3 Years of Incompetence in Iraq
17 March 2006 8:00 am by Taylor Marsh
3 Years of Incompetence in Iraq
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| 3 Years of Incompetence in Iraq. 61% of Americans want our troops home. |
Indeed, it’s the situation in Iraq
that appears to be at the heart of Bush’s problems … 61 percent disapprove
of Bush’s handling of the situation. Moreover, 57 percent are less confident
that the war in Iraq will come to a successful conclusion, which is a seven-point
increase since December. And 61 percent say the United States should
reduce the number of troops there, while just 31 percent want to maintain
the current troop level. NBC/WSJ
poll: Majority now prefer a Democrat-controlled Congress
Three years of incompetence on Iraq has finally taken its toll
on President Bush.
We've traded Saddam's mass graves for new mass graves.
A headline in a leading Arabic daily newspaper,
al-Hayat, caught my attention on Wednesday, although I had seen it many times
before. “New mass grave discovered in Iraq,” it read.
In particular, the writer used the term “makaber
jammiyeya,” the Arabic catch phrase for those evil hordes of skeletons
unearthed so many times in Karbala, Sarajevo and other scenes of mass murder
and genocide.But as I read further, I discovered the article was
talking about something rather different — that the more than 80 bodies
found this week near Baghdad had been found by Iraqi boys after their soccer
game was interrupted by the stench of rotting corpses. The boys stopped playing,
the article said, followed the smell and saw limbs sticking out of the dirt
and trash.The headline should have been more like “New
mass graves being created today,” I thought.(snip)
My Iraqis friends are exhausted, too. But all indications
are this phase of sectarian violence or low-level civil war (or whatever we
want to call it) will continue for at least several years, crushing more lives
in its indifferent wake.
Compares life
under Saddam to that experienced today
Everyone over here is so worried about Bush's exhaustion and the
tiredness of his team no one stopped to think of how exhausted the Iraqis must
be. You've got to wonder just how much more of Bush's “stay the course” “victory” the Iraqis can stand.
President Bush's latest out of touch embarrassment is that he evidently wasn't
consulted about Operation Swarmer. Now, I'm skeptical about this detail since it comes from the you don't introduce a new product in August crowd, but
on one side it's wholly believable. Generals Abizaid, Casey and our troops are far more capable of correcting
situations than our president, whose 3 year record of incompetence in Iraq is
beyond refute. But Operation Swarmer still smells of political and logistical
desperation, something Juan
Cole takes up as well.
This Samarra operation is probably
mainly a political act. The US generals are attempting to demonstrate
to their Shiite allies that they take seriously the terror attack on the Askari
Shrine on Feb. 22. Presumably they are also attempting to ensure that if the
shrine is rebuilt, it won't just be blown up again. Short of pulling a Fallujah
on Samarra, however– which would involve emptying the city and then destroying
it– it is difficult to see how the US/ Iraqi government forces can prevail.
Not even the talented and adept Generals Casey and Abizaid can
save Bush from the years of bungling before they arrived. A show of force as
insurgents take control of the narrative is worth a try, but it certainly doesn't
take the reality away.
Three years after Bush invaded Iraq, we've gone from Saddam's mass
graves to the new mass graves of Iraqi civil strife. Iraqis are fighting
Iraqis, weeding out groups not liked, death squads roam, with the U.S. military
caught smack in the middle. We can run Operation Swarmers until the goats come home, but
we can't kill everyone in every city whose residents are rising up against the
neighbor they abhor.
Three years of incompetence in Iraq has led us on to yet another
battle field. The terrorists of Bush's mythic speeches have been replaced by Iraqi citizens of every sect and religious faction represented in this ancient land. Opeation Swarmer may roust a few, but we can't kill everyone rising up. Because the battles now pit Iraqi against Iraqi, we will eventually
be forced to just stand by and watch the carnage unfold. In fact, in some places, we're already doing that now.
UPDATE: We find out that Operation Swarmer is actually better titled Operation Overblown. (h/t Atrios)
