Like, this approach has “worked” for Israel??

From a piece by Dexter Filkins in today’s NYT:

As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.
In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in….

Sounds familiar?? Well, it is:

American officials … acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare.

Filkins cites Brig. Gen. Michael A. Vane, who is deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy at the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, as having recently written: “[W]e recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas.”
Well, jolly good for General Vane. Maybe… But totally bad for everyone else concerned.
D’you think the folks in the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command haven’t heard yet about the fact that these tough-guy tactics haven’t actually ‘worked’ for Israel? That is, more than three years after the IDF instituted practices of massive over-reaction, strangulatingly tight movement controls, proactive assassinations, and all those other tools from the old playbook of colonial “pacification” campaigns — they still haven’t succeeded in forcing the Palestinians to bow to their will.
As none other than the IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon himself recently admitted publicly. As I noted here on October 29, Ya’alon had told Israeli journalists the day before that the comprehensive travel restrictions and curfews his forces had imposed on Palestinians were actually harming Israel’s overall security.
“It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations,” Ya’alon was reported as saying. Also: “In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest.”
See also the very similar criticisms that four retired heads of Israel’s “Shin Bet” security agency have voiced recently about the policies that the Sharon government (and before it, let’s not forget, the Sharon-plus-Labor government) has mandated toward the Palestinians. You can read a full, English-language version of the interview with the four SB heads here.
So here’s my simple question. I do believe I’ve asked it on JWN before now; but it seems it still needs repeating: If these exact same types of policy have evidently not ‘worked’ at pacifying the Palestinians, why do some people in the US military think they can possibly work against the Iraqis?

The Filkins piece in the NYT gives more details of just how deep the colonial mentality seems to have sunk into the consciousness of at least some US officers. He quotes Capt. Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, as saying:

“You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force– force, pride and saving face.”

Oh, c’mon! Where on earth do they get all this racist garbage? “The Arab mind”? Like it’s a special form of non- or sub-human mentality not found in any other race?
Or then, later in the piece, Filkins quotes a Col. Sassaman as saying,

“With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them…”

And then, over at the WaPo they have their own special Army lunatic, as well. In their case, it’s even worse. This guy, retired general Wayne Downing, has a whole nice slot on the Op-Ed page today for his piece, Hearts and Minds? First, Just Win.
Whatever “winning” means in this context… I thought winning was about the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Or did I misunderstand something?
So anyway Downing, who is a former head of Special Operations Forces (and therefore perhaps not the brightest bulb in the military’s firmament of strategic thought?), as well as formerly Condi Rice’s deputy in the Bush White House (ditto), writes that earlier this fall it became clear that the “hearts and minds” approach the US military were using in Iraq was not working…

It was time to take off the gloves.
That is exactly what we are seeing: large, well-coordinated cordon and search operations prompted by the best available intelligence; willingness to enter known insurgent strongholds and directly engage the enemy even though these areas might be heavily populated; destruction of insurgents’ homes with smart bombs; and sweep operations that round up all likely suspects and turn them over to trained Arab interrogators for determination of their true status — insurgent or innocent. These aggressive operations, which are very much like those employed by the Israeli Defense Forces, are daring and risky, but it appears this campaign is beginning to take insurgents off the street and, more important, is developing useful intelligence that leads to further fruitful operations.

He describes what is happening as “a virtuous cycle for the United States.” If this is his idea of “virtue”, maybe he could benefit from reading the whole of the Shin Bet chiefs’ comments, or the whole interview with Ya’alon… Those Israeli guys all seem to know a lot more about both longterm strategy and ethical values such as “virtue” than Downing does.
I’ll grant him this. He does at least admit that, “time may not be on our side.” Actually, his whole piece comes across as fairly muddled and extremely shallow and vacuous.