You believe he’s willing to kill on orders, but not to lie ? Are you defending him, or insulting him ?
Besides, I see no reason to believe you, when all the actual evidence says exactly the opposite, not to mention common sense. Only in America’s masturbatory fantasies do our victims love us for conquering and slaughtering them.
What does that have to do with anything ? I was quoting a survey.
Because we are better armed, and most are afraid we’ll level their city, or kidnap them and torture them, or rape their children in front of them, or do various other unpleasent things. It’s what we are known for.
I picked up your post randomly to make a more general comment : it seems to me that many posters in this thread are putting too much confidence in a peaceful, stable, america-friendly Kurdistan.
First, the Kurds and the USA are only circumstantial allies. I gather that Kurds aren’t necessarily as enamored of the USA as one might think. They didn’t necessarily forgot that the USA was supporting Hussein while he was gassing them, for instance.
Second, the autonomous (Iraki) Kurdistan has only be peaceful for a short while. Before the american invasion, the two main Kurd parties were fighting each other. Such a fight might very well resume in the future, as soon as they’ll get what they all agree on, like the oil-producing areas, independance, whatever…
Third, the issue of other Kurd areas might very well cause serious troubles in the Iraki Kurdistan, for instance with it serving as a base for operations inside neighboring countries. Turkey (for instance) won’t necessarily accept the presence of a safe haven for Kurd militias in a neighboring country forever.
To sum up, the Iraki Kurdistan is a much hotter spot than many people seem to assume, and serious issues might erupt there too, even assuming that it would be somehow shielded from the current troubles in Irak, from islamist extremism, etc…
Another factor is that in a guerilla war the majority of the population doesn’t have to do the actual fighting. If an insurgency doesn’t have the people’s support then it’s dead in the water. But if it has support…well, just look at recent history. Supplies, logistical support, intelligence and a safe haven – all these allow the guerillas to be extremely effective and play to its strengths.
Imagine you’re a U.S. soldier doing his standard patrol. You know some locals – you recognize their habits and day to day doings. Then one day an IED takes out the car in front of you. Two of your friends are dead and another has no legs. The people that are usually manning their stores or eating lunch outside or the children playing games…are all gone. You know that they knew…and you want to find out.
I imagine that’s how a lot of these massacres happen. A guy gets too frustrated because he can’t get them to fess up and things get out of control.
We don’t even have 3,000 dead, do we? But last I looked we had 19,000 casualties with something like 10,000 of those being serious enough where the guy had to be sent home. That’s a decent chunk of our current manpower. That’s rather self centered, though, and we’re all aware, I’m sure, of the impact the Iraqis have had to withstand.
It’s curious, though, that many people don’t think about the massive Iraqi refugee problem. There don’t appear to be any solid numbers – my searches yield sites that say anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 million have fled Iraq since the war began. Does anyone have any reliable sources?
Kanicbird, a lot of this stuff has been gone over and over in countless threads, pounded into the ground really. George W. Bush lost to Saddam Hussein in a truth telling contest. How sad is that? The inspectors said what was up and they were quickly pulled back because Mr. Bush realized his window of political viability on a full scale invasion was about to start rapidly closing. If you think this war is a great idea then it seems to me you could find something closer to reality to use in your support of it.
But that doesn’t really matter, does it? This isn’t what the thread is about.
What is our goal in Iraq? Bush wants democracy and freedom. He may get democracy yet, but the latter ideal is coming in awfully cloudy. The way I see it, no matter what we want the Iraqis will get what they want first. Any overlap will be purely coincidental. My guess? Saddam #2, Shi’ite style. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…oh, and ladies? Hand over those driver’s licenses.
So what should the U.S. do? I think many people could agree that we should do whatever is in our power to lessen the loss of life. So the question is, does our presence lead to more or less death? I think a reasonable person could argue that we are, ever so slightly, keeping a lid on this proverbial pressure cooker. Besides, at this point it seems the vast majority of the death is nearly out of our hands – Iraqi against Iraqi, roving nighttime deathsquad against another. One could certainly criticize our meager security patrols…but imagine if there were no patrols.
And, of course, it seems only fitting the party responsible for this mess should be punished directly. Well, young kids sent over the top and into the hot sand…but in a round about way it gets back to us. I’m sure Der Trihs would find that aspect appealing, anyway.
My guess? Well, the first part isn’t a guess: Bush has said explicitly that we’ll be in Iraq when he leaves. But afterwards, we’re not going to leave either. If the next President makes a deal about leaving it’ll be really ugly, politically speaking. The only way I see us leaving within the next decade is if one of the following occur:
The U.S. electorate turns around and demands it (something freaky would have to happen to cause that – this needs several more years to build up IMO)
If the next President, ever so slightly, decreases troop strength. A hundred here, another five hundred here…it’d have to be slow and under the radar. This I find the most realistic and is somewhat likely.
A major world event happens where pulling out of Iraq is required and even a fool would do it. Unlikely and scary.
I don’t think so. And anyway, currently, it doesn’t really matter anymore. The main issue in Irak now isn’t that Irakis are killing americans, it’s that they’re killing each other. The number of fatalities in Baghdad is absurdely high. I did some maths the other day (based on the number of victms during the two previous months, the population of the city, and an arbitrary average size for an Iraki family) and came to the conclusion that a random Baghdadi in all likehood had someone close to him who got killed during the last year.
I’m not sure what can still be salvaged and how given how dire the situation is. I don’t think that an outcome that would be at the same time at least relatively stable and beneficial for US interests and policies can be achieved. I also can’t figure out what the US admnistration hopes to achieve exactly. It seems quite clear that the content of their speeches can be safely ignored since it doesn’t seem to have any relation with the actual situation (that’s assuming that they aren’t totally deluded, of course). Do they still actually hope to achieve anything apart from handing the unpinned grenade to the next administration before it explodes? What aim drives them exactly at this point?
Oh! And Afghanistan seems to be in a very worrying state too…