London every day
We forget that the nature of the insurgency creates Londons every day for the people of Iraq. I am not attempting to minimize in any way the horror of the London attacks--it's just that they hit closer to home for us, because they took place in a Western democracy.
We're better than the terrorists. I'm a frequent, aggressive critic of American foreign policy, but to my knowledge, we've never purposefully suicide-bombed crowds of children. That's unspeakable. So, I wish we'd either kill all the terrorists and stabilize the freaking country, or leave.
I just don't think we will.
posted by CharlesPeirce @ 10:12 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
...I'm sure you know all this already, but I feel like I have to say it anyway.
"kill all the terrorists and stabilize the freaking country" -- Thats the idea, you're welcome to help if you want. The country really is becoming much more stable. Check out Iraq the Model for the perspective of an Iraqi. There have been elections and a constitution is being drafted. Power is returning most places. For most Iraqis outside of Baghdad day to day life is mostly stable. We are killing terrorists and stabilizing the country, its just a slower process than anyone would like.
"or leave" -- I can't believe that leaving would accomplish anything. The suicide and other bombings would continue until Iraq falls back into a dictatorship or a theocracy. Either way the average Iraqi will have to deal with oppression and the threat of death daily. In fact, the threat will just spread out of the 'Sunni Triangle' -- where most of the attacks are now -- to everywhere in Iraq. Evidence of this is Zarqawi and Osama saying that it is okay to kill muslims and Iraqis that support the government. They oppose the US being there, but they also oppose the new government. Thats why most attacks now target Iraqi police or servicemen, or civilians. So, I don't see how leaving and taking away the only force that can fight the terrorists is going to help the people of Iraq.
Fair reply--but don't you think we'll need 100,000 or so more American troops to do it? That's why I wrote "I don't think we will"--I'm not saying that 1) this isn't the goal, or 2) I don't want to help, as I absolutely want us to succeed there. But if you look at American casualties by month...they're just not going down (82 in May, 74 in June. 15 so far this month.)
So it's not that we're not trying, it's that I'm afraid we can't succeed with conditions as they are.
I hope I'm wrong.
Casualties might not be down month to month, but maybe the process is slower than that? How are they compared to last year?
Still, I was thinking much the same thing as your original post on the way to work this morning when I heard about how many people died yesterday in Iraq. And it happens a lot over there. Over 100 people died in Pakistan today when a train operator screwed up and 3 trains collided.
Only 40 people in London - that's miraculously low in my opinion.
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