Why is the USA military not making headway in Iraq ?

Question

Over four years and no end in sight. The only thing in sight is defeat.....Like Vietnam.

Answer 1

what makes you think this is like Vietnam?
i think it sounds a lot more like WW2.
you had a dictator who brain washed the broad community against a religion,
ww2- Hitler and his concentration camps,
recent events- Saddam had people tortured in the basements of his castles.


in both cases the dictator tried to expand borders.
ww2- Hitler expanded to the Czech(appeasement) then polland till we said enough is enough
recent events- when Saddam invaded Kuwait, we said no the first time.



and Finlay, the u.s. was attacked viciously resulting in large loss of life
ww2- pearl harbor, to escape the burning fuel on the ships they jumped into the water. when people tried to pull them out, many people slipped out of their skin and back into the water.
recent events- twin towers, many people decided they would rather fall to their death than melt with the mettle around them.
Rosie o'donald"mettle doesn't melt!" HOW DOES SHE THINK WE SEPARATE IRON FROM DIRT AND SHAPE IT?

people who compare this war to Vietnam are severely under educated and should check their facts before making a statement like that.

Answer 2

Because their actions in Iraq are counterproductive -- they just arouse more and more anti-US feeling and support for the jihadists.

*****

The fact is, ending the threat of jihadist terrorist attacks
against the US would be easy enough. You just need to
do what Ron Paul has done, and pay attention to the
actual motivations of the jihadist terrorists. Every serious
analysis has concluded that their hatred of the US is
motivated by actions that the US government has
ndertaken in their part of the world -- harmful interventions
against Muslim populations. These include backing
Israeli attacks on Palestinians, the destruction of the
civilian infrastructure of Iraq and sanctions that killed
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, support for
various dictators in countries like Saudi Arabia, etc.

In order to eventually halt the jihadist terrorists from
making these attacks, the US should stop committing
these harmful interventions and thus remove the
motivation for the jihadist terrorists (whose attacks on
civilians they by no means justify) in the first place.
Ending these harmful interventions would in any case
be the right thing to do from a moral standpoint.

This should of course be combined with a strong
law-enforcement effort to go after the jihadist terrorists
who undertake such attacks.

Instead, though, the Bush administration has chosen
to deny reality, misrepresent the terrorists' motivations,
and to engage in even more of these harmful interventions
(the invasion/occupation of Iraq, Ethiopia's proxy invasion
of Somalia, etc.). This simply makes the problem worse,
motivating more and more Muslims to join the jihadists,
and landing the US in the Iraqi quagmire -- much to the
delight of al-Qaida.

A caveat is in order, though. This strategy would take some
time to eliminate the motivations of the jihadists -- that kind
of hatred and fanaticism does not end in a day.

Another helpful thing to do would be to aid the good groups
in the region, such as:

http://www.rawa.org/
http://www.ifcongress.com/English/index.htm
http://www.equalityiniraq.com/english.htm
http://www.awalls.org/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/

Answer 3

First this is NOT an organized army, but a guerrila type.
In assymetric warfare, progress are very hard to calculate. One day you wipe them out in a locations, and a month later you must go back at the same place, because they gain controlled of the same area. They are no clear targets, no clear definition of the ennemy plans other than killing as much as possible American troops, so they don`t fight something conventional, and by this definition, they must use unconventional means to fight them! And those means cannot be measured as well as traditional means.
So all in all, as long as they will have insurgents coming from other countries to fight your troops, this war will never be winnable! And since 43% of those insurgents are coming from Saudia Arabia, and that they US keep pointing at Syria and Iran, then this war will go nowhere!!
I guess, it was the main objective to engaged in an unwinable war, to increase profits of the few... But this is another topic...

Answer 4

We are fighting a Holy War. When people will give up their lives with the belief that if they die, they will be amply rewarded, they are pretty hard to beat. We will hold our own as we did in Vietnam, but we will not win and have a tremendous loss of life. We will end the war as we did in Vietnam, by just leaving the country and coming home but not victorious.

Answer 5

the only reason vietnam was a defeat was that the people lost there will to continue.

how long did it take the americans to win there indepence from the british? 8 years from 1775 - 1783. (the US army was created in 1775 before the creation of the delceration of independce) you cant defeat or instill a democracy in a region who has NO history of democracy in a short time span. especially when the people here are trying to fight a civil war with each other. it will take a lot of time and the question is do the american people have the will to follow through with the course they set or are we going to abandon these people like we abandoned the S. vietnamese

look up the popularity of the wars in both there was support initally. but when "headway" wasnt made quickly support was lost. another reason for this is the meida they dont give a fair or impartial view of what is happening they write what they think will sell

Answer 6

You don't solve cancer by beating the victim senseless. You target the disease, but sometimes you do have to use brute force tactics.

Chemotherapy is a race. The patient is slowly poisoned in a hope that the cancer will die before the patient does. It is a brute force way to treat a patient and one of the cruelest medical treatments that can be prescribed.

The better way to treat a terrorist and a cancer is to remove the cause, like immunize the patient before it develops. Or if it hits to catch it in the early stages and cut it out. But, once the cancer has taken control the only way to treat it is to punish the entire body.

Cancer is a good analogy to terrorism. Both are a disease that can be spread and both are very difficult to treat. They can have many causes and dealing with it requires a whole new way of treatment.

The old fashioned way is to use military force to cut out the cancer and sterilize the wound, but just like cancer we need to find new ways to handle terrorism. The problem with terrorism is that military force is the hardest way to treat it. When you kill a terrorist you risk killing other civilians if if the attack is surgical most terrorists have a family. So killing terrorists only creates more terrorists. That is the principle equation that always spells defeat and it was why the US would never have won the war in Vietnam.

We have made progress in Iraq, but we have only increased terrorism in the world as a result. In Iraq we are starting to see new solutions like hiring potential and ex-terrorists to provide protection against other terrorists. We have subjected the entire nation to a devastating invasion and attack some of the people are actually getting so sick of terrorism that they are trying to stop it. But, much like chemotherapy it is a race to kill the cancer of terrorism before we destroy the entire nation of Iraq.

The problem is huge and can't be solved in a single generation. Even the Democrats won't be able to pull us completely out of Iraq. If they do then chaos will be the result with a group like the Taliban taking power. This is exactly what happened in Iran and Afghanistan. The Democrats will reduce our commitment and call upon the Iraq government to take on more of the work. If the government is mature enough and capable then it can do the job and survive, if not then it will surely fail. But, the results will be the same no matter how many troops we send. We proved in Vietnam that without “winning the hearts and minds of the people” no amount of force will win the war.

Lets look at a different example; gangs in the United States. The police could go in like storm troopers and destroy every gang, taking down the neighborhoods in the process. Imagine the worst police brutality and abuse taken to the tenth power. Instead programs were started that pulled children away from gangs, that provided them with other options. Those few gang members that couldn’t be controlled were exiled from society into super max prisons. It took years and millions of dollars to fight the war, but we fought it without bringing down the city upon us. This is the kind of approach we need to fight terrorism.

Crushing poverty has always been a great source or recruitment, so the plan for the government to share its oil profits could help. Kuwait is stable and all of its citizens are rich because they share the oil profits. This might work in Iraq, if given time, and if given the chance to work. The US wanted to go into Iraq and rebuild like we did in Germany and Japan after WW2 yet 4 years after the war the Iraqi power have less electrical capacity than they had before the war. We tried to build new plants, but they were all terrorists’ targets so we failed.

We need other options and methods of attack; like paying a rich Saudi Construction company to come in and build those power plants; the problem it that with the current instability we can’t do any positive work until we stabilize the country. The best method that we have found is to take a neighborhood and stay. For the troops to live there and become part of the population, then if attacked the people will feel that they are being attacked. This tactic was pioneered in policing when the police stations were spread out. Police officers were stationed in the community, in old stores and right in the middle of the worst of the rot. They became part of the community itself and only then did they start to make more progress against the gangs. Then the police got involved and tried to settle disputes. Gang conferences would settle territory disputes without violence; they would give the gang members dignity and lead them into become involved with the community not just the gang.

The best treatment for terrorism isn’t a military one; it will be closer to a police solution. But, Iraq is still in chaos and police can intimidate people armed with bombs and RPGs. In the US gangs are at their worst when they get access to automatic weapons, in Iraq the average citizen has an AK-47, they are so armed that only a military response will work. When that happened with crime in the US SWAT teams were formed. Sharp strong physical violence was applied with surgical precision and it was always held in reserve and held in check until needed. We can do the same in Iraq. The idea to keep US troops on their bases was this kind of plan. The idea would be to let the Iraqi police find the hardest terrorist cells then a US helicopter would drop a SWAT style unit into the zone and a specially targeted missile from the sky could be a two part knock out punch that would take out the terrorists without harming their neighbors. These kind of tactics and plans are the ones we need to set up and organize. Brute force will only make the situation worse.

Imagine what would happen if after the Rodney King riots the National Guard was sent in; armed troops in the streets, helicopters in the sky and fighter planes targeting hold out groups. The reaction would be so strong that the Governor would have to take control and replace the entire local government, or the very citizens would revolt. You can’t treat gangs and street crime with a mace, or use a huge hammer that can destroy a city block. This is what we are doing in Iraq, using missiles and such massive attacks are meant to destroy Russian tank battalions, not individuals.

Answer 7

The job the military is doing in Iraq is to stabilize things so the Iraqi's can write their own constitution. Sometimes we support one side and sometimes the other, in an effort to give all sides a voice. It means we are not making friends among the Iraqi people.

Answer 8

Let's face it. We are fighting guerillas. No organized military has ever had any luck in defeating a determined fragmented guerilla force. We should get out and the sooner the better. Maliki has already said they can handle it now.

Answer 9

i replaced into speaking one time to a guy from Bavaria. i discussed that it replaced into tragic six hundred.000 German civilians have been killed and over a million injured in WW2 Air Raids, yet he in basic terms held up his hand and mentioned; 'look Germany sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, it is all there is to it'. That replaced into very information of him. With it incredibly is invasions of Iran and Kuwait, and nerve gassing Kurds, Iraq sowed the wind and reaped the mutually as wind. particular it incredibly is a tragedy harmless human beings died, yet innocence is not any immunity to whirlwinds.

Answer 10

Because we are having to fight:
1. Insurgents
2. Terrorists
3. Democrats

They are all working together to Defeat the US.