By which I mean to say the second liberation of Baghdad by US forces:

THE American military is planning a “second liberation of Baghdad” to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.

Pacifying the lawless capital is regarded as essential to establishing the authority of the incoming government and preparing for a significant withdrawal of American troops.

Strategic and tactical plans are being laid by US commanders in Iraq and at the US army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Lieutenant- General David Petraeus. He is regarded as an innovative officer and was formerly responsible for training Iraqi troops.

“Once more into the breach, my friends” is a quote from Shakespeare. For our military in Iraq its becoming a redundant strategy. Of course, this time they’ll have the help of the Iraqi Army, whatever that means. I fear though is that we may be looking at Fallujah redux, except on a larger scale:

Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” used by the marines and special forces and armed with rocket launchers and machineguns, are likely to complement the ground attack.

The sources said American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies.

Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained.

Yes, first we blow shit up, then we pick up the garbage. This sounds to me a lot like the pacification program in Vietnam. You remember, the one President Johnson and his genius military advisers conjured up:

After the Guam conference of March 1967, President Johnson demanded a greater share of the U.S. effort in South Vietnam be devoted to the “other war” “to win the minds and hearts of the population.” His insistence on a consolidated U.S. pacification effort was realized with the arrival of Ellsworth Bunker in Saigon, replacing Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. […]

“Pacification is the military, political, economic, and social process of establishing or reestablishing local government responsive to and involving the participation of the people. It includes the provision of sustained, credible territorial security, the destruction of the enemy’s underground government, the assertion or re-assertion of political control and involvement of the people in government, and the initiation of economic and social activity capable of self-sustenance and expansion. The economic element of pacification includes the opening of roads and waterways, and the maintenance of lines of communication important to economic and military activity.”

Wonder how well that worked out? Oh yes, I forgot:

“Defenseless villagers are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set afire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” George Orwell wrote those words in 1946 in “Politics and the English Language.” But he could have been describing the way the U.S. waged war in Vietnam more than two decades later. It has now become generally accepted that the American use of massive firepower has caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians – perhaps, some U.S. officials admit privately, as many as 100,000. Aside from such aberrant incidents as the massacre at My Lai, the commonly cited culprit is “indiscriminate use of firepower,” a phrase that means American military recklessness. But in my opinion, the U.S. military has been guilty of more than recklessness. It can, I believe, be documented that thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed deliberately by U.S. forces.

That is a very serious charge. But any doubts that it is true were dispelled in my mind after an exhaustive examination of one of the most representative – and most “successful” – episodes in the history of pacification in Vietnam. Late in 1968, the U.S. command in Saigon launched an “accelerated pacification program,” a sort of government “land rush,” as officials dubbed it. In support of that campaign, the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division mounted a six-month operation code-named Speedy Express, focusing on the Mekong Delta province of Kien Hoa. In my investigation of Speedy Express, I examined the military record of the operation and interviewed pacification officials familiar with Kien Hoa; I talked with participants in the fighting and combed through hospital records, and I traveled throughout Kien Hoa – on foot, by jeep, in boats and by raft – to talk with the people. All the evidence I gathered pointed to a clear conclusion: a staggering number of noncombatant civilians – perhaps as many as 5,000 according to one official – were killed by U.S. firepower to “pacify” Kien Hoa. The death toll there made the My Lai massacre look trifling by comparison.

Uh, perhaps I should also remind people unfamiliar with Vietnam that pacification worked so well we ended up leaving while the North Vietnamese seized Saigon, effectively ending the war. But why should one little failure stop us now. That was pacification in a rural environment. Surely it will work much better in an urban one like Baghdad?

Let’s see. We plan to contain the Shi’a militias in their enclaves while we invade the Sunni areas and bomb and slaughter the people there, then give the survivors better sewage treatment and garbage pickup? And who will be leading this effort on the ground? The Iraqi army, comprised of the Sunnis’ enemies, former (and also perhaps current) Shi’ite militia and Kurdish Peshmerga elements who will no doubt treat the Sunni population oh so tenderly after our helicopters have raked the streets with .50 caliber machine gun fire and blown up houses with rockets.

Tell me again, how is this “liberation?”