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The good, the bad and the clumsy To the surprise of no one who is not a professionally optomistic spin-doctor in the pay of the US government, the situation in Iraq has settled into a messy attrition war. Although the US cannot lose this contest militarily, it most certainly can lose politically.
However I think this as this latest bit of true propaganda (almost but not quite an oxymoron) shows, the other side in Iraq may be determined but that does not mean they are all that competent.
That said, I would not read too much into this… Churchill was also a fairly indifferent shot by many accounts.
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Perhaps because of the times he was born into, Churchill was more of a sabres drawn cavalry charge across the scrub of the North West Frontier man.
While I find the whole thing humorous and ironic, I find myself wondering about the pan-Arabic concept that male virility is tied to the weapon brandised. If Zarky handles his “manhood” in as slapdash a manner as he handles this gun, I feel better about the unlikelyhood of his procreating.
Mark: he used a ‘Broomhandle’ Mauser pistol when he was in the cavalry charge at Omdurman
Odd how the better things get in Iraq the more pessimistic the commenting becomes. People are too impatient these days, it took us 9 years to finish up in Germany, and 13 in Japan, is it supposed to take 5 years in Iraq?
I’ve always wondered why Arabs fire their weapons in the air as a sign of rejoicing e.g. at weddings, murders and lynchings.
Perry,
Yep a Mauser model 1896, lovely.
This is not about Zonko being a good or bad shot, but about him being a cretin with no knowledge of weapons handling. Anyone even marginally trained learns how the fir selector lever works, and how to clear stoppages – and they learn that before ever they are allowed to live fire.
Talk about giving a baboon a machine gun!
Why, oh why would you keep footage of stuff like that around. You know that any particular base may have to be abandoned. Stuff that is of negative value (only helps the other side) shouldn’t be kept unless you’re getting ready to stick the knife in with an internal power play.
As for Churchill, after 3 years of combat where there would have been significant opportunities to fire for real, I would expect that he would have been able to clear a weapon, Zarqawi can’t. I would have expected that Churchill would have surrounded himself with enough talent to get him out of any jam with a weapon. Zarqawi didn’t (sizzle *ouch*).
Saif said:
Probably because it’s cheaper than fireworks. Americans do it too, although the government has been actively discouraging the practice for as long as I can remember.
First Cheney, and now this. Not a good year for evil scumbags with firearms…
I find it interesting tht the military was willing to use this for their own propaganda purposes–the unreliable weapon Zarqawi can’t clear is US military issue. In America it’s called the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, but elsewhere its known as the FN Minimi. (A guy I went to high school with carried one in the Gulf War, and it jammed frequently on him too.)
“I’ve always wondered why Arabs fire their weapons in the air as a sign of rejoicing e.g. at weddings, murders and lynchings.”
Because guns are the ultimate symbol of their society, of course. See also the way American’s wave flags in the air, and the British wave glasses of alchohol. Depressing, isn’t it?
I don’t think attrition combat is exactly what you meant.
I believe the normal utilization of the term, follows the following nomeclature :
“maneuver” combat – more or less the first phase of Gulf II – large sweeping maneuvers by major units leading sometimes pitched battles. Germany’s WWII exercise into Russia to the gates of Moscow also qualifies. All of WII North Africa. It helps to keep the force density relatively low.
“Attrition” is where fairly well matched forces sit and grind one another down, but a “shooting war” nonetheless. WWI, western front, once everyone starts digging trenches is the classic horrific example. The winner is the one with the most men/gear/deep pockets. If this were Iraq the US would win last tuesday.
What we have in Iraq , where one side controls the anything they tactically want to, but can’t achieve a firm victory is what US Army types refer to to as “LIC” low intensity conflict. While it has “attrition warfare” ideas, in that there’s no real grand movement, it’s mostly a political war where you turn the population for/against the relatively small numbers of one sides fighters that count on the population ( or a subgroup) for cover/logisitics & etc… The “dominant” player isn’t defeat by guns, but by politics.
The allies try to cause losses to the bad guys at a rate that is unsustainable for them to maintain pressure on the good guys in order to buy time for the politics to become more favourable…whilst the bad guys try to cause a (much lower) rate of losses to the US forces that gives politicians in the USA enough leverage to cause a political defeat for the US government whilst destabilizing the local politics with terrorist style attacks against civilians at a rate that makes the local political system melt down.
But the key thing is that it is not about positional warfare at all, it is just about maintaining the will to keep fighting in the face of a given rate of casualties, which is pretty defines attrition warfare, at least in the strategic sence… it may not be the trenches in WWI but that is what it is.
However I think we are not really disagreeing with the essentials but more with the semantics.
Actually Perry, it is the essentials. During WWI Lord Haig stated that the Western Powers would win because they had more manpower. He was right. That is attritional warfare.
Causing unacceptable casualty levels on the other side is something else. That is warfare fought to cause the remaining majority enemy to surrender. It is unclear in Iraq what that would mean becaues it is unclear who exactly the enemy are. There are Sunni, Shia, warlords, scumbags, Baa’thists and subdivisions of all of the above.
Iraq, alas, is a war where the only likely victory is to create one or two stable Islamic states (+ a relatively free-wheeling Kurdistan – that’s a given). That’s the best we can hope for.
As Bismark once said of a cause, “It isn’t worth the bones of a single Pommeranian grenadier”. That’s how I feel about disposing dictators to create Ismalic Republic(s). Religion and state do not mix. The West paid enough blood and treasure during the Reformation to find that out. Why should our soldiers die and be maimed to repeat to create such intrinsically flawed states?
Reliability, thy name is Kalashnikov.
Why in the hell we don’t use them is a mystery……….or maybe a copyright/patent issue…..or downright unpatriotic, dammit.
No respectable guns; no respectable boots; no respectsble armour; no respect for our military from a government that itself deserves none.
The Kalashnikov is reliable (and all that) but accurate it ain’t.
re the Kalashnikov thing, I was watching a news report from a Russian air base in the ’90s. The base looked like a field after a rock concert. Litter everywhere, broken bottles, you name it.
The American interviewer commented on basing fighter planes out of a mess like this. Why don’t they take better care of their equipment? What if something got sucked into an engine? The Russian looked at the American and asked, ‘Would you really want to go into combat with a plane that can be taken down by littering?’
Several years later I was at an airshow where the Blue Angels were performing. Just after the start of the show there was a delay. A long delay. A very long delay that was finally explained by the announcer. One of the fighter jets in the show had hit a bird and sustained damage. The other pilots visually inspected it carefully and he eventually landed and took up the back up plane.
It reminded me of the Russian’s comment.
We don’t use AK-47s for several reasons:
a) at 7.62mm, an AK carrying infantryman is able to carry 1/3 the ammo of a .223 M16 carrier. This means that the AK guy needs to be three times more accurate to kill the same number of baddies.
b) because of the very loose tolerances of the AK, it is far less accurate than the M16. The M16 regularly wins all top prizes at the Camp Perry National Shoots. While this also means the AK can still be fired more reliably after crawling through a swampy mudhole, AKs also tend to be hand fitted together, while M16s more precision machined parts are far more interchangeable.
c) dirt poor third worlders shoot AK-47s because they can’t afford anything better.
As for the other complaints, I’m a military vet. The equipment used today is far better than in yesteryear. One problem with our troops today is that they get spoiled in the feelings-based basic training we have now. Basic training is to kick the civilian attitudes out and fill the void with military discipline and precision. That doesn’t happen anymore, and the coeducational military receiving illiterates of both genders (HS diploma or not) is dumbed down and softened. Physical standards for women are 1/4 – 1/2 that of men.
The real operators: SEALs, green berets (the real ones) don’t like body armor, it weighs you down. They don’t like helmets, because it interferes with your hearing. Nor do the troops need armored hummers. Armoring a hummer is inane: it makes the vehicle top heavy and slow, so it can’t get out of a firefight fast, and is likely to roll when doing evasive maneuvers, particularly on uneven or soft ground.
RE: Russian turbines: the best ones are no more rugged than ours. Ruggedized ones have terrible Thrust to Weight ratios and are useless for high performance aircraft.
Russian military discipline and morale sucks. Only a drunk moron who should be cashiered would keep his airbase in such pisspoor condition.
ANY aircraft sucking in a bird is going to malfunction. When I was stationed at Cannon AFB outside Clovis, NM, I was chowing down at the flightline cafe below the flight tower. The Base Commander happened to sit down across from me when he got a call on his radio about an in flight emergency called in by one of our F-111D Aardvarks up near Tucumcari.
About 20 minutes later, it landed, with the nose cone hanging down like a wicker basked that had been punched out of shape. We rushed out the the aircraft as it came to a stop. The Weapons Safety Officer, a ‘butterbar’ lieutenant, hopped out with wet pants, freaking out. The pilot, a Colonel and vietnam vet, was as calm as you please. Seems they’d flow through a thermal over a Mesa, sucked an eagle in one jet intake, killed that engine. Sucked another one in the ECS intake on the other side, resulting in bloody snow in the cockpit, while a third struck the nose cone head on, shattering its composite structure (resulting in the basket-like appearance), while a fourth eagle followed it, breaking through the avionics bay, the cockpit capsule wall, and dying in the lieutenants lap.
Of course, the butterbar was ready to eject. The Colonel told him to shut up, cranked the remaining engine to full afterburner, and with the nose hanging down and the other engine dead, limped back to base at 250 mph.
If the Russians want to engineer their hardware with anti-poultry measures, fine. When their enemies start launching surface-to-air chickens at them, they’ll be well-equipped. Some planes need to be flying bricks, and some planes don’t. You put your design budget where it’s needed.
“No respectable guns; no respectable boots; no respectsble armour; no respect for our military from a government that itself deserves none.”
The average infantryman in Iraq carries sixty pounds of gear. Incarnating him as the armor-plated second coming of the Pillsbury Doughboy is unlikely to improve his chances, being as the ancient and sovereign remedy against gunshot wounds is being somewhere other than where the gun is aiming. Gear is heavy, ammo is heavy, water is heavy, and the soldiers themselves have in many cases observed a preference for running after bad guys rather than trotting ominously in their wake.
Suggesting that the US government holds the nation’s military in disdain denies the basic fact that any management of any war is always accompanied by mistakes, chicanery, stupid shortages, and tragic blindness. Accusing the government of wilful contempt of its military for such oversights suggests only a lack of perspective regarding how messy, ugly, and error-prone an occupation actually is.
Re; the war of attrition;
You also have to factor in that the western media is in league with the enemy in Iraq. They seek to mis-inform
and demoralize the weak minded.
… see inane comment by Ken Hagler about Cheney above.
I suspect this may be the new face of warfare in democracies where the home team’s media uses the enemy’s talking points to inform their coverage and their politicians accept money and influence from our enemies. As for Zarky, he botched his beheadings as far as the dictates of Sharia (no bones are supposed to be broken I’m told), so one should not expect this wack job to figure out some thing as complex as an automatic weapon,
Commenters come from (among other places) both sides of the pond & confusion occurs when a source (of criticism, maybe) is unclear. My previous remarks were with reference to UK forces who, in comparison with their US counterparts, are pretty miserably equipped. Our leaders seem not to feel that those whose lives are at risk deserve the best equipment that money, currently thrown at spurious social causes in vast amounts, can buy.
The Kalashnikov may not be supremely accurate but it is reliable & what would you rather have in a tight corner. I recall that the Bren was a real scattershot, slower than the MG34 & it’s following marks but it was reliable. (Unfortunately, so was the MG34.)
When I mentioned armour I was talking about the ‘Guderian’ type, not the body type, although that too should be more available to those exposed when travelling in AFVs. I am aware that the foot soldier would rather not (sometimes) be lumbered with it. As to Humvees, I cannot understand why our cousins use ‘soft’ vehicles in areas of clear & present danger. They are to RPGs as flowers to honeybees. Perhaps someone can explain.
Regarding Churchill and guns, he didn’t need to be a good shot, because he seemed to prefer something that didn’t need to be aimed too carefully.
Thompson………Yes, had one, awesome. The kick of one .45 is staggering; streamed, they’re a tad remarkable.
Uain,
It doesn’t surprise me that Sharia observes “the niceties” of beheading. That’s just typical muzzie.
The media is important in the way you say. In this war one tearful Iraqi orphan, especially a pretty little girl, or a boy who is a Beckham fan (See! Just like Us) is worth 10 dead US Marines to our enemies.
It’s the (il)logical conclusion of asymmetric warfare. And it could well prove to be very effective because it’s got many parallels to Gandhi’s passive resistance.
I don’t think Zarky has the wit to see this. He was a small-fry drug dealer and petty criminal before he decided Islamic insurgency was a more effective route for him to express his sociopathic urges.
But Zarky ain’t the only donkey in the paddock…
PS. Someone asked why muslim-types always fire AK47s in the air at celebrations… I’ve often pondered this. Eventually had to conclude it’s because they’re bloody idiots.
I have put literally tens of thousands of rounds through various Kalashnikovs and I assure you, they are ‘fit for purpose’… it is an assault rifle not a sniper rifle. If someone cannot hit an STK target up to 400 metres with an AK-whatever, chances are it is their shooting or circumstances (i.e. the fact they are giving way to incoming traffic) that is the problem, not the rifle.
I think that in the real world, with incoming, no one can be reasonably expected to hit anything at longer range than that.
Sure, but the fairer comparison these days with the AK-74 rather than AK-47, in which case there is no significant difference in ammo weight between the 5.56mm NATO and 5.45mm Soviet.
Personally I think 7.62mmx39 is too slow, 5.56mmx45 is too weak (ditto 5.45×39) and 7.62mmx51 is too heavy. The 6.8mmx43 or 6.5 Grendel would be better all round assault weapon rounds in my view.
Sure, but ‘fit for purpose’ does not mean Camp Perry, it means some godforsaken shit hole in the Third World usually. Weapon accuracy is important but nothing, and I do mean nothing, matters more that when the trigger gets pulled, the weapon goes BANG.
In truth even though the AK’s are significantly better when it comes to reliability, I think the M-16 family is reliable ‘enough’ under most conditions, but the Kalashnikov is likewise accurate ‘enough’. It is very much ‘horses for courses’.
You are quite correct about the ability to swap parts however. I always found AKs from the same factory were pretty much swappable but it was a crap shoot if they came from different ones. That said I put a lot of rounds through a Croatian AK-74S with various East German and Chinese bits and it worked fine… and yet on several occasions I have swapped bits between Chinese AK’s and sometimes had the weapon become quite uncooperative.
If you have little in the way of logistic tail and training, the AK is simply a better weapon. For any militia army in fact. Quite a bit more reliable, easier to repair in an improvised armoury, much more forgiving about not being cleaned for long periods etc, etc.
Personally, put some 4 power low profile glass on one of the AK-74 family and on balance I would prefer it to any of the M-16 variants for general purpose festivities. But it is all a matter of various subjective value judgements really, there is no single ‘correct’ answer to ‘what is the best weapon’ in my view.
Just don’t get me going on that preposterous OICW.
From the accounts of Walter H. Thompson, WSC’s personal bodyguard, Churchill was a very impressive shot with his (Thompson’s own) .45, with the LE .303 and a variety of other weapons including the C96 ‘Ripper’ Mauser referenced above.
He couldn’t use a sword well due to a recurring shoulder injury from his schooldays, which was why he used a standard issue revolver in Afghanistan and on the NW frontier and the C96 at the 21st’s Omdurman charge.
Nick M-
Besides Gandhi, I would add that the US media is enthralled with the idea they could re-create the Vietnam disaster. Over there, we swept the enemy off the battle field, trained an effective SVA and kept the NVA penned in to the North. It was the constant mis-reporting of the war (the same template is used today)
that eventually gave cover to the leftist politicos to pull the plug on funding the SVA.
Can you imagine if any of us did the stuff Zarky and his pals do, the censure we would receive? Yet the hapless media portray anyone with darker skin and an accent as being unlike us and not capable of democracy, and prone to violence. Note Darfur. Lack of interest because there are no evil white men involved.
Yeah, Uain, it’s so much easier to do the news if you set it to a script from 30 years ago…
It would appear that we have a “new” enemy. The Mahdi Army&trade of Moqtada al-Sadr, the nutters us Brits have been trying to appease in Basra for the last few years brought down a Lynx…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168940,00.html
If, as seems likely, they used a Russian SAM supplied by that nice Mr Mahmoud Armageddon of Iran then what?
My personal feelings on this are not suitable for respectable good folk like yourselves. Certainly not on a Sunday.
It would appear that Angela Merkel is under pressure to prevent Mr Armageddon from pitching up in Germany to watch Iran go out of the World Cup. In particular, the holocaust-denying scumbag wants to see Iran’s first game against Mexico in Nuremberg.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2168495,00.html
I think Mahmoud ought to be able to enjoy the finest German hospitality, and a full itinery for his trip should include a trip to Dachau.
Or they could just poison him. I’d just love to see the headline, “Iranian President takes a turn for the wurst“.