John Swain – I think you are at least somewhat correct in a comparison of the UK military to the US Army, but I think if you look at the Marines, it is a different story. As a Canadian, I don’t have a dog in the fight, but I have had the pleasure of working with the British Army, the US Army and the US Marines. The US Army has (or maybe had) a “technocratic” outlook (a result of their emphasis on high-tech gear) whereas the Brits and the Marines both emphasize pure soldiering at the small unit level. I think the US Army has begun to rememdy this as a result of experience in Iraq. The Brits have a kind of relaxed stoicism that the US Army just doesn’t have – probably a result of years of “doing more with less”. All that said, the quality of the soldier is basically irrelevant if they aren’t allowed to fight – and I have no doubt that the squaddies would have fought if allowed to.
Basra and the surronding area should have been amenable to a more velvet glove approach than the Sunni Triangle, but somewhere along the way Brit policy forgot to show Sadr the mailed fist inside the glove. Fallujah was always a snake pit – it had to be cleaned out the hard way (and the US screwed up big time by backing off the fist time). Basra should never have gotten to the state where it needed to be “cleared” – but the militias weren’t crushed when they were still weak, so they got strong and the fight was consequently much bigger. It took the Americans years to realize that you have to get out from behid the wire and get among the people, let them see you and know that you are there to protect them. The Brits knew this at first but just as the Americans were figuring it out, the Brits were retreating behind their wire. It doesn’t matter if you wear a brainbucket or a beret, it matters where you are, where you sleep and whether the locals know you. There’s nothing wrong with wearing shades on patrol – if fact, now that the Americans are perceived as winners, the Iraqis want oakleys and WileyXs to (or at least replicas thereof).
