Marble Composition

Seething

Because I'm such a news junkie, there aren't many things that surprise me anymore when it comes to the madness unfolding in Iraq. Maybe I've become numb to it all. But every once in a while a news item I come across really leaves me seething with anger. Via Kos, Editor and Publisher highlighted a small portion of a report from the New York Times. Here's the part that would interest E&P:

"In this surreal setting, about 20 American soldiers were forced at one point to pull themselves one by one up a canted tin roof by a dangling rubber hose and then shimmy along a ledge to another hut. The soldiers were stunned when a small child suddenly walked out of a darkened doorway and an old man started wheezing and crying somewhere inside.

"Ultimately the group made it back to the high rises and escaped the sniper in the alley by throwing out the smoke bombs and sprinting to safety. Even though two Iraqis were struck by gunfire, many of the rest could not stop shouting and guffawing with amusement as they ran through the smoke.

"One Iraqi soldier in the alley pointed his rifle at an American reporter and pulled the trigger. There was only a click: the weapon had no ammunition. The soldier laughed at his joke."

It's not known which of two Times reporters was the target of this "joke."

Here's the part of the story that makes me want to rip my hair out:

"In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.

"When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one American soldier, with a shot to the head."

While this may be a small anecdote, it demonstrates perfectly why the U.S. needs to pull all of its forces off of the streets of Baghdad. Ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in the city are well underway, and U.S. forces have no business being stuck in the middle of a low-level civil war. Yes, we've all heard that before, but still: it stands. I've read and seen numerous accounts of people all over the political spectrum wringing their hands, saying, "well we can't leave now, look at the mess we've created", or, "we must achieve victory", but at this point we need to cut our losses. Our delusional president stated: "The people of Iraq want to live in peace, and now is the time for their government to act". No they don't. They're perfectly happy slaughtering each other en masse. And, their government's parliament can barely even form a quorum.

Enough.

Update: [1/25/2007 09.24.00 PM] Kevin Drum over at the Washington Monthly has more on Haifa Street, here. And via Atrios, an amazing look into the ongoing civil war from Lara Logan at CBS News, here.

posted by FuzzFinger @ 1/25/2007 07:35:00 PM 3 comments

Cart Before the Horse

Matt Yglesias nails it, here:

Roughly speaking, the fixed point of the president's thinking is an unwillingness to admit that the venture has failed. For a long time the best way to do that was to simply deny that there was a problem. Political strategy for the midterms, however, dictated that the president had to acknowledge the public's concerns about the war and concede that things weren't going well.

That concession only came after the Republicans came to realize just how big their losses might become:

At that point, simply staying the course doesn't work anymore. But de-escalating would be an admission of failure, so the only option is to choose escalation. Thus, the idea of an escalation starts getting pushed and we start reading things in the paper like "Top military officials have said that they are open to sending more U.S. troops to Iraq if there is a specific strategic mission for them." Consider the process here. It's not that the president has some policy initiative in mind whose operational requirements dictate a surge in force levels. Rather, locked in the prison of his own denial he came to the conclusion that he should back an escalation, prompting the current search for a mission.

It's even more light-headed than that. This whole travesty comes down to one word:

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

Not that one, this one:

Mr. Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

posted by FuzzFinger @ 1/02/2007 09:02:00 PM 1 comments