"the USA didn't make Iraqis suicide bomb each other. Something in Iraqi society did that."
Elroy, yes, but why do you argue: "I don't hold Bush responsible for much bad stuff for giving the Iraqi population what they desire, I blame the people who took their newfound freedom and decided to use it to kill random Iraqis in random crowds?"
Don't you think that when a nation decides to play God and use its military might to force "regime change," it has SOME responsibility to look ahead and understand the "something in Iraq society" that might actually cause things to end up exponentially worse than before?
There might have been some clues too, don't you think?
For instance, the State Department career diplomats and Iraq experts were warning that removing Saddam would create chaos and might lead to civil war.
For instance, a decade earlier the Sunni majority had gunned down Shiites wholesale using choppers and machine guns.
For instance even earlier the Sunni and Shiites had cooperated in gassing the Kurds.
For instance, the father of the man who made the decision had considered the same course of action and rejected it because he didn't want to try to deal with a probably intractable occupation that would likely lead to the empowerment of a radical Islamic leadership.
Those are just some of the facts you'll have to account for if you want to convince reasonable people that we can absolve the Administration of any responsibility for betting the farm on this sucker bet on the rationale that once we've given people "newfound freedom," whatever bad things ensue can be considered to be their fault.
What is about removing all the institutions of another nation's government and declaring them free while you occupy their nation, patrol their streets with guns, patrol their skies with attack helicopters and bombers and buy up their politicians with billions of dollars of cash that you think will allow us to lay the blame for the failure of "democracy in Iraq" on them?
And, more importantly, what is it about the "something in Iraq society [that makes them kill each other]" that we can change in order to "win" in Iraq? And where does that lead us?
Because if WE can't change THAT, don't you think we ought to declare defeat and get the hell out instead of sending more of our soldiers to kill, bleed and die there? Ed |
