If you want a good comparison for Bush’s war in Iraq, a good model of how Bush’s war is likely to go, look no further than Palestine. Bush now has his own occupied territories.
One of the many things Bush did not talk about in his Sunday night address was how victory will be measured in Iraq. He spoke vaguely of victory, but how is that victory defined? What will it look like and how do we get from here to there? How will we know we have achieved victory?
Using the Israel-PLO model as our guide, we see that victory is not possible and will never be achieved. Struggling for victory just incites an endless cycle of retaliatory violence. It is a perpetual war of revenge, and Bush is driving the war in Iraq in the exact same direction. Every couple of weeks CentCom announces a new push to rid Iraq of evildoers, calling it Operation Peninsula Strike, or some such ridiculous name. The soldiers fan out, burst into the homes of Iraqi families in the middle of the night, and arrest all males older than fifteen. Like the Israeli Defense Forces, Bush’s strategy seems to be to detain or kill all potential terrorists.
The results are predictable. Attacks on U.S. troops increase, and soft targets are bombed. More American raids are launched heaping even more indignities on Iraqis, which ignites more violence against the occupiers. It is Bush’s West Bank.
In his speech, Bush did get one thing right, when he said, “The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples.” Terrorists are now thriving in Iraq because the Iraqi people have built up a tremendous well of resentment for Bush, who is widely regarded as a tyrant no different than Saddam. At least Saddam was an Iraqi who could inspire nationalism in the population. Bush is just a foreign oppressor. Resentment toward him is almost palpable.
Returning to the West Bank model, Bush’s much-vaunted roadmap for peace in the Middle East is in shambles, with violence and recrimination spiraling wildly out of control. If Bush cannot demonstrate even a tiny sliver of competence in achieving a diminution of violence there, how can he possibly be trusted to make good decisions setting us on a path to peace in Iraq?
The violence between the state of Israel and the Palestinians has been carried on for nearly 50 years, with Israel determined to win its war against terror and achieve victory. With the current belligerent political leadership in Tel Aviv and Washington DC, I see no end in sight in the West Bank, and I see no end in sight in Mesopotamia.
likelystory.net |
