Americans bring enlightenment and progress to Iraq

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Spiffor

The Palestinian Authority has a very efficient propaganda machine running on. I apologize for thinking there is a difference between the Palestinian authority and the refugees of a few-weeks-old guerilla.

...run by the thirty-year-old remnants of the ba'athist regime?

[The Mad Monk]

A doctor of the Red Crescent explains his base of operation in Fallujah has been ordered to close down, and has been attacked immediately after the warning. He has seen young people whose legs and thorax were full of ecchymoses, a sign the Americans are torturing people there.

I finally looked up "ecchymoses".

It means "bruises".

How does that imply torture, or torture by specifically Americans?

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


I finally looked up "ecchymoses".

It means "bruises".

How does that imply torture, or torture by specifically Americans?

Probably not the same incident, but it fits into the pattern:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3669331.stm

A US television station has broadcast pictures allegedly showing US soldiers abusing Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. ---

[The Mad Monk]

Or it dosen't.

More to the point, why did the reporter use the highly technical and little known (to laymen) medical term "ecchymoses", when "bruises" is shorter, simpler, and easier to understand?

[Atahualpa]

Yes we are!
We don't call jihads to exterminate other people, we don't send our youngs with explosive belts to blow school buses, we don't persecute minorities, we don';t prohibit other religions, we don't kill girls for becoming pregnant while being single, and we don't flight planes into civilian buildings.

You (We) are probably not so morally ****ed on a low level, but on a global level dont expect to be ANY better!

I just say: cheap labor, oil, money, exploitations, child labor, oil, money, our own fvcking best interest

We all support it, our industries like it and we are not going to do anything about it.
Not the moral high ground if you ask me.

But of course every single individual is completely moral and goes to the church and would never slap his women or force an abortion and we are so understanding and tolerable...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
More to the point, why did the reporter use the highly technical and little known (to laymen) medical term "ecchymoses", when "bruises" is shorter, simpler, and easier to understand?

Because it is a French text, and "ecchymose" is the standard term, unless you use "bleus" which is on a low level of language (children, friends)

[GePap]

Today in the news they had pictures of US soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners. So some charges of abuse appear to be correct, though how widespread they are is not clear.

[MrFun]

The soldiers who are mistreating prisoners obviously need to be punished appropriately.

But I don't think this would be widespread.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
The fourth Geneva Convention says nothing at all about churches/mosques. It neither forbids damage or destruction nor sanctions attacking those who use them for cover.

It does have something to say about hospitals

"Art. 18. Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict."

I doubt that an attack on hospital buildings which were then being used as a base of operations by the enemy would breach this provision. Those so using the buildings - in the unlikely event that they were soldiers of a signatory state - would themselves be causing a breach.

Exactly.

The actual point about damaging mosques is little or nothing to do with moral or quasi-legal matters. It is pragmatic.

Because it throws into sharp relief the question of whether the game is worth the candle.

If the objective - as folk like MtG imagine - is to win the various fire fights when they occur then there can, of course, be no question of allowing the "enemy" any shelter from which they can launch attacks with impunity.

Explain to me the pragmatic benefit of allowing a hostile armed force to live and fight in buildings which you make publicly known sanctuaries? The religious authorities in Iraq don't issue fatwas against the misuse of mosques by armed arab fighters.

What are we supposed to do: (a) Search people going into the mosques, including women, to prevent resupply of the people who are in the mosques sniping at us with impunity because we can't fire back? Or (b) Not bother searching anyone going into the mosques lest we offend anyone, and let people resupply those fighters ad infinitum?

The objective isn't to win firefights when they occur - that's one of many tactical issues. The larger objective is eliminate the enemy's capacity to initiate firefights or any other attack on any significant scale.

But if the objective is to restore order to Iraq so that the troops can leave and the people can get back to living their lives then the trouble with firing on people in mosques is that you enflame the situation further and find yourself further away from achieving your object.

As long as you have forces capable of continuous and active resistance, their mere presence over time inflames the situaton. Allowing them to operate from sanctuary areas simply encourages them to continue to do so, meanwhile, the Iraqi people, regardless of their inclinations otherwise, take a look at who has the guns and who is willing to use them. They make their own assessments of who to cooperate with, for their own pragmatic ends.

And, of course, that is the object.

The troops were sent to eliminate the risk that hideous nuclear and chemical and biological weapons originating in Iraq would be used against the USA or the UK. And that object is achieved.

There was a mindset that Saddam would do anythng, and if he hadn't yet he would if he ever thought of it, but I don't buy for a minute that that was the only reason, or even main one, for the invasion. Look at the number of hardline anti-Iraq (chicken)hawks packed into the Bush administration from the start - this was about finding a test case for a new world view. Bush in his speeches made a big deal about Iraq becoming a "beacon of democracy" in the ME, so Bush set the geopolitical bar impossibly high. Linking Iraq to the "war on terror" was also a huge mistake, because if we let Iraq degenerate into a mess of anarchy, or do anything short of turn it into some form of US-compliant proxy, all sorts of folks including a lot of brands of Islamists will claim victory over the infidel west.

They stay because Bush and Blair fight shy of just bringing them home and leaving the power vacuum in Iraq to resolve itself as it will.

If we did that, virtually the entire arab world would proclaim it as a great victory against the west, and you could guarantee that things would get a lot worse closer to home.

The insurgents are not "the enemy". They have never had nuclear weapoons or powerful chemical weapons or biological weapons.

That isn't the only issue. Bush, and Blair by following Bush's lead, have also turned this into a fundamental conflict relating to terrorism, the mideast, and militant Islam. It was a collosal mistake to launch into this mess, but the only thing worse would be to pull out without a decisive victory. We can't afford to give active enemies around the world the idea that they can outlast us, or outfight us, on any level.

A negotiated settlement in Fallujah and Najaf would be ideal, but that requires the good faith and positive action of all sides. Failing that, armed resistance must be crushed, because any other action will simply embolden the enemy. And yes, if they're fighting us, they're the enemy.

Instead they make up a part of the very people whom the US/UK now need to engage so that a government can be brought into existence in Iraq which commands the loyalty of a sufficiently high part of the population to be stable.

We can't engage all the Iraqi people. If we can negotiate our way out of fights, if we can get the armed resistance to disarm by dealing with community and religious leaders, and if we can at least partly un****up the massive FUBAR that is this whole adventure, then great. But if these fighters refuse to disarm, refuse to stop attacking, and the rest of the Iraqi people won't stop them, then ultimately, we will.

The objective is not to defeat these people it is to police them until they can go back to doing that for themselves.

Police the world over know that they can only operate if they win and maintain the trust of the community they serve.

So did police in the UK have the trust of the IRA, and average murderers, rapists, and thieves? Or were those not a part of the community they serve? You can never gain the trust of those who actively oppose you, or who have agendas and goals fundamentally and irreconcileably opposed to you.

Where open resistance breaks out in Iraq the troops need to withdraw, attempt to cordon off the area and to open communications with any leader who can be found; not to win a battle but rather not to have a battle at all.

So if this becomes the known pattern, and "open resistance" breaks out on some scale in all the oilfields, ports, major highways, etc. that are the economic and logistical lifeline of both Iraq and the occupying forces, we should just allow that sort of interdiction? Don't disturb them while they plant more IED's along the roads? If that was the policy, why would any Iraqi in his right mind not "openly resist" with total impunity, unless that Iraqi was so in bed with coalition forces that he or she would be up against a wall no matter who eventually took over?

Weakness and a refusal to take any action when confronted isn't going to win trust - it's going to make Iraqis think in terms of which faction of armed thugs is most likely to end up on top of the heap, so they know who to be friendly with.

I will offer one final observation. The comparisons made with Vietnam up to now have seemed to me rather silly. But in this particular respect there is a parallel. Because the US did no more than pay lip service in Vietnam to "winning the hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese.

Winning the hearts and minds was nothing more than public relations bull**** - it was never policy. Then again, neither was decisive engagement and destruction of VC and NVA warfighting capacity.

It was the MtGs of this world who then had all the answers.

I don't do political micromanagement of military issues, and I wouldn't have gotten into the entire Vietnam mess in the first place. If I had, though, Soviet and PRC support of NVN would have been addressed a lot more forcefully, I wouldn't have ****ed around for years with taking a hands off approach to NVA activity and support for the VC, and I wouldn't have tolerated the thuggish, incompetent *******s that passed for the ARVN "government." In the ideal situation, we would have cut a deal with Ho right after the end of WW2, when we had the chance and the credibility to do so.

So I, and all the rest of the world, watched the attempts to "win" that war by the steady escalation of military force. It was appalling. It brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets of every capital city in the world including me. It totally sickened the men who were sent there to do the "winning". In the end even the world's politicians, even Richard Nixon, knew how appalling it was.

What you didn't recognize, is that there were no credible attempts to win. There was a lot of micromanagement and meddling and game-playing with specious political considerations, and a lot of piss-poor doctrine for dealing with that type of war.

Which tells us this.

It does not stop with firing on mosques.

It also doesn't stop with allowing every mosque to become a declared safe haven for enemy forces to engage us with an assurance that they will be able to do so with impunity.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Have you actually asked any Iraqis?

All evidence is that they do want democracy, and are impatient with the US for not giving to them soon enough.

I've thoroughly read a poll conducted in Iraq. Only half of them want a democracy. The other half is separated into those who want an Islamist republic, and those who want a strong man to unite the country.

Besides, democracy is not a priority for most of them, which is not surprising from a country who has never experienced it. They'd rather start with security, prosperity, and, above all, sovereignty without American patronage. People in the West just don't realize how humiliating colonialism is.

[Barinthus]

The fact that the military is doing something about those soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners shows that they are not callous and encouraging abuses.

As for those who are saying that the insurgency is what Iraqis want, I direct your attention to an exercept from

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54541-2004Apr29?language=printer

"We are doing this because we love our country and we want these thugs out of our country," said Mohammed Faur, a former colonel in the Iraqi Intelligence Service who is serving as a liaison between the militia and the Marines.

Faur said most of the members of the new force would be from Fallujah. "It's about time for them to take responsibility," he said. "It's an Iraqi problem. They Iraqis are getting angrier. People are upset that Syrians and foreigners are causing trouble here."

Foreigners (as in those islamic fighters) = troublemakers.

It's a good thing to see Iraqis taking care of this. The Iraqi military shouldn't have been dissolved at all, that was one stupid move. Also it's the goal of the CPA to transfer authority over to the locals anyway.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Bump for MOBIUS, et al.