Suffer the children....
The following, written by Chris Bellamy for The Independent, sums up what I have feared and dreaded from day one of hearing that Bush and his henchmen, or vice versa, conjured the plan to blanket Iraq with the relatively justified pursuit of Al Qaeda, only. This, to me, is obvious. It will inherently and unavoidably get worse -- in our lifetimes and far beyond -- than it would ever get better. I offer this here to defy every Bush patron who stubbornly lauds and shockingly encourages what the hell we're doing over there:
" For every Iraqi killed, either in Fallujah or overall, there are five, maybe 10, maybe 20 sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, parents, children. For every dead Iraqi there may be 20 people who are now committed to a blood feud. We have to ask whether this is achieving the aim, which is to conduct free and fair elections in January and, in the longer term, to establish a stable and secure democracy.
For all the hype about "effects-based operations" the US approach appears to be thoroughly attritional. The US command appears to believe that the supply of suicidal Baathists, jihadists and foreign Islamist fighters, and Iraqi nationalists who just resent foreign occupation, will eventually be ground down to zero. By effectively eliminating the insurgents, according to one retired US general, the "fellow travellers" can be made to see the handwriting on the wall. It seems they have not seen it yet. With Fallujah largely subdued, US forces, with limited Iraqi government help, have moved to Mosul and Baquba."
" For every Iraqi killed, either in Fallujah or overall, there are five, maybe 10, maybe 20 sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, parents, children. For every dead Iraqi there may be 20 people who are now committed to a blood feud. We have to ask whether this is achieving the aim, which is to conduct free and fair elections in January and, in the longer term, to establish a stable and secure democracy.
For all the hype about "effects-based operations" the US approach appears to be thoroughly attritional. The US command appears to believe that the supply of suicidal Baathists, jihadists and foreign Islamist fighters, and Iraqi nationalists who just resent foreign occupation, will eventually be ground down to zero. By effectively eliminating the insurgents, according to one retired US general, the "fellow travellers" can be made to see the handwriting on the wall. It seems they have not seen it yet. With Fallujah largely subdued, US forces, with limited Iraqi government help, have moved to Mosul and Baquba."
posted by Paul V. Regelbrugge at 2:32 PM
1 Comments:
But to apply your U.S.-as-savior-of-the-world logic, Smartcookie, the U.S. should commit its forces, en masse, globally, and oust dictators and other draconian regimes in Sudan, the Ivory Coast, and so much of South America. But I suppose Iran and North Korea must come first, no? And how about Saudi Arabia too? The U.S. already levelled the Bedrock that already was Afghanistan. There was at least an arguably justifiable reason to chase Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
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