Not With A Bang…

After witnessing the Pentagon’s retreat from both Fallujah and Najaf without achieving the “success” of pacification and/or elimination of the local resistance, it seems that aside from killing several thousand (mostly) civilian Iraqis and causing lots of property damage, the Pentagon forces are quite ineffectual within dense urban cities, constrained as they are by their limited numbers and armour, and aversion to troop casualties. So much for their new “urban war lite” doctrine. In the Vietnam Era following their invasion of South Vietnam the Pentagon generally controlled the cities while the hinterlands were abandoned to the resistance. In Iraq it seems to be the reverse: the Pentagon controls the desert and wilderness areas, while except for tiny pockets of control around airports and bases, the cities are generally no-go areas for US troops. I think it’s probably time again to quote the ex-Deputy PM of Iraq, Tariq Aziz:

“People say to me, ‘You are not the Vietnamese. You have no jungles and swamps,'” Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is quoted as telling a University of Warwick researcher six months ago. “I reply, ‘Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles'”.

Earlier here.