Hey Iraq, Where's The Gratitude?
In last week's Presidential Radio Address, President Bush began his public relations offensive with this little gem. “Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front for the war on terror.” Ladies and gentlemen, I am ecstatic to announce that President Bush and I can finally agree upon something. Intelligent people have long been saying that the Iraq War has militarized, organized and impassioned the enemies of the United States. They are able to focus all of their hatred upon our soldiers and the Iraqi citizens who are trying to scrape together a society out of the radioactive rubble that we (the terrorists and the Bush Administration) have turned Iraq into.
“…the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front for the war on terror.” Could this be why we are not treated as liberators, as Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld promised us? Read that whole sentence again. “Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have NOW made Iraq a central front for the war on Terror.” Doesn’t this sentence actually say that our removal of Saddam Hussein from power has made Iraq a central front for the war on terror? (Brace yourself folks, this looks like an honest statement coming out of the Whitehouse.) Not to belabor a point but was it worth it to remove a dictator and replace him with a rabid insurgency? Ask the Author of “Baghdad is Burning.” http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Does anyone recall how many car bombs were going off daily in Iraq, prior to the invasion? I do; none.
Why Mr. Bush, have they made it a central front? Because we invaded. Where was the central front before? There was none. Why? Because they did not have the motivation or organization to create one. Our aggression has created a potent seed to be planted in the fertile soil of Iraq. A country ripped asunder, devoid of authority, centrally located in the heart of the Islamic world, with an Islamic society that can easily hide terrorists who have more in common with the population than we do, is really not such a hot place for us to be having this fight. Why? It’s simple; as the insurgency grows, our soldiers, who have no real knowledge of the society they are “defending”, grow more and more cynical, scared and hardened to the pain and suffering around them. It becomes more difficult to differentiate between insurgent and general population.
This state of mind is not helped by the indoctrination that the soldiers receive in basic training. I recall a conversation with a co-worker of mine, whose son just graduated boot camp and is now being trained to drive a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. In one of our many disagreements on the subject of the war in Iraq, he told me that his son’s drill sergeant told him that “Joe-Iraqi gets up every morning, has a cup of tea and goes up onto his roof and takes a couple of shots at American Soldiers. He then goes off to work.” If our soldiers are being told this in basic training, how much compassion could GI Joe have for Joe-Iraqi?
GI Joe Says:
In order to save the Iraqi people we have to kill the insurgents. Who are the insurgents? Joe-Iraqi shoots at me every morning, he’s an insurgent.
Joe-Iraqi Says:
The American Soldiers say that there here to protect us but they keep shooting at us. Screw them! If they are going to shoot at me, I’m going to shoot at them!
This mind set becomes a Mobius Strip, moving in an eternal loop, with no beginning and no end. It grows and grows. The harder we fight, the more the insurgents can point and say “Look at what the Americans did. This was not happening before the Americans came.” More Iraqis join the insurgency.
So how long can this insurgency last anyway? When the war began, Donald Rumsfeld stated that he thought it could last “six days, six weeks, I doubt six months.” He has now adjusted that timetable to “up to 12 years.” In my opinion, with history as a yardstick, this is an optimistic projection. Even if we get out before then, this is the legacy that we have left for Iraq.
For what, for what?
“…the world’s terrorists have now made Iraq a central front for the war on terror.” Could this be why we are not treated as liberators, as Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld promised us? Read that whole sentence again. “Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world’s terrorists have NOW made Iraq a central front for the war on Terror.” Doesn’t this sentence actually say that our removal of Saddam Hussein from power has made Iraq a central front for the war on terror? (Brace yourself folks, this looks like an honest statement coming out of the Whitehouse.) Not to belabor a point but was it worth it to remove a dictator and replace him with a rabid insurgency? Ask the Author of “Baghdad is Burning.” http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Does anyone recall how many car bombs were going off daily in Iraq, prior to the invasion? I do; none.
Why Mr. Bush, have they made it a central front? Because we invaded. Where was the central front before? There was none. Why? Because they did not have the motivation or organization to create one. Our aggression has created a potent seed to be planted in the fertile soil of Iraq. A country ripped asunder, devoid of authority, centrally located in the heart of the Islamic world, with an Islamic society that can easily hide terrorists who have more in common with the population than we do, is really not such a hot place for us to be having this fight. Why? It’s simple; as the insurgency grows, our soldiers, who have no real knowledge of the society they are “defending”, grow more and more cynical, scared and hardened to the pain and suffering around them. It becomes more difficult to differentiate between insurgent and general population.
This state of mind is not helped by the indoctrination that the soldiers receive in basic training. I recall a conversation with a co-worker of mine, whose son just graduated boot camp and is now being trained to drive a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. In one of our many disagreements on the subject of the war in Iraq, he told me that his son’s drill sergeant told him that “Joe-Iraqi gets up every morning, has a cup of tea and goes up onto his roof and takes a couple of shots at American Soldiers. He then goes off to work.” If our soldiers are being told this in basic training, how much compassion could GI Joe have for Joe-Iraqi?
GI Joe Says:
In order to save the Iraqi people we have to kill the insurgents. Who are the insurgents? Joe-Iraqi shoots at me every morning, he’s an insurgent.
Joe-Iraqi Says:
The American Soldiers say that there here to protect us but they keep shooting at us. Screw them! If they are going to shoot at me, I’m going to shoot at them!
This mind set becomes a Mobius Strip, moving in an eternal loop, with no beginning and no end. It grows and grows. The harder we fight, the more the insurgents can point and say “Look at what the Americans did. This was not happening before the Americans came.” More Iraqis join the insurgency.
So how long can this insurgency last anyway? When the war began, Donald Rumsfeld stated that he thought it could last “six days, six weeks, I doubt six months.” He has now adjusted that timetable to “up to 12 years.” In my opinion, with history as a yardstick, this is an optimistic projection. Even if we get out before then, this is the legacy that we have left for Iraq.
For what, for what?
posted by Paul Skogstrom at 3:10 AM
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