Can technology win the war in Iraq?

On the net there are plenty of articles about new tech the US army could use to win the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It makes no doubt in my mind that 90% of them are grossly over stating the real impact of their inventions.
The trend seems to follow three ways: less-lethal weapons, unmanned vehicles and IT military gadgets. The one thing that struck me was the fact that these were materials that could be used equally by police or the military. Considering the job of the troops is to ensure security (their own and the Iraqis'), their mission looks indeed very close to a police operation. An extreme one, but still.

Bagdad is a cop's nightmare alright: it's huge, it's messy and it is overcrowded. But couldn't CCTVs be installed the city over to find suspects or at least track them down once they've committed their action and then see where they were coming from.
Similarly, shouldn't road-blocks be controlled via robots while the crew remains safely in bunkers?
Finally, tough gunfight is common but very often (at a road block for instance) the troops seem to have little choice if one is behaving weirdly that to shoot at him or do nothing. Police forces in the West are increasingly equipped with tazers and other less-lethal weapons.

To a certain extent, the NYPD seems more fit to the mission in Iraq then the USMC or the army. Do you agree or do you think I'm completely wrong?

I don't think a way to 'save' Iraq is by nuke, but I agree generally with your opinions, Sparten. Overall, i think there can be no 'victory' per se in Iraq, just a slowdown of activities or phasing out of foreign troops. The robot technology just simply isn't there at the minute to even conceivably be used at road blocks, as it is our ability (whether used or not) to be able to interpret any specific situation and take the appropriate action. So, human control of roadblocks is paramount.

First, I agree with Maharbbal that technology is not going to save the situation in Iraq. It is ironic that there are claims to this considering how the Bush administration refused to increase the size of the military because they thought that technology would be able to replace many people.

I will disagree with Spartan in talking about an enemy. From what I understand, there isn't an enemy to target, but an ever changing ethnic and nationalistic conflict that the U.S. didn't prepare to deal with, and even then it would be hard for them to handle. So, one week our enemy are the Sunni uprising, but the next week they are out ally against the Shia, only to have the roles reversed a few weeks later. When your allies and enemies keep changing, one cannot focus on any one of them.

From what I understand, and please anyone who knows better about the situation correct me here, there is a gun culture in Iraq similar to that found in the U.S. Most households have weapons for self-defense. As violence change and locals are threatened by it, they dust off the gun, and defend themselves.

So, general Franks would have had disarmed the whole nation to prevent uprisings, which was just not possible. Doing so would bring the same reaction that doing this in the U.S. would bring: an uprising.

Finally, the strategy that the Iraqi are using to get rid of the occupation force is the same one that General Washington conducted to get rid of the English: make the colonies so expensive that the occupying force decides that it is not worth keeping the occupation. Yes, Washington engaged them in battles, but if he had to fight the war today, we would have adopted very similar tactics as those used in Vietnam and Iraq.

Quite frankly, I don't know of any ploy that can overcome this strategy against occupation once the insurgency is widespread enough, as it has happened in Iraq. Wars are expensive, both in lives and money, and citizens get sick of never ending wars that produce no concrete results.

Hugoestr - wasnt maharbbal saying that technology could win the war in Iraq..?

The thing is when you mean "disarm", you don't mean take a gun from every single person, only that you isolate the organized groups and prevent them from acting effectivly.

Well, Iraq war has already been won since US reached its goals. Now the problem is Sunnis, Shias and Iran

The objective of the war is to snatch Iraqi oil out of the hands of the Iraqi people, so no, the objective hasn't been reached.

Another objective of the war was to transform Iraq into a satellite state of the US. This has definitely not happened.

As for military objectives, yes, those are constantly met.

One of the problem of the US in Iraq is that it has political objectives but it tries to achieve them through military means. There is only so much that you can do by killing people.

As I said before, Sparten, the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi Army and started it from scratch. You cannot blame the U.S. for failing to do this since it did it. For it to take weapons out of all potential recruits, it had to disarmed the whole nation, which you agreed that it wasn't possible.

Our greedy, mioptic leaders think that they can still get away with stealing the oil that belongs to the Iraqi people. That is part of their reluctance to leave. They are mistaken. The moment that that oil becomes the property of Exxon, that is the moment that the oil wells go up into flames, and the oil pipes will be destroyed throughout the country.

The U.S. has one good strategy left, and that is to leave.

The short answer is no.  I don't know whether this is sad or something else but when I was in 11th grade watching the gathering storm (usually watching CNN in my business class) and we invaded iraq I told family members and friends it would be another vietnam, we would sweep aside the regular forces with ease but our casualties would keep piling up from guerilla warfare.  I must say that for once I am disappointed that I was right.  Technology can only do so much, it won't help if the people whose country you are occupying are fighting you and each other, not to mention don't for the most part want you there at all.  The running joke here is that nixon was the greatest president to ever live in comparison with bush.

All thats very well sir, but again you seem to be missing the point I made namely that the US has an absence of strategy. The German and IRA analogy is misleading since the Germans did have a strategy and objective; to keep the occupied territories quiet and the way their technical superiority helped them to achieve that by a tactic of basically popping anyone who was or looked threatening.

Maharbbal,

One of the ironies of CCTV is that you need a peaceful population to be able to run it successfully. The reality is that electronic equipment is easy to tamper with, and all what you need is scissors, a magnet, or, if everything else fails, a brick.

My point about having the population armed is the following: people who are not involved today may get involved tomorrow if they become the victims of violence; for example, relatives died in a mosque attack. Then the guns come out.

Remote controlled robots cannot substitute soldiers. Again, these could easily be tampered, and a sort of arms race could start to see who can waste the resources of the enemy faster: the insurgency with cheap roadside bombs or the U.S. with expensive technology.