This is another inconvenient fact for those who delude themselves that the Patriot Act or invading Muslim countries can contain suicide bombers, so therefore we have to give little concern to whether our foreign policy needlessly inflames hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims. I wish the se folks would explain how if we can't control these actions in Iraq with 140,000 of our best troops in a country I'm going to guess is 5% the size of the US, we can do so in this country. Though it is moronic to think terrorism can be contained while pissing off needlessly hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, it may be yet quite effective, even for years ,in electing increasingly shrill right wingers, and of course it is quite effective in lining the pockets of their leaders as they rotate in and out of the "defense" industries. Sadly when in the short run these leaders can not only gain reelection but make money we will continue to be in increasing danger from terrorismfrom their misguided policies. ************** Defying U.S. Efforts, Guerrillas in Iraq Refocus and Strengthen By DEXTER FILKINS and DAVID S. CLOUD Published: July 24, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 23 - They just keep getting stronger. Despite months of assurances that their forces were on the wane, the guerrillas and terrorists battling the American-backed enterprise here appear to be growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever. A string of recent attacks, including the execution of moderate Sunni leaders and the kidnapping of foreign diplomats, has brought home for many Iraqis that the democratic process that has been unfolding since the Americans restored Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004 has failed to isolate the insurgents and, indeed, has become the target itself. After concentrating their efforts for two and a half years on driving out the 138,000-plus American troops, the insurgents appear to be shifting their focus to the political and sectarian polarization of the country - apparently hoping to ignite a civil war - and to the isolation of the Iraqi government abroad. And the insurgents are choosing their targets with greater precision, and executing and dramatizing their attacks with more sophistication than they have in the past. American commanders say the number of attacks against American and Iraqi forces has held steady over the last year, averaging about 65 a day. But the Americans concede the growing sophistication of insurgent attacks and the insurgents' ability to replenish their ranks as fast as they are killed. "We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents," said a senior Army intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make his assessments public. "But they're being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge." At the same time, the Americans acknowledge that they are no closer to understanding the inner workings of the insurgency or stemming the flow of foreign fighters, who are believed to be conducting a vast majority of suicide attacks. The insurgency, believed to be an unlikely mix of Baath Party die-hards and Islamic militants, has largely eluded the understanding of American intelligence officers since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 27 months ago. The danger is that the violence could overwhelm the intensive American-backed efforts now under way to draw Iraq's Sunni Arabs into the political mainstream, leaving the community more embittered than ever and setting the stage for even more violence and possibly civil war. Fakhri al-Qaisi, a conservative Sunni leader, warned that if the isolation of Iraq's Sunnis was not soon reversed, the insurgents would grow even stronger. "They will make suicide bombs, and they will destroy all," Mr. Qaisi said. Such results appear to be exactly what the insurgents are trying to bring about. On Tuesday, masked insurgents gunned down two moderate Sunni leaders who had been helping to draft Iraq's permanent constitution. The killings, carried out in the middle of a busy Baghdad street in heavy traffic, appeared to be calculated to squelch the voices of moderate Sunnis, and to prevent anyone else from stepping forward. The immediate effect seemed to play right into the insurgents' hands: moderate Sunni leaders announced that they were suspending their efforts to help draft a constitution, laying down several conditions for their return. Insurgents have killed moderate Sunni leaders before, but the shootings of Mejbil al-Sheik Isa and Damin al-Obeidi on Tuesday were especially striking: the men were killed after months of coaxing by Iraqi Shiite leaders and American officials intended to bring moderate Sunnis like them into the constitutional process. The killing of the Sunni leaders came just three days after one of the worst suicide attacks since the American invasion, and one that was clearly intended to draw the country closer to a full-blown sectarian conflict. Last Sunday, in the Shiite town of Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber dashed beneath a truck full of liquefied gas and blew himself up, igniting a giant fireball that killed more than 70 people and wounded at least 156. The truck, which amounted to a gigantic bomb itself, had been hijacked in western Iraq and parked next to a Shiite mosque. ....... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/i...22782400&en=140b6161bc5fd50d&ei=5070&emc=eta1
If It's Civil War, Do We Know It? By JOHN F. BURNS Published: July 24, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq — The first signs that America's top officials in Iraq were revising their thinking about what they might accomplish in Iraq came a year ago. As Iraq resumed its sovereignty after the period of American occupation, the new American team that arrived then, headed by Ambassador John D. Negroponte, had a withering term for the optimistic approach of their predecessors, led by L. Paul Bremer III. The new team called the departing Americans "the illusionists," for their conviction that America could create a Jeffersonian democracy on the ruins of Saddam Hussein's medieval brutalism. One American military commander began his first encounter with American reporters by asking, "Well, gentlemen, tell me: Do you think that events here afford us the luxury of hope?" It seemed clear then that the administration, for all its public optimism, had begun substituting more modest goals for the idealists' conception of Iraq. How much more modest has become clearer in the 12 months since. From the moment American troops crossed the border 28 months ago, the specter hanging over the American enterprise here has been that Iraq, freed from Mr. Hussein's tyranny, might prove to be so fractured - by politics and religion, by culture and geography, and by the suspicion and enmity sown by Mr. Hussein's years of repression - that it would spiral inexorably into civil war. If it did, opponents of the American-led invasion had warned, American troops could get caught in the crossfire between Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds and Turkmen, secularists and believers - reduced, in the grimmest circumstances, to the common target of a host of contending militias. Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare could come true. Recent weeks have seen the insurgency reach new heights of sustained brutality. The violence is ever more centered on sectarian killings, with Sunni insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians in suicide bombings. There are reports of Shiite death squads, some with links to the interior ministry, retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics and community leaders. The past 10 days have seen such a quickening of these killings, particularly by the insurgents, that many Iraqis are saying that the civil war has already begun. That at least some senior officials in Washington understand the gravity of the situation seems clear from remarks made at the Foreign Press Center in Washington two weeks ago by Zalmay Khalilzad, who arrives in Baghdad this week to begin as Mr. Negroponte's successor. In his remarks, Mr. Khalilzad abandoned a convention that had bound senior American officials when speaking of Iraq - to talk of civil war only if reporters raised it first, and then only to dismiss it as a beyond-the-fringe possibility. Using the term twice in one paragraph, he spoke of civil war as something America must do everything to avoid. "Iraq is poised at the crossroads between two starkly different visions," he said. "The foreign terrorists and hardline Baathist insurgents want Iraq to fall into a civil war." The new ambassador struck a positive chord, to be sure, saying "Iraqis of all communities and sects, like people everywhere, want to establish peace and create prosperity." Still, his coda remained one of caution: "I do not underestimate the difficulty of the present situation." One measure of the doubts afflicting American officials here has been a hedging in the upbeat military assessments that generals usually offer, coupled with a resort to statistics carefully groomed to show progress in curbing the insurgents that seems divorced from realities on the ground. One example of the new "metrics" has been a rush of figures on the buildup of Iraq's army and police force - a program known to many reporters who have been embedded on joint operations as one beset by inadequate training, poor leadership, inadequate weaponry and poor morale. Officers involved in running the program offer impressive-sounding figures - including the fact that, by mid-June, the Iraqi forces had been given 306 million rounds of ammunition, roughly 12 bullets for each of Iraq's 25 million people. But when one senior American officer involved was asked whether the Americans might end up arming the Iraqis for a civil war, he paused for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe," he said. link to page 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/weekinreview/24burns.html?pagewanted=2
I have been thinking for a while that the fall back goal of the Bush's might be to welcome a civil war. This way they can have one side dependent on them and ask us to help with the fighting. Also in a real civil war we might be able to have at least one group with real determined desire to fight along side us. Not the present situation in which poor unemployed guys enlist for a while for some quick bucks, supposedly to fight for our favorite English speaking exiles, only to split when it it time to actually fight. They don't seem to do those polls anymore, but if i recall roughy 80% of Iraqis wanted the US occupiers to leave. Maybe with a civil war more will actually want us to continue to occupy.
In the Iraq-Iran War, the US and much of the West armed both sides and seemed to be largely content for both sides to slaughter each other. It also seems possible that in this warkwe wouldn't really care that much if say the Shiites slaughtered say a million or two Sunnis for us, if that is what it took to end the rsesistance. Any potential blame for this bloodbath on Bush policies should be able to be spun as just the work of Muslim terrorists that as ever great humanitarians who love freedom and peace tried so hard to prevent.
First I think it just show advance the U.S. itself is when comes to having group of different people to co - exist. But I think the lessons such that this country went through (slavery, civil rights movements, class struggles of the 30's etc) is something a lot of other nations have to go through and learn on their own. You can't just give them democracy and expect them to be singing kumbayah together. It takes deligent effort and trial and errors by themselves to reach that goal. We're lucky in this country and have can reach that goal, some countries might take forever to reach that point, and we need to be ok with that. We shouldn't expect that we can change them through occupying them for a few years and lead them by the hand, we didn't get there this way, and they are not going to be able to do that also.
