Why the US will lose the war in Iraq.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

Have no doubt, the US WILL lose, becuase the war is unwinnable. Let me explain why.

What we have in Iraq is classic low intensity warfare - the military euphamism for guerilla war. A guerilla war is NOT winnable by standard military tactics, in fact NO guerilla war has EVER been won with standard military tactics becuase standard military tactics merely create more guerillas.

Let's take a specific hypothetical example to explain why.

Four disgruntled men attack a US convoy. The US troops of course fight back with all the firepower they can muster. They kill the four attackers, maybe with no loss to themselves, but in the process an innocent civillian caught in the crossfire is killed.

There are now 5 families with a grudge against US troops. Those 5 families produce 1 person each who decide to seek revenge on US troops, except this time instead of one attack, there are two.

Once again, an innocent civillian is killed in the crossfire during each attack along with the 5 original attacker. Now we have 7 families with a grudge.

Continue this over an extended period of time, and what happens?

This example is just a tiny part of the reality. Multiply this by a hundred different attackers and you can see that hatred and desire for revenge will explode exponentially over a period of time.

In other words, the act of fighting back against the guerillas creates the conditions for many more geurillas to be created.

In other words, the only way to win this war with the standard tactics is to kill nearly everyone in Iraq. This would be genocide, and I assume the US people would not stand for it. So even if US casualties never even reach the heights of Viet Nam (which they probably would) the sheer number of dead Iraqis would result in the demand of a withdrawl of US troops.

In fact, the only war to win a geurilla war - and this has been proven in the past, notably by the British - is to do the complete opposite of what American gungho attitudes will allow: You have to stop fighting back.

When a convoy is attacked, you have to just absorb the casualties and run for it in order to prevent further civillian casualties. Then you have to encourage the locals to see your restraint as being because YOU are on their side and didn't want any of them to suffer because of the battle, and that if they wish to prevent further deaths of their own people, all they have to do is stop supporting the geurillas.

You have to start thinking like a cop rather than a soldier - protect and serve, rather than secure and subdue. The US military is not trained for this. Their whole life experiences are based on dominating their opponents - beat him at football - beat him in the stock markets - beat him. But you can beat everyone, and trying will only result in being beaten.

That is what happened in Viet Nam. That is what happened in Afghanistan to the Russians, and what is going to happen to the US. Hell, it has been happening in Israel/Palestine for half a century.

The US will never again fight a purely conventional war - no nation on its own can beat the US in such a fight, so they will ALWAYS resort to low intensity warfare as it is the ONLY winnable strategy against the US military.

So that is Iraq and Afghanistan, but what about the wider "War on Terror"? The answer is the same - the US will lose. Every time it tries to beat down terrorists, all it is doing is creating MORE terrorists who see terrorism as the ONLY way to successfully attack the US.

It is basically IMPOSSIBLE for the US to win in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in the "War on Terror", becuase the US itself will not be able to bring itself to do what HAS to be done to win - address the root causes of the problem in a non-violent manner.