Stay the Course
What is the “Course” that we are supposed to be staying on?
As Holden and Andante have noted it means training an Iraqi army that is ambushing our troops.
We have learned this because Nadia McCaffrey, the mother of one of the two California National Guardsmen killed in one incident didn’t accept the Pentagon version of her son’s death, and Senator Barbara Boxer help bring pressure on the military to investigate the incident.
It means that seven Marines and a Navy corpsman are under indictment for the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi.
It means Abu Ghraib and Haditha. It means that after billions of dollars and three years Iraqis have fewer utilities than under Saddam Hussein.
This course has cost Iraqi women their civil rights, strengthened the power of fundamentalist Muslims, turned up the flame on sectarian differences.
This course has cost 2500+ members of the US military their lives, tens of thousands have been wounded, with even higher numbers among Iraqis.
It should fairly obvious that the presence of the US in Iraq is not improving the life of the people. We can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, because the tunnel was destroyed during the “Shock and Awe” campaign.
4 comments
This the waiting for the Iraqi’s to get trained to “Stand UP and Kill our Troops More Effectively” theory of HOW to re-Deploy our forces (Heaven’s Gate Needs More Troops on its Borders.)
We are training and arming the insurgency.
I wonder how isolated this situation actually is, and whether or not we’ll ever know otherwise.
Andante, I don’t believe that it is rare. They aren’t screening people effectively, because they don’t know the questions to ask. They don’t understand who the “bad guys” are, so how can they spot them.
Disbanding all Iraqi security forces after the invasion was the worse mistake we made, followed closely by not holding elections very quickly.