Al Qaeda in Iraq : When losing, flail away and kill as many as you can.

At least that's one way to spin this. In a sense, it reads like a document that might have emanated from the Fuerhrer-Bunker in Berlin in April of 1945 (I can only wish in our timeline with AQI we were at the April 45 time tick...) But first...

Yesterday, I linked to Cassandra's crie-de-coeur over at Villainous Company, regarding her view of a rising willingness of the Usual Suspects to express their contempt of those of us who donned the uniform or support those who wear it. Oddly enough, they aren't as contemptuous when the Powers That Be send us off to do thing that the Usual Suspects approve of... well, they aren't as openly contemptuous, anyway.

I'm not reopening that discussion here, so much as I'm going to cherry-pick from her commenter who took issue with her, a Mr. Schwag.

You finally put it all together Casandy. The majority of Americans now feel contempt for the military.

Why is it that the "greatest military of all time" can't defeat a few thousand camel jocks?

Gas is now over $4 and all we hear is about how great are "heros" are.

You and your ilk have trashed our country and soon you will get a major domestic ass kicking.

Heh. So much to work with, so little time.

Of course, Cassandra never said the majority of Americans now feel contempt for the military, that's Mr. Schwag expressing his earnestly held belief and the hopeful vision that helps him sleep at night.

Better yet, Mr. Schwag, carrying the banner of goodness and light and holding himself up as a paragon of progressive virtue and tolerance and all-round cuddly behavior gives us this gem:

Why is it that the "greatest military of all time" can't defeat a few thousand camel jocks?

Snerk. Can I toss the "bigot" flag here on our representative of the progressive Left?

Heh. Oddly enough, in this space, we have more respect for the residents of the Middle East than it would appear Mr. Schwag does. We're going to return to this comment later.

Gas is now over $4 and all we hear is about how great are "heros" are.

Guess that whole "It's all about oiiiiiiiiiiiiillllll!" meme isn't working too well, but $4 a gallon gas (leave aside the $9 a gallon cost in Europe) is apparently directly attributable to we military people, and guys like Jason Dunham, Paul Smith, Michael Monsoor, and Michael Murphy. Gosh, I'm surprised he didn't manage to throw in there that they are all white males, too. I suppose the charitable reading of that is - when gas is over $4 a gallon, that's *all* we're supposed to hear about... because that's personally affecting Mr. Schwag, and, well, as Fred said in the first comment to the post below this one "Pathological narcissism is the defining disease of our age." (Admittedly, this is dangerous ground for a blogger to tread...)

So, I said I'd come back to it, so, let's come back to it:

Why is it that the "greatest military of all time" can't defeat a few thousand camel jocks?

Cassie really pretty much answered this in her response:

Why is it that police can't totally eradicate crime?

Well, they probably could, if they were allowed to turn America into a police state, but who wants to live that way? There are tradeoffs between liberty and security, and we choose how much freedom we are willing to give up in return for a given degree of safety.

If we were allowed free exercise of military power in Iraq, we'd have little trouble guaranteeing security. The political reality is that we are constrained by the chattering classes (that would be people like you) who like to chant idiotic slogans like "No blood for oil!" and "Stop the illegal, immoral occupation of Irak!"

Since I usually try to avoid being a "me too!" blogger, I have something to add, so lets get back to AQI and flailing around and killing people.

We took out the Japanese and the German governments because we effectively waged a war of attritional annihilation on them. One in which we killed a great many people who probably really didn't need killing. And we learned in Vietnam, that fighting a civil war in the mode of a war of attrition, but being unwilling to *really* wage a war of annihilation, causes you to kill a great number of people and not accomplish your goal. Which makes all that killing, well, a bad thing. If you are going to go to the level of killing, you'd certainly like to be successful at what you are doing, and not lose your soul doing it. So now, we've been constrained by our leadership, international opinion, and yes, the "chattering classes" to not do so much killing.

We've constrained ourselves. And we find, among other things, it makes things take a lot longer (but with a helluva lot fewer casualties on both sides) than the "grind them to pulp" approach of WWII. And now we take shite for it from persons like Mr. Schwag.

Let us quote from a recent letter, from Abu Safiyan, in Diyala, intended for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the non-Iraqi leader of AQI. Just one section will be sufficient.

Economical War: How can we foil the enemy economically? 1- Attack the gas and oil fields, wells and pipelines for the apostate government and focus our efforts on such attacks. 2- Attack each targets such as gas and oil tankers even oil ships in Basra, Kirkuk, and Baghdad. 3- Attack all the targets that strengthen the enemy economically and militarily. Such as the electric stations and lines which feeds the enemy’s military establishments including the Shi’a, the Awakening and the government’s army which belong to Maliki (such as police station and military bases). Blow up all power lines.

Currently we must focus our efforts to attack oil fields and pipelines, why?

Results and Solutions: Because…
1) It will halt payment of the Military and Police salaries and the Awakening movement associated with the occupier and Maliki’s malignant government. Even the American Army will weaken since it depends on the Iraqi oil and gas wealth. The enemy will gradually drown step by step.

Chemical, Biological agents and Nitric Acid War

1) Throw large amounts of Nitric Acid even Bacteria and other materials that can spread illnesses and kill people until the enemy melts in the lakes and valleys. Even place it in the enemy’s water pipes which will spread the killing and dangerous illnesses among them. The enemy will become afraid and confused and think that we have a dangerous chemical weapon. But in fact it’s a psychological war that places fear in the enemy and exhausts them psychologically and they will gradually foil.

2) The enemy must be killed using all dangerous materials such as nitric acid, bacteria and destructive chemical materials against the enemy’s personnel and nature. We need specialists in this sensitive field.

This is how AQI wishes to fight. Anyone not with them, is the enemy and killable. Sounds a lot like the Fuerher Directives emanating from Berlin in those last dark days of despair.

1) Throw large amounts of Nitric Acid even Bacteria and other materials that can spread illnesses and kill people until the enemy melts in the lakes and valleys. Even place it in the enemy’s water pipes which will spread the killing and dangerous illnesses among them. The enemy will become afraid and confused and think that we have a dangerous chemical weapon. But in fact it’s a psychological war that places fear in the enemy and exhausts them psychologically and they will gradually foil.

It's taken this long because we aren't fighting like this. It will take longer because we won't fight like this - and this isn't the native Iraqis talking about doing this - this is the mostly foreign fighters of AQI.

We fight with one hand tied behind us. As, in many respects, we should. But I love the lack of a sense of history that says, "You suck because you can't beat these guys as fast as you beat the Germans and Japanese, but if you fight them like you fought the Germans and Japanese I'll castigate you for being too brutal and "horror" you might sweep me up in your damned military as you mobilize the entire country and that would *really* get in the way of my self actualization."

These people aren't serious. They're just anti-anything not their idea. And when it's their side that wants to do it... I'm guessing they'll man the barricades to call me a traitor for not being all that supportive - just as I was not, and am not, that supportive of our efforts in the Balkans.

Feh.

For a .pdf of the whole letter, Click here.

To get to the Defenselink article with the briefing slides - click here.