Bloody Horror...

I’ve had a few days to think about Fallujah and the Shiia attacks in Baghdad since the Blog went down. Many other bloggers have expressed our feelings much better than I ever could. The memory of the 4 civilians killed and mutilated for guarding food shipments wears on everyone. Much the same type of thing happened down south years ago to blacks…but at least your average American had the sense to be disgusted by it, and be susceptible to change. We don’t see much of that reasonable attitude in Fallujah.

From what I can see, the Marines have the town sealed off, but have not started any operations. I would expect the sense of impending doom must be priceless in this Baath stronghold. With the video taken by the BBC (?) they have good pictures of everyone who took part. Fallujah is not that big of a town that identifying the rioters should be that much of a problem. I would love to be a fly on the wall of that planning session.

We won’t flatten Fallujah, although we could get away with it. Hell, only ¾ of Iraqis have even seen an American, but they do remember that the Baathists oppressed them for 30 years. Fallujah is a Baath Party stronghold…your average Iraqi-in-the-street wouldn’t miss it. Only the sunni mullahs, shiia religious radicals, the Bush=whatever crowd, and Al-Jazeera would complain…same old actors.

I expect we will section the city and use the local cops and tribal leaders to ferret out the bastards. I have a sneaking suspicion that the local authorities were in on it. It was obviously a trap and the food trucks were allowed to pass…there were limited ways to get into and out of the town. Nothing that we do will ever placate the holdouts in this region, so we might as well hurt them some. Suggestions that we should cut off power, water, and food until the scumbags are turned in are by far the gentlest suggestions I have heard. Emptying the town of inhabitants, moving them all to shiia towns, and then returning Fallujah to the desert tended to be a middle of the road solution. Myself, I preferred a daisy cutter dropped on the SUVs as the fires went out…do you think there were any innocents within 500 yards of that funeral pyre?

My Kuwaiti daughter-in-law reminded me that Arabs are clannish and tribal. If you are not a member of their immediate family...you are not completely human. Arab men are also known to be courageous only when fighting women, bound prisoners, and the dead. Religion of Peace™ my white, hairy ass.

The recent pitched battles in four cities against the iranian backed mullah Sadr’s illegal militia were probably inevitable. Sadr is the most reactionary of the Shiia clerics…another fucking Islamist extremist with his own army. He has ignored calls from moderate shiia to back off. This guy is in the way of any hope of democracy in Iraq…I hope he gets caught and exiled…at least. “Died Suddenly” would be nice news bulletin also. He has given us an excuse to weed out the worst of the Shiia, as Fallujah has given us the excuse to weed out the worst of the Sunni. Iraq was never going to be easy, but it does not seem to be a general shiia uprising (see paragraph 5).

This is not Somalia, and the President isn't Clinton. A recent TV poll shows 70% of the American people would prefer a response that is in no way 'measured'. The news media (of course) doesn't show the gruesome pictures because it might 'incite' America to want war...the same 'reason' they won't show the 911 footage. They don't mind showing pictures that 'incite' Americans to be against the war...what fucking hypocrites. Can the media be any more worthless? It takes a concerted effort to get decent information…

As I see it we have two choices:

Fight the war using police powers (as the Clinton Whitehouse did). This requires waiting until civilians are killed, then spending months or years tracking down the terrorists. The tradeoff for minimal police and military casualties is high civilian casualties. Results are generally successful.

Fight the war using preemption as Bush is doing. Seek out the nests and the governments that support terror and destroy them. The tradeoff for minimal civilian casualties is a higher rate of military deaths. Results are also generally successful.

Things are coming to a boil leading up to the handover of government in June. The nests are being destroyed one by one, and the beasties are being wiped out. We will prevail. We must! The longer we fight to win the battle against terror, the more we lose our fight to keep our personal freedoms. Government uses any excuse necessary to increase their control over its citizens, and the WOT is a beauty.

Update: Things are starting to happen. Operation Valiant Resolve via the Belmont Club