Hi Neocon; Re: "Yes, and at the same time, services are being returned to pre- war levels, businesses are reopening, most towns have elected councils ..."
It's good to know that healthier, wealthier, better fed and happier Iraqis will be shooting at us instead of the sick, poor, hungry and sad ones that we've had to deal with so far. I suppose that the next piece of good news is that the expenses in Iraq will cause OUR citizens to end up sick, poor, hungry and sad. Will that improve the performance of the US military? I doubt it.
The problem is that improving the conditions in Iraq doesn't make the locals love us any more than improving the conditions in Palestine made the locals there love the Israelis. We are the occupier, and we will be shot at until we leave.
As to "Iraqis are eager to enlist in the security forces", this is a sad joke. We just took the Iraqis on a joint mission and their guys made sure that we didn't catch a single fedayeen. It's not just that the Iraqi security forces cannot be relied on to police Iraq to our wishes, but instead, like the Palestinian security forces, they can be relied on to assist the rebels. We have essentially zero true friends in Iraq, if "true friend" means people who are willing to put their life on the line in order to make Iraq into what we want it to be. All of our buddies are upper middle class intelligentsia too smart to get drafted, or lazy people sitting on unearned wealth.
-- Carl |
