« I TOLD Bingley | Main | 2b? Nt2b? ??? »

November 19, 2005

Gettin' It Done the Old Fashioned Way

Though the American media is slow to report it, U.S. forces are relentlessly destroying Zarqawi’s senior leadership.
A fascinating, encouraging read.

Posted by tree hugging sister at November 19, 2005 11:20 AM

Comments

Women in Iraq feel very little loyalty to their husbands. One of our successful methods of getting intelligence was to use female interpreters, native Iraqis. While the male interpreters talked to the men, the female interpreter chatted with the women in the house. We got some extremely valuable intel that way because the women weren't especially interested in what the men were doing and would gladly gossip and chat quite freely about what they knew.

Secondly, there is value in killing off the leadership, but they have absolutely no shortage of leaders to step up. I think the conclusion that is most obvious is that zarqawi thought the mission important enough to send someone he trusted, because he has a lot more explosive experts available to him.

Finding weapons caches and killing prominent people is valuable mostly for our own morale but has little impact on the ability of the enemy to operate.

The enemy

Posted by: Mike Rentner at November 19, 2005 01:57 PM

continuing . . .

The enemy's center of gravity isn't munitions or leaders. It is the people of Iraq. It only takes a few blood thirsty murderers to control a small city. Maybe a dozen or two, left unchecked, can dominate a city of 30,000 or larger quite easily. All they have to do is chop off a few heads and the people will cower in fear.

Our only way to win is to have a permanent presence in these cities to prevent them from instilling fear on the people. And we have to have an Iraqi presence do it or else we'll never leave.

There are munitions everywhere. There are plenty of die hard terrorists available. We should continue working to destroy caches and kill leaders, but we can't fool ourselves into thinking that this is a winning strategy. It only helps in that it distracts them somewhat.

Posted by: Mike Rentner at November 19, 2005 02:02 PM

True enough, Mike, if that were the sole part of the strategy, but there are other parts, as you know.

But killing the leadership renders the organization less effective, even if they do have continuity plans in place. Killing the terrorist leadership doesn't stop them, but it can slow them down, by (possibly) forcing them to get back on the learning curve. And not all of those leaderships in the hallway are necessarily good leaders.

Ultimately, we are buying time for the Iraqis to take control. If killing the terrorist leadership helps to buy that time, it's a good thing.

Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at November 19, 2005 02:55 PM

"Killing the terrorist leadership doesn't stop them, but it can slow them down"

Why? Do they come back from the dead or something? I thought head shots took care of zombies.

"by (possibly) forcing them to get back on the learning curve."

Well yeah, it is more difficult to get zombies to learn things.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at November 19, 2005 10:19 PM

Hmmmm....Andrea, apparently I expressed myself poorly.

"Killing the terrorist leadership doesn't stop them {i.e., the terrorist group}, but it can slow them {i.e., the terrorist group} down."

[snip]

"by (possibly) forcing them {i.e., the terrorist group} to get back on the learning curve."

I switched back and forth between them, the terrorist leadership, and them, the terrorist organization. Poor grammar, and my bad.

The effect also depends on how decentralized the AL Qaeda network is, or is not. But the loss of a key leader generally means a transition in authority and resources available through a clandestine network, which takes time and effort to re-establish.

I hope I didn't miss any irony tags in your post.

Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at November 20, 2005 12:29 AM