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Monday, November 08, 2004 |
 Target: Fallujah. A note on the nature of a TAZ and what will be gained/lost by taking the city.
Also, a journal note on a recent large arms shipment interdicted by Saudi security services.
5:34:16 PM 
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Here's an example of second generation warfare thinking that Lind wrote about below. This is from a recent Marine briefing prior to the assault on Fallujah (send in the meat grinder!):
"Never send a marine where you can send a round," Capt. Gil Juarez advised his Light Armored Reconnaissance company, as final preparations got under way. "The enemy is crafty. We just have to be methodical, with techniques that work. Put steel on the target. We need not panic in the face of the enemy."
9:39:20 AM
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NYT. Interesting. The Fallujah assault targets a hospital first. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties (that news generated opposition to the first assault). Managing the information flow to "shape" the moral conflict.
Also, here's more economics info: Insurgents dressed as policemen also ambushed a dozen Iraqi national guardsmen on their way home to the southern holy city of Najaf and murdered them all, officials in Najaf said. The attackers, who called themselves the Furkan Brigades, beat up a civilian driver and told him to pass a message on to the people of Najaf: If they wanted to get back the headless bodies of the victims, they would have to pay millions of dollars.
9:15:27 AM
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BBC, "The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy," said Colonel Brandl. "But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."
8:14:04 AM
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Lind on generations in warfare.
Second Generation warfare is relevant to us today because the United States Army and Marine Corps learned Second Generation warfare from the French during and after World War I. It remains the American war of war, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq: to Americans, war means "putting steel on target." Aviation has replaced artillery as the source of most firepower, but otherwise, (and despite the Marine's formal doctrine, which is Third Generation maneuver warfare) the American military today is as French as white wine and brie. At the Marine Corps' desert warfare training center at 29 Palms, California, the only thing missing is the tricolor and a picture of General Gamelin in the headquarters.
I suggest that the war we have seen thus far (in Iraq) is merely a powder train leading to the magazine. The magazine is Fourth Generation war by a wide variety of Islamic non-state actors, directed at America and Americans (and local governments friendly to America) everywhere. The longer America occupies Iraq, the greater the chance that the magazine will explode. If it does, God help us all.
8:09:47 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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