Article

2004-01-16 Iraq

Iraqi: Hamas, Hezbollah operating in Iraq?

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Posted by Fred Pruitt 2004-01-16 00:00|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Hezzz-bolah. Rolls of the tounge as smooth as a babies bottom, like lezzz-bien.

Posted by Lucky 2004-1-16 12:26:20 AM|| 2004-1-16 12:26:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I remember articles commending the Brit forces for their "softer" approach to peacekeeping: wearing berets instead of helmets, engaging public opinion more readily, etc in contrast to our own, more hardnosed approach. Are the chickens coming home to roost now?

Posted by mjh 2004-1-16 8:25:39 AM|| 2004-1-16 8:25:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Let the Iraqi police, or even better, the new paramilitary forces take the lead on this assignment with coalition backing.

It will be a nationalist victory.

Posted by mhw 2004-1-16 9:33:35 AM|| 2004-1-16 9:33:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 I remember articles commending the Brit forces for their "softer" approach to peacekeeping: wearing berets instead of helmets, engaging public opinion more readily, etc in contrast to our own, more hardnosed approach. Are the chickens coming home to roost now?

The British haven't had any real experience with seriously-financed and -supplied guerrilla wars. Whether in Ireland or Malaya, the British experience has always been with lightly-armed guerrillas perennially strapped for recruits and equipment. (Just read any account of the kind of equipment and funding the oppo fielded, and compare that to what the US faced in Vietnam and now Iraq). The British like to brag about their past experiences, but these experiences are completely irrelevant to the US experience in Iraq. Note that the US taught them a few lessons by taking Baghdad while the Brits were pussyfooting around in Basra. Only after Baghdad was secured did the Brits get off their rear ends and finish the job - and it still took them several days to deliver the coup de grace.

I don't have any problem with anglophilia, but 20th century military operations are one area in which the Brits do not have anything to brag about compared to the US. The guerrilla wars in which they've been successful have always been far less strategically and tactically complicated than what US forces have encountered.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-1-16 9:50:11 AM|| 2004-1-16 9:50:11 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Not long ago, I wrote about why the British experience with the IRA is only applicable to pinprick guerrilla efforts like Northern Ireland. I compare the resource bases of our opponents in both Vietnam and Iraq to what the British face in Northern Ireland:

Al: The IRA was well funded (mainly by Boston / NY Americans) given the size of the territory in question.

My response:

One of the things that you need to understand is that support from Irish Americans for the IRA gets attenuated within a generation. At most, a few tens of thousands contribute sporadically at Irish pubs to the IRA.

North Vietnam was supported by the industrial bases of the Soviet Union and China with billions of dollars of weapons and supplies. Vietnam was repaying the debts from its weapons procurement binge well into the 1990's. Take it from me - the Migs, tanks and howitzers North Vietnam used to conquer the South do not grow in rice paddies, and don't come cheap.

Compared to Vietnam, Northern Ireland is a completely different animal. To my knowledge, Ireland is not actively sending Irish troops into Northern Ireland to fight the British army. The entire Irish government budget isn't devoted to expelling British troops from Northern Irish soil. The Irish government is not smuggling anti-aircraft missiles, mortars, howitzers and light tanks into Northern Ireland. The Irish government is not recruiting Catholics in Northern Ireland to fight the British. And the Irish government isn't sending its agents into Northern Ireland to assassinate a dozen British civil service officials and Loyalist collaborators on a daily basis. But the equivalent of all of these things happened in Vietnam.

Saddam's men have the looted resources of an entire nation in their grasp. The dollar amounts are in the billions - perhaps tens of billions. They have the remnants of an overlapping and redundant (because of Saddam's fear of collusion against him) security apparatus whose sole purpose was to keep Saddam in power - an apparatus that killed 300,000 Iraqis. They have hidden weapons and ammunition caches in place that are the result of tens of billions of dollars in weapons purchases spent over decades.

Significant chunks of the 15% of the population that was Sunni did not have to work for a living - Saddam paid them off with no-show jobs to keep everyone else down. Under American occupation, they now have to. And there's no way around it - if the US starts paying them off too, everyone else will want to get on the dole. That's no way to run a country, especially when they'll have to start governing themselves in six months. But it also means that Saddam's henchmen can recruit from a pool of 3 million Sunnis recently taken off the dole.

Al Qaeda fanatics in Iraq have a potential resource and recruitment base numbering 1 billion people. The ideological underpinnings of jihad are reinforced in Saudi-funded institutes throughout the world, providing both fresh recruits and (probably more importantly) fanatically-committed fund raisers for the cause of jihad. Tithing at Muslim mosques accounts for some portion of al Qaeda funding. (And 10% does seem to be the number for Muslim tithing - what they call the zakat). And what is the important aspect of this tithing? It's that this is almost akin to governmental funding - every Friday, the payments come in, like clockwork, meaning that the cause of jihad is never short of cash. A little better than collecting a few dollars here and there in Irish pubs, eh?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-1-16 9:58:01 AM|| 2004-1-16 9:58:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 I remember articles commending the Brit forces for their "softer" approach to peacekeeping: wearing berets instead of helmets, engaging public opinion more readily, etc in contrast to our own, more hardnosed approach. Are the chickens coming home to roost now?

I'd immediately make efforts to get spies in there and gather as much information as possible. Then lower the boom on the scumbags.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-1-16 10:34:55 AM|| 2004-1-16 10:34:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Well said Zhang Fei.

Posted by ruprecht 2004-1-16 11:10:35 AM|| 2004-1-16 11:10:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Zhang Fei -- it's not just the zakat funding the terrorists receive; they also get huge amounts of cash, intelligence, training, and safe havens from the Arab governments. The Arab governments figured out they could never beat a Western (particularly Israeli) army in a straight fight, so they switched to terrorism to support their foreign policies. And not just against the west, but also against each other.

Posted by Robert Crawford 2004-1-16 12:54:18 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com/] 2004-1-16 12:54:18 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Great analysis, ZF.

Posted by 11A5S 2004-1-16 2:07:07 PM|| 2004-1-16 2:07:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Well said Mr. Guy.

and ZF.

Posted by Shipman 2004-1-16 4:24:00 PM|| 2004-1-16 4:24:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 If Hizbullah is operating in Iraq and they are linked to attacks against coalition targets...Guess what?

Open season on yet another terrorist group from the Religion of Peace which has killed Americans and gotten a pass.

I hope this is the case...I would like to think that the Bush administration has more memory than the various appeasement factions we've been saddled with.

Posted by RTFM 2004-1-16 4:42:36 PM|| 2004-1-16 4:42:36 PM|| Front Page Top

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