Rethinking occupation

[NNN0LHI]

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1186433,00.html

As Apache helicopters attacked targets over Baghdad yesterday, for the first time since the end of last year's war, it became harder than ever to accept the official US claim that violence in Iraq is "the exception and not the rule". Alarmingly also for the first time, US forces were simultaneously attacking both Sunni and Shi'ite communities in or near Baghdad. The action against Fallujah in the Sunni Triangle, in retaliation for the brutal killing last week of four US security contractors, was an unvarnished offensive under the blustering title of Operation Valiant Resolve. The other operation in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City was directed against militiamen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr whom Paul Bremer, head of the US-led coalition, has now declared to be outside the law. Al-Sadr's forces are a minority but a substantial one, drawing support from younger, mostly unemployed Iraqis, who are more likely to be provoked than intimidated. None of these actions even pretends to be concerned with winning hearts or minds and there is an increasing sense of desperation in Mr Bremer's warnings that "violence will not be tolerated".

In Washington the despair is now open and bipartisan, with the public forebodings of Republican senator Richard Lugar that Iraq may be on the brink of civil war. However much the US administration may have brought this crisis upon its own head, by an unwise war executed with a reckless disregard for the consequences, it is a crisis affecting all Iraqis and the surrounding region for which the rest of the world must now take responsibility.

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[Wickerman]

1. Dammit, didn't they get the memo

things in Iraqw are going much better than the liberal media is reporting. They only report the bad stuff - everything is fine.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Time to cut and run.

I think this is going to get seriously nasty.

[NNN0LHI]

4. Cut and run. Peace with honor. I don't care what they want to call it

It is time to stop this madness now before it is too late. Thats if it is not too late already.

Don

[brokensymmetry]

6. It is too late.

We went in with far too few troops to hope to control a volatile area with three mutually hostile groups.

We were harsh enough to make enemies, and not harsh enough to cow those same enemies.

We still don't have anywhere near enough troops, and we still lack the will to either crush the Iraqi resistance or abandon the project as a bad deal.

And we're going to get lots of blow-back. A civil war in Iraq is the least of our trouble. Every enemy the U.S. has - and, IMO, there are many of them - will decide that the U.S. lacks the strength and will to hold territory. The lesson will not be lost on China, on Al Queda, on Russia - and plenty of others.

Being the worlds only superpower is one thing. Being the ex-superpower...when one wasn't always too nice on the way up...may be something else entirely.

As Admiral Yamamoto said in the movie Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Victory, if available, will have a high price. Defeat, more terrible still.

Let's hope I'm 100% wrong. You'll be welcome to say you told me so.

[NNN0LHI]

7. Won't be no I told you so coming from this guy. I am afraid you are right

Really.

Don

[bahrbearian]

3. At first I thought you were looking for a New job.

[drfemoe]

5. oh but

*he* said today that as the deadline to turn over "sovereignty" gets closer there will be MORE violence. It's those cursed folks who are against "democracy" causing all the trouble.

"This is one person -- this is a person, and followers, who are trying to say, we don't want democracy -- as a matter of fact, we'll decide the course of democracy by the use of force. And that is the opposite of democracy."

:crazy: