"The UK during the Malay emergency"

OK, I won't argue over the success of the Malay campaign. Success is in the eye of the beholder. I know the UK moved a half billion villagers which effectively hindered the guerrillas, and accomplished that part of the objective, but I doubt they moved that many hearts or minds. The scale of the operation was a little different than Afghanistan and Iraq, but no doubt some valuable lessons to be gleaned.

Still, the US and her allies in SW Asia, stability is fleeting and remains only as long as military superiority (boots on the ground) remains in place and goes to h*ll afterward. So don't waste lives, ours or theirs, by hanging around any longer than you need to. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are going to establish their own security.

Sorry about the thread drift.

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The hearts and minds bit did occur- the villagers moved relatively happily. Why? Because Britain had already said that once we had the CT's sorted, with the help of the locals the Brits would go away and leave the Malayan folks to run the place. There was even a reasonably capable and not too corrupt potential government available to take over.


That was not the case in SE Asia, Afghanistan or Iraq.


N

Yup agree with bengo, Iraq never had an end of game plan, they simply sacked the whole of the police force en mass, the good, the bad and the indifferent, leaving a huge vacuum while the combat troops were suddenly thrust into a peacetime roll which they were ill equipped to carry out resulting in wide spread looting, rape and murder.
Loathed as the police were, they were the ideal force to continue policing the populace while weeding out the Saddam cronies.
All the average Iraqi wanted was a quiet life and the likes of Saddam wouldn't tend to feature in it, but when you wake up to no power, water, food, sewage flowing down the street, murders, rapes and thefts, then you look for someone to blame and remember when things were better, hence the western forces became the target and that anarchy was fueled by every other lowlife that had a beef with the USA, UK or any other western country.