Given your view of the situation, I would agree that there would be some grounds for optimism. Unfortunately, I suspect that the resistance is not from the "dead enders" that the Bush people like to dismiss so readily. I've seen a few public television discussions that ask Arabs and Iraqi experts about the resistance and I've read a lot of investigative type articles. There is a growing body of opinion that the resistance is from several groups.
Some of the basis for the resitance is nationalistically grounded, some is religiously grounded, some is politically grounded, some is foreign terrorist supported, some is a result of Ba'athist disenfranchisement and resentment and there are probably other bases. The thing that is clear, however, is that the actions we are taking to quell the resistance are NOT WORKING.
For reasons that I gave in my earlier post, the longer they don't work, the more momentum and numbers the guerrillas are likely to amass. Like the Israeli-Palestinian conflagration that happened over the last 3 years, once the cycle starts it builds and pulls in more young, passionate and committed activists.
I've been in a war. I know how easy it is to target and kill men. I know how men respond when they "feel" like their lives are always on the line. I know the violence that fear breeds. I know how the reactions of such men create more, not less, resistance from the population. We should all know these things. We have the Russian experience in Afghanistan and the American experience in Vietnam to remind us.
In a place like Iraq where people do things on a regular basis that we think of as absolutely crazy, what makes you think that we know enough to win over the Iraqis. How do we counter the actions of terrorists that know the Iraqis and understand them like family (which they often are)? |
