I did not say there was humiliation in losing. I said that there was humiliation for the regime in the unwillingness to fight.
As it stands, the Iraqi security forces have taken plenty of hits, and are, of course, targets for the resistance. No one is starving in Iraq, so I doubt that people are risking so much to enter these forces just because of unemployment.
Do you think that if the attitude towards the GIs were generally hostile, the children would feel so free to hang out? even for gum?
You miss the point. You asserted that the populace was scared and hostile. Even in cases where there is hostility, it has been more normal to demonstrate than shoot, and no one seems afraid that we will kill them for agitating. This undermines your point about the poll.
Sorry, there are probably a couple of hundred thousand former Ba'athists and family members, who profited from Hussein, maybe more. I am not concerned about them, except as a security problem. Everyone else is better off.
I, for one, always expected that there would be a period of pacification, if only because it was inevitable that there would be some hold outs, and because it was inevitable that anti- Western terrorists would try to infiltrate. Therefore, none of this seems strange or unaccountable to me. It is at a higher level than I would have wished, but it is not a big surprise to me, or, I would say, to the Administration.
Only someone with completely unrealistic criteria for progress would call this a failure at this point......... |
