Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Posted by sepoy on April 17, 2004 · 2 mins read

Blasting loud rock (what, no LimpBizkit?) and insults at the Fallujah uprisers is the current state of psyops in Iraq.

At night, the psychological operations unit attached to the Marine battalion here sends out messages from a loudspeaker mounted on an armored Humvee. On Thursday night, the crew and its Arabic-language interpreter taunted fighters, saying, “May all the ambulances in Fallujah have enough fuel to pick up the bodies of the mujahadeen.”
The message was specially timed for an attack moments later by an AC-130 gunship that pounded targets in the city. Later, the team blasted Jimi Hendrix and other rock music, and afterward some sound effects like babies crying, men screaming, a symphony of cats and barking dogs and piercing screeches. They were unable to draw any gunmen to fight, and seemed disappointed.

It seems like a weird tactic (do the insurgents even know english?) designed to provoke more than prevent. But that seems to be the modus operandi in Iraq. There is no attempt at all to connect to the Iraqis as people with a proud heritage who have yet to achieve their freedom. The tactics of war are good for just that: war. You cannot have a peace and reconstruction mission carried out by marines and soldiers. They are trained for something else.
Fallujah is a fiercely tribal place that will answer only with aggression. Wiser heads than mine, Juan Cole, have written on the need for temperance and restraint in Fallujah.
Here is another account of a briton in Baghdad pointing out the absurdity of peace-keeping with military tanks.
All this is, rather, academic. Iraq has toppled into the chaos that was predicted before the war. Bush/Blair are leaving come July. Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. Afghanistan belongs to the Afghanis. We have done our job. To give them freedom.

COMMENTS


Shakir | April 27, 2004

Operation against Shiite in Fallujah was nothing but just mass killing!! A friend of mine returned the other day from Fallujah, and she told horrible stories about ONE SINGLE US SNIPER, who around killed 160 women ALONE!!!! in the streets !! I think the situation now will be even worse than ever before. Just look, sucide bombing everyday!!

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