US Marines build sand walls in latest Iraq tactic

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/11/070111141318.rm71vcto.html

Adapting ideas tracing back from ancient history to modern Israel, US Marines have sealed off flashpoint towns with sand walls in a new counter-insurgency tactic to quell the wilds of western Iraq.

Driving across the desert to Haditha, one of the war's deadliest and most infamous battlefields, the grey plain suddenly collapses into a ditch and rises into an intimidating 12-foot (around four-metre) bank of bulldozed sand.

This is bleak territory in Al-Anbar province, bordering on Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Freezing wind howls across the desert in winter. The summer sun is merciless, sand storms a constant curse.

Scores of American soldiers have been killed around Haditha in the four years since the US invasion. The area has been terrorised by Al-Qaeda fighters who reportedly roam large, beheading civilians to impose fundamentalism.

[atreides1]

1. So now....

...the US military is building Sunni Ghettos, when do the train rides to the gas chambers begin, or will they just skip that part and do it all with bombs and bullets?

[MADem]

2. This isn't a new tactic. They were doing this a while ago, too NT

[uppityperson]

3. Here is the last bit of the article, amazing.

While some officers recognise similarity with Israel's separation barrier in the occupied West Bank in terms of the same stated goal of keeping "bad guys out" many are wary about drawing too close a politically explosive analogy.

"What surprises me is how much the Iraqis look at that. 'You ought to do what the Israelis do. If someone plants an IED, you should bulldoze their house'," says Lieutenant Colonel Jim Donnellan, US Marine commander of Haditha.

"Probably some of it does come from Israel, or at least the ideas behind it. We use the same bulldozers as they do, although I think we're a little more gentle. We don't run over any homes," says Frick.

Colonel W. Blake Crowe, the overall US commander for western Al-Anbar, calls them gated communities and likens them to the walls around Biblical Jericho. Tracy compares them to Neolithic barricades built to keep out nomadic invaders.

[Jacobin]

4. OMFG. Using Israeli tactics against Iraqis in their own country

Hell the UN hasn't given us Iraq.

[endarkenment]

5. Not new. Why are they lying about this?

As another poster noted, this odious technique has been used before in Iraq by our forces. So why are they lying that this is new?

[Cobalt-60]

6. fixed defenses..very nice.

What did Patton say about fixed fortifications?
Wasn't it that they were monuments to human stupidity?

[cliss]

7. We can't win.

If you take a step back and look at most of the decisions made by the military, they all have 1 thing in common:

They are always made as the RESULT of a prior issue. They ACT, we REACT. We are always in a reactive mode rather than proactive. They act, we react. The iraqis will always be 10 steps ahead of us in this game, and it's impossible to win.

Even Bush said, "We are constantly adapting to conditions on the ground". = meaning, we are hheld hostage to their constantly changing tactics. Even he didn't realize the significance of his statement.

Case in point: about 3 years ago, the insurgents started putting IED's in donkey carts. A few troops were killed. Result? Next day, we see photos of US troops inspecting every damn donkey cart in Baghdad. Took lots of time, it was real time consuming.

MEANWHILE the Iraqis had already dumped that idea. next, they moved on to using rigged cars as moving IED's. Good luck with that one, Peter Pace.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Really?

Too bad they aren't building levees in New Orleans.

[Lisa]

9. didn't the Romans build vast ditch/wall networks on their frontiers too?

Just one more disconcerting parallel ...