As far as i can see, the claim that the Iraqy troops would be taken back in 'shock and awe' is a total overestimation. the only people who are shocked are the families back home, who not only have to live with the death of their loved ones, but also within the knowledge that they were killed through the incompetence of their fellow british companions and American counterparts.

Not only that but now we find out that as the armies make a bee line for Bhagdad, they leave pockets of resistance in just about half of all the villages and towns they come across.
If the American forces want to destroy their image as 'cowboys' then they are nto going the right way about it.

And finally whats my point?
My point is that within only 4 days i have seen 15 damn good reasons why this war should never have started. Not forgettng the lives of the American troops lost and the supposed killing of an ITN (main british TV channel) reporter by allied forces.

I just pray that this will be over quickly and that no more troops, or especially Iraq civilians have to die.
But i think we all know that would be a miracle.

Is there anyone on this board who can truly say that what we are seeing hapening in the gulf can be called a success?

 

I hear what you're saying, Sir D.

It's become personal.

I don't know *what* the heck is up with the patriot missile thing. I know IFF works for regions, and I've always thought that the exact same codes get sent to the Britts as the Americans are using, but to be honest, I don't truely know.

I have no combat ribbons.

Other than that, yeah; our guys have a whole slew of GPS receivers. It's a crazy ratio; like one for every two, or something. To be perfectly honest here, I'm thinking we should have shipped a fscking STACK of GPS crates over to The Island and anyone else that was playing, too. Long before we were even gearing up the paintball guns.

Yeah. There were some things that sure has heck should have been done a bit different. I'll agree with you there.

I do want to know what the story is with that Tornado. And the helicopters.

And the guy lobbing grenades into the tents I have chalked up to a "sleeper". I'll let the news and Ari call it different.

 

I think the whole thing is being mishandled.

Most countries are against the war let alone British and Americans. Many of the troops are ill-equipped over there.

I don't see why they didn't just send some assassins over. Some people say thatthey did but it failed but most people are saying they just say they have.

I may get flamed for this and people may think I'm stupid and it may starts arguments or whatever - but I think Bush is intent on putting on a show. He wants to prove he is more powerful and act as if he is in more control than he actually is. America may be a powerful country but I don't think it means they can force other countries to do what they want and try and take over.

I think id America And Britain weren't allies then I think the war may have been over quicker, as America probably wouldn't have bothered much with the UN. The views of many people in my area is that America were going to attack whatever. Another view is that Britain doesn't have a choice in this as America may have caused a retribution.

People are killed in wars, people who have no say in whether it is right or wrong to go on, but the leaders who don't have to go anywhere near or take part and are as stubborn as hell.

 

I have mentioned in other threads that public support of the war may lessen if the war becomes protracted or if US/British casualties mount. It may be another Vietnam in that respect. The passion for war may wane as the body bags pile up.

 

I think the main reason it's come to war is that Bush wants a handle and a postion in OPEC. Think about it. Why now? Gas prices are insanly high. Why Iraq? Iraq is the second largest producer of oil in the world (aside from Saudi Arabia). Maybe I'm just a consiracy nut, but there's too many coincidences for it to be mere statistics.

 

And now Bush is saying that this is going to be a long and bloody campain He seems to have changed his stance a bit

 

Sir Dargorn -

Here are the statistics of U.S. casualities per war:

• Revolutionary War: 4,435
• War of 1812: 2,260
• Mexican War: 13,283
• Civil War: 558,052
• Spanish-American War: 2,446
• World War I: 116,708
• World War II: 407,316
• Korean War: 33,651
• Vietnam War: 58,168
• Gulf War: 293

It should be noted that in World War I and II, European civilian and military casualties were massive.

This war, as far as Americans are concerned, just like World War II. Saddam is a Hitler. Just as evil. Just as ready to murder civilians for his own whim.

[ March 24, 2003, 09:50: Message edited by: Blackhawk ]

 

Did you really expect that this war would leave zero casualties. People make mistakes (maybe even more when they are at war) that's why we are called 'humans' (for good or for worse)

My point is those soldiers who are fighting in the gulf right now are there because they decided to join the army, they want to fight for their countries. If they were against the war they shouldn't have joined, they knew there was always the chance on a war.

And if Bush wants to attack Iraq prematurely, why not let him, it's not like there wouldn't be a war if there wasn't a Bush. The fact stays that there is still a dictator sitting on the throne of Iraq and that sooner or later he will have to be 'dethroned'
If Bush wants to do it next to his fears of loosing his oil supplies, I say let him do it. Or we could have waited for the U.N. to finally see Saddam for who he really is (which would have taken another several years and several thousends of Iraqi civilians).

Last week I saw an interview with an Iraqi family sheltering in Holland for a while now and they were really scared for their family. But when they were asked if they were supporting the war, THEY WERE, because they know what kind of man Saddam is to his people.

Everywhere now they are marching against the war, in Amsterdam there were 20000 people (which is a lot in Holland) protesting against the war. I am sure that at least 50% of those people doesn't even know what this war is about or even where Iraq lies on the globe. They hear war and they protest. Two weeks ago Polls showed that 80% was against the war, now that has dropped to 50%, isn't that a little weird that people would just change their mind in two weeks after seeing the images on CNN.

I really hope this war will end soon, but I see this for what it is: a necessity

 

I read in an article today that the US casualties are *higher* when in home base and out of combat zone than they are in the normal run-of-the-day bomb the buggers war we have nowaday. Accidents happened alot more often while sitting at homebase in Texas and going out boozing in the evening than during quaraintine in Kuwait with missiles flying hither and dither.

 

Right.

At least during the Gulf War.

During operation Desert Shield/Storm Fewer US service personel died in the combat area than died in training accidents in the US the year before! It was statistically safer for the US service personel to be at war than at peace! Simply amaising when you think about it.

As far as this war is going, it think it is amaising that there hasn't been MORE US and British killed and wounded. More will die, probably numbering in the hundreds, possibly reaching into the 1000 mark.

I don't remember hearing ANY generals, or the president for that matter say that this was going to be an easy campaign. Quite the opposite. But I don't think for a second that they won't be successful. I figured that it would take at least a month for the US and British to reach Bagdad. It looks now like they will be there in just about 1 week.

 

I doubt in the principle of "shock and awe". Sure, massive airstrikes will demoralise recruits and poorly trained normal troops. War experience in WW-II and recent conflicts however has shown that neither bomb raids nor artillery attacks have alone succeeded to drive a determined defender out of his positions. Take the city sieges of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Stalingrad (Wolgograd) or the fierce fightings of Okinawa.

In WW-II generals in germany and britain and the US believed in city bombings demoralising the enemy, eventually making him surrender - quite the opposite was the case in britain, it united the brits. The city bombings also didn't break the combat will of the north vietnamese. The same in germany. And in germany production increased despite all the city and massive industry bombings.

I think "shock and awe" is an expression of the high-tech fascination in the think-tanks and among the air force tech-freaks. To someone examinating the combat effectiveness of a modern bunker busting GPS guided bomb an infantryman indeed looks puny and easily intimidated.
However, massive air support helps a lot to win, but it cannot handle everything.

 

I want to make clear that I feel nothing but the deepest respect for those who have died for what they believe in -- and that includes the Iraqis. But someone earlier had a point I want to re-emphasize -- did anyone think there'd be no casualties in this conflict? War is horrible, and the sacrifice of lives is nothing to take lightly, but that's what happens in a war. Even worse things are happening to the American POWs right now, and I guarantee after some Iraqis used a white flag as a trick, the U.S. soldiers are going to be some ticked, and they will do some things they shouldn't.

I don't know exact statistics, but the U.S. needs to do something about its friendly fire issue. But that happens in war, too. Like death and taxes, this is just a fact of life, unpleasant and serious though it may be.

 

Ragusa -- There is one excepton: The bombing campaign in Kosovo was very effective. I wish that we had followed a similar track with Saddam, as we did with that other dictator, instead of what we are doing now. Every waking moment, I worry for our guys over there, knowing that in most of the surrounding countries there is so much anger at the US and it could be directed at them from across the borders. I fear the lesson here is not the US in Vietnam, but that of the Russians in Afghanistan.

I know some won't like to hear this, but Bill Clinton was smart to send US troops only as part of a UN multi-national peacekeeping force, after the bombing had stopped in Kosovo. The current administration felt that it had nothing to learn from the previous one's successes.

Bill was especially disliked here in Bush's home state and not a day goes by that I don't hear a comment about him or Hillary. I find it curious that a Rhodes Scholar can be referred to as "Buba" -- especially when rednecks are doing the name calling. Reminds of that line: "Who are you calling Buba? Buba."

 

Depends on how you look at it: The bombing campaign itself wasn't effective militarily as it failed to reach it's original aim: To destroy serbian forces in Kosovo. As it turned out that this wouldn't work NATO instead consequently attacked infrastructural targets (factories indeed can't hide and re-locate) to bomb the serbs to the negotiating table again.

The costs were the live of civilians, the so-called "collateral damage" incidents occured regularly. It was along the rationale: How much destruction on your already troubled economy can your country survive, and how much is the action against the albanians worth you?

The serbian forces in Kosovo however, stayed there during the bombings and remained combat ready and actually very successful in eluding the allied reconaissance and countering precision guided weapons.
Plus, their air defence was pretty able, forcing the allieds to fly high, making them unable to effectively attack ground forces. Very notable is the serb success in countering the allied recce drones, the alliance lost about 21 over the campaign (6 non combat losses). The serbs took clever advantage of vegetation and terrain making them hard to spot and even harder to hit as professional soldiers do not spot a recce plane and stay where they are to get killed.

The switch in targets actually was a clear signal and indicated that a war against a determined and professional enemy force from the air alone was futile. And it proved that without ground troops a professional enemy force cannot be destroyed. The serbs in kosovo weren't defeated, their government was forced to withdraw them at full strength. So it worked with the aim given - cum grano salis Kosovo war was a military failure and a political success.

However, I doubt that that bombs alone might have been enough when the NATO would have been up to topple Milosevich.

[ March 25, 2003, 12:54: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Thank you, Ragusa, for your extensive reply. It is clear that you have a greater depth of knowledge on the military aspects of the war in Kosovo than I do. I had thought that the original aim of the campaign was to put enough heat on the serbs to drive Milosevich from power, rather than what you suggest. I watched the coverage of the war daily on American TV. It appeared as if we were accomplishing what we set out to do, which was to bring Milosevich to justice for genocide. In that, I am gald we succeeded.

 

Bringing Milosevich to justice is a job for the international war criminal trial for former Jugoslavia in Den Haag; it's not a job for bombs. Sadly, the bombs contributed nothing to justice, they left him in power and only hindered him in exexcuting a plan. Those who had to die for that mostly didn't even had anything to to do with Kosovo and the albanians and the probably planned ethnic cleansing. And also in that war quite a lot of info was faked.

I remember our then secretary of defence presenting hard "smoking gun" evidence for serbian attrocities. He went into detail how the serbs had blown up houses there after driving out the inhabitants. He presented aerial photography, showing a "recently ethnically cleansed village".
On the pic there was an abandoned village, notably, all houses were without roofs. It pointed out this pic was 2 years old and from Bosnia as a journalist could tell, beeing able to read the datafile on the pic, after that the pics were shown without data. It also pointed out that the method to blow up the houses he described was technically impossible ... ... pictures tell tales ...

It's not even that I think that the Kosovo war was wrong, but it was against international law and out gvt's did us tell a lot except one thing, the truth. That's what I have always disliked about it.

[ March 26, 2003, 05:42: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

This is pretty much off topic, but weren't Stalingrad, Leningrad, and St. Petersburg all the same city that had a name that changed with the ruler?

 

Nope, they are two different cities in very different parts of russia. St. Petersburg became Leningrad after Lenin's death and became St. Petersburg again after the USSR fell. St.Petersburg is located at the baltic.
Wolgograd, some 1.600km down south (500km north of the caucasus, and just 500km too much west to be in asia that starts with the ural mountains) and on the rivers wolga and the don, was named Stalingrad in communist times and then again became Wolgograd again - for the same reason.

In WW-II both cities were sieged by the german army for a long time and never conquered as the russians defended both under incredible sacrifices. check here (mind the odd spelling of "Saint Petersburg" and "Volgograd" is a US idea )

[ March 27, 2003, 14:42: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

To get back to the topic this war. Casualties are essential some must die to be a war. I'm very sorry for the losses but the people who took the decisions don't care because they knew they wouldn't go there to fight. Only the simple folk can understand the real pain the war causes and only the simple folk can say no to war when there is a peacefull solution even if is the longer one. Hans Blinx said that if he was given two months time he would have disarmed Iraq. Now not only it wont be disarmed but also the people of Iraq will unite to oppose this invansion. And if you think that this is a lie why don't you try to see a different news network not an US or British or Al jazeera a neutral one. Also as one member of the British Parliament said now with this war we are giving the excuse and the motive for many muslim to join terrorist groups all over the world. How do you like that.