Article

2007-10-15 Home Front: WoT

Asia Times looks at future of urban combat: "Planet of Slums"

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Posted by 3dc 2007-10-15 11:07|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 posted via keyboard bounce before it was ready.

Posted by 3dc 2007-10-15 11:11|| 2007-10-15 11:11|| Front Page Top

#2 posted via keyboard bounce before it was ready.

Happens to me all the times when I write email. Damn those fat fingers! (I'm not fat, I'm big-boned, dammit!)

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-10-15 11:14|| 2007-10-15 11:14|| Front Page Top

#3 Fixed. Not sure what you wanted the title to be, so I just took my best guess.

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2007-10-15 11:31|| 2007-10-15 11:31|| Front Page Top

#4 Apart from the usual slant of the hack ("fallujah, abu graib, no WMD, fought to a standstill, etc, etc..."), this is an interesting article, I wonder what would lotp or other think of that meeting.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-10-15 11:32|| 2007-10-15 11:32|| Front Page Top

#5 Fixed. Not sure what you wanted the title to be, so I just took my best guess.

Also, should be page 2 or 4 & "Homefront : WOT".

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-10-15 11:33|| 2007-10-15 11:33|| Front Page Top

#6 In his tour de force book Planet of Slums, Davis observes, "The Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or Department of State types fear to go ¡ [T]hey now assert that the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World - especially their slum outskirts - will be the distinctive battlespace of the 21st century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor".

The only way such a dismal scenario will happen is if the First World leaders continue to ignore the dire necessity of killing despots and tyrants like Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and Islam's host of ghouls. Better that these hellholes are cleansed with nuclear fire than allow them to drag the civilized world into their bottomless cesspool of incorrigible criminality and eternal human degradation.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-10-15 12:00|| 2007-10-15 12:00|| Front Page Top

#7 To the rest of the world, at least, it's clear enough that the Pentagon knows how to redden city streets in the developing world, just not win wars there; but in Washington - by the evidence of this "Joint Urban Operations, 2007" conference - it matters little. Advised, outfitted, and educated by these mild-mannered men who sipped sodas and noshed on burnt egg rolls between presentations, the Pentagon has evidently decided to prepare for 100 years more of the same: war against various outposts of a restless, oppressed population of slum-dwellers one billion strong and growing at an estimated rate of 25 million a year. All of these UO experts are preparing for an endless struggle that history suggests they can't win, but that is guaranteed to lead to large-scale destruction, destabilization, and death. Unsurprisingly, the civilians of the cities that they plan to occupy, whether living in Karachi, Jakarta, or Baghdad, have no say in the matter. No one thought to invite any of them to the conference.

So, who invited this twerp?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-10-15 12:05|| 2007-10-15 12:05|| Front Page Top

#8 Ralph Peters had an execllent book on the future of warfare and it's urban component (which would dominate becauese fighting Uncle Sam in the open is suicide).

He laid out tactics used by the Chechyans and others. Hanging wounded or dead Russians in front of machine gun nests because it made the Russians less likely to fire back. Basically the third world learned the lesson from the Vietnamese that the only chance to win is to drag the combatants into the most vile barbarism imaginable, but hope that the west walks away rather than goes genocidal.

Posted by rjschwarz 2007-10-15 12:48|| 2007-10-15 12:48|| Front Page Top

#9 The 20th Air Force has seen the future and the answer is napalm.

Posted by ed 2007-10-15 17:58|| 2007-10-15 17:58|| Front Page Top

#10 My 2c worth. Iraq (Baghdad) will be the last large urban battlefield the USA and its allies fight in, for a generation.

I have several reasons for thinking this.

Occupying an enemies capital isn't even 20th century thinking, it's 19th century thinking. Occupying Baghdad was a mistake that wouldn't have been made were hindsight available. I recall the discussion at the time of just going around it and keeping going into the Sunni heartland north and west. The calculation was that taking Baghdad would end the war sooner.

Another reason, is the places where I foresee future conflicts don't have large cities - South Caucasus, the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, East Siberia, South China Sea.

A third reason is we know how to contain urban conflicts. The British did it in N.Ireland and the Israelis have done it in Gaza and the W Bank - fences, surveillance, intelligence, limited raids to snatch or assasinate people, but otherwise leave the urban slums alone.

Posted by phil_b 2007-10-15 18:10|| 2007-10-15 18:10|| Front Page Top

#11 You've got a point, Phil, on military considerations. But there are also political ones. If you leave a city, not just the capital, in enemy hands, they will have control of the civilian residents, civilian communications systems and the ability to broadcast any view of misery, fauxtography, or terror that they choose to audiences foreign and domestic.

Americans don't have the patience for what we have had to do in Iraq let alone seige or encirclement warfare. I look for lots more combat in cities and banlieus, especially in EUrabia.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-10-15 18:23|| 2007-10-15 18:23|| Front Page Top

#12 A third reason is we know how to contain urban conflicts. The British did it in N.Ireland and the Israelis have done it in Gaza and the W Bank - fences, surveillance, intelligence, limited raids to snatch or assasinate people, but otherwise leave the urban slums alone.

Excellent analysis, phil. Iraq must serve as a comprehensive object lesson regarding what to avoid in all further campaigns against Islam and other hostile regime changes. NO MORE NATION BUILDING. Break the bad boys' toys and get the hell out. Preferrably after having looted their treasuries to pay the bill.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-10-15 21:57|| 2007-10-15 21:57|| Front Page Top

23:46 gorb
23:36 Mike N.
23:35 gorb
23:30 Mike N.
23:22 Zenster
23:17 Zenster
23:15 Eric Jablow
23:06 Zenster
23:05 Mike N.
23:00 Zenster
22:45 Zenster
22:14 trailing wife
22:10 eLarson
22:09 Zenster
22:07 trailing wife
22:07 DMFD
22:05 Zenster
22:03 Leonard Plynth Garnell
22:00 trailing wife
21:59 DMFD
21:57 Zenster
21:44 N guard
21:39 49 Pan
21:39 Beau