The U.S. conducted major offensives to weed out insurgents; on April 2004 American forces drove insurgents out of Fallujah in a large-scale ground attack. However, al Qaeda retook the city weeks later. The offensive operations conducted by the U.S. forces were effective as they would disrupt insurgent control of Iraqi cities, but the U.S. was not establishing strong security in the areas just captured. The result of little to no security in the cities retaken by American forces resulted in al Qaeda taking back most positions. The U.S. had to retake Fallujah in November and the operation cost more than 90 American lives. The U.S. needed to stop making the same mistake of clearing an enemy area and losing it once troops would move to the next …show more content…
had to rethink their plan for counter insurgency due to many mistakes being made regarding the military’s tactics for fighting insurgents and the way America trained the Iraqi security forces. Military officials began to look back at America’s past wars like Vietnam and El Salvador to see how unconventional wars were won. Americans were able to see many “comparisons with the long, soul-destroying counterinsurgency in Vietnam.” In an unconventional war the enemy is more likely to have success because he has the home field advantage, knows the landscape, environment and local people much better than the foreign force. During Vietnam the U.S. had a high number of casualties reaching almost 60,000 as the U.S. was fighting an unconventional enemy, the Vietcong. As casualties increased the U.S. began to train and advise the South Vietnamese in order to defeat the …show more content…
and Iraqi forces cleared city after city they noticed the number of insurgents still continued to rise. The biggest objective was to prevent foreign fighters from coming into Iraq because as the Iraqi and U.S. forces eliminated insurgents more continued to flood into Iraq. A majority of these foreign fighters who were moving into Iraq were coming through the Iraqi town of Tal Afar in North Western Iraq. There were over 500 insurgents in Tal Afar who were commanded by al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The city became a terrorist cell where insurgents created a safe haven, weapons depot and training camp. A year before, U.S. forces ran al Qaeda out of the city but returned soon after. U.S. forces were determined to prevent insurgents from retaking any more area. On September 2nd, 2005 U.S. armored troops along with 5,000 Iraqi forces staged an operation to take back Tal Afar. At the end of the operation more than 200 insurgents were killed and many more ran away. The success of the mission is another great example of how the training from SOF and allowing the Iraqi security forces to fight their own war have been successful at battling
September 11, 2001, Osama Bin Laden decided to “wake the sleeping giant.” The US immediately sent SOF units and CIA officers to recon the area and meet with the Northern Alliance. The primary battle leading up to this operation was Tora Bora, which was absent of conventional forces. Up until this point, the war on terror was predominantly a Special Operations fight along with Air Force for overhead support.3 SOF and the Northern Alliance had already displaced Taliban forces out of many towns and villages in northern Afghanistan to gain control of key terrain. Key towns in northern Afghanistan including Taloqan, Konduz, Herat, and Mazar-e Sharif took only three weeks to clear.4 The SOF units were making huge impacts across the country calling in air strikes. At the same time the SOF units were diligently...
Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, “Che” Guevara, Osama bin Laden and others have professed unique qualifications as innovators and practitioners of Guerrilla warfare. However, in our relatively short military history, we have periodically had to use or defend against irregular warfare. During the French and Indian Wars as well as the Revolutionary War, we were the guerrillas. In the Civil War, there were the partisan operations of Mosby, Forrest and the outlaw Quantrill, who played a key role in the Confederacy’s ability to wage effective war against the numerically and industrially superior Union for over four years. It is often forgotten, that regular forces require a ratio of ten to one to prevail against a partisan operating on their native soil3. Nevertheless, one thing remains constant: the adaptability and courage of the American Soldier under the harshest of circumstances continues to allow them to prevail.
No matter how well intentioned the invasion of Iraq may have been, it was an act of violence and deception that has left many American men dead for no clear reason.
Operation Desert Shield was launched by President H.W. Bush to increase the amount of forces and troops in areas surrounding Kuwait and mainly in Saudi Arabia in response to the 120,000 troops and 2,000 tanks invading Kuwait. The United Nations called for the Iraqi army’s extraction from their presence in Kuwait, however Hussein went ag...
It has been known that the Vietnam War affected many American soldiers who were involved in the war physically and psychologically. The Vietnam War was one of the most memorable wars in history. Many Americans’ lives lost for no objective at all. Chapter 10 informed us about how the Vietnam War started and what really happened during that time. It also gave us background information about Vietnam Veterans and nurses who were involved in the war and what they went through during the war. I had the opportunity to interview a Vietnam Veteran also.
The Vietnam War was one of the most prolonged wars in US history. Although there were no exact dates, it is believed that US involvement lasted for around 20 years. The US went into this war hoping they could stop the spread of communism and defeat the northern Vietnamese. The battles were like nothing they had seen before and it was very difficult for the soldiers to differentiate between the enemies and civilians. To make it even more difficult for the soldiers, their “information was based on faulty intelligence”. Võ Nguyên Giáp, a northern Vietnamese general, believed that the US and the southern Vietnamese had an unstable relationship. He hoped that through the Tet Offensive the US would believe they were no longer worth defending. Fighting was done using guerrilla warfare which blurred the lines of legitimate and illegitimate killings and this had effect of bringing peoples morales down. Support for the war had always been split but this battle caused even the government to reconsider their involvement. The Tet offensive changed the US's attitude towards the Vietnam war by leading to further anti-war protests, a credibility gap in America, and for President Johnson to negotiate peace and not seek reelection.
and the VC during the Tet cease-fire (6). The cease-fire was a peaceful and hospitable
On March 18, 2003, Coalition forces would launch the initial attacks on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. A full invasion of the country followed, and Hussein was overthrown from power. While the end of Hussein’s oppressive reign was considered a victory for many of the Iraqi people, the Sunnis of the Ba’ath Party refused to accept his demise. Although the Sunnis were in the minority, the city of Fallujah would remain home to many of the Ba’ath Party supporters. On March 31, 2004, almost a year to date from the end of Hussein’s reign, four American Blackwater contactors working in Fallujah were attacked, brutally beaten, burned and dismembered by a group of Iraqi insurgents. Two of the bodies were hung from a bridge for all of the citizens of Fallujah to see, and a mob style celebration took place in the city. The highly publicized incident would be the igniter for the First Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Vigilant Resolve. On May 1, 2004, the battle would end with the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the city and control being turned over to the newly formed Fallujah Brigade. The mission as a whole was a failure, and the shortcomings of Operation Vigilant Resolve were ultimately a demonstration of the underestimation of the power, size, efficiency, organization and control that the Insurgent Forces had in Iraq as well as the lack of a consistent strategic plan from the American forces.
The first battle in Fallujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is known as Operation Vigilant Resolve. This battle is regarded as one of the biggest single defeats that the United States Military has suffered throughout all its campaigns during OIF. The United States and international media outlets exploited this defeat, which in turn, bolstered Al Qaeda recruiting in Fallujah. This offensive failure and retreat was backed by a huge public outcry for troop withdrawal and successful exploitation of recruiting propaganda by the insurgents.
On September 11, 2001, our country was hit with enormous devastation, just after eight o’clock a.m. the first of the twin towers was struck by a suicide pilot, the second was struck slightly later. The towers fell just after ten o’clock a.m., devastating the entire country, and ruining the lives of many. A plane also hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and another in rural Pennsylvania causing just as much grief. The U.S. is still in mourning, but standing tall, more Americans showed their American pride in the following months than ever before. In the months to come the only thing that was on the minds of millions was: Should we go to war? War is necessary for the survival of our country. Going to war with Iraq is a fight against terrorism. Many people believed that going to war with Iraq is unjust. Some believe that there are other ways in looking at the situation.
After Vietnam erupted into civil war, both sides started employing clever tactics and new t...
At the start of the war both sides used a similar tactic: to gain the
The world’s history is majorly shaped by mega wars that happen both inside and outside the boundaries of individual nations. Almost every sovereign state in the world had to forcefully liberate itself from its colonizers and oppressors mainly through warfare. For instance, America had to fight a long and exhausting revolutionary war against the British before it could attain its independence in 1783, likewise is the fate of many other nations. It is important to understand the two distinct types of wars that exist and their implications. Guerrilla warfare and the conventional military warfare are two types of war that are very different in their execution and military approach. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the similarities and differences existing between the American war in Vietnam and the American Revolution (Vetter, 1997).
The official era of the second Indochina war initiated on August 5, 1964, to May 7, 1975. Making it the longest war in both New Zealand and American history. The 1964 defeat of the French in the first Indochina war against the Viet Minh, spurred both New Zealand and British- American beliefs of the Viet Minh being a threat and a pivotal point in the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia. American President at the time, Dwight Eisenhower subscribed to the domino theory, which claimed that if one nation fell to communism, the rest would fall, like dominoes, in which the 33rd President of The United States, Harry S. Truman, believed in the policy of containment which is the concept of preventing the expansion of communism. This initiated the
The Vietnam War took action after the First Indochina War, in fact the Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War. This war included the communist North Vietnam and its allies of the Viet Cong, the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies going against South Vietnam and its allies, the Unites States, Philippines and other anti-communist allies. It was a very long and conflicting war that actually started in 1954 and ended in 1975. The war began after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist party in North Vietnam. More than three million people were killed during the war, this included approximately 58,000 Americans and more than half of the killed were actually Vietnamese civilians. The Vietnam War ended by the communist forces giving up control of Saigon and the next year the country was then unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Many people, including both men and women were directly and indirectly involved within the war itself. Women worked many different roles in the Vietnam War, and they are most definitely not credited enough for all that they actually did.