US Forces walk into Najaf death-trap

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Thursday August 12, 2004 18:09 by Hilaal

In the great US tradition of Custers last stand and the bay of pigs , the US army's 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit has driven into what will be for them another memorable US army humiliating defeat.

Mr. Sadr's guerrillas have battled the Iraqi police and American forces for more than a year. Throughout this period the US army has floated like a butterfly and stung like a gnat, thus avoiding heavy casualties.

Now, however, on orders from it's generals many hundreds of miles away in Doha and at the political behest of think-tanks many thousands of miles away in Florida and Washington and against the best advise of West Point trained military officers on the ground, they have committed themselves to the occupation of the old city of Najaf. Where they have no food, no water, no petrol and no beds.


Over the last week, most Shiites in Najaf have remained on the sidelines as American, British and their Iraqi confederates have fought Mr. Sadr's militia but this will soon change. The US and their Confederates were relatively safe on the edges of Najaf where they could skitter back to their base for munitions, food (TV dinners) and rest. They had Mr Sadr's Mahdi Army under observation in the centre of the old city and could fire at will, without care for civilians, at a relatively concentrated although fluid target. The Mahdi Army would be drawn out to try and locate and target the moving ring of US/Confederates, who in turn could call off operations and return to their base outside the town, at any time.


This situation is now completely reversed with the US and it's confederates moving inside the "Trench" prepared by the Mahdi Army, thus leaving themselves in the position of having to sit in fixed , central locations and having to run a dangerous gauntlet each time they want supplies. Under the supervision of an Iranian, the Siege of Najaf by the US has now become their own siege. Thier own dirt-nap. Driven by arrogance and over belief in their military capabilities, the US army has walked into a modern Little Big Horn. One that will unfold slowly.


It will be a slow death and a never forgotten humiliation for the US . Deceived by very poorly trained Shiite forces who posed for the TV cameras, the US imagines this is all they will face. The reality is that for years, as the people of Najaf watched their children dying in tens of thousands, as a result of US/UN imposed sanctions plans have been laid to trap the Americans behind a , "Trench", if ever they would elect a leader foolish enough to direct his army to follow them into the "desert" that is old Najaf. Plans that will become clearer as the weeks go by.
Iran , who has given it's best strategists, equipment and soldiers to this effort also has a long memory for the US and the million it murdered by proxy with it's former henchman Saddam Hussein. Is it surprising that their Iraqi Confederates are comprised of the worst rabble of Saddams army and police? The Shia remember them too and the massacres they carried out for Saddam and the US.


Traps like this lie all over Shiite Iraq and in the Sunni north for the visiting thieves, whose oil is running out . The forces of Al Qaeda also continue to carry out surgical strikes on US forces, it collaborating politicians, police , army and pipelines, where and when it wishes. To the people of Iraq who have seen 1,750,000 of it's people murdered by UN/US sanctions in the past ten years this is only what the US is due.

It seems the Iraqis are prepared to test the myth of Americas military supremacy. The thieves may have marched into Iraq as the worlds undisputed "No1 superpower" but they will leave much humbled and return to a country in economic ruins, on the brink of it's second civil war.