U.S. invasion has landed it in Israeli territory (merged)

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

Some excellent points and a very apt comparison…

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1847350

U.S. invasion has landed it in Israeli territory

Two weeks and 8,000 missiles into the war on Iraq, things have not gone quite as planned. The much-ballyhooed “shock and awe” strategy has failed to precipitate the quick capitulation of stunned Iraqi forces or an internal overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. Far from throwing in the towel in the first round, Saddam’s men have taken our laser-guided punches and satellite-homed hooks and put up a fight. Not only have we yet to reach Baghdad for the inevitable siege, we have struggled to take Basra, a city a mere hour’s drive north of the Kuwaiti border, and one we were led to believe would welcome our troops with flurries of petals and rice.

There is shock and awe aplenty, but not as was scripted. Set against the backdrop of our heralded ability to minimize “collateral damage” with the awesome precision of our technology-laden arsenal, the waywardness marking some of the missiles fired by our navy from ships in the Mediterranean and Red Seas is notably shocking. U.S. Central Command has reported that some not only failed to hit their targets in Iraq, but they completely missed the country! (They landed instead in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.) Needless to say, CentCom has cancelled missile launches from MedRed. Equally shocking are our intelligence failures. In mid-March, before the order to attack, our top military commander in the Middle East confidently declared that we were ready, that we had enough troops in position to prosecute the war and complete the mission. On the 10th day, we scrambled an additional 100,000 soldiers to bolster the 250,000 already engaged in the Iraq “theater.” And just hours before the first bombs fell on March 19, special operations teams were deployed to what U.S. Central Command considered the four highest-priority locations inside Iraq. By now they were to have uncovered stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. They have found none, an outcome that leaves inspectors of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission unmoved. The CIA advised that if Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, the sure way to have him use them is to attack Iraq. That probably still holds true, but so far Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been conspicuous by their absence. Then, on Saturday, March 30, there was the most significant shock of all, a grim, forbidding milestone, and a harbinger of hell to come. Four of our finest were manning a Najaf roadblock. A solitary Iraqi in a car, an explosion, five men dead. The war’s first suicide bombing – guaranteed to be the first of many – will no doubt be seen as an awesome precedent by the conscripts sure to swell the ranks of Iraq’s faceless martyrdom brigades.

Our rules of war are based on overwhelming superiority of the force at our disposal compared to that of the enemy. Israel’s experience in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories tells that overwhelming force cannot quell fiery nationalism. And history tells that Iraqi nationalism is as fierce as any. The cost of ignoring that will only mount with time. We will turn to the Israeli military, the world’s most experienced in combating suicide bombers, and adopt their methods. We’ll claim our right to defend ourselves against the retaliation of those we attack. Our presence on their land is what they detest, yet we will see their killing of our soldiers as proof they are the terrorists our presence is needed to wipe out. We’ll force cars to stop at a safe distance and make their occupants approach on foot. Then an Iraqi patriot will shuffle up to marines at a roadblock and detonate a concealed explosives belt strapped to his waist. Our counterterrorism experts will advise that we force Iraqis civilians to strip to their waists before they approach our men. The effect, as Israel knows all too well, will be to alienate the indigenous population. Our actions will ratchet up their resentment and intensify their loathing of the foreign military power controlling their lives. The number of Iraqis ready to die to kill anyone sporting a Star-Spangled Banner or a Union Jack will mushroom. We can win the war, but the peace will enervate us. Welcome, America, to a vicious cycle of violence like that Israel is mired in. In time our nation will yearn for freedom from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare

As the troops enter Bag Dad, this training they received from the Isrealis might come real handy. Lets see if thye use them D9 bulldozers.
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Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare **

By Justin Huggler in Amman
29 March 2003
The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied.

If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.

Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighbourhood – home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.

Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem’s internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.

Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons.

Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks and armoured vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so they bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in.

If the US military intends to use converted D9 bulldozers in Iraqi cities, there is cause for concern. When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds, children’s toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors.

Israeli use of the bulldozers has not been limited to clearing the way for tanks. They have also been used in collective punishment, such as the destruction of an entire neighbourhood in Jenin after the fighting ended.

In Nablus last April, eight members of the al-Shubi family were killed when an Israeli soldier bulldozed their home, burying them alive, despite shouted warnings from neighbours that they were still inside. The Israeli military has supplied US forces with video of incursions by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian cities, said unnamed “security sources”. They added that Israeli officers have given their American counterparts extensive briefings on Israeli tactics.

One of the tactics identified was the Israeli army’s practice of moving from house to house by knocking holes in connecting walls to avoid being exposed in the streets, a practice that has wrecked the homes of thousands of Palestinians.

The Israeli army has also routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect them as they advance, a practice that has continued despite Israeli court rulings forbidding it. There was no word on whether Israeli officers had briefed American troops on this tactic.

There were reports in the US and Israel media last November that American troops had been trained by Israeli instructors in a mock-up of a Palestinian city inside an army base in Israel. Those reports have been denied, but an unnamed Israeli source told the Associated Press that US officers did visit the mocked-up Palestinian city and attended a briefing on Israeli training methods.

There have also been reports that Palestinians who have fought against Israeli forces in Jenin and other Palestinian cities during Israeli offensives last year have telephoned friends and acquaintances in Iraq to advise them on tactics to use against American and British forces if street-to-street fighting begins.

There is another lesson to drawn from Jenin. The Palestinians who defended the city were armed only with assault rifles and crude, home-made booby-traps and pipe-bombs, against the massively better-equipped Israeli army.

But they held out for 11 days, and managed to kill 23 Israeli soldiers, 13 of them in a single ambush. When the Palestinians ran out of ammunition, they kept fighting and started throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers. If the much better-equipped Iraqi forces take the same attitude to defending Baghdad and other cities the battles could be bloody.

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Who is to say Israeli troops are not fighting side by side with the Amricans and the British in Iraq?

Any bets?

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I'm not a betting man but, I agree with you Gupta.

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The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied.

Maybe the American terrorists know that Baghdad/Iraq may become their own West Bank/Gaza Strip soon?

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Wasnt sure where to share it. Farid Mian talks bout the similarity of this war with American involvement in Lebanon and Isreal’s handling of Jenin.

"Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It’s the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened. " **White man’s burden **