Sunday, April 11, 2004

Posted here Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 7:57:08 PM     And how hard it is, Dowd reminds us what the marines were saying just a few weeks ago. Before heading out to Iraq last spring, Marine commanders explained that they would try to take a gentler approach than the Army. They would avoid using military tactics that would risk civilian casualties, learn Arabic and take off their sunglasses when talking with Iraqis. "If to kill a terrorist we have got to kill eight innocent people, you don't kill them," Maj. Gen. James Mattis told The Times's Michael Gordon. The Iraqi Inversion April 8, 2004, NYTimes By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON ********

Posted here Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 6:51:12 PM     Let's look at the extremes.. From Juan Cole http://www.juancole.com/ for april 11 Virulent Racism, Disregard for Civilian Life Mar US Military Approach: British Commander Sean Rayment of the Telegraph reports a story today that should be on the front pages of every American newspaper. He reports extremely deep dissatisifaction in the British officer corps with American military counter-insurgency tactics. The critique begins with attitudes. The officer quoted says that the US military looks at Iraqis as "Untermenschen," a Hitler-derived term for inferior human beings. ' "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are." ' This attitude tracks with what I know of racial attitudes that are all too common (not universal) in US military ranks. Press reports speak of US troops and some officers routinely denigrating Arabs. Even calling them "hajjis" and "Ali Babas" betrays the attitude. (Hajji is a strange thing to call Iraqis, who have lived under a militantly secular socialist regime for 35 years and most of whom couldn't have gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca even if they wanted to). The contempt for Iraqis and Arabs and Muslims that is widespread in the ranks, the British maintain, spills over into operational plans, creating a contempt for human life and a willingness to endanger and kill civilians in a ruthless effort to get at insurgents. This approach produces, of course, further insurgents. The officer said, "When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area. They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage, but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. The US will have to abandon the sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach - it has failed. They need to stop viewing every Iraqi, every Arab as the enemy and attempt to win the hearts and minds of the people. " and compare, quoted from www.Billmon.org quoting the NY Post (this writer just got fired..) We've forgotten the arithmetic of patriotic battle: That it's better for a hundred of them to die than for one of us to die. We owe that to these young men in uniform, and we owe it to their families and sweethearts back home. It is better for a B-52 to flatten an Iraqi neighborhood than it is for one United States Marine to die. It is better to roll tanks down a foreign street than it is to put an American soldier in his grave. We need to use our strength, we need to use our technology, we need to use our power. We need to go big. More troops, more arms, more aggressive tactics and strategies. Let's flood Iraq with American men and munitions and let's steamroll anybody who gets in our way. No more pussyfooting. It's time to fight like Americans. New York Post Fight Like America ********

Posted here Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 6:25:46 PM     On the possibility of real insurgent war and the obstacles for the US http://www.bopnews.com/archives/000547.html#547 ********

Posted here Sunday, April 11, 2004 at 6:13:24 PM     The pressure seems to build both on the side of the Iraq uprising and the Bush determination to stay. Bush will try more power. Most commentators world wide say 1. gotta stay it out, to leave would lead to real chaos 2. the style has to be different. What I see is our educational limitaions. Young people who are "oiur soldiers", scared, primitive, feeling some liberty to be bullies. Running an empire requires sophistication, civilization, and social imagination all the way to the bottom. We don't have it, starting with the top. The many decent and courageous people, from near the top to the front lines, are obscured by the actions of thugism of way too many. The vast weaknesses of american society are in our face. There is so much work to do. This week watch Blair, the 911 commission, the US response in Iraq, the shifting media scene, and financial markets. ********