Saturday, July 16, 2005

Inconceivable!

We are creating insurgents and suicide bombers faster than we can kill them or they can kill themselves. How many disaffected young men does it take to kill hundreds or thousands? How many martyrs do we have to create before others seeking martyrdom come to our shores to achieve their goals?

The insurgency is in its "last throes". Bullshit.

Saturday

An insurgent suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body , Saturday, triggering a huge explosion at a gas station near a mosque south of Baghdad and killing at least 54 people. The attack capped a string of three major bombings over the past four days that killed at least 120.
Friday

A suicide car bombing Friday night near the official residence of President Jalal Talabani capped a day of bombings and explosions across the capital in which at least 25 people were killed, including policemen, security guards and civilians, and 111 others were wounded.
Falluja - Friday

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops live in crumbling buildings here and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10 p.m. curfew.


But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.

At least four [suicide car bombs] have exploded in recent weeks, one of them killing six American troops, including four women. Two of five police forts being erected have been firebombed. Three members of the nascent, 21-seat city council have suddenly quit and another member has stopped attending meetings, presumably because they have been threatened.


Just as disturbing, even Falluja residents who favored purging the streets of insurgents last November are beginning to chafe under the occupation.

The lesson of Vietnam was simple, if you don't win the heart and minds of the people, the insurgents win. Here are some thoughts straight from one Iraqi's heart:

[Bush] speaks of ‘abroad’ as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. ‘Abroad’ in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life.

Don’t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as ‘Abroad’ was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don’t Americans realize that ‘abroad’ is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? ‘Abroad’ is home for millions of us. It’s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.
The wrong war in the wrong place for the wrong reason. It seems like the description not of pride, hubris or error. It it the definition of treason.