Interesting. The uprising in Basra (and more here from FOX) is really rocking the world of the radio reporters I'm listening to. You can hear it in their tone; it's making a deep impression.
With respect, Rumsfeld's comments about not staging uprisings until coalition forces were ready to help them was right and yet wrong. The warning needed to be made, lest a Baghdad revolt turn into an equivalent of the 1944 Warsaw uprising. To leave it at that, however, is wrong on both a strategic and a tactical level. They were wise words; it would be wiser still if our actions did not match those words.
If you're thinking in military terms, Baghdad is the big battle. If you're thinking in terms of how the war is seen and the political consensus post-war, I submit to you that Basra may be the more important fight. It shows what this fight is about in the clearest possible terms, and the effects of that on the pan-Western culture war will be substantial. More to the point, it offers us a chance to make good on our shameful betrayal of the Shi'ite and Kurd resistance in 1991. A betrayal of neglect and indifference that must not happen again.
A successful and supported uprising also throws a major monkey wrench in Saddam's tactical plans. Baghdad, too, is mostly Shi'ite. A successful uprising in Basra can only complicate Iraqi strategies predicated on withdrawing troops inside their capital city. Private weapons sales have been brisk, and the Iraqis know all too well that urban warfare could cut both ways.
An unsuccessful uprising in Basra, on the other hand, sends the worst possible combination of messages: That we'll betray Iraq's minorities again for our own convenience. That we remain afaid to take casualties. That obedience to Saddam, rather than disobedience, remains the safest course for all Iraqis. That an urban warfare strategy in Baghdad is likely to succeed.
We can't afford those consequences. Can we afford to launch an operation into Basra? My belief is that we can't afford not to.
This one's for the Brits, led by Tony Blair. No-one has to think twice about where his heart is on issues like this, and that fact alone gives me great confidence. I am praying for the allied forces to step up, do the decent thing, and step in to end Saddam's rule there. I've studied Jenin; worse, I've studied Ortona. I, like you, have seen the videos of POWs and their treatment. I see my brothers and sisters truly at war, and my heart is heavy knowing what that means.
Sometimes, however, we are presented with situations that justify such horror. This is one of them - and I'd be making the same argument if I was one of those soldiers outside Basra. Get in there at first light, lads. Get in there and do the right thing, and make this right.
UPDATE: Dean Esmay has an interview with Iraqi expatriate and Basra native Yousip Enuiya, who once served in Saddam's military.
UPDATE 2: Check out this report from Michael Totten. I hope it isn't true. I suspect it is.
UPDATE 3: UPI seems to agree. Interesting take on Royal Marines vs. U.S. Marines' approach. (Hat Tip: reader Michael Marcus)
excellent post, i agree with your analysis, and i admire your heart on the issue. thanks
there are alternatives even at this time.
Don't go into Basra. Don't go into Bagdhad.
Ask yourself what would happen if an invading force attacked Los Angeles before you get all giddy on this. You have to picture the relevant size of this kind of operation to understand the repercussions.
Go for it, Brits. Liberate the Shi'ites! The world is with you.
Indigenous rebellion like the reported Shiite revolt in Basra being helped by the British clearly can shorten the war, but there are also risks. If the U.S./British forces are seen as aligned with a particular tribe, resentements and a civil conflict could begin before the country is fully under coalition control, and tribal conflicts could make the peace difficult to keep
Joe,
First of all, I disagree that anybody needs liberating and like ´yah´ says there is an alternative. Stop the madness called war.
What makes you think that there is an uprising going on?
You chose to believe the new Pentagon story. Being fooled once by them is ok....twice understandable, but for the 100th is not wise.
If they go in, a massacre will take place.
Help out somebody! The SKY military analyst said that the militia was firing at the crowds with ´horizontal mortar fire´!!
I am not good with guns, but hey.... isn´t this IMPOSSIBLE?
Sorry friend, but the "coalition" folks seem to be rather busy liberating themselves and each other with their ineptitude. Hubris is a heavy load to carry in one's rucksack!
Carping aside, this is the best news so far. If there is to be any hope of Iraqi resistance to Saddam spreading, the uprising must succeed, it must be seen as welcome to the Coalition, and it must be supported.
Capturing Basra in conjunction with a civilian uprising might well represent a major turning point in this war.
There will be risks in moving in, but I agree with Joe in that these risks must be taken.
And the smug defeatism of some of the other posters here is a tad sickening.
If there's a successful uprising, its first order of business will be a short note for Coalition command: "Get the f*ck out of our country."
That would be a better ending than some, but I don't think Shrub would like it. Goodbye to all those lucrative contracts for his friends. The Iraqis no doubt have other places to spend their money.
U.K Military: the uprising is in it´s infancy and the army will be trying to exploit it.
Another false story friends....
Where is Pedro Grego from?? The name sounds Spanish but he writes like he's French. Must be Mexican.
Richard,
If you tell me what you object in my writing, I will tell you my family tree!
Is Paris Burning?
It's their country, not ours. The American armed forces are quite blind to anything pertaining to civilians en masse. Anyone's civilians.
What a joke!Everybody needs to be dosed.
Be careful of your 'heart' on this. Psy-ops may be at work here as in just about all that trickles out of the frontlines. And coalition forces badly need some good news after the week-end disasters. It is not beyond them to manufacture an uprising for the media much as they manufactured the letter from the Niger purporting to show uranium procurement by Iraq. See
Much as I detest the Bush administration I would pick up my birdshot gun and head for the front if a foreign army attacked the US. I suspect most Iraqis would do the same, especially after being shrapneled by coalition armaments. 500 lb. bombs in residential districts usually entail heavy collateral damage.
I don't conclude from this that these reports are false. I'm just very skeptical until they are proven considering that this gang in the White House has shown it will do anything at all to win.
In last post the linkI inserted got lost it is newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1
What fun!Just like Monte Cassino.Our grand children will be bored listening to the stories of the great desert war of 2003.
I find it really disheartening that posters here can just ignore factual information in their anti-war rhetoric, and although any losses are terrible, saying there were major disasters this weekend is a bit much. We lost a total of 40 troops from the start of the war to the end of the weekend, and 5 POW's, now up to 7. Of the dead, more than half are accidents/friendly fire. What that says to me is that the Iraqi's are patently ineffective so far in doing anything against Brit/U.S. troops, despite their guerilla tactics. The briefings, photographic evidence, and simply the fact that U.S. troops have been injured through mock surrenders all show that the coalition forces are doing a great deal to protect civilians, and the fact that (according to Red Cross workers in Baghdad) the majority of civilians in the hospitals are there due to anti-aircraft fire supports it as well. If you want to be anti-war, at least use facts to support your case instead of rhetoric!
Roach,
I hope you are right. If the numbers stay like these, who wouldn´t be happy?
War is still wrong though.
Roach. If you don't think these deaths are disasters then you are not these kids' mom or dad. Look, we are attacking a third world country without an airforce. Against this third rate power this should be a walkover. But, surprise these folks are fighting hard for their country. Imagine that.
And flak in Baghdad did not kill those civilians in Basra. If you want to stay factual then don't conflate separate events. That's Bush's technique… Ingredients: one part 9/11, a pinch of al Qaeda and a handful of Saddam. Mix well in one big bowl and hope y'all don't disaggregate.
See this for Basra 'collateral damage.' (iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm)
I agree that war is wrong, in many cases, and should always be a last resort. I don't think it was wrong in 1941, though, and I don't think it would have been wrong to go into Rwanda and stop the genocide that occurred there. I hope this goes well, and I hope that we do support the people in Basra. Time will tell, but I fervently hope that the loss of life in this war is more than made up for by the fact that Iraqi people will no longer be killed by the hundreds and thousands by a cruel dictator, unfair sanctions, and attempts at 'ethnic purification'.
Peter,
I agree it's important to not mix facts when you're making a case, and thanks for the website reference. I was making a case for the overall military activity, as evidence that the coalition forces are trying hard not to injure civilians. It certainly makes it difficult when the Iraqi regime does everything it can to make civilians targets (dressing soldiers in civilian clothes, mock surrenders turning into ambushes, using hospitals to stage troops, placing military targets in, on, or near civilian houses). Tell me this, Peter, were we right in 1991 to do nothing in Basra? Which is the better option, to let people rebel against superior force and be slaughtered, or to try to protect those people? Was it the right decision of the UN not to go into Rwanda, or for the U.S. to do nothing after the UN decided, as usual, to make verbal condemnations but not back those up?
I'm not going to say that the U.S. and Britain are completely in the right here, because they are not, nor am I going to say that everything they feed is factual. However, I'm more inclined to believe a (relatively) free press over the propaganda voiced on Iraqi national news, and I've seen enough surveys and listened to enough interviews with Iraqis to know that a fairly substantial number of Iraqis want this to happen. Of course, if you are more inclined to believe the government of Iraq, fully 100% of the people are in support of Saddam Hussein, as evidenced by his landslide election last fall. Not one vote against - how amazing!
1) In 1991 Iraq attacked Kuwait when there was no clear and present danger presented by Kuwait. Now we are doing precisely what Iraq did then. That's against international law and it's the reason why the world community supported us in '91 and is against us now. Big difference.
2) Iraq was not by any stretch of reality like Rwanda where a slaughter took place while we watched or Kosovo which was similar and where we did intervene. The Iraqi deaths you are so stricken about occured not during a recent slaughter but in three big batches.
The war against Iran, which we supported to the extent that we supplied the anthrax spores and the mustard gas he used. Remember Saddam was our SOB then. Hell, we ended up secretly supporting both sides to slaughter one another.
The first Gulf War, when we rightfully pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait because of an unprovoked attack.
The slow death of thousands during the sanctions regime of the last dozen years, for which we bear partial responsibility for imposing those sanctions. Only Britain and the US have supported those sanctions in the last 3 or 4 years.
In terms of whom to believe, my basis is always case by case. You are right to say there is a large disparity between the free press of the US and that of Iraq. But, at the present we are at war and I'm old enough to have gone through these sorts of times before. Governments at war lie, period. The US is no exception to that. As I pointed out above the Bush administration told a whopper to the Congress to push this war (see- newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1). Just as the Johnson administration made up the Gulf of Tonkin incident, just as the first Bush admin. made up the incubator baby story (look that one up if you're not aware of it). Comparison of recent stories released by Iraq and the US actually seem to favor Iraqi credibility. I'm referring to the POW story denied at first by the US as Iraqi propaganda and the downing of the helicopters also denied by the US at first. This doesn't mean I believe the Iraqis. I just don't believe anybody or anything till it's proven in times of war.
What worries me: the U.S. leaders were wrong about Turkey, wrong about the French eventually coming on board, wrong about Russian support (and soul), wrong about Mexico's support, wrong about the effect "shock and awe" would have on Baghdad, and wrong about the Shiites throwing kisses to the liberators. Their overall judgement so far seems so poor that I'm afraid it bodes ill for this campaign. They talk like a victory over Iraq is a fait accompli but these are the same guys who didn't want to risk troops to get UBL at Tora Bora. Good luck in Baghdad with that mindset. If things go badly at least the New Hampshire primary is 10 months away. How does President Howard Dean sound?
Peter:
You forget Iraqi slaughter 3(A), in which there was a revolt in the Shi'ite south, in cities like Basra, which the US encouraged and did nothing to support. It was suppressed, brutally, by the Ba'athist government. That's one reason I still hold out support for eventual acceptance of the coalition forces - the Iraqis were burned once by American promises of freedom. If we prove that we mean it this time, they may yet come around.
And Earl's remarks hint at some of the logic behind this. There are a lot of people hoping with all their hearts that the war is lost, so that their political and ideological causes will advance. I find this disgustining, and ask: Who among us is deluding themselves because of what they want to see?
God, what stupid reasoning: war is not wrong! If you absolutely believe that then you also believe it was wrong for American's to revolt against England, the bolsheviks to revolt against the Czar and the French to rebel against their King. You also would believe that it was wrong for the Arabs to sweep out of the desert and overrun the Levant, Mesopotamia, North Africa, Spain, Persia, the Transoxes and India. If war is wrong; you would not support none of these. You are just choosing sides.
There is no right or wrong in war; it is all about power and will. Anyone who has read history knows that land belongs to the people willing and capable to defend it. Land is always being overrun by more powerful people. Just look at how ruthless Russia was at grabbing land before and after the revolution.
America is unusual in that it has no territorial ambitions. It does intend to prevail in the world, but economically and culturally, not militarily. The only reason America is the world's superpower is that Europe would rather spend its money on welfare and bureaucracy than arms.
President Bush intended to lead America into an isolationist phase before September 11th. He campaigned on ending foreign adventures and he has a stubborn habit of keeping campaign promises. Unfortunately, it became apparent that America had some some swamps of hatred and envy to drain around the world, most notably in 'old Europe' and Araby.
The President has already undercut 'old Europe' by killing NATO and the UN. Neither organization is designed to solve today's problems. NATO stopped having a mission after the Soviet Union went belly up, and the UN is overrun by thugs and tyrants. We will slowly withdraw from both, thus rendering them irrelevant.
Araby has three complaints against the West: that we prop up tyrannical Arab regimes, that we make Arabs feel humiliated by being so much better than they are and that we won't allow the Arabs to push the Jews into the sea.
The Iraq war is our second step in taking down Arab despots. Bush can't declare for political reasons that he intends to take on all of them and replace them with representative governments. It might take twenty years, but that is now US government policy. We might be forced to take down a few European despots too.
We can't end the Arab cultural inferiority complex which is fueling the terrorists; the Arabs must do that. A free economy in Iraq and increasingly in all the Arab world will provide them with jobs and a feeling of self worth. But, there are dark days head until their low self esteem and the rage at their helplessness lifts.
The Israeli / Palestinian issue is currently unsolvable. There can be no peace between them. Not when 73% of the Israeli's are willing to support a two state solution, Israel and Palestine side by side, and 69% of the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. The Palestinians need to give up their territorial ambitions; the Jews are going nowhere. The Palestinians had best get used to it and strike the best deal they can. They are depending on Israel's honor and decency. These virtues wane as wars continue. If Israel is pushed into a corner they will come out fighting. The Arabs hardly expect to achieve by whining what they failed four times to get militarily: the destruction of Israel.
The president intends to cut off funding to the Palestinian terrorists by attacking Iraq and reforming Egypt, Syria, Saudia Arabia and Iran diplomatically. He will force both Israel and the Palestinians to accept a deal and then guarantee peace. We might have to go to war with either. Messy. Very messy. I hope he can pull it off.