Iraq War: US Counterinsurgency in Tikrit

Last week, I highlighted a quote from conservative columnist David Brooks (my emphasis):

What will happen to the national mood when the news
programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops
will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be
atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the
cause. ...

After the apparent shoot-down of an American helicopter in Tikrit, Iraq, the US retaliated this way: "As part of the new tactic, U.S. jets dropped three 500-pound bombs in the Tikrit area and blasted at least three buildings early Saturday after the Black Hawk crashed -- apparently due to hostile fire."

Billmon links to this story that gives more details about the immediate US response:

In retaliation, American troops backed by Bradley
fighting vehicles swept through Iraqi neighborhoods before dawn Saturday,
blasting houses suspected of being insurgent hideouts with machine guns and
heavy weapons fire.

As Billmon comments:

I'm reasonably sure that driving around a hostile city
taking random pot shots at "suspected" insurgent hideouts and dropping bombs on
uninhabited mud flats are not part of any generally accepted
counterinsurgency doctrine. They're not nearly brutal enough to terrify the
population into submission, but they're a great way of showing the insurgents
you've been reduced to a helpless, impotent rage -- which is pretty much the
state of mind they're trying to induce.

Tags: iraq war