Compare what the IDF are doing in Gaza--turning whole swaths of dense urban sprawl into a cratered moonscape--with how the US did its counterinsurgency work in densely-populated urban environments in Iraq like Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi. Did we level whole neighborhoods via air strikes to get a few Al Qaeda in Iraq cells? No. D…
Compare what the IDF are doing in Gaza--turning whole swaths of dense urban sprawl into a cratered moonscape--with how the US did its counterinsurgency work in densely-populated urban environments in Iraq like Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi. Did we level whole neighborhoods via air strikes to get a few Al Qaeda in Iraq cells? No. Did we cordon off and clear out entire cities block by block on foot via ground troops? Yes. Did we focus on getting the supporting populace (Iraqi Sunnis) to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq by building shit for them while also doing everything possible to not produce civilian casualties and then paying families of civilians killed on accident with hard cash ($10k+ per victim)? Yes. Is Israel taking this same kind of approach via appealing to the Palestinian populace and trying to wedge them away from Hamas? No.
There's your alternative model, from right here at home. By 2009, the Iraqi Sunnis had turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq, which ended both the counter-US insurgency *and* the Sunni-Shia civil war that raged there from 2006-2008. Our involvement in Iraq was a ultimately big mistake, but there are real lessons that came out of that mistake that Israel could learn from. The success of this approach to doing counterinsurgency in the urban environment is one of them. Israel clearly didn't take any notes.
Did I say there weren't civilian casualties? No. Did I say that what Israel is doing via airstrikes is orders of magnitude worse than what we did in Iraq? Yes.
Do you even deploy bro? Or do you just read articles about conflicts and then jump on the Dunning-Kruger bandwagon from there?
I don't have "to deploy" to know that a very large number of civilians died in the fight against ISIS, not just in Mosul, but also in other towns/cities. (as many as 40k civilians killed, in a city that was 800k; compare with Gaza with almost 2M people.)
AND that those cities were just about flattened in the combat.
Who was dropping the bombs/artillery? The US.
So, if you think the US was doing something drastically different, you are very wrong.
BTW - you can look up what Amnesty said about the US's precision bombing and minimizing of civilian casualties in the Second Battle of Raqqa (about 80% of buildings destroyed):
The scale of bombing was not the same in Mosul as it is in Gaza (not just via population numbers but via square acreage of urban sprawl reduced to rubble), and I don't think you or Amnesty International is differentiating between airstrikes or the blasts from ground combat (IEDs, ATGMs, etc.). Mosul also unfolded over the course of some 9 months whereas we're only about 1.5 months into the Gaza operation. You can also make a comparison between Fallujah--a city the Us Marines cordoned off and cleared block by block without reducing it to rubble from airstrikes--and Gaza and in viewing that comparison you'll see a whole lot more airstrikes in Gaza compared to Fallujah.
Do you honestly think the IDF couldn't have cordoned off Gaza and cleared it block by block with limited airstrikes called in by fighters on the ground who are actively taking fire rather than doing airstrikes at such a large scale *in preparation for* a ground offensive? Like, they literally could've just did the ground offensive without the massive airstrike campaign that preceded it and it would have literally resulted in thousands of fewer civilian casualties. What was so hard about doing that? Especially considering that they didn't know where the hostages were and could have very easily killed some of them in airstrikes.
No, they couldn't have cordoned off Gaza and went through block by block.
That's the tragic difference between Gaza and Mosul; at least in Mosul people had a CHANCE to get out.
In Gaza, there was no way Israel was going to let 2M Palestinians (most who support the destruction of Israel and are happy to kill Israelis) into Israel. Egypt wasn't going to do it for largely the same reasons (Hamas).
And, not to mention the fact that Hamas' STRATEGY is to have maximum civilian deaths for PR purposes.
The Israelis, according to reports, are warning people of bombings, but there's only so much that can be done with the population density being what it is.
But this is why war is so terrible. Innocent people die. But Hamas, and the Gazans with their support of "death to Israel" and "resistance" mentality (they could have "resisted" and fought Hamas, but they support them) brought this on themselves.
They literally could have Gaza cordoned off and cleared it block by block. You don't have to move Palestinians into Israel to do that. We didn't take the whole civilian populace out of Fallujah when we cleared it--in fact, that's part of why the cordon was there in the first place, so as not to allow people out because the terrorists can get out of the city pretending they are civilians that way.
What the IDF should have done was to enforce a cordon around all of Gaza and cleared it block by block via ground forces rather than doing massive airstrikes that killed thousands of civilians and then clearing it block by block while letting whoever wants to get out flee the city--including terrorists who hide among the displaced civilians. The IDF simply had better options and chose not to take them in my book. Period.
We very much did evacuate the civilian population before the Battle of Fallujah:
"Although many of Falluja's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault, between 30,000 and 50,000 are believed to have remained during the fighting."
"Oh, and the US used heavy weapons to flatten buildings where bad guys were hiding. Fallujah was pretty devastated afterwards."
The key difference is that we used heavy weapons *when our forces were on the ground inside the city and taking fire* from these guys inside of buildings. That's not us doing massive airstrikes across the city *before* our troops are even within the city limits. I cannot stress enough the major differences there. Again, cordon off the city, send ground troops in to clear it block by block, but *don't* do a mass airstrike campaign on the city and all the civilians inside of it before you even send troops into the city. The only airstrikes that should have happened is on targets that weren't close to collateral civilian damage, otherwise, hold the airstrikes until your troops are inside and can identify structures with Hamas fighters shooting at the IDF from within the structure. Until you take fire from a structure with civilians inside of it you should not be dropping ordnance on it, end of story.
I really think you are oversimplifying what "cordon off block by block" entails.
How exactly are they supposed to do this in a dense crowded city, all while under fire, and with an enemy that has an extensive tunnel network to move around in and get out of said cordon.
I said to cordon off the city and clear it block by block. That means setting up vehicle checkpoints at all the entrances and exits from the city. That's not hard to do, especially if you already have a wall up that surrounds the city. Once the cordon around the city is established, you clear the city out with infantry block by block, house by house. Yes, it sets up a possible Mogadishu scenario. But what it avoids is a thousands of dead children in about six weeks scenario. The IDF are going to lose troops. That's what happens to troops when they go to war. What Israel *should* be doing is avoiding civilian casualties at all costs because getting rid of Hamas entails getting the Palestinians to turn against them, which they are far less likely to do if you're leveling their entire apartment buildings to get after a handful of fighters. Even the Bush administration--as dumb as it was--understood this. Why the Israeli government does not understand it with all of our efforts in hindsight is beyond me.
Compare what the IDF are doing in Gaza--turning whole swaths of dense urban sprawl into a cratered moonscape--with how the US did its counterinsurgency work in densely-populated urban environments in Iraq like Baghdad, Mosul, Fallujah, and Ramadi. Did we level whole neighborhoods via air strikes to get a few Al Qaeda in Iraq cells? No. Did we cordon off and clear out entire cities block by block on foot via ground troops? Yes. Did we focus on getting the supporting populace (Iraqi Sunnis) to turn against Al Qaeda in Iraq by building shit for them while also doing everything possible to not produce civilian casualties and then paying families of civilians killed on accident with hard cash ($10k+ per victim)? Yes. Is Israel taking this same kind of approach via appealing to the Palestinian populace and trying to wedge them away from Hamas? No.
There's your alternative model, from right here at home. By 2009, the Iraqi Sunnis had turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq, which ended both the counter-US insurgency *and* the Sunni-Shia civil war that raged there from 2006-2008. Our involvement in Iraq was a ultimately big mistake, but there are real lessons that came out of that mistake that Israel could learn from. The success of this approach to doing counterinsurgency in the urban environment is one of them. Israel clearly didn't take any notes.
LOL.
Bro...You really need to read about what happened to Mosul when the Iraqis/US waged war on ISIS.
They literally destroyed the city to save the city.
But sure...great example of how it was done with no civilian casualties.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/09/mosul-iraq-anniversary-islamic-state-liberation-battle-reconstruction/
Did I say there weren't civilian casualties? No. Did I say that what Israel is doing via airstrikes is orders of magnitude worse than what we did in Iraq? Yes.
Do you even deploy bro? Or do you just read articles about conflicts and then jump on the Dunning-Kruger bandwagon from there?
I don't have "to deploy" to know that a very large number of civilians died in the fight against ISIS, not just in Mosul, but also in other towns/cities. (as many as 40k civilians killed, in a city that was 800k; compare with Gaza with almost 2M people.)
AND that those cities were just about flattened in the combat.
Who was dropping the bombs/artillery? The US.
So, if you think the US was doing something drastically different, you are very wrong.
BTW - you can look up what Amnesty said about the US's precision bombing and minimizing of civilian casualties in the Second Battle of Raqqa (about 80% of buildings destroyed):
https://raqqa.amnesty.org/briefing.html
The scale of bombing was not the same in Mosul as it is in Gaza (not just via population numbers but via square acreage of urban sprawl reduced to rubble), and I don't think you or Amnesty International is differentiating between airstrikes or the blasts from ground combat (IEDs, ATGMs, etc.). Mosul also unfolded over the course of some 9 months whereas we're only about 1.5 months into the Gaza operation. You can also make a comparison between Fallujah--a city the Us Marines cordoned off and cleared block by block without reducing it to rubble from airstrikes--and Gaza and in viewing that comparison you'll see a whole lot more airstrikes in Gaza compared to Fallujah.
Do you honestly think the IDF couldn't have cordoned off Gaza and cleared it block by block with limited airstrikes called in by fighters on the ground who are actively taking fire rather than doing airstrikes at such a large scale *in preparation for* a ground offensive? Like, they literally could've just did the ground offensive without the massive airstrike campaign that preceded it and it would have literally resulted in thousands of fewer civilian casualties. What was so hard about doing that? Especially considering that they didn't know where the hostages were and could have very easily killed some of them in airstrikes.
No, they couldn't have cordoned off Gaza and went through block by block.
That's the tragic difference between Gaza and Mosul; at least in Mosul people had a CHANCE to get out.
In Gaza, there was no way Israel was going to let 2M Palestinians (most who support the destruction of Israel and are happy to kill Israelis) into Israel. Egypt wasn't going to do it for largely the same reasons (Hamas).
And, not to mention the fact that Hamas' STRATEGY is to have maximum civilian deaths for PR purposes.
The Israelis, according to reports, are warning people of bombings, but there's only so much that can be done with the population density being what it is.
But this is why war is so terrible. Innocent people die. But Hamas, and the Gazans with their support of "death to Israel" and "resistance" mentality (they could have "resisted" and fought Hamas, but they support them) brought this on themselves.
This is FAFO on a huge scale.
They literally could have Gaza cordoned off and cleared it block by block. You don't have to move Palestinians into Israel to do that. We didn't take the whole civilian populace out of Fallujah when we cleared it--in fact, that's part of why the cordon was there in the first place, so as not to allow people out because the terrorists can get out of the city pretending they are civilians that way.
What the IDF should have done was to enforce a cordon around all of Gaza and cleared it block by block via ground forces rather than doing massive airstrikes that killed thousands of civilians and then clearing it block by block while letting whoever wants to get out flee the city--including terrorists who hide among the displaced civilians. The IDF simply had better options and chose not to take them in my book. Period.
We very much did evacuate the civilian population before the Battle of Fallujah:
"Although many of Falluja's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault, between 30,000 and 50,000 are believed to have remained during the fighting."
and even then, civilian casualties were high.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/14/iraq.iraq3
Oh, and the US used heavy weapons to flatten buildings where bad guys were hiding. Fallujah was pretty devastated afterwards.
"over 60 percent of Fallujah's buildings were damaged and 20 percent destroyed outright."
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-case-study-7-second-battle-of-fallujah/
"Oh, and the US used heavy weapons to flatten buildings where bad guys were hiding. Fallujah was pretty devastated afterwards."
The key difference is that we used heavy weapons *when our forces were on the ground inside the city and taking fire* from these guys inside of buildings. That's not us doing massive airstrikes across the city *before* our troops are even within the city limits. I cannot stress enough the major differences there. Again, cordon off the city, send ground troops in to clear it block by block, but *don't* do a mass airstrike campaign on the city and all the civilians inside of it before you even send troops into the city. The only airstrikes that should have happened is on targets that weren't close to collateral civilian damage, otherwise, hold the airstrikes until your troops are inside and can identify structures with Hamas fighters shooting at the IDF from within the structure. Until you take fire from a structure with civilians inside of it you should not be dropping ordnance on it, end of story.
I really think you are oversimplifying what "cordon off block by block" entails.
How exactly are they supposed to do this in a dense crowded city, all while under fire, and with an enemy that has an extensive tunnel network to move around in and get out of said cordon.
Sounds a lot like a Mogadishu set up.
I said to cordon off the city and clear it block by block. That means setting up vehicle checkpoints at all the entrances and exits from the city. That's not hard to do, especially if you already have a wall up that surrounds the city. Once the cordon around the city is established, you clear the city out with infantry block by block, house by house. Yes, it sets up a possible Mogadishu scenario. But what it avoids is a thousands of dead children in about six weeks scenario. The IDF are going to lose troops. That's what happens to troops when they go to war. What Israel *should* be doing is avoiding civilian casualties at all costs because getting rid of Hamas entails getting the Palestinians to turn against them, which they are far less likely to do if you're leveling their entire apartment buildings to get after a handful of fighters. Even the Bush administration--as dumb as it was--understood this. Why the Israeli government does not understand it with all of our efforts in hindsight is beyond me.