Shocking Tally of Iraq Civilian Causalities

[Occhidiangela]

"If the insurgents stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up we will go home sooner!"

Methinks they might phrase that backwards:

"If you go home sooner, we will stop killing civilians, targeting convoys, and just blowing things up!"

Which I think may lead to this problem going on for longer than it needs to, since each side is waiting for the other to stop. Strange, but it always seems to work that way. Israel and Palestine have been at it for about 60 years now.

-Jester
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You may be right, but here's the risk problem, seen with a slightly wider angle lens. It is believed in Washington that departingh now leaves too big a power vacuum, which as it is filled will take the shape of a wider spread civil war than is going on now, or worse. More dead people, lots more dead people, on a weekly basis. Risk decision: do we risk a bigger war by pulling out and giving the various factions one less target to attack? Will the aggregate volume of attacks decrease if Americans simple go away? I don't think so, because the Sunni's have been disarmed, they are a minority, and there is a majority who are well armed with a grudge and a desire for power. Think Hutus, Rwanda, and what they did to Tutsis, for what some folks see as the future if Iraq, south and central, if America pulls out now.

Remember Colin Powell's cryptic comment about pottery shops? "If you break it, you own it?" Well, in "breaking" the power structure the US (and the coalition of the billing) took on ownership of the problems caused. Kofi Annan, for all that I think he's an incompetent, was right when he called the US "occupying power." That is the role America fell into when Kofi bailed out after the truck bomb hit the UN office building in Baghdad. Action talks and BS walks, so Kofi walked. Still, he was right on that matter.

The "transition authority until the power vacuum we created fills back up with something good enough" (aka occupying power) is obliged to try and keep a lid on the chaos. Good enough means, I think, NOT a spreading civil war. Defining something by what it is not is a hell of a way to run an insane asylum, eh?

Do you remember our conversation before the Iraq war started? Deciding to opt for war was a big risk, and some unknowns on the back side were (and they appear unresolved as of this writing)

Can you impose democracy at the point of a bayonet?

Is the creation of a second Ismalic Republic in the Persian Gulf (a likely outcome foreseen even then by rogues and others) an acceptable outcome, strategicaly for the US? For the global economy/community in general? (Second may be a different answer than the first.)

Can Iraq be expected to break asunder like Yugoslavia once the glue (Saddam, his will, his team) is removed?

At the time, I did not see how Al Qaeda in particular would capitalize on the chaos, though I fully expected Iran to capitalize on the power vacuum next door. They did.

The "on the ground question" you ask is too simplistic for the situation and the obligation (moral and legal) undertaken by "breaking" the power structure in the first place.

At least a foot and a fist in the tar baby, if not a couple of ears as well.

I wonder sometimes if GWB asks "Hmm, anyone know where a nearby briar patch is? Where are Brer Fox and Brer Bear when you need tham?"

Probably not. Probably sees the cracker barrel as half full. :whistling:

Occhi