A l’heure o\u00f9 le futur secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense am\u00e9ricain est en train d’annoncer<\/a> que les USA ne sont pas en train de gagner la guerre, Tom Pritchard, auteur d’un livre sur la bataille de Nasiraya (Ambush Alley: the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War<\/em>), pr\u00e9sente dans un article<\/a> les p\u00e9rip\u00e9ties de cette bataille commenc\u00e9e le 23 mars 2003, trois jours apr\u00e8s le d\u00e9clenchement de l’invasion de l’Irak.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLa th\u00e8se de Pritchard tend \u00e0 r\u00e9concilier les conceptions diverses sur les \u00e9v\u00e9nements d’Irak: y a-t-il eu deux guerres, l’une que les USA ont gagn\u00e9e et la seconde qu’ils sont en train de perdre? Y a-t-il une guerre que les USA ont gagn\u00e9e et la paix qu’ils sont en train de perdre? Au contraire, Pritchard tend \u00e0 fusionner les deux \u00e9v\u00e9nements : l’attaque du 20 mars 2003 conclue victorieusement le 10 avril et ce qui a suivi.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tPour Pritchard, Nasiraya rassemble tous les ingr\u00e9dients auxquels les USA vont se heurter \u00e0 partir de fin avril 2003, jusqu’\u00e0 la catastrophe actuelle. Cette bataille montre toutes les erreurs d’\u00e9valuation et toutes les erreurs op\u00e9rationnelles et psychologiques des USA durant la phase d’apr\u00e8s le 10 avril 2003, \u00e9tablissant ainsi un lien puissant entre les deux p\u00e9riodes et, d’une certaine fa\u00e7on, les fusionnant. Il n’y aurait donc eu qu’une guerre contre l’Irak, ce qui permettra d’encore plus pr\u00e9ciser la complexit\u00e9 et la richesse du concept G4G (Guerre de la 4\u00e8me G\u00e9n\u00e9ration).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abOne of the most difficult jobs for the US Iraq Study Group, which is due to report today, has perhaps been to pinpoint the moment that Iraq started to go wrong. How did scenes of joyful Iraqis hacking down Saddam’s statue so quickly turn into images of car bombs, grieving mothers and burning helicopters? Some experts argued before the panel that it was a mistake to disband the Iraqi security forces. Others said there had not been enough troops on the ground. In most analyses, however, there is a tendency to treat the invasion and post-invasion of Iraq as separate entities. The invasion is generally portrayed as well planned and executed, the post-invasion strategy as ill thought-out, chaotic and undermanned; hidden somewhere in the months following the arrival of US forces in Baghdad there lies a magic moment when Iraq somehow began to descend into chaos.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn fact, the fight to get to Baghdad and the one coalition forces have been engaged in ever since have much in common. All the information about the nature of the trouble to come was apparent from the first days of the war. If lessons learned then had been incorporated into military and political thinking, it would have injected a much-needed dose of realism at an early stage.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThose lessons were best synthesised in a little known but bloody battle, fought in a lesser known part of Iraq on day four of the war. It was a battle that America nearly lost.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt was dawn on March 23 2003 when marines from Task Force Tarawa approached the town of Nasiriya in southern Iraq. They had been assigned a routine manoeuvre, taking two key bridges to open up a route to Baghdad. Nasiriya was a predominantly Shia town that had rebelled against Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf war. US intelligence suggested that as soon as the Americans rolled into town, the city’s defenders would lay down their weapons and, as one marine commander expressed it, put flowers in our gun barrels, hold up their babies for us to kiss and give us the keys to the city.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbBut when Task Force Tarawa’s lead units reached the outskirts they came across the burnt out remnants of several vehicles of the US army’s 507th Maintenance Company. A captain in the 507th told wide-eyed marine commanders how his convoy had taken a wrong turn at night, driven into Nasiriya and been attacked by Iraqi fighters. Several US soldiers were still missing, including a young army private, Jessica Lynch.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIt was her fate that attracted attention in the days following. But it’s what happened to Task Force Tarawa that is most instructive about the nature of the Iraq war and about what life would be like once coalition forces got to Baghdad.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbAs marine units moved into Nasiriya they were attacked by massed numbers of Iraqi fighters. To the surprise of marines on the ground, few of the Iraqi combatants seemed to be wearing military uniforms. Many were dressed in the distinctive black pyjamas worn by Shia Muslims, and much of the gunfire came from dwellings flying black flags, denoting them as Shia homes. And yet the Shias were supposed to be on the Americans’ side.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tPourquoi donc cette r\u00e9volte g\u00e9n\u00e9ralis\u00e9e contre les Am\u00e9ricains, ce jour-l\u00e0, \u00e0 Nasiraya? Pour une raison vieille comme le monde, que les bureaucraties occidentalistes et am\u00e9ricanistes n’imaginent gu\u00e8re, derri\u00e8re leurs raisonnements sophistiqu\u00e9s, argument\u00e9s, aseptis\u00e9s : les Am\u00e9ricains \u00e9taient des \u00e9trangers, des envahisseurs, une arm\u00e9e conqu\u00e9rant le territoire national. Et, contre cela, une population se l\u00e8ve. Vieille histoire.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 6 d\u00e9cembre 2006 \u00e0 11H53<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A l’heure o\u00f9 le futur secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense am\u00e9ricain est en train d’annoncer que les USA ne sont pas en train de gagner la guerre, Tom Pritchard, auteur d’un livre sur la bataille de Nasiraya (Ambush Alley: the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War), pr\u00e9sente dans un article les p\u00e9rip\u00e9ties de cette bataille… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2645,857,6191,6192],"class_list":["post-68279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-guerre","tag-irak","tag-nasiraya","tag-pitchard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}