Monday, July 11, 2005
How Stupid Are They?
The Chron, in the paper version I found outside the house this morning, and which I can't find in the online version at the moment, had an article about the bombings in Baghdad over the weekend that killed around 50 people. These occurred just days after the latest "Our massive counter-insurgency efforts in Baghdad have seriously degraded the insurgency's ability to conduct operations" announcement by the US military. Just how many times is that going to happen? The US stages a massive effort in some random area of Iraq; the local insurgents bury their guns and bombs in the back yard and blend in with their compatriots; the Pentagon says, "We done whupped 'em this time."; the US operation ends; the insurgents dig up their supplies and start blowing shit up. You'd think after a 4 or 5 repeats of the recipe (and in light of our experience in Vietnam) that it would sink in that when there are lots of soldiers around guerilla fighters hide until the soldiers are gone.
And just to repeat myself from previous posting events, How many Iraqis to do we have to kill before the rest of them are going to be our friends? I honestly can't figure out how extending the occupation by another hour is superior to packing up and leaving. Every minute we're there is another minute of occupation that makes any positive outcome less likely. At this point the best we probably hope for is a Shiite theocracy that stomps on the Sunnis and the Kurds. The bad outcome is some kind of splintered Somalia situation where the warlords are self-financing because they are sitting on top of pools of oil.
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