I think that Iraq is headed the way of Somalia, in that, they had civilization and gave it up.
The sad reality of things may be that the very nature of Islamic culture (read: religion) requires an oppressive theocratic leadership to preserve the “peace.” Given the chance, the various factions can’t seem to help killing each other for the simple crime of being “the other.”
It’s tribal warfare, plain and simple.
It doesn’t help that the other religious autocracies in the region have a vested interest in seeing the burgeoning representative democracy fail. The last thing they want to see is a viable, working threat to their long-established ways of life. And so we see Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia funneling in high-tech weapons and well-trained “insurgents” to continue to foment discord and destabilize the new government while sabotaging the effectiveness of any Coalition “peace-building” efforts.
We will never succeed in helping the Iraqi’s if we/they cannot find a solution to the Sunni-kills-Shia so Shia-kills-Sunni cylce. Otherwise, six-months after we finally do leave, the country will collapse into sectarian chaos, and then Syria and Iran move in to fight over what’s left, with an appalling loss of life on all sides.
Say what you want about evil, despotic, dictatorships; at least they’re fairly stable.
UPDATE:
And on a related note. There has been much discussion as to whether “insurgents” and captured POWs and terrorism suspects such as languish in the Gitmo detention facility qualify for protection under the terms of the Geneva Convention. I would propose that the answer is NO.
WASHINGTON — Iraqi insurgents are teaching recruits sophisticated sniper techniques for targeting U.S. troops that include singling out engineers, medics and chaplains, according to training material obtained by U.S. military intelligence.
If the people you are fighting send their snipers out to specifically target doctors, corpsman, chaplains, and others who traditionally enjoy the protection of the GC as non-combatants, then clearly the people against whom you are fighting have no knowledge of or interest in zees, how you call it, “Geneva Convention.”
They are thugs, criminals, and murderers, plain and simple.
And another thing. The next time someone trots out some bombastic rhetoric about how many “civilians” have been killed in Iraq, consider this photo.
This “insurgent” is wearing jogging pants and flip flops. All he has to do is ditch the rifle, drop the vest, and fade into the population. If our guys are lucky enough to tag the SOB, the media will show some poor slob in running pants and flip-flops, covered in blood, another “civilian” killed by coalition forces. Because you KNOW that before the media will be allowed to take the picture, the gun and kevlar will be stripped off.
Every insurgent killed is technically a civilian. Nevermind that these civilians are armed with RPGs and high-powered rifles, with a hard-on for killing Americans.
UPDATE DEUX:
Me, I’m for thinking that the Israeli’s got some kickin’ Counter-Battery Radar. Backtracking a missile track, and having air on station overhead is a great way to make lauching rockets a high-risk profession. But remember, Hezbollah is the “friend of the people.” Yeah….
Filed under: Religion of Pieces
They had civilisation and they gave it up?! PLEASE!!! How about: “They had civilisation and we decided unilaterally, against the will of everyone else in the world except the brittish, to take their civilisation out, and ignorantly bring Iranian-supported militias to power”?
Now this sounds a more fair reason to me.
Also, you’re vilifying the insurgent because he’s wearing civilian clothes? What should he do? The guy tried to stop our army while he was in his own army. We were stronger, he lost. But he still doesn’t want to see our troops in his country, he wants to fight back. What should he do? wear military clothings, and perhaps carry a red flag to get identified in a second and get killed? Of coarse not! If waering clothes like a civilian gives him a slightly more chance of survival, he will do it. That’s what any logic would demand.
Ah, but please, suh. I am NOT villifying the insurgent, per se. What I am villifying is the tendency to use “civilian” casualties as the flail de jure with which to condemn the US and its presence in Iraq. When, in fact, as soon as someone picks up a rifle or RPG, they cease to be a civlian, and become a combatant.
My point is that by NOT wearing a uniform, as part of an established military force, and by using his status as a civilian to increase his chances of survival, all while engaging an enemy force militarily, makes that person ineligible for protections under the Geneva Convention, AND, makes the term “civilian” at best a misnomer, at worst, willfully deceptive.
Good. The insurgent is dressed like a civilian ans is hiding among them. Are all civilians insurgents? simple answer: NO! What should we do now that a combatant is hiding among civilians?
Ok, now that’s a good subject to discuss. If a fighter hides among civilians, is it moral to kill the surrounding innocent civilians to eliminate the hidden “bad guy”?
I believe there are 2 possible answers. If you really absoulutely 100% want to kill the guy, be aware that there is NO way to pinpoint him. You have to eliminate 10 people to kill this one militia. This is what US does in Iraq or as a better example Israel does in Lebanon and Gaza (Up to now, Israel has killed 750 people in Lebanon, at most 50 of them among Hizbollah militants. That’s 11 civilians per one single combatant). In my standards, this is NOT the correct path. Eliminating 1 militia does NOT justify the death of 10 innocents. Trying to blame the militia for the lives of those 10 people make the claim more pathetic since you were the one who pulled the trigger, not him. It was your responsibility to pinpoint him, however hard or impossible it may be, not him.
The second solution is to see why the militia is doing this? Is there any way you can understand his logic, and try to solve the problem he’s trying to solve by becoming a militia? That’s much more humane than the first one. This solution requires more thinking power than fire power, which unfortunately I doubt the current administration possess much of.
What if we already have a clear and cogent understanding of what he wants? And what if what the militant wants is to destablize the freely elected government so that his proxies can then move in and set up the traditional Sharia-based theocracy by force of sword? Should we just shrug and go, “okay, whatever.” And let it happen to prevent any more non-combatant casualties?
Even if what he wants is that, should we kill the other 10 innocents?
Not intentionally, of course.
But what happens when your militant is firing rockets from a courtyard, and you return fire, and the ensuing explosion kills 10 people? And what if your “militants” were all wearing civilian clothes? How do you determine who was part of the firing team and who was an innocent bystander?
And what if the terrorist is counting on your reluctance to fire into populated areas – a reluctance he clearly doesn’t share – and so CHOOSES his launching points in amongst apartment buildings and shops? How long do you continue to accept his barrages before you respond?
Not intentonally?! You know that if you drop a bomb on the building he’s staying in (and probably shooting an occasional round of fire) you will definitely bring thw whole bulding down. Yes, he should be punished, and yes, the bomb will kill him. But what about the other 5 children, 2 helpless women, 2 elderly people and the passerby who was just passing by? Please think about it? We are talking about 10 innocent souls being killed to punish one bad guy. Does the cause justify the actions? My answer: no.
Note: Of coarse the terrorist os counting on your reluctance to fire into that populated area. But If you choose to kill all those innocents to shoot him down, you have effectively made yourself to be a more dangerous terrorist killing innocent women and chidren!
Seems like you’ve got a pretty good handle on what is the wrong answer.
What’s the right one?
What’s right? It’s like a chess game. Sometimes you are stuck in a situation that you cannot gain anything, because you had made a mistake 10 moves before. What I mean is that these round of violence, both in Iraq and lebanon, are not newborn, they are rooted in the past actions. The militant has some logic, and some reasons to do the stuff he does. Basically all those militias consider themselves “resistant forces” against their country’s occupation. Iraqi insurgents fight to free their country from our forces (pleease don’t say that we freed them, pleaase!) while Lebanese Hizbollah is trying to “free” shebaa farms from Israeli occupation. We here in US tend to name them as terrorist because 1. either we are the occupiers or we totally support the occupiers. And 2. since they may not have the means to attack our military targets, they tend to attack whatever they can.
The irony is that according to numbers, we (US and Israel) are much more terorrist than them! In this lates round of violenece in Lebanon, Israel has killed 600 Lebanese, 550 of them were civilians (for example Qana). In our three years of Iraq occupation about 42000 civilians have been killed. All of these innocent souls were killed with the same reason, “A terrorist has been hiding among them”.
You asked me what is the right answer. The right answer is to eliminate the “cause” which transformed an otherwise normal person to a militant. That means: we have to stop our occupation of Iraq, pull our forces out and let the Iraqi people decide what they want to do. The same goes for Israel, they have to leave the land their occupied. If Israel leaves Shebaa farms in Lebanon, there won’t be a reason for Lebanese Hezbollah to fire rockets into Israel. If they pull out of Syrian Golan heights, Syria will stop their hostility towards them. If they go back to the 1967 UN green borders, all the middle eastern counries, including the current big-bad Iran will lose the cause of their hostilities towards Israel.
This, my friend, is the guaranteed way towards a lasting peace. Killing invites more killing, and violence begs for violence.
You missed the entire point of my original post. By claiming that 42,000 “innocent civilians” have been killed in Iraq, you deftly ignore the reality that the vast majority of these “civilians” were busy shooting at coalition troops at the time they were killed.
Isreal did pull out of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. All it did was allow the PLA to fire their Qassam rockets that much closer to the Israeli heartland.
The shebaa farms haven’t been in contention until recently, as the cause de jure for Hezbolloah to justify its aggression. Hamas, the PLA, Hezbollah, Iran…all have repeatedly made open declarations that they will stop at nothing short of the utter destruction of Israel for no other reason than it is Israel.
Appeasement and capitulation has not, and will not work. It only emboldens your enemy by validating his methods as effective in getting what he wants.
One might argue that it is the highest form of morality to allow yourself to be killed rather than take another life. It is simply not a view to which I adhere.
1. Your ignoring the fact that many of the killed civilians have been children below 10 years old. Were they busy shooting? I strongly doubt it.
2. Well, this was my solution to stop killing civilians. You claim appeasement doesn’t work? Fine. What do you suggest? What in your opinnion Israel should have done so that 550 out of 600 people killed in Lebanon had not been killed? The enemy has set the cost of wartoo high (although it has done it by immorally hiding among civilians). What should we, which claim to have the higher moral ground, do to stop them and not kill civilians?
While my solution is to eliminate the cause, not people, your previous posts implies that your solution is: “kill the buggers! Let them die, and we’ll blame the terrorists for it!”
NDM, your proposals for “peace” are merely formulas to render disciplined, responsible and humane armies such as that of the United States completely ineffective, to game the war so that we always lose.
You bring up 10-year-old kids as though that in itself ends the argument. You’re arguing from gut emotion, not reason. That’s understandable when kids and women are involved, but it’s seriously misguided.
The people setting off roadside bombs in Iraq and firing rockets into Israel are most definitely not freedom fighters striving to breathe the air of liberty out from under the bootheel of their U.S. oppressors. They are, by and large, terrorists and thugs. How is their using civilians for cover any different than a hostage situation? Wait, there is one difference: in a normal hostage situation, the hostage-takers can be reasoned with. They want something — cash, a plane, a car, etc. They usually don’t really want to kill anyone. These guys are different. If they aren’t targeting civilians themselves on purpose, they are hoping they can use U.S.-inflicted civilian casualties as propaganda for their cause.
Again, your prescription for peace is simply a call for the U.S. and Israel to lie back and take what’s coming to them. Don’t fight back, just relax and try to enjoy it.
NDM,
Again, taking a grand total of civilian deaths and using it as some general indictment of US aggression is misleading. I would present that the bulk of the civilian deaths have resulted from a) direct combat with “insurgents”
b) civilians killed by IED’s or VBIEDs planted by…other “civilians.”
I do not doubt, nor contradict that US combat actions have resulted in the deaths of unarmed women and children. I do know that the US takes amazing measures to limit those casualties whenever possible, even to affecting our ability to conduct combat ops.
It would be nice if unilateral disarmement worked. But it doesn’t it. The bad guys just go, “SWEET!” and shoot you.
If there was a way to ensure that no non-combatant was ever killed in a war, we’d take it. But there isn’t.
The fact is that this war has been conducted with the utmost concern for keeping civilians out of harm’s way. The U.S. military has gone to unprecedented and sometimes extraordinary lengths to do this.
NDM says the insurgents hide among civilians because they have no other choice. NDM says the only way to piece is for the U.S. to lay down arms and walk away.
Bullshit.
The insurgents have the choice of putting down their arms and joining the fledgling democratic political system the U.S. and right-minded Iraqis have constructed. They can use peaceful, political means to try to achieve their ends. If they stop blowing up U.S. troops and massacring civilians, the U.S. will leave in short order.
But if the U.S. walks away before that happens, we will leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of the militants and leave Iraq as big a threat to the region and the U.S. as it was under Saddam.
Yeah. What HE said.
{{Scott, while I certainly appreciated you posting on my site, if you are going to continue to do so, I really must insist that you stop explaining things better than I do.}}
wow, you guys have been busy reinforcing your mutual point of view.
The solution you are advertising will never stop violence. Israel employed this solution almost 50 years ago, and look: Arabs and Israelis are still fighting. Unless both sides stop violence and killing, this will continue for years to come.
We Americans have only experienced this path for a short time, namely 3 years. What I fear for is that 50 years passes and we still observe the same round after round of violence in Iraq.
By the way, we imposed our will on Iraqi people. President Bush started the war specifically because of WMD claims, which he clearly stated in congress before starting the firework on Baghdad. We fought their army, conquered their country, and guess what? No WMD found any where.
So what you propose now is that: OK, we messed the reason, but we were the stronger army, and we won the war any way. Why can’t they be good boys and obey us, so that a dependant government gets shaped, and we can go home with all our newfound influence?
Please be honest, do you see a good reason for us being in Iraq? If we went there based on a bunch of lies, and now that we haven’t found any WMD, doesn’t the average Iraqi have the right to want us out of his country?
By the way, was Germany’s invasion of France in WW2 justified for any reason, or was their only reason that their army (and race) was superior? And did anyone call the “French resistance movement” a terrorst militia, although it had military branches that only did espionage?
Believe me, those are not a bunch of nutheads which oppose the glorious American democracy for no reason. They have seen their family members get killed, their country occupied and their industry, roads and bridges demolished based on some lies.
One of the stated conditions for our withdrawl is a stable, elected government and an end to the sectarian (insurgent) violence.
I would suggest, as Scott did, that the best and quickest way to get the American’s out of Iraq is to stop blowing up mosques, police stations and public markets.
Your general trend seems to be that if the US or Isreal would stop shooting back, then there would be peace.
Okee-doke.
That’s one part of what I suggest. The other is pulling out of the occupied lands to stop the violenece cause.
Any way, I hope there will be peace in every part of the world.