Locobot

Source and comment below.
"
Thou Shalt Kill
by Ralph Peters

A soldier's job is to kill the enemy. All else is secondary. Theories don't win wars. Well-trained, well-led soldiers in well-equipped armies do. And they do so by killing effectively. There is no substitute for shedding the enemy's blood.

Of course, no battlefield is ever quite so simple as this proposition, but any force that loses its elementary focus on killing the enemy swiftly and relentlessly until that enemy surrenders unconditionally cripples itself.

Precision weapons have value, but they are expensive and do not cause adequate destruction to impress a hardened enemy. The first time a guided bomb hits the deputy's desk, it will get his chief's attention, but if precision weaponry fails both to annihilate the enemy's army and population it has been defeated, it leaves the job to the soldier once again. Those who live in the technological clouds simply do not grasp the importance of graphic, extensive destruction in convincing an opponent of his defeat.

Focus on killing the enemy. With fires. With maneuver. With sticks and stones and polyunsaturated fats. It's difficult to persuade leaders schooled in caution that their mission is not to keep an entire corps' tanks on line but to rip the enemy's heard out. In the bitter years after Vietnam, when our national leaders succumbed to the myth that the American people would not tolerate casualties, elements within our military--although certainly no everyone--grew morally and practically timid.

By the mid-1990s, the U.S. Army's informal motto appeard to be "We won't fight, and you can't make us." There were obvious reasons for this. Our military felt betrayed by our national leadership during Vietnam. Then President Reagan evacuated Beirut shortly after the bombing of our Marine barracks on the city's outskirts--beginning a long series of retreats in the face of terror that ultimately led to 9/11.

Things began to change less than two weeks into our campaign in Afghanistan. At first there was caution. Then, as it dawned on our commanders that the administration would stand behind our forces, we saw one of the most innovative campaigns in military history unfold with stunning speed.

But we're still too vulnerable to the nonsense concocted by desk-bound theoreticians. A recent draft study for a major joint command spoke of the need for "discourses" between commanders at various levels and their staffs.

Trust me. We don't need discourses. We need plain talk, honest answers, and the will to close with the enemy and kill him. And to keep on killing him until it is unmistakably clear to the entire world who won. When military officers start speaking in academic gobbledygook, it means they have nothing to contribute to the effectiveness of our forces. They badly need an assignment to Fallujah.

Of course, we shall hear no end of fatuous arguments to the effect that we can't kill our way out of the problem. Well, until a better methodology is discovered, killing is a good interim solution.

We are, militarily and nationally, in a trasition phase. Even after 9/11, we do not fully appreciate the cruelty and determination of our enemies. We will learn our lesson, painfully, because the terrorists will not quit. With hard-core terrorists, it's not about psychological operations or jobs or deploying dental teams. It's about killing them. The only solution is to kill them and keep on killing them. A war of attrition.

This will be a long war of attrition, stretching beyond many of our lifetimes. We must ensure that the casualties are always disproportionately on the other side. Nothing says that wars of attrition have to be fair. It's essential to purge our minds of the cliche'd images the term "war of attrition" evokes. A one-sided war of attrition, enabled by our broad range of superior capabilities, is a strong model for a twenty-first-century American way of war.

It cannot be repeated often enough: Whatever else your aim to do in wartime, never lose your focus on killing the enemy.


From "In Praise of Attrition," by Ralph Peters, published last summer in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College quarterly. Peters is the author of New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy, which will be published this summer by Sentinel Books.
"
Source: Harper's magazine Jan. 2005

This is the first realistic look at the conflicts we face today that I've seen. Our chickenhawk leadership continues to hide from the endevour it has undertaken. The best example I can think of the type of leadership that this essay demands would be Colin Powell's press conferences during Gulf war I. We all know the story of his demise.

In the weeks preceeding the invasion of Iraq I got stuck in a conversation with a right-wing coworker and the questioned was posed, "How long will this war last?"
"30 days" replied the coworker.
"Ten years" was my response.
And yes, he was really unbarable to be around when Bush was declaring victory under the "mission accomplished" banner at sea.

I don't mean to stifle discussion with this article, although that's one of Peter's stated goals. He is after all, joining the war of words by writing this article.

stevo

He's right, you know. Especially about not fully appreciating the cruelty and determination of our enemies.

I was apathetic toward politics in the 2000 election, but it was Bush's actions after 9/11 (and years studying economics) that have made me the conservative I am today. Bush didn't back down and retreat when we were attacked on 9/11. It is going to be a long, hard fight. One that will last generations, and in the short term the only way to win is to kill the terrorist, while in the long term the spread of liberal democracy and freedom across the globe will be what wins this war. And Bush knows this. Thats why we're in Afghanistan and Iraq. There will be a transition in the middle east from dictatorial regimes to free, democratically elected governments. Freedom and Liberty are not western values, they are human values. The masses want freedom, that is why we will win this war.

shakran

You're right. He went right after afghanistan / Al Qaeda. Then he quickly ignored them in favor of going after a country that didn't have anything whatsoever to do with the terrorists that attacked us.

Hey, maybe he's not such an idiot after all. Maybe he just has ADD

Charlatan

I don't think anyone here would dispute that the "spread of liberal democracy and freedom across the globe" is an excellent goal... what is always at dispute is how to achieve those ends...

Bush and company would say, "the only way to win is to kill the terrorist" while others would argue that education and diplomacy are much better ways of achieving those goals.

Unfortunately, those methods are too slow for many who like their results to be quickly achieved so they can go onto the next "big thing". It is further exacerbated by the fact that the US, in many ways (mostly subversive) is the kettle calling the pot black. For America to go abroad preaching peace, while waving guns and economic red flags is tough for many to swallow (it kinda gets their backs up).

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Coppertop

Now there is a scary thought.

irateplatypus

really? i've heard unending complaints about how Bush's policy falls into line with the author's logic. the issue is often framed from the left as: Bush's lack of understanding is what draws him into such black-and-white thinking.

ahh... come on locobot. so many pessismists these days.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

pedro padilla

yeah right........

Guardsman killed Iraqi after sex

By JAY PRICE, Staff Writer

A North Carolina National Guard member thought to be the first U.S. soldier convicted of murdering an Iraqi said he "snapped" and shot the 17-year-old boy after they had consensual sex, according to court-martial records released this week.

Pvt. Federico Daniel Merida, 21, of Biscoe, a tiny town south of Asheboro, pleaded guilty during a court-martial in Iraq to shooting the Iraqi national guard private, whose name the Army withheld.

Merida was sentenced Sept. 25 to 25 years in prison and reduced in rank. He will be dishonorably discharged.

Army officials at Forward Operating Base Danger, where the court-martial was held, withheld details of the case, saying the records had to be approved by a general. They released the records to The News & Observer on Thursday.


Maj. Neal E. O'Brien said Army rules required that most of the names be inked out, including that of the victim. The Los Angeles Times reported shortly after the court-martial that the victim's name was Falah Zaggam.

According to the records, Zaggam and Merida were on guard duty May 11 in a tower on the perimeter of an Army camp near Tikrit in northern Iraq. About 10:30 p.m., Merida shot Zaggam repeatedly with his M-4 carbine.

The "gay panic" motive was the third that Merida offered. He first told investigators that Zaggam demanded money at gunpoint. Later, he said he killed Zaggam because the boy forced him to have sex.

Interviewed a third time by skeptical investigators, Merida said he got angry after the two had consensual sex. When the boy went to the latrine, Merida began to craft an excuse for killing him.

According to the records, Merida told investigators that he picked up Zaggam's AK-47 rifle and chambered a bullet so that it was ready to fire. He then pulled out the magazine, which held the rest of the bullets, and put it aside.

When Zaggam returned, Merida handed the gun back. Merida then grabbed the boy's trigger finger, forcing him to fire a bullet into the ceiling.

Merida then radioed the camp headquarters and said Zaggam had tried to kill him after demanding money. Merida dropped the radio and raised his own gun, a short version of the M-16 assault rifle.

Merida first shot at the floor of the guard tower, then into Zaggam's legs, according to an account that Merida signed for the court-martial. Zaggam tried to wrest away the rifle, and Merida shot him in the groin. Zaggam clutched at a railing and fell down the stairs as Merida kept shooting.

"The accused fired a couple more rounds into the lifeless body ... then took his magazine out and set it aside, put his weapon down, and called ... to report that he had just killed the [Iraqi national guard] soldier who had tried to rob him," the account signed by Merida said.

The boy was hit by 11 bullets.

In an agreement with the Army that limited his prison sentence to no more than 25 years, Merida pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder but guilty to murder without premeditation. He pleaded guilty to two counts of giving false statements in his initial explanations. He was found not guilty of dereliction of duty for having consensual sex while he should have been guarding the camp.

During the court-martial, Merida apologized to the victim's family.

"He was a son, a brother, someone very important to them," he said. "I took someone they loved and cared for."

Plea for leniency

Friends and family members wrote the Army asking for a reduction in Merida's sentence, citing the fact that his son, a toddler, needs him and that his wife speaks little English and relies on him. Merida was born in Veracruz, Mexico, and moved to the United States as a child.

A man who answered the phone at the family's home in Biscoe declined to identify himself or say whether the family had heard from Merida recently. "I don't know nothing, man," he said, and he hung up.

Merida is confined at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., a Leavenworth spokeswoman said.

Merida is a member of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion's Battery B, based in Monroe. He deployed to Iraq early this year with an N.C. National Guard brigade of several thousand soldiers, which was placed under command of the 1st Infantry Division.

Maj. Robert Carver, a spokesman at the N.C. National Guard's Raleigh headquarters, said Guard leaders here knew little about the case. He said that if there was anything positive about the unpleasant case it was that it should serve notice to Iraqis about how justice should work.

"Obviously one of the things we're trying to do in Iraq is foster an environment that includes the rule of law rather than dictatorship, and hopefully this demonstrates that to the Iraqis," he said. "The rule of law was applied, and the guilty have been punished."


winning hearts and minds wherever they go. Whatta surprise they ain´t throwin flowers.

Lebell

Pedro,

I don't know what that article has to do with the thread, but I'll note that in America that guardsman will go to jail.

If he had been an Iraqi soldier under Hussein, he might have gotten a medal.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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pedro padilla

The kill all the enemy bit is wearing a bit thin. These fu%king nutcases are shooting and looting. Yeah. He´ll go to jail. I feel much better, Thanx

Lebell

Jail isn't good enough?

I don't understand.

What punishment would you give him, the death penalty?

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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pedro padilla

Jail is fine. but how many more psychos are out there killing these dangerous insurgents? Kill what enemy? Who exactly is the enemy?
Saddam would have given him a medal. Good comparison. GW just gave a couple to Franks and Bremer. And they should all get a few years behind bars to spend polishing them.

Lebell

Your analogies are suspect to say the least and seem to flow from equating the war as a whole to an illegal act.

As such, this has been discussed to death and I have no interest in engaging in another such fruitless argument.

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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pedro padilla

guilty as charged. however, I cannot believe that any argument along these lines could be fruitless. discussed to death or dismissed to death?

stevo

pedrop, there are sickos everywhere, but he is one person, not representative of the US military. You don't like it when liberals are all grouped together based on one liberal's remarks or actions but you seem to have no problem using this guy as a poster boy for the US army. Your article has nothing to do with the post at hand. If you want, go ahead and start a new thread.

The reason iraq has to do with the global war on terror is because the spreading liberal democracy through out the middle east and the rest of the world is what is going to beat the terrorists.

Sometimes the only way to deal with a regime is to use your military. Other times, in other countries, diplomacy is the way to go. With iraq, obviously diplomacy didn't work. 12 years of saddam shirking UN resolutions and the massive amounts of corruption and bribery of the oil-for-food program got us no where. The war in iraq works toward the achievement of short run goals (kill the terrorists), as well as long run goals (spread freedom and democracy). The war in iraq is not a diversion, it is part of a much bigger picture, one that many self-proclaimed 'open-minders' can't even see.