It's pointless to ask soldiers to act with greater restraint, when they are being shot at. Or even if they are just being pelted with rocks (which can kill, too).
What's needed, is to re-establish an Iraqi police force, who will keep order in the streets. Let them deal with the protestors.
The problem being, can we get a loyal police force in place, and will it remain loyal? "Loyal", meaning loyal to the U.S., not loyal to whatever they see as Iraqi interests. If whoever is running the Iraqi police acts on his own definition of "Iraqi interests", and ignores our definition, then he's just one more independant armed group for us to deal with. We've got enough of those, already. If we can't find proxies to police the streets, if U.S. soldiers have to do it, there is going to be a series of incidents such as this, and then things will escalate from there. |
