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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (2911)	12/8/2003 9:12:04 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3959

rruff, the writer of this column must be another duranged person!!! Dishonoring the Dead Bush—and the nation—should do more for the soldiers killed in Iraq Dec. 5 — The president’s numbers are up and, oh, by the way, another U.S. soldier died in Iraq last night. That was the gist of a radio news report Friday morning. President Bush’s holiday dash to Baghdad is credited, along with some positive economic signs, with boosting his approval rating back above 60 percent. Never mind that in the days immediately following his visit, a wave of attacks against U.S. allies in the region resulted in the deaths of seven Spanish intelligence agents, two Japanese diplomats and a couple of South Korean aid workers. Those attacks probably would have happened anyway, but Bush’s “bring ‘em on” bravado shows exceptional callousness toward the people who are the targets of the terrorists. Bush is safely spirited away in Air Force One while the enemy digs in and gets better at tracking and targeting less-well-protected visitors. At this stage, the administration is embroiled in a full-blown counterinsurgency war, and it’s troubling that they’re not facing up to it. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is visiting Baghdad over the weekend; maybe he’ll learn something that will shake his confidence and force a reassessment of U.S. strategy. Rumsfeld has announced that U.S. troops will be drawn down from the current 130,000 to 105,000, a puzzling decision considering the increasing lethality of the resistance. The fundamental question, says an aide to a ranking Senate Republican, is this: “As Bush goes into the election season, will he contemplate increasing troops; and if not, can the Coalition win with the troops they have?” Fighting a counterinsurgency hearkens back to the Vietnam strategy of destroying the village to save it. Innocent civilians get swept up in the conflict, and as their death toll rises, so does the anger at the U.S.-led occupation. The Pentagon, fearful of generating stories about too many Iraqi casualties, refuses to release body counts as a measure of success in combating the insurgency. Those body counts became infamous in Vietnam when we learned later how the Pentagon deliberately inflated the numbers of enemy killed to suggest peace was at hand and to somehow justify continuing the war despite the tens of thousands of Americans who gave their lives. The number of American dead in Iraq is nowhere near what it was in Vietnam, which makes it all the more disturbing why the nation has not done more to honor these fallen soldiers. With rare exception, the news of the almost daily deaths in Iraq is relegated to a back page or a passing mention, after the latest tabloid scandal. “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS is notable for devoting a silent tribute to those who have died. I don’t fault Bush for not attending funerals. A Republican strategist I respect and who lived through Vietnam says it only emboldens the other side if you thrust the country into national mourning. “Just like Vietnam, there’s a public-relations component,” he says. “The Tet Offensive was not a military victory, but it played big in a public-relations sense. We’re approaching a difficult period, and our enemies are very cognizant of the election calendar.” The North Vietnamese mounted the Tet Offensive in February 1968, just before the New Hampshire primary, and the bold maneuver played a role in President Johnson’s decision to announce he was pulling out of the election. During the Vietnam era, the networks would end the Friday-evening news each week with a scroll of names of people lost in action. Some weeks, there were five hundred deaths. Today, as long as voters aren’t reminded of the human cost of Iraq, confidence can remain high in Bush’s leadership. Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad was touted as an example of his renewed commitment to fighting the war. His words convey resolve, but the administration’s actions are less than stalwart. In Saddam’s Iraq, the schools did not teach the Qur’an; the regime and the education system were secular. Now the Shiite religious leaders are clamoring for free and fair elections, knowing that one-man, one-vote would put them in power since Shiites are 60 percent of the population. The blood of American GIs liberated Iraq, but our worst nightmare, an Islamic state, will eventually be achieved at the ballot box. How bizarre is that? msnbc.com