If you'd care to provide me with actual viable examples of the parallels between this situation and Vietnam, I might actually pay some attention. And given how the British troops seem to be perfectly happy with the tactics they're currently using, what are you bitching about, Shep?
Hint: Urban combat and jungle warfare are two entirely different sorts. It's easier to conquer a hill and hold onto it than it is to take possession of a small segment of a city and try to hold on to that when the enemy is swarming very close and can substantially outgun you by concentration of fire and remain mobile at the same time. If you take ground in urban warfare, you don't do it by halfmeasures unless you want your troops slaughtered, and since the Brits aren't afaik manpowerwise capable of the full measures without leveling the city, what's the problem? Their officers in the field don't think it's a problem, the troops doing the fighting don't think there's a problem, and I should ignore their opinions and everything they taught me about urban combat in the army just because you have a different opinion?
You're in for a long wait if you think that's going to happen.
Edi wrote:If you'd care to provide me with actual viable examples of the parallels between this situation and Vietnam, I might actually pay some attention.
I've been giving you fucking examples; for example, how British troops
go across the bridges at night to sieze a single fucking warehouse and
then turn it back over to the enemy at dawn. That is exactly fucking what
caused a severe morale drop in US troops in Vietnam. I've read oral
histories of the Vietnam War, and the central theme from all of the
troops who fought there was a seeming hopelessness, that everyone
was dying for *nothing*, because the ground that was fought over
so hard one day was surrendered to the enemy the next day.
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MKSheppard wrote:So you're using a hypothetical future threat of some die hard saddamites
to justify this glacial pace of advance with troops going across the river
to capture a warehouse, and then at dawn, to hand the warehouse back
to the Iraqis?
YES! Because not all the Iraqis in Basrah are against the British, the only handfull of "saddmites" are the real trouble, they controlled large areas of Basrah, they still can, but the larger population just wants to get on with their normal lifes, clusterfucked by some raghead constantly planting bombs, or opening fire.
It would be Northern Ireland all over again.
The British are trying to avoid a situation in whish the population gets alienated, and eventually turns against their supposed liberators, ultimately the objective of the "saddamites".
(BTW, check out CNN, live pics from 7th cavalry!)
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MKSheppard wrote:I've been giving you fucking examples; for example, how British troops
go across the bridges at night to sieze a single fucking warehouse and
then turn it back over to the enemy at dawn. That is exactly fucking what
caused a severe morale drop in US troops in Vietnam. I've read oral
histories of the Vietnam War, and the central theme from all of the
troops who fought there was a seeming hopelessness, that everyone
was dying for *nothing*, because the ground that was fought over
so hard one day was surrendered to the enemy the next day.
Shep, the vietcong had a virtually limitless source of manpower, they could afford losses, the Iraqis militias can't, because accesses are controlled, and the population is unwilling to help them. The British are inflicting unsupported casualties in the militias, and those raids serve a more important role in Intelligence.
Also, and I just remember this, raids are more in spirit of the British, after all the Commandos were born with this concept in mind. So, we are going around turns here! The tactics adopted are more inline with British doctrine of operations, not US.
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Warspite wrote:
Shep, the vietcong had a virtually limitless source of manpower, they could afford losses
Not to get off onto a tangent, but where the FUCK did the vietcong dissapear
into after Tet?
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"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Erm, the British forces do now control a suburb of Basra (recall this is a city of over 1.3 million). The probing attacks do seem to be working (hasen't there only been 5 deaths in combat so far?), remember this whole campaign is about winning hearts and minds, that’s impossible if you flatten large swathes of the city. It seems to me some of the US forces don’t seem to get it (winning the trust of the Iraqi's), the UK has much more experience in this area, simple things like eye-contact, removing helmets for berets (i.e. not looking like robo-cop), patrolling on foot, i.e 30 years of NI experience, Bosina, Kosovo, Sierra Leone
I would think they know what they are doing, besides what's the rush?
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Warspite wrote:
Shep, the vietcong had a virtually limitless source of manpower, they could afford losses
Not to get off onto a tangent, but where the FUCK did the vietcong dissapear
into after Tet?
OKay, that wasn't a very good one, I concede.
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US forces have praised the "impressive" British tactics used around Basra and may adopt the strategies in its Baghdad battle plans.
"In Baghdad, we will definitely use a lot of the effective techniques and utilise some of the larger strategic lessons we learned in the British efforts over Basra," a senior military official told The Washington Times.
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Shep, firstly calm the fuck down. The Yankee army so far hasn't complained about this so they obviously see no fault with it.
Secondly, you seem to think we're going in to level the place and make the civvies there feel like we're invading their very homes and simply not giving a shit about the fact that we're there to help rebuild the nation afterwards.
Thirdly, why not just tac. nuke the cities then? So far the US hasn't exactly shown lightning speed in their advance on Baghdad and I could easily go on about failures of military planning on both sides.
Unless you're actually in charge of the forces and know what's going on, I suggest you just sit and watch for they are fighting the war, not us.
We have to give the Brits the benefit of the doubt, they are far more experienced than the US when it comes to Urban ops. They know what they're doing. This is a city of over a million people, not a town. People will die in massive numbers if they assault the place.
I have a feeling that the Brits are waiting for the US assault on Baghdad in the hopes that when the cpital falls either these Fedayeen Sadaam simply give up or melt away thus giving them the city without much civilian bloodshed OR it will at least make assaulting Basra easier because maybe the populace itself will rise up and help the Brits flush out these irregulars and kill them.
Right now the Brits control all access to the city and so these Fedayeen are not getting fresh supplies or troops. Every Fedayeen that dies is one that they cannot replace. Every day they spend is a day of food, water and ammo that they expend that they cannot easily replace.
I happen to think the Brits are doing a good job because it isolates a group of fighters that can be slipping away to attack supply lines at night, pins them down to one place and keeps civilian casualties low.
I have a feeling that this whole debate is going to be decided in Baghdad. I don't think the American public will support this kind of warfare in Baghdad so look to a real urban assault, not raids.
Wherever you go, there you are.
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The British likely don’t feel that they have the troops to secure the city. But there not doing much else anyway. There raids are not doing anything to harm the enemy, there just shooting off large amounts of ammo slowly collapsing the same buildings.
Anyway, it sounds like the British are not fully encircling the city, they only hold the southern and western roads in.
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The British don't have the troops to go in gung-ho and secure it. Challenger II's are gods of the battlefield, but a third story window and a decent RPG will pop it's hatch. And the SAS may be the very best of getting into buildings and sweeping up, but there are only a few of them. Americans may drool over the Rumsfieldian 'Bomb everything precisely', but England's been in enough wars to learn the only feasible way of taking a city without a slaughter(Of the attackers) is a siege. Nothing goes into Basra without their OK. Nothing comes out without their OK. They harass and strike at targets, and the siege wears down the defenders. There's only a few hundred years of battles proving this tactic works, after all.
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SirNitram wrote:The British don't have the troops to go in gung-ho and secure it. Challenger II's are gods of the battlefield, but a third story window and a decent RPG will pop it's hatch. And the SAS may be the very best of getting into buildings and sweeping up, but there are only a few of them. Americans may drool over the Rumsfieldian 'Bomb everything precisely', but England's been in enough wars to learn the only feasible way of taking a city without a slaughter(Of the attackers) is a siege. Nothing goes into Basra without their OK. Nothing comes out without their OK. They harass and strike at targets, and the siege wears down the defenders. There's only a few hundred years of battles proving this tactic works, after all.
The British have quite a lot of armored and light infantry deployed, MBT's only make up part of one of several brigades. They likely don't have enough to take the whole city.
But sitting outside of it being shelled, then conducting raids to overrun the same observation post they took out the last night is not productive.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Sea Skimmer wrote:
The British have quite a lot of armored and light infantry deployed, MBT's only make up part of one of several brigades. They likely don't have enough to take the whole city.
But sitting outside of it being shelled, then conducting raids to overrun the same observation post they took out the last night is not productive.
But it clearly has been working, they have worn down the Iraqi regulars/irregulars to the point where they were able to take over several suburbs and more recently an industrial estate, plus more importantly they are winning the people over, gaining their trust (to the point where the locals are pointing out where the irregulars are).
Like I said what's the rush? the coalition needs to win the peace as much as the war.
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Evil S'tan wrote:
Like I said what's the rush? the coalition needs to win the peace as much as the war.
The defenders are not likely to believe Saddam is dead, and not likely to surrender in any case. The sooner areas are cleared of armed Saddam supporters the sooner peace can actually have a chance to be won.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Evil S'tan wrote:
Like I said what's the rush? the coalition needs to win the peace as much as the war.
The defenders are not likely to believe Saddam is dead, and not likely to surrender in any case. The sooner areas are cleared of armed Saddam supporters the sooner peace can actually have a chance to be won.
Yeah but the way the way they are doing it know[UK forces] they are winning over the civilians (like I said to the point where they are pointing out the locations of irregulars), if they go in all guns blazing and blow the place to hell it's not going to help win 'hearts and minds' is it?. I've already posted the link where US sources have praised the approach, and how they are may use the lessons learned for Baghdad (albeit on a larger scale).
Why rush ahead into bloody street to street battles when the approach of gradually increasing pressure on/taking out the regular/irregular forces while winning over the local populace, IS working with minimal casualties?
They are probably the most experianced guys at this type of thing, they clearly must know what they are doing
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Indeed. Seems most of the bitching and moaning around this issue is coming from Americans (and civilians at that) who just want to see the city taken right now, and no ifs or buts as far as they are concerned. Never mind what is actually happening on site.
Reminds me of what I read about Stalingrad, with Hitler micromanaging everything on the front down to company level at the later stages and directly ordering troops not to retreat, "because giving ground in face of the worthless Soviet dogs will lower the morale of the glorious German troops and sap their will to fight" or words to that effect, which forced the troops in many cases to stay put on open ground and die when moving a kilometer or two would have given good defensible positions. The insistence here is the same, civilians saying that the troops should go in and take ground and then hold it "because otherwise the troops' morale is lowered". Pfft! Like Evil Stan said and like I've said several times, the troops on site know what they're doing. They've also got BBC reporters with them, so if there was major screwups or casualties, we'd learn about it soon enough.
SirNitram wrote:but England's been in enough wars to learn the only feasible way of taking a city without a slaughter(Of the attackers) is a siege.
Tell that to the US Marine Corps who took Hue, in Tet 1968, massacring
the VietCong and only suffering minimal casualties
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
MKSheppard wrote:
Tell that to the US Marine Corps who took Hue, in Tet 1968, massacring
the VietCong and only suffering minimal casualties
Oh yeah, they also did that without airpower or artillery support,
since the higher ups had decreed that they didn't want to level
the city. And the Marines re-took it anyway with minimal casualties.
w00tage, indeed.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
MKSheppard wrote:
Tell that to the US Marine Corps who took Hue, in Tet 1968, massacring
the VietCong and only suffering minimal casualties
Oh yeah, they also did that without airpower or artillery support,
since the higher ups had decreed that they didn't want to level
the city. And the Marines re-took it anyway with minimal casualties.
w00tage, indeed.
Bullshit. The Tet offensive ripped the shit out of the occupying forces and pushed them back. The retaking of Hue was a goddamn SIEGE operation of the type that you seem to be speaking out against.
Shep, Hue is not a relevant example here, and the enemy there was incompetent anyway. It was already discussed quite a bit in the Baghad strategy thread. You're just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. Want a more relevant example, take a look at Grozny and what happened there in the 1990s. The coalition won't screw up like the Russians did, but the selfimposed rules of engagement that aim for low destruction of infrastructure and avoidance of civilian casualties make the current approach in Basra about the best viable option.
Shep. If this coalitions expects to have a peacefull Iraq to occupy after the main fighting is done, You have to have the support of the population and acting like a bull in a china shop is not going to do that. The Brits have 30 years experience in this kind of thing and you are seconed guessing them?
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