"To him, the two ideas do not conflict."
For the past couple of years, the real debate over the U.S.'s Iraq policy can be summed up with a paraphrase of a Clash song: should we stay or should we go?
The "stay" side rests with a variation of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" analogy ("You break it, you've bought it"): namely, if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, the bloodletting will be ever so much worse than it is now, and Iraq's oil supply just might be permanently taken off-line in the bargain.
The "go" side has it that Iraq, for all the shilly-shallying by American politicians, Executive Branch and Pentagon officials and military spokespersons, is in fact in a low-level civil war that is spiraling ever further out of control, and that the U.S. troops are perhaps the only target that all sides in Iraq (excepting the effectively independent Kurdistan to the north) can agree on; since the situation is untenable and since the U.S. doesn't have the men, materiel or political will to simply start blowing away everybody, making the best of a bad situation, from the American perspective, is to withdraw the troops and equipment as quickly as possible. (This would take a couple of years if the U.S. doesn't simply abandon the bulk of its equipment; though what would happen to a gradually diminishing U.S. force has not as yet been a subject of public speculation.)
Anne Garrels had a report in the second hour of yesterday's (Wednesday, 25 October) All Things Considered that makes me think that the correct answer to this "Final Jeopardy" question isn't "go;" it's "Run, Toto, run!"
Ms. Garrels profiled a Baghdad neighborhood, Hourria (SP?), "where Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army are killing and expelling Sunnis;" the most instructive portion of her story begins at 6:21 minutes into the 7:39 running time of the archived audio:
ANNE GARRELS: "Yet even Hassan, whose family was forced to flee their home, and whose brother-in-law was killed by Sadr's militia, does not blame Sadr himself."
TRANSLATOR relaying HASSAN'S INTERVIEW: "He only fights the Americans, and we are with him on that. He has never approved the killing of Sunnis."
AG: "Despite his hatred of the American forces, and his support of attacks on them, Hassan says he wants the American troops to stay in his neighborhood to protect him. To him, the two ideas do not conflict."
TRANS. for H: "I wish that they would stay, so that no one would dare pick up arms in Hourria; because if they leave, it will be like Afghanistan, with everybody armed to the teeth."
OK, let me see if I get this straight:
Hassan, a supposedly ordinary Iraqi whose family has been touched by the chaos and violence that has all but over-run his country, hates the American troops who are stationed there to keep the violence down to a low boil, is all for the Mehdi Army killing them, BUT doesn't want the U.S. troops to leave his neighborhood because he wants them to protect him?
If I'm understanding this correctly, Hassan sees the U.S. troops as the equivalent of a stalking horse: something to draw the fire of the Shi'ite thugs who might otherwise direct their fire at him and his family. This dovetails nicely with "Dubya's" flypaper theory (otherwise known as "we fight them there so we don't have to fight them at home;" never mind the distinct possibility that we'll be fighting them at home because we fought and on-the-job-trained so many of them "over there"...), even if the administration isn't quick to jut out its chest and smugly declare, "See? I told you so."
Under these tactics, U.S. servicemen (and -women) stationed in Iraq are literally called upon to sacrifice their limbs and lives for their country. Forget "citizen soldiers;" they are, in a very real sense, sacrificial victims. (Can I get a "BLOOD OF THE LAMB! BLOOD OF THE LAMB!"..?)
Well, fuck a whole great big bunch of that bullshit. It's time to get out of Dodge. Now.
And what's with that "will be" at the end of Hassan's interview? Have I missed something? I got the distinct impression that pretty much everybody in Iraq already is armed to the teeth. Or else there wouldn't be so many bullet-riddled corpses turning up in the morgues and so many IEDs ("improvised explosive devices," not to be confused with IUDs, "intra-uterine device," a form of birth control...) maiming and killing U.S. troops. The "will be" implies that more and better weapons can be acquired. What? The militias will order a few tactical nukes on eBay? What?!
The "stay" side rests with a variation of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" analogy ("You break it, you've bought it"): namely, if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, the bloodletting will be ever so much worse than it is now, and Iraq's oil supply just might be permanently taken off-line in the bargain.
The "go" side has it that Iraq, for all the shilly-shallying by American politicians, Executive Branch and Pentagon officials and military spokespersons, is in fact in a low-level civil war that is spiraling ever further out of control, and that the U.S. troops are perhaps the only target that all sides in Iraq (excepting the effectively independent Kurdistan to the north) can agree on; since the situation is untenable and since the U.S. doesn't have the men, materiel or political will to simply start blowing away everybody, making the best of a bad situation, from the American perspective, is to withdraw the troops and equipment as quickly as possible. (This would take a couple of years if the U.S. doesn't simply abandon the bulk of its equipment; though what would happen to a gradually diminishing U.S. force has not as yet been a subject of public speculation.)
Anne Garrels had a report in the second hour of yesterday's (Wednesday, 25 October) All Things Considered that makes me think that the correct answer to this "Final Jeopardy" question isn't "go;" it's "Run, Toto, run!"
Ms. Garrels profiled a Baghdad neighborhood, Hourria (SP?), "where Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army are killing and expelling Sunnis;" the most instructive portion of her story begins at 6:21 minutes into the 7:39 running time of the archived audio:
ANNE GARRELS: "Yet even Hassan, whose family was forced to flee their home, and whose brother-in-law was killed by Sadr's militia, does not blame Sadr himself."
TRANSLATOR relaying HASSAN'S INTERVIEW: "He only fights the Americans, and we are with him on that. He has never approved the killing of Sunnis."
AG: "Despite his hatred of the American forces, and his support of attacks on them, Hassan says he wants the American troops to stay in his neighborhood to protect him. To him, the two ideas do not conflict."
TRANS. for H: "I wish that they would stay, so that no one would dare pick up arms in Hourria; because if they leave, it will be like Afghanistan, with everybody armed to the teeth."
OK, let me see if I get this straight:
Hassan, a supposedly ordinary Iraqi whose family has been touched by the chaos and violence that has all but over-run his country, hates the American troops who are stationed there to keep the violence down to a low boil, is all for the Mehdi Army killing them, BUT doesn't want the U.S. troops to leave his neighborhood because he wants them to protect him?
If I'm understanding this correctly, Hassan sees the U.S. troops as the equivalent of a stalking horse: something to draw the fire of the Shi'ite thugs who might otherwise direct their fire at him and his family. This dovetails nicely with "Dubya's" flypaper theory (otherwise known as "we fight them there so we don't have to fight them at home;" never mind the distinct possibility that we'll be fighting them at home because we fought and on-the-job-trained so many of them "over there"...), even if the administration isn't quick to jut out its chest and smugly declare, "See? I told you so."
Under these tactics, U.S. servicemen (and -women) stationed in Iraq are literally called upon to sacrifice their limbs and lives for their country. Forget "citizen soldiers;" they are, in a very real sense, sacrificial victims. (Can I get a "BLOOD OF THE LAMB! BLOOD OF THE LAMB!"..?)
Well, fuck a whole great big bunch of that bullshit. It's time to get out of Dodge. Now.
And what's with that "will be" at the end of Hassan's interview? Have I missed something? I got the distinct impression that pretty much everybody in Iraq already is armed to the teeth. Or else there wouldn't be so many bullet-riddled corpses turning up in the morgues and so many IEDs ("improvised explosive devices," not to be confused with IUDs, "intra-uterine device," a form of birth control...) maiming and killing U.S. troops. The "will be" implies that more and better weapons can be acquired. What? The militias will order a few tactical nukes on eBay? What?!