Fighting the Iraq insurgency the savage way.

[WarGod]

Ok lets take a step back when the surge started two years ago. lets say we used a different strategy in fighting the insurgency and militias. lets say we used the extra forces to do these goals: We say that all anti government militias and insurgents are to disarm or be disarmed.
If they refuse we go after the mahdi Army first in sadr city and "disarm" them.Also we kick the media out of the country. We go after the shiite militias first. Then we go after the sunni insurgents. The type of warfare would be heavy air power.Then the troops mop things up.Also in this scenario we change the rules of engagement to "If you open fire to us and coalitions forces you will automatically be killed in the battlefireld even if you surrender." We unleash the full power of our military on the militias and insurgents. After we all do this we leave iraq. Do you think this idea would work back then? What you think wopuld have happened to iraq and the middle east?

 

[aokun]

We unleash the full power of our military on the militias and insurgents. After we all do this we leave iraq. Do you think this idea would work back then? What you think wopuld have happened to iraq and the middle east?

This kind of full-bore, savage insurgency suppression has been done before many times. Military success is possible and a local political success is even possible. Long-term political success much less so. Like the French in Algeria, the Russians in Afghanistan and the Brits in Kenya, we would have inflicted dozens of casualties on the insurgents and hundreds on the civilians for each soldier we lost. (You mention heavy air bombardment as a main tool, and the insurgents in this case are a pitiless bunch, so hundreds is correct.) Perhaps another 1,000-2,500 US killed and 10,000 injured, 200,000 insurgents killed if there were that many, 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. The insurgency, as the currently organized force, would most likely have vanished, but many individual insurgents and leaders would remain. Resistance in other forms would continue, as it did in most countries where full bore repression was used.

If we then left, the politics of the country would have been fundamentally unstable, with no acceptable organized force there to replace us and most of the surviving active leaders either one or another form of lapsed insurgent, warlord or gangster, or else a collaborator. A charismatic and capable collaborator might have won the allegiance of the population, but it would be difficult after an occupation with 1.5 million civilian dead and its towns and cities in ruins. In any case, the politics of the country would be wholly outside our control at that point unless we (contrary to your scenario) went for perpetual occupation. Might go the way of Belgium, might go the way of Syria, might go the way of Somalia. No way to know. The psychic and economic trauma of that scope of damage on Iraq would last a century.

Much worse would have been the effect on us, if we care about the credibility of our power outside our borders. Great powers, with few exceptions, consider themselves good and rely, in a thousand ways, on respect, admiration and acquiescence from other parties. Mass slaughter of innocents, even if collateral as your suggestion would be, is devastating to a power's self-image and undermines it's capacity in a hundred ways. There are counterexamples, like Chechnya, but we're not Russia and Iraq is not part of our sovereign territory. There is also the sapping of our monetary and military resources. The sideshow in Iraq already hampered our operations in Afghanistan, which politically we have had a chance of winning, and so emasculated us in the eyes of the rest of the world that North Korea and Iran concluded they could pursue nuclear weapons with impunity.

 

[uzodinma]

Ok lets take a step back when the surge started two years ago. lets say we used a different strategy in fighting the insurgency and militias. lets say we used the extra forces to do these goals: We say that all anti government militias and insurgents are to disarm or be disarmed.
If they refuse we go after the mahdi Army first in sadr city and "disarm" them.Also we kick the media out of the country. We go after the shiite militias first. Then we go after the sunni insurgents. The type of warfare would be heavy air power.Then the troops mop things up.Also in this scenario we change the rules of engagement to "If you open fire to us and coalitions forces you will automatically be killed in the battlefield even if you surrender." We unleash the full power of our military on the militias and insurgents. After we all do this we leave iraq. Do you think this idea would work back then? What you think would have happened to iraq and the middle east?

This strategy can not work:if we wish to defeat terrorists both "sunni" and "shiite",we must reduce our forces and engage in guerrilla warfare,leaving the main engagement to the Iraqis.We must also separate them from Islam:terrorism violates Islamic tenets.Islam forbids suicide,sectarianism,hard drugs etc.If we let them know that they are not fighting for Islam that we are on the side of God and that these events have been prophesied by prophet Muhammad.I have a blog in my profile that could help