Thomas Wictor

I wrote a post about Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the new Islamic State. He issued his first official statement as the new caliph; in it, he says that the mujahedin will take over the world. I got a little pushback over that post. It’s a criticism I hear often, so I thought I’d address it. In the end, however, no matter what Americans do or say, the caliph and his mujahedin still want to kill you.

Here’s the complaint I got.

Too much arrogance here, Tom. Of course it’s a lot of wishful thinking and we all know their preposterous usage of words (Rome? WTF?). And we know the ISIS beheaders army isn’t a real army. And of course we know the dreamed caliphate is just an Islamic Disney world without any organization behind it. However, I urge you to keep a close eye on those holy guys and refrain from that victorious nonsense of Fallujah. You see, Italian frogmen police and biannual machineguns of some Kentucky knobs (?) aren’t able to stop a Boeing airliner or a blast at your local Central Station. It isn’t lord Ibrahim I fear, I fear those brainwashed jihadi fuck ups coming back to my almost perfect but free world. Loud talk and flexing muscles won’t be of any help.

Caliph Ibrahim said his men are going to “conquer Rome and own the world.” You don’t own the world by crashing airliners into skyscrapers or blowing up train stations with suicide bombers. The only way to own the world is by subjugating and occupying it with an army. To do so, you need to fight the people who don’t want to be occupied. Here are the Caliphate’s mujahedin.

What, exactly, did I do wrong by saying that we can defeat these mass murderers who’ve destabilized an entire region? How is that arrogant of me?

The “victorious nonsense of Fallujah” just happens to be one of the most ingenious military operations ever carried out. For some reason people are opposed to informing themselves about war. I think they feel that studying it will somehow “legitimize” it. Or maybe they’re worried about what their friends will think.

At any rate, the only thing that will stop “brainwashed jihadi fuck ups” and prevent them from coming to your “almost perfect but free world” is fighting skill equal to that of the men and women who brought about the victory in the Second Battle of Fallujah (November 7 to December 23, 2023), officially called Operation Phantom Fury.

I made a huge mistake earlier this year. When Mike Albee robbed me of my life’s savings, I revealed the dollar amount because I wanted to drive home the magnitude of his crime. It backfired on me because I didn’t anticipate that people are so full of class envy. What happened was that everyone thought I’m a rich dilettante who got what he deserved, so nobody—not the media, not the publishing industry, not law enforcement, and none of my former “friends”—gave a shit.

The reality was that I lost almost every cent I owned. If my parents hadn’t died when they did, I can’t tell you what would’ve happened. The only thing I know for sure is that my attempts to be a writer would’ve ended for good. At fifty-one years old and with Meniere’s disease and PTSD, I would’ve had to find some kind of coolie job.

Since I’m not envious, it never occurred to me that people would be glad that Albee took me to the cleaners. But I’ve learned my lesson. When I write about the experience in my upcoming novel, I won’t mention any dollar figures. That way people won’t be alienated to the point that they root for the vicious criminal. I’ll voluntarily make this concession to our degraded culture.

When it comes to the spectacular skill of the US military, however, I’m not going to change the way I discuss it. If people choose to interpret my justified appreciation as “loud talk and flexing muscles,” so be it.

Operation Phantom Fury inflicted on the Wahabbists the greatest defeat they’ve ever suffered. The US armed forces beat them through brainpower and incredible planning. They deserve to be praised. It’s not possible to describe how brilliantly they performed without using superlatives.

But so what?

Why does American “boasting” offend people more than Muslim mass murder? I’ve never understood that. How does me saying, “We mopped the earth with the best that the Wahabbists have to offer” help or hurt anything? It’s irrelevant to the war that the Wahabbists declared on us in August of 1996.

But for you who don’t actually have any factual knowledge about Fallujah, let me briefly explain.

Before Operation Phantom Fury, the world thought of American troops in terms of the Battle of Mogadishu, aka the Black Hawk Down incident. The movie is fantastic. I’ve watched it twenty times, easily. Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, I heard Mark Bowden—author of the book on which the film is based—say on the radio that the US military was so embarrassed by the disaster of Mogadishu that it simply brushed it under the carpet. Bowden said that US troops were completely untrained in military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) because the officer corps denied that there was a problem and wanted to wish the whole thing away.

I knew that was a lie. The Los Angeles Police Department Special Weapons and Tactics team had extensively trained US troops in MOUT after Mogadishu, at the behest of the officer corps. But the American media hates the US military, so the way to get your face on TV is to predict disaster and accuse our armed forces of incompetence, atrocities, and stupidity.

The world had been so deluded by Mogadishu that Saddam Hussein actually imported Somali militiamen in “technicals,” the trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on them. He thought that would win the war for him.

USMC Brigadier-General John Kelly described how our troops dealt with the men in the technicals.

They run into our machine guns, and we shoot them down like the morons they are.

Somalia and the Russian experience in the First and Second Battles of Grozny made the Wahabbists think they were invincible. This is a graphic video of Russian OMON special forces being massacred in Grozny.

Operation Phantom Fury proved to the Wahabbists that Mogadishu was an aberration, brought about by the meddling of gutless, corrupt politicians. It’s not important if the general public thinks that Fallujah was a defeat for the US, or that it doesn’t matter, or that talking about it is boasting. The enemy understood that he could no longer go up against Americans face to face, so he stopped for a while.

Caliph Ibrahim is making threats as his men murder and rape their way across Iraq and Syria. He’s forgotten what he once knew. That’ll cost him. Everything.

I’ll end on a little more loud talk and muscle flexing, because the people who carried out this mission should be recognized as the geniuses they are.

On 4 September 2004, in Tal Afar, Iraq, an OH-58 D Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter went down. Both pilots were injured but managed to escape the wreckage and crawled to a nearby rock wall for cover. Scout platoon, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division (Scout Plt., 5-20 INF, 2nd ID) Stryker Brigade Combat Team followed the GPS guided electronic map and found the downed helicopter. Thanks to GPS technology, the scout platoon was able to check the location of the friendly convoy in real-time base. UAVs constantly updated the newest enemy strength and location. Co. B 5-20 INF, 2nd ID, rushed its way into the city, toward the crash site.

Insurgents attempted to set up road blocks to delay Co. B in an effort to gain time for the others to overrun the scout platoon. Learning the situation from images provided by UAVs, Co. B immediately coordinated with the joint tactical air controller for CAS [close air support]. An F-16 fighter dropped a GBU-31 GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) and leveled the roadblock that was in Co. B’s way along with the insurgents guarding the roadblock. With Co. B rushing into the crash site, the insurgents on the streets and the roof-tops were wiped out by automatic weapons. Army infantry then cleared the surrounding buildings room-by-room with the support of Stryker Fighting Vehicles.

Because of the Interceptor Body Armor (IBA) with Small Arms Protect Insert (SAPI) plates, the casualties of Americans were minimized. Then a heavy expanded mobility tactical truck (HEMTT) and a palletized load system flatbed truck along with the Army recovery team came in and recovered the downed helicopter.

It was nothing like Operation Erin on 3-4 October 1993, at Mogadishu, Somalia: no more convoys getting lost in the city, and no more American corpses being dragged on the street. The entire mission went quickly and smoothly due to the technological improvements and lessons learned from Somalia. The Tal Afar operation again proved that with the proper use of technologies, MOUT is no longer an equivalent of disaster.