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April 19, 2007
So It Goes
"Meticulously planned," with "multiple victims." "Carnage," "tragedy," devastation." Those were the words used to describe a regular day in Iraq, yesterday, a day when 230 people met a violent death.
That's a 9/11, by the way, proportional to the population.
Many people have pointed out that the carnage in Virginia Tech is a small window into daily life in Iraq. Everday, they lose about a hundred of their sons and daughters. Millions have fled, an uncertain future awaits them. There seems to be no end in sight to the massacres, I discern no signs of political will from any of the involved parties towards trying to come up with, not a solution as that word seems unfit for any result that may come from the current horror, but a means to stop the blood flowing in the streets.
Meanwhile, I watched the PBS "America at Crossroads" series. While it clearly made by people who dislike Bush, it was so shallow that I can't t find another word to describe it. The Iraqis, it seems, just aren't properly trained. Somehow, they can blow up Americans and each other without running into skill shortages, but their lack of training holds them back from performing their duties. This was the narrative upon which the series mostly revolved.
Even when squeezed into the ill-fitting narrative, the segments still made it clear that the problem, as far as the occupation goes, is that the Iraqis are unwilling to do the bidding of an occupation army. They aren't untrained, per se.
And it is also clear that the American military has no idea what it wants to do. The soldiers, dressed as robocops, go around rounding up people that they have been told are the "bad guys," a phrase used repeatedly by the soldiers. Told by whom? A rival? A neighbor? Not clear. What happens to these bad guys? They disappear into a Gulag.
While American soldiers are going around attempting to round people up, IEDs explode on the roads. The soldiers carry their wounded and dead back into the base. Next day, they try to clear other roads of IEDs that are there because American soldiers are driving through those roads. Meanwhile the Sunni sectarians blow up markets and the shi'ite government death-squads execute sunnis, two serious problems the American soldiers are clearly incapable of doing anything about.
So it goes. Americans hunt IEDs, more of which blow up while they patrol the roads hunting for IEDs. Bombs go off in Shia neighborhoods. Sunni men turn up dead, shot execution style. Americans round up some men, reasons unclear. Another bomb goes off. All Iraqis who work with Americans cover their faces, which tells you all you need to know about the nature of the occupation. More men turned up strangled. PBS tells me that the Iraqi army is untrained. So it goes.
Posted by zeynep at April 19, 2007 03:18 PM
Comments
Millions have fled, an uncertain future awaits them.
Including, now, alas, Riverbend & family. (According to her latest post, they haven't left just yet, but have decided to go and are trying to work out how to get out of the the country.)
Posted by: Paul Lyon at April 28, 2007 02:40 AM
War aint so bad. it gives commies and hippies something to complain about..which they are really good at doing.
damn this beer tastes good!
cheers
'aaron
Posted by: aaron at May 27, 2007 01:29 PM