Could we "win" the war in Iraq if we were willing to attack like we did in World War II? What if we were

Question

willing to level their cities like we did to the Germans and Japanese during World War II? I think we could win the war in three months if we were willing to do that. Now, don't misunderstand. I am not suggesting that we do that, but I wonder why we do not do that if we really want to win that war. Give me you thoughts. Please no "Bush hating" answers. Just common sense answers about why we are not willing to really go all out to win this war.

Answer 1

The main difference between this war and WW2 is the fact that we aren't sitting back ad waiting for it to get out of control. We're actually trying to prevent it from getting to the point the Nazi's did. The only major difference between the Nazis and the Extremists is that the extremists wear turbans and have access to the internet. I know we've lost over 3,000 soldiers in the four years we've been there. But in WW2, we lost an average of 4,000 soldiers a week for the four years we were there. All because we tried to remain neutral and we let the Nazis gain too much control. Whether we like it or not, Muslim extremism exists and will continue to grow more powerful if we sit back and do nothing. So let's prevent WW3 from happening by taking action now.

Answer 2

Every time you kill a civilian that civilians family joins the enemies side. An old Arab saying applies quite well here The enemy of my enemy is my friend.If you make an enemy of the civilians who will there natural friends be our enemies the insurgents and terrorist. Not to mention such carpet bombing techniques are quite illegal now on city centers. The facts are in this war we are in the way once we took out Saddam the old feuds and revenge attacks blew wide open Iraq is one of those places that either require a strong man like a dictator or has to be broken up into new smaller countries as the 3 groups will not submit to the others rule willingly. Thus democracy was never ever in the cards it was an ignorant fantasy at best. I know I lived in the Gulf for 2 years aboard the command ship USS LaSalle(AGF-3) 1988-1990. I met and made friends with many people from the various tribes and the two barely spoke to one another.

Answer 3

During the 2nd W.W. we fought standing armies who fought by the, so called, rules of war.
We won the war in the Pacific by dropping the A.bomb. Japan is an island nation. So the only ones that were harmed were the Japanese people. Our enemies.
We won the war in Iraq against a standing army. The people who are fighting there today use terror. They are relegious fanitcs. Our armies are not taught to fight this type of war.
We don't drop the bomb because Iraq is surrounded by nations that we are not fighting. If we drop the bomb on Iraq; all of the nations around would be affected & many would be killed. We don't want to do that. That would mean total war against the entire middle east. I'm sure that China, Russia, Korea & India would look to this as their reason to start sending bombs our way.

Answer 4

in that sense we've already won, the problem is trying to make them do and act how we want. there is no historical precedent for nation building except imperialism and even then the imperial powers don't care about your daily life or who gets to be the manager, just so long as the sweat shops get set up.

There is little more damage you can do and indiscriminate bombing would just create more opposition. likely extreme amounts of opposition not just from iraq but the world.

your not willing to go all out because you were never in danger in the first place. you're obviously toying with them and free to fiddle around trying to socially engineer a society. some would argue that if they aren't a threat to you you shouldn't go around abusing inferior cultures. help, trade with, educate, but military domination, how crude is that?

Answer 5

Your concept would work if we were really intent on winning this war. This is how generals conducted wars and this is when we won wars.

Since the Korean conflict, when Truman fired MacArthur, politicians took over the responsibility of conducting warfare in the US, and since then, it stopped winning wars.

Carpet bombing of Dresden took the wind out of the Nazi sails. Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the Japanese to their knees. This is how you win wars.

Tehran should be given the same ultimatum as Japan. Unless they're completely insane, I believe the fanatical government of Iran will crawl to the table of capitulation!

Answer 6

You seem to be under the impression that we have declared war on Iraq. We are not fighting Iraq, we are attempting to help them set up a viable government.

It would be counterproductive to flatten cities. In fact, the "Shock and Awe" that flattened areas in 2003 was a major error in tactics.

The best way we have available to us now to help Iraq is to get the heck out of there, eliminating the target of the insurgency.

Answer 7

We just tried fighting a WWII style conventional war in Iraq and it didn’t work. Phase IV is an insurgency and in a is a gorilla war and the people are the prize. Destroying their world merely converts them to insurgents.

Tanks and carpet bombing are more suited to conventional warfare as opposed to gorilla warfare or insurgencies. Where the people are the prize, destruction should be kept to a minimum.

Answer 8

In a word: YES! At the end of WWII everyone in Germany or Japan who wanted to die for their country was dead. Everyone who wanted to kill, throw rocks or chant "Death to America!" was dead too. Those few fanatics who were left went into hiding or committed suicide to avoid retribution not only from the allies but their own people who they'd misled into war. Unfortunately, we had to kill a lot of innocent men, women and children to accomplish that. Today, that kind of 'guts' and political will are not 'politically correct' and probably shouldn't be either. Had we went into Iraq with more boots on the ground ready to seize control, to actually 'occupy' the place and force a 'PAX AMERICANA' we wouldn't be in this mess now 3 years and 3000+ dead not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's.

Answer 9

so you want to level the cities filled with, say, for example, 3 million normal people who just want to live their lives, and 1500 insurgents...

Coalition forces target the enemy as best they can without killing innocents. The bleeding hearts would cry even more if we went about it with a disregard for civilians' safety.

Answer 10

Who ever has been running these strategies has been really slow. It took these general yrs to come up the basic war strategy, control the borders. Controlling the borders is one of the first things you're sposed to do, not wait yrs later gggggggrrrrrrrr