BlogWood: MT Archives

US task: reconquer Iraq

The situation is not getting any better. W and his neocon cabal have screwed things up so badly that the entire country may now be lost. Remember how, just a few weeks ago, conservative types were saying stuff like "well, we may not have found any WMD, but Saddam is gone, and the Iraqi people are better off..."

Right now, there is no authority in Iraq. No government. No rule of law. Violence, chaos, hunger, shortages. W is taking us deeper and deeper into this deadly morass, and getting out is going to take decades and trillions of dollars.

Juan Cole:

Fighting Rages in Fallujah, Najaf, Karbala; 6 US Troops Dead, Hundreds of Iraqis

The US suffered 6 more combat deaths on Wednesday and Thursday. In a CNN interview retired General Barry MacCaffrey said that the task of the US is to regain control of Baghdad and restore its lines of communication in the South. He gave away a great deal. One may conclude that a) the US has lost control of Baghdad and b) the US communications and supply lines in the South have been cut. That is, a year after the fall of Saddam, the US faces the task of reconquering the country.

al-Hayat alleged that 300 had been killed in Fallujah and 400 wounded in the course of the US military operation there. It says that the Marines are fighting heavy, house-to-house battles supported by helicopters. It reports that the US succeeded in turning away an aid convoy from Abu Ghuraib. The US let in only a few trucks among the 60 that had shown up with food, water and medicine for civilians in the city.

The relief convoy was a joint Sunni-Shiite operation, and protesters carried posters of assassinated Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Muqtada al-Sadr. It seems to me from reading between the lines in the press reporting that some US troops let some of the food and supplies into the city as an act of insubordination toward Donald Rumsfeld, refusing to fire on unarmed civilians to stop them from entering the city with food. Pan-Islam and Sunni-Shiite unity in the face of encroaching Western powers have been a political dream since the time of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the 19th century, but have usually proven futile. Donald Rumsfeld has finally made al-Afghani's dream come true.

Sheer incompetence. Even if you agree with its policies, this administration ought to be fired for its failures. (First, they pick the wrong priorities. Then they don't even do the wrong things right.)