"Plenty of Iraqis want the USA and COW to be there as they have a lot of years experience of Sunni suppression. The USA could say to Saddam "Look, it seems we've made a bit of a blunder, why don't we put you back in charge and we'll support you". That would put the wind up a lot of Iraqis and settle things down. Let the deck of cards start up again. Not Saddam's sons of course.
With Saddam in charge and the oil flowing and no WMDs [which to me were obviously not there or there in negligible proportions] there would be order. He's good at suppressing dissent."
I hope you're joking. g. I know you are but you raise an interesting subject.
The problem is that although the Bush people seem to feel that the more of them we kill the more compliant they will get, the facts seem to indicate that the more of them we kill the madder they get.
Like Saddam. It could, just maybe, be that if we put Saddam back in power we might discover that he now really, really wants to do all the things we said he was planning to do before we invaded. And now he might not care if he dies trying to do it or loses millions of his people. Et tu, Saddam, et tu?
Sort of like the suspected terrorists we held at Guantanamo. We weren't sure we were right so we held them without hearings and took a couple of years out of their young lives, abused them in ways that could have seemed a little harsh to them (after all they seem genetically incapable of understanding that our interests take precedence over theirs, and the rule of law) and then we released a few of them.
And, sure enough, we were right. Some of the guys we released actually took up arms and tried to kill our guys. Just proves we were right to suspect them; proves it, that is, if you want to ignore human nature and the animosities that would undoubtedly arise as a result of the treatment we gave them.
Still, so many red-necked Americans seem to think that we can treat these people like frightened sheep, herd them around and enforce our will. They don't seem to understand that all the little thimbles of power held by each individual can merge in a common, passionate, resistance that could sweep aside our efforts.
But then Bush, Cheney, Rice and the others never really spent much time with people like that, did they? Not even in our own country. Bush Sr. knew. The others needed to go to Vietnam and watch those tough little people at work. Bush, like a rock, only dumber. Ed |
