Does anyone really think the PC masters at DoD will let the gloves come off?

Barring some snake eaters deciding to take matters into their own hands, I don't see the rank and file in the traditional Chain of Command allowing any form of advanced aggressiveness. Especially with the media holding Haditha over their heads.

As much as I would love to see us shed this consistent hampering of our forces, I can’t think of any affront that would convince Washington to cry havoc. Even if they started crucifying soldiers and putting their heads on pikes in the town square, our civilian leadership doesn't have the stomach to respond appropriately.

If we started stringing up insurgents wrapped in pig carcasses in the town square surrounded by dogs they may get the message that we mean business. Alas, we are far too kind to those who would behead us. It is the one true weakness that al Qaeda continues to use against us. Our inability and unwillingness to fight the war on our own terms and not theirs.

The answer to cruel barbarism is certainly not more of the same.

Sadly, there are far too many people on the Right, like Rush Limbaugh and Gabriel Chapman, who are altogether too quick to forget (or perhaps they never knew) exactly what it is that makes America so great.

I'll give you a hint: it's not measurable by the number of tanks or subs or nuclear missiles we have.

The true patriots are those, like Nick Berg's family, who recognize that we have a duty to ourselves and to the world to hold ourselves up to a much much higher standard, and in doing so set an example for the world to follow.

People who think like #1 are, indavertantly or not, helping to destroy all that is good and great about our country.

RIP.

#2

Spoken like someone who is far too willing to ignore the threat we face.

Nick Bergs father shames his sons memory by blaming everyone except the man holding the knife, for his sons death, and then misplacing the reasons and importance behind the removal of al Zarqawi.

Here's a hint: ending islamic terrorism won't come at the end of a pen. If you havn't learned that by now, you never will.

Walter,

Gabriel refers to a known successful tactic - it's how we broke the back of the Moro Rebellion in the Phillipines.

I doubt it will work against the Baathist-Al Qaeda alliance in Iran. There ethnic cleansing of die-hard Baathist areas would probably be more effective.

We're already at least halfway towards that. The late President Tudjman of Croatia had a formal policy of reducing the proportion of Serbs in Croatian territory to under 10% as part of his policy of establishing Croatian independence.

Iraq's population reputedly had about 25% Sunni Arabs. I had long contended that it was really no more than 20% and, after the U.S. invasion, was plummeting as exiled Shiites and Kurds can home, while Sunni Arabs fled for Jordan and Syria.

"The Sunni Arabs make up less than twenty percent of Iraq's population. Actually, given the many (over a million) Iraqi Sunni Arabs who have fled the country in the last three years, that's probably closer to fifteen percent these days."

I’ve been saying this for years:

It would be very useful if the Bush administration explains Tom Holsinger's proposal in detail.

"We can and will bring order and democracy to iraq. All that is needed is that we kill enough of the iraqis we don't like that the remainder flees the country. We anticipate that by killing as few as one million sunnis we can persuade the rest to flee, probably as early as 2007.

"This will be a great victory for democracy, for humanity, and for peace."

Ideally Bush would present the central idea, and then Cheney would expand on the details, McCain explains why it's a great idea, Rice expands on more details, and then every Republican in the Senate and the House agrees that it deserves the full support of the US government.

Fetterman.

GC

You have no shame yourself impugning the honor of a man who lost his son in such a barbaric manner. You speak about his motives as if you know what is in the man's head and heart. Unless you have been in a similar circumstance, I would suggest strongly that you hold yourself mute on the motivation for his comments, because they're pretty clear to all of us who can empathize with our fellow human beings.

On this point, I thought you might also be interested in the comments made by the mother of the fine young man pictured at the top of this post:

Menchaca's mother, Maria Vasquez, answered her door in Brownsville early Tuesday sobbing and unable to speak. She issued a statement written in Spanish that said, "I am against the war and I feel very hurt by what has happened to my son."

And finally, you have basically begged me to respond to your final foolishness with this wise saying:

The Pen is mightier than the Sword.

You speak about his motives as if you know what is in the man's head and heart.

Yep. The guy is a narcissistic creep. I've met many of his sort in my time as a boomer. Shame about that, but there it is.

And the pen is not mightier than the sword, all history attests to that. But if a pen is all you've got I suppose it's pretty to think otherwise.

J.Thomas,

You demonstrate the usual lefty anti-American narcissism - constant assertions that nothing you dislike happens unless the United States makes it happen.

"As for "failed states" and civil conflict, several panelists agreed that they were always and everywhere the fault of the United States ... even the moderator became exasperated by the general refusal to place any responsibility on the peoples and leaders of countries plagued by civil conflict. Yet the panelists held their ground. When someone pointed out that the young boys fighting in African tribal and ethnic wars could hardly be fighting against American "imperialism," the African dictator's son insisted they were indeed. When the head of the NGO paused from gnashing his teeth at American policy to suggest that perhaps the United States was not to blame for the genocide in Rwanda, the African dictator's son argued that it was, because it had failed to intervene. The United States was to blame both for the suffering it caused and the suffering it did not alleviate ..."

Because you really want to believe this, and your faith cannot be shaken by mere facts.

Getting back to the topic at hand, our ROE will not change. You see, AQI wants us to have a liberal ROE because then we'll kill more civilians. There is no such thing as "taking the gloves off" when fighting an insurgency, unless you are prepared to eliminate the mass base through ethnic cleansing or genocide. the gloves are already off as far as the insurgents go: when we find them, we kill them. Perhaps Mr. Sensing thinks we should blow away those kids AQI uses as human shields. The wisdom of that COA should be obvious.

No Andy the domestic fallout from this is quite clear and WILL be made:

Dem/MSM/Whinging Lefties (and the Bush Admin accomodation of same) led to restrictive ROE that got these guys killed.

The Marines in Haditha claim that they did what they had to (clearing houses room by room with fire and grenades) to avoid what happened to the soldiers above.

There is no more middle ground, and you ignore the role that soldiers in theatre who can and do communicate with people back home. Already pressure from Marine families got the Camp Pendleton 8 released from constant shackling (accusesd of some trumped-up charge of murdering some Iraqi bystander, the eight including a Navy Corpsman were held in near 24-7 shackles).

The average person is likely to choose a side; that of America, the soldiers, and soldiers and Marines doing whatever they need to stay alive.

After Malmedy the US Army did not take many surrenders, and NONE of SS (who were summarily shot in almost all cases as Ambrose made clear in Band of Brothers). Currently soldiers and Marines have to risk death to take surrenders. As opposed to simply shooting those who approach them.

Dems have unwisely publicly valued the lives of Jihadis (and what can be termed enemy civilians) over that of our soldiers and Marines. The next poison gas attack or worse on US soil is likely to take the gloves off here as well.

Multi-Culti PC nostrums destroy, not the least of which is that common sense measures are not taken until a crisis point requires grave measures.

The next poison gas attack or worse on US soil is likely to take the gloves off here as well. Multi-Culti PC nostrums destroy, not the least of which is that common sense measures are not taken until a crisis point requires grave measures.

The Marines in Haditha claim that they did what they had to (clearing houses room by room with fire and grenades) to avoid what happened to the soldiers above.

Do you work for the postal service, Jim?

Donald Sensing: "I predicted two years ago that if terrorists in Iraq started beheading American military captives,
... the terrorists will learn something else: they have made the war personal. When that happens, the American experience of war shows that our troops will shed the veneer of restraint like a snake's skin. And for every American head Zarqawi severs, he will soon find three of his own men's heads."

It was nice of you to remind us of your prediction, Donald Sensing. How did that work out?

Did it pan out about as well as Alan Brain (Zoe Brain) mournfully pondering a "trail of tears" as the Muslims were expelled from Russia following the Beslan massacre?

Did it work out about as well as the frightful predictions and foreboding terrors of America's reaction after 11 September, 2001?

How about America's inexorable, irresistible, unstoppable reaction to the atrocious treatment of the four (soon dead) contractors at Fallujah?

Or going back further in time, how about the terrible consequences that under President Ronald Reagan were supposed to follow the deaths of the Marines in Lebanon?

Excuse me, because I don't know how to say diplomatically, and I think it has to be said: your prediction was nothing but a normal, personally blameless, piece of a culture-wide, reality-challenged and dysfunctional pattern, where, when the enemy hits us with an attack so vicious that it ought to shake us out of our cultural navel-gazing, so depraved that in this case the difference between a weak response and a restrained response vanishes - over and over we start dreading or bragging on or arguing about our violence, our toughness, our harshness, and often our potential or actual guilt.

I put most musings on America's nuclear Arsenal in the same category: fantasies about things that we can't do, and that we would not be able to do even if it was life or death that we do them.

I think as a pervasive, persistent, civilisation wide response to real attacks that cross the boundaries of what one can honorably decline to respond to, this is insane, it's paralysing, and it's dangerous.

At a social level, it is no better than this: our foes behead some more of us, and we gaze at our navels again, and cry and think ourselves far too tough and violent to dare to act. It is all-important that such a dreadful force of pent-up emotion remain passive. Which, nothing surer, it will, yet again.

Our enemies are not failing to grasp the difference between restraint and weakness: we are.

Our enemies rely pervasively on our proven, chronic weakness and lack of will, because jihad history has proved that they not we are correct in diagnosing our limited ability to meet savagery with savagery.

Will a terrorist who has been caught and released before not notice that he has not been beheaded by those fierce, dreadful Americans? That he has not had to purchase a limitation of American violence in return for any restraint or decency at all? If we offer him amnesty for killing Americans, will he not notice that we are offering to give him what he already has? How much credit do we get for exercising restraint in respect of punitive power that we don't actually have, and that the enemy sees very well that we don't have, because of our internal hatreds and divisions? (Anti-Americanism, imperial guilt, white guilt, antisemitism transferred to America as the protector of the Jews, Al Qaeda / Michael Moore talking points and so on.)

We should talk only in terms of responses that we really can make and back up for as long as the need persists. If that generates puny lists of options, all the more reason for us finally to face up to how weak we are, once what we are politically unable to do is taken off the table, and how great the danger that we are in.

Barbarism has won before against paralysed, divided civilizations. It can do so again. And in Islam, what we face is more deadly and infinitely more enduring as a threat than mere barbarism.

I am not advocating a policy of unrestrained violence, partly because I don't think it would work, and mainly because I think it is high time we stopped talking about terrible things we can't do and awful options we don't have.

The issue is only: can the mostly but not entirely paralysed civilised culture act so shrewdly that even the little that it can do is enough for victory over Islam? I sure hope so. I'm all for it. But we have to realize:

When it comes to will, we are fighting a poor man's war!

Yes! Let's take the gloves off! Let's show those terrorists that we can murder innocent people far more effectively than they can! Let's give the American people the bloodbath of revenge (against the wrong people) they desire. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

I will not try to engage here on an intellectual level as I am outclassed. As a father of a 3/1 Haditha Marine and coworker of Menchaka's uncle I will say that every grunt will now go into survival mode. ROE will be useless. Grunts will protect grunts and kill anyone not in their squad. Soldiers are now second guessing themselves because of self serving Officers and politicians. Going to the brig has no meaning to a 20 year old who is more afraid of being beheaded by Islamist and seeing his family put through such hell on the news. Thank you Osama bin Murtha.

Tom Holsinger, I look at my comment #6 and your response #10 to that comment, and I can't begin to see how I said any of the things you accuse me of saying.

It doesn't make sense. My #6 is right there above your #10. I didn't say any of the things you accuse me of. Your ad hominem slurs are not derived from my comment but from your own sick imagination. This was utterly uncalled for.

Your credibility as an original thinker is secure. But when you write slanders that are so easily checked, why would anyone believe any of your other claims?

You have often come up with ideas I have never seen before you present them.I have to respect your creativity, your ability to come up with new ways to look at things. But when you apply that creativity to me, telling me what I believe without respect for my own words, I can't respect that.

I will say that every grunt will now go into survival mode. ROE will be useless. Grunts will protect grunts and kill anyone not in their squad. Soldiers are now second guessing themselves because of self serving Officers and politicians. Going to the brig has no meaning to a 20 year old who is more afraid of being beheaded by Islamist and seeing his family put through such hell on the news.

This is a strong argument to withdraw our ground troops.

If -- for whatever reason -- our troops can't follow the ROE, what good are they doing? The ROE comes from our counterinsurgency plan. If we can't carry out the plan, how can the plan work?

We need a new counterinsurgency plan, quick, one that includes a ROE that we can actually carry out. If we can't get a workable plan that depends on soldiers who protect each other by killing everybody they find, then we need to limit the exposure of our troops to potential targets just as much as we can.

This is nothing new.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135853,00.html
2004.

Gunnery Sgt. Jason Berold says the rules, as they are now, are frustrating. Unless they see insurgents shooting at them or have what they call positive identification, there's little that the Marines can do.

"It is very frustrating," says Berold, 38, of Los Angeles.

"All we are doing is getting Americans killed and we cannot do much about it," says King. The other marines in the room nod in approval.

"None of us are scared of going out ... as long as you get one bad guy."

Because of the existing rules of the engagement, though, the only thing left after the incidents is to "pick up your dead and wounded and get out of there as soon as possible," King says.

What could we do, that would work?

90% of the commenters here have no idea what they are talking about.

What happened to these three guys had nothing to do with ROE. It happened because their unit leadership allowed a 3-man team to operate alone in a known dangerous area without support. That's akin to leaving your cute, drunk teenage daughter alone in the slums of Tijuana. I can't for the life of me understand why their platoon commander would allow a force that small to operate alone without support. I suspect we'll see some officers relieved of command because of this incident.

The ROE will not change and our professional soliders will continue to follow it. I'm familiar with the ROE and overall it is appropriate. It is somewhat restrictive for a reason - so we don't needlessly kill noncombatants. Loosening the rules would be a grave mistake as we'll hand yet more propaganda victories to the enemy.

I'm waiting for the final report on haditha before passing judgment. Ultimately, it doesn't legally matter that they killed civilians - what matters is if they followed the ROE which are legally binding. I have confidence the investigation will find the truth, whatever it is.

The change that will happen within our forces in Iraq is that we will now fight to the death and not surrender. If it wasn't clear before, I'm certain it's clear to everyone that surrender is the worst option to take.

I disagree that there will be wholesale shirking of ROE terms, our military has been influenced far too heavily by the PC aspects of liberal society that looks upon it as a social experiment. I was in Somalia, Rwanda, and Burundi in 94. We came in right after the Rangers left. Our Rules of Engagement were so restricted that we actually had to take a casualty before returning fire. Mogadishu was a total hellhole and the warlords knew they could basically run around town with impunity. Daily they would spray our positions with fire and we were not allowed to return. I watched Aidids thugs attack civilians and innocents with impunity, while begging the CoC to take action, yet our morale was sunken, because we were there, we had the means to act, and yet we were not allowed to do anything about it. You allow this kind of resentment and anger to build up in troops and they will break, its human nature. If the ROE in Iraq end up being two hands tied behind their backs, the results will not be positive. No one is calling for the wholesale slaughter of Iraqi civilians, we are just pointing out that the enemy doesn’t hold back, and when we confront the enemy neither should we. Mistakes will happen, war is not perfect, and collateral damage can be minimized but not wholly avoided.

As for Michael Berg, much like Cindy Sheehan, he has smeared the memory of his son by using him as a propaganda tool. To say that: “The death of every human being is a tragedy" (in reference to Zarqawi) should say everything about Michael Berg and his beliefs.

Menchaca's mother can have her opinion, and I wouldn’t place any indifference towards her for having it this soon after her sons death. Michael Berg and Cindy Sheehan have turned their sons deaths into tools to further their own agendas, even when their sons beliefs were opposite their own.

Everyone fighting in this war volunteered, people need to keep that in mind. I like many before me volunteered to join the service and to support missions that my leaders deemed important enough to undertake.

As for sayings, I’ll submit:

“a pen leaves a much smaller hole than a sword”

#20

“a pen leaves a much smaller hole than a sword”

Pure genius.

I suppose you're right...the pen that the founders used to sign the Declaration of Independence would have been useless as a weapon against the British soldiers. They wasted their time, I guess, in thinking that the laws of man could bring order and peace to people.

First item: all honors to the fallen.

Second item: I've done some quick scans of the various 'human rights' (domestic & international) web sites to mull over their responses to the murder of these two soldiers. Nothing. Not a jot, nor a tittle.

To the international 'human rights' groups I have these words: buffoons, charlatans, hypocrites...moral cowards. I won't bother to give you my opinion of the various domestic groups, you can guess for yourself.

Third item: it may have dawned on some of you asking why? Why this savagery? This is the media war between expansionist Islam and Western Civilization, written in blood. How does it play out?

'Immoral war.' 'Failed policy.' 'A horrible mistake brought about by lies and deceit.' The various arguments I see going back and forth.

Don't flinch. Press forward. Battles are not won by backward glances, they are won with 'eyes front'.

The fu@*ked up ROE's? See item #2 for the origin of those abominations.

Don't worry too much about the troops, they'll settle the issue in their own way, in their own time.

"The fu@*ked up ROE's? See item #2 for the origin of those abominations."

Would you mind explaining this comment a bit further?

The fight is twice as hard. The enemy without.

And then there's this: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9985

A friendly hint to you on the Left. Start picking a side.

Walter,
During the War of Independance, the pen was a tool of the revolution, but the British troops were ultimately ejected by an army.

Andy, I've only seen news reports, but what I saw was that they were running some sort of checkpoint with three vehicles. They got attacked by a much larger force than usual, and two vehicles moved out to attack the insurgents while the third stayed in place. So it wasn't just that they put 3 guys out there alone. But at some point they were left out there alone.

I'm not clear about the tactical details. Was it important to hold the position? If they were supposed not to let the bad guys through, then it might make sense to leave somebody in place to stop the bad guys from getting through -- provided the attack was small enough to handle. If everybody moves out then that's a way to get past them. Attack them and draw them away. We don't want that to work.

The news says that a quick reaction force got to them quickly. But it wasn't quick enough for that one vehicle.

I agree that it doesn't look like this incident reflects on ROE. All of a sudden there were a whole lot of attackers for them to shoot at. The claim is that the ROE leaves our guys unable legally to shoot at hostile civilians until -- sometimes -- it's too late. And that Marines especially are getting real disgruntled about that. This latest incident shows once again that the enemy is real ruthless and doesn't follow any civilised ROE. Of course we already knew that. They've been using women and children as human shields, torturing civilians, etc. Sure, our soldiers aren't going to surrender to insurgents, but did they ever? We haven't had any illusions about that.

Ultimately, it doesn't legally matter that they killed civilians - what matters is if they followed the ROE which are legally binding.

For the propaganda war, both here and there, it matters a whole lot how civilians got killed. If it turnes out the ROE approve of killing civilians in some horrific manner, it could cause trouble with US voters and/or iraqi voters and/or world opinion. I don't see what to do about that.

Objectively it's no worse to throw a grenade into a room full of women and children without looking first, than to drop a 500-pound bomb on a house full of women and children. But somehow people understand the pilot has no idea what he's dropping bombs on, he's just following orders. When it gets closer and more personal the horror is less abstract. Silly but true.

We could get lots of little cheap robots with multiple cameras. Send a robot ahead to look into the room. If it gets shot at you know what you're up against. If not you can get a good close look, you can demand people surrender in a way that's reasonably safe for you. Haditha should help get those into much greater use. If enough supplies get through to our military in iraq we don't have to give them the ugly urban warfare choice nearly so often. Shoot without looking first, or put your life on the line hoping to rescue civilians. If you can put $30 worth of electronics on the line instead the civilians are much better off.

I disagree that there will be wholesale shirking of ROE terms, [....] You allow this kind of resentment and anger to build up in troops and they will break, its human nature.

You're arguing from experience, which makes your opinion much more important than, say, mine. It sounds like you're claiming both sides of this one. Would you mind explaining in more detail?

"A friendly hint to you on the Left. Start picking a side."

We're all on the same side here, Charles, even those with whom you may disagree. Please try to remember that.

Robots take time. And by the time you have called in the crew that serves one, the bad guys have gotten away. There is such a thing as over-reliance on technology. Yes we are using robots in Iraq, but the technology and the speed of deployment are not yet viable for normal troop use. They will for now, be used primarily to thwart IED's.

#26:

I don't know the tactical specifics either. If they were part of a larger force which was lured away then it's not as cut and dry as I said above. Whatever the case may be, a hard lesson has been learned and I'm sure that no commander from now on will leave a small force alone like that.

And there are no "hostile civilians" in ROE. There are combatants and non-combatants. If someone is shooting at you, you generally have the "inherent right to self defense" and can fire back. If the combatants are using non-combatants as human shields then the issue obviously gets more complicated. Despite complaints about ROE, I know few in the military who want to fire at an insurgent who's hiding behind a couple of kids since doing so will assuredly kill those kids. Sometimes this can't be avoided however. It's all very situational and depends on what's happening and what the current threat is.

The thing is, I worry about all this talk of "taking the gloves off" etc. I don't think people realize what they are advocating when they say something like that. The gloves are off as far as the terrorists go. It's not like we don't kill them when we find them, even if "civilians" are around and get killed in the attack, as happens frequently when we bomb terrorists from the air. Taking the gloves off more than they already are will make it very easy for terrorists to set up situations where we kill large numbers of civilians. That's something we can't allow to happen. The surest way to strategic defeat in this war is to turn the population against us.

To W.R.

#23: consider the accumlative effects of the those selfsame NR NGO's, the drive-by media, and the political left. Yes, flag rank officers are making political decisions since there is no assurance that a change of national government will not result in select individuals being thrown to the wolves at the ICC.

Think I'm blowing smoke? Sit down with a group of health care providers and ask them about the effects of rampaging trial lawyers on how they conduct themselves.

#28: the audience of these blog goes beyond 'us'. If the comment does not apply to you, then pay it no mind.

I understand the thirst for vengeance here. Our soldiers getting struck down in this despicable, barbaric way, only gets my blood boiling.

I fully understand the counter-response by the military - if they are going to kill our troops, f**k 'em up. (But then, I'm a particularly aggressive liberal.)

The thing is - it is not the United States choice of what to do. The Maliki government has come out against ethnic cleansing - as it would simply plunge Iraq into a worse state, and weaken the government.

Is anybody saying that the United States should not respect the wishes of the government we helped form?

The other two things to not forget.

a. This was a war of choice, painted as a war of necessity by the Bush administration.
b. The BEGINNING of this war - when there was the most chance of success - the "reconstruction period" was handled in such a lame-a$$ f**ked up, incompetent, abdication of responsibility manner, that the guys who SUPPORTED this overthrow of Saddam, should be MORE PISSED OFF at the Bush administration than ANY liberal.

And funny enough liberals FOR this war of choice, should be the MOST pissed off.

For point b - on the incompetence charge, here is Kevin Drum

Actually, not everyone seems to have realized this. In fact, it's a point of considerable controversy, isn't it? Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias made the opposite point explicitly in "The Incompetence Dodge," arguing that "administrative bungling is simply not the root source of America’s failure in Iraq." I made the same argument myself a couple of years ago, though I remain sort of ambivalent about it, largely because of stories like Babylon by Bus. If you're operating at 80% efficiency and your plan doesn't work, it probably means the plan was just plain bad. But if you're operating at 20% efficiency, it seems at least plausible that better execution could have produced success. It may be that democratization by force is a chimera, but the level of incompetence in Iraq has been so monumental that it seems almost impossible to draw any enduring conclusions from our experience there.

People like Yglesias say that the "incompetence" charge is a dodge - that this was a FUBAR engagement from the getgo.

But ONLY partisans who have their partisan-blinders so fully covering their face they are seeing out of a peephole - only these idiots don't acknowledge the incompetence demonstrated in 2003-2004, in the reconstruction period.

#27 J Thomas:

To be more exact, in terms of troop morale, highly restrictive ROE in a hot zone will after a period of time lead to those ROE being ignored, with consequences being severe. A looser ROE, one that is more in line with common sense and basic self defense, is in my view more appropriate. ROE should reflect the level of danger present. While when a layman reads a ROE they can see such common sense directed as “Nothing in these rules negates your inherent right to use reasonable force to defend yourself against dangerous personal attack.” What is passed down to the troops via verbal command can contradict this. In many instances, we were told that we needed authorization to take a shot, or return fire via verbal authority. Each command in turn can lay out the “unofficial” ROE. In my case the Clinton administration made it clear to commanders that very strict ROE were to be utilized. Most times, unit troops get only the ROE card, and have not been briefed or made aware of the larger ROE order.

Here is an example of the ROE for Operation Restore Hope:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-23/fm100_10.htm

Notice that the order is rather lengthy, yet when you move further down and read the ROE card that is issued to troops, much of what is covered in the original order is not there. It is here that a command can “interpret” the original order to their liking, making it less or more restrictive.

For the most part ROE needs to address the crucial distinction between a "hostile act" and "hostile intent." Which can be said to be arguing semantics, but I digress. It is highly important for the Chain of Command to clearly identify and pass down the ROE to all troops involved. As has been seen in many after action analysis of conflicts and battles, when the ROE are poorly distributed and communicated, bad acts can and do occur. It is my opinion that what we have in Haditha could be a result of a poorly defined ROE scheme, mixed with the obvious reaction to a downed comrade. This doesn't excuse murder (if it was committed) but it can prove to be a mitigating factor.

Hope this helps.

Surprised that barbarians do what barbarians do? It is in the nature of barbarians to rape, pillage, torture, and brutalize. Does their religion cause it, is it their traditions?

Whatever the cause, it is on display for all the world to see. Barbarians on parade 24 hours a day. The equivalent of a graduate degree in that primitive part of the world.

As to barbarism, in the beginning I may have been able to give the benefit of the doubt as to whether elements of Islam had been able to move past their 7th century roots. While most other religions had been able to work past their "barbaric" stages, Islam in many instances has not, and remains stuck in the past without any hopes of an equivalent enlighten that say Christianity had.

Though it may be simple to point a finger and say Islam is to blame, in my view it’s a little more complex. Basically Arab culture in general when mixed with the whabbi elements have produced a more toxic and utterly non-tolerant mutation of Islam.

This of course begs the question, can we negotiate with these people, and do they respect anything other than force? So far the answers appear to be No on both counts.

Gabriel,

It sounds like your views are colored by your experience in Somalia. The ROE in Iraq is not the same as you had there. It is somewhat restrictive, but when you're fighting an insurgency in an urban area it has to be.

Changing ROE to suit the current situation is common. There are guiding priciples, but ROE is situational, and local Commanders can further define the ROE as long as they don't compromise the guiding principles.

As for Haditha, we don't know the details of what happened, so it's really innappropriate for anyone to comment on if the ROE was followed or not. Some of the allegations are that the Marines executed civilians. There is no way this kind of thing would be allowed under any ROE. We don't know what happened. There are multiple stories and and two investigations. The investigators, who have all the facts, are, I'm sure, looking at the ROE.

I am beginning to believe that both Islam and arab culture are responsible for the barbarism we see in the middle east. Muslims who are arab, or arabs who are muslim? Combining the two is apparently highly flammable. The addition of familial inbreeding with religious indoctrination, youth, and inexperience will provide a necessary and sufficient recipe for barbarism.

J.Thomas,

Your No. 6 blamed the Bush administration for the traditional nasty Middle Eastern ethnic cleansing identified in my No. 5.

I called you on that. Stop blaming us for what others do.

I personally find it ironic that what seems to be winning for our side in Iraq is traditional Middle Eastern nastiness - this time practiced by our nominal Shiite allies - and not our armed forces' actions. The latter merely bought the Shia the time required for them to organize and arm.

And it is delicious that I predicted this years ago.

"J.Thomas,

A demon tells me things."

#31

I am certainly not here to speak for "The Left", but I will offer the fact that most Democrats and liberals I either know personally or whose opinions are recorded by history supported the invasion of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan after 9/11, myself included.

So I do not think it is inappropriate or wrong to suggest that my comment about "we're all on the same side" does apply to the majority of those "on the Left" as well. You would do well not to attempt to define an entire swatch of the political spectrum (now the majority view) that opposes the current war in Iraq by a small number on the fringe (this goes for both fringes, btw) who may genuinely be opposed to any and all US military action or have other questionable beliefs.

I hope that most of the "audience" of this blog or elswhere recognize this simple truth.

Your No. 6 blamed the Bush administration for the traditional nasty Middle Eastern ethnic cleansing identified in my No. 5.

Here's how I got the idea you were saying that.

Gabriel refers to a known successful tactic - it's how we broke the back of the Moro Rebellion in the Phillipines.

At this point you're talking about what the US military did to get success elsewhere.

I doubt it will work against the Baathist-Al Qaeda alliance in Iran.

You're saying that method will not work for the US military in iraq.

There ethnic cleansing of die-hard Baathist areas would probably be more effective.

Now you're saying what would work.

We're already at least halfway towards that.

And here you're saying we're making it work.

Can you see how I'd think you were talking about the US military doing it?

I called you on that. Stop blaming us for what others do.

You miscalled me. You blamed me for something I didn't do. I'm not interested in blaming anybody, myself. I'd like to see us take responsibility for what we do.

Bush needs to tell the US public what his victory strategy is. How about if he says it this way, in line with your plan.

"We have armed the shia army as well as we can, and we have disarmed the sunni militias as well as we can. And they are both eager to go out and kill enemy civilians rather than just kill each other.

"We have trained and equipped and supplied the shia armies, and attempted to reconstruct shia cities, and we have bombed sunni cities without reconstruction. We can pull our ground troops out of iraq. The shia army has stood up. They can handle all the problems with sunnis without our help, except for airstrkes.

"There will be peace when enough sunni civilians have been killed that the remainder leave iraq, or remain as slaves, or accept their death.

"Then the problem in iraq will be Finally Solved. And if the sunnis can get out of the country quickly enough it will involve only one or two million murders, which is only a third of six million. And it's sunnis getting killed, and they're the bad guys.

"We had to get rid of Saddam because he was a mass murderer. He killed hundreds of thousands of the twenty five million citizens of iraq. But after our plan is complete the twenty million citizens of iraq will finally have peace. Our goals will at last be achieved."

You're saying that our victory strategy is to make sure that our preferred side (the side allied with iran) wins the civil war and performs the ethnic cleansing. We ensure that by setting up a shia government army and training it, arming it, supplying it, "stiffening" it, and performing airstrikes for it. We don't have to do the ethnic cleansing ourselves, we can just create their success at doing it.

When it's our strategy, and it probably wouldn't work without our intensive support, why do you want us to deny responsibility for our part in it?

Robots take time. And by the time you have called in the crew that serves one, the bad guys have gotten away. There is such a thing as over-reliance on technology.

Maybe we aren't heading where I want to on that. I'm talking about little cheap quick robots with cheap cameras. Easy to use. Give half a dozen of them to each team, and replace them as needed.

Some ways it's better to give the robots weapons, but that makes them more expensive and more complex and harder to use.

The time to use them is when you need to see stuff and you don't want to expose yourself. If there isn't time, you can just start running and if there's somebody there to shoot at you maybe he'll be surprised enough you get by. But -- for example -- when the other side is mostly pinned down but you don't want to just give them a shot at you from hiding, send in the little robot. If there's nobody there it can explore and maybe confirm that. If there's somebody there and they don't look dangerous it can be your speaker. "Here's how you can surrender and not get shot." If it shows bad guys to you, you know more than you did when you sent it in. Even if they shoot it, you're better off than you'd be without it, provided the guy who's hiding and monitoring the robot has enough backup. You can't afford to be playing too much with the thing when somebody's sneaking up on you from another direction.

The story that sounds particularly bad from Haditha, which might be untrue, is that the marines were taking a house -- a house where maybe somebody shot at them and maybe not. Each time they approached a room they might be going into an ambush. So the tactic was to first throw a grenade into the room, and then right after it went off they'd jump in and shoot everybody they saw before the bad guys got over the grenade enough to shoot. This worked well at keeping US casualties low, but when it was a room full of women and children then the women and children got killed.

Small cheap robots could give you a look without getting shot in the eye. But stopping to look would make the whole thing slower. And if you do rescue civilians then somebody has to watch over them which dilutes the force. It might be safer to just kill everybody as quick as possible and move on.

Anyway, they should be small, cheap, quick, and easy to use. Lose one and you haven't lost much.

Oh yeah, you might use them at checkpoints too. Maybe get a closer look at vehicles before they're close enough to hurt somebody. That sort of thing.

It's true that many expect us to take a hit before firing back. After, isn't that the code of the West (Hollywood version)? I once worked law enforcement for a federal agency and told my people that the reason we wore vests is so that we could take a hit and maybe survive. Then we could shoot back. Otherwise, the government would let us hang.