Posted on 04/16/2006 5:17:42 PM PDT by jmc1969
As Col. Patrick Donahoe scans the horizon through the mud-splattered, inch-thick windows of his armored Humvee, he can almost see Bosnia through the palm trees.
It is not there yet, Colonel Donahoe said, but the communal hatred he has witnessed in this area of Iraq, the blindingly ignorant things people say, the pulling apart of Shiite and Sunni towns that were once tightly intertwined are all reminiscent of what he saw years ago as a Army captain on a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia.
"You talk to people here and it's literally the same conversations I heard in Bosnia," Colonel Donahoe said. "I had a police colonel tell me the other day that all the people in Jurf," a predominantly Sunni town, "are evil, including the children."
The work is emblematic of a new role for the American soldier in Iraq, because as the threat has shifted, so has the mission. Sectarian violence is killing more people and destabilizing Iraq more than the anti-government insurgency ever did. In response, American commanders, especially those in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, are throwing their armor, troops and money directly into the divide, trying to keep Iraq from violently partitioning the way Bosnia did.
"This is the critical year," Colonel Donahoe said. "If we don't turn things around, if we don't get the Shiites and Sunnis to stop killing each other, I'm not sure there's much else we can do."
According to Staff Sgt. Joseph Schicker, a psychological operations soldier, Mahdi militiamen recently threw battery acid on a woman whose ankles were showing and dragged a man accused of being gay through the streets.
Colonel Donahoe draws on the Balkans for an easy metaphor.
"Moktada is like Milosevic," he said, referring to the former Serbian leader. "He'll do anything to stay in power."
(Excerpt) Read more at theledger.com ...
...sort of like what the democrats do
Doogle
The left just can't give up on negativism and on the idea that we might actually win and do something right. They simply can't stand it.
They've got Vietnam stuck on auto-replay in their brains.
Well, at least they're balancing their reporting by including the pre-war documents information.
Perhaps that's why they consider Clinton's bungling Bosnia and Kosovo to be a victory?
You know they just love seeing the clips of those Christian Churches burning in Kosovo.
Well, if all the Iraqis with excessive tribal and sectarian loyalties reciprocally exterminated one another, it would finally become possible to turn the place into something more decent. There would even be some survivors left to populate it.
NYT: "Maybe we'll run the 'sectarian violence' stories on even days, and the 'generals against Rumsfeld' stories on odd days."
["Colonel Donahoe draws on the Balkans for an easy metaphor."
Yes, it is an easy metaphor.
I can think of a metaphor as well. How about confederate and union soldiers killing each other en masse at Antietam and Gettysburg.
"War is hell."
one big difference between Iraq and Bosnia: the adults are in charge now.
"Moktada is like Milosevic....He'll do anything to stay in power."
This is the muddled thinking that the Great Power brings to the ongoing war. It is a good example of "easy" thinking: meaning, stupid and facile. But the Great Power respects nothing, except its own power, and is continually scouring the hostile land looking for someone to demonize, whether it is a Castro, Ortega, or Chavez, or, yes, Milosevic; but not a Rios Mont, D'Aubisson, Izetbegovic, Tudjman, or Sharon. The Colonel draws on an easy hypocrisy.
You're reinforcing my point. I just went back a few more years (of course, to bring the US into the "equation").
In short, geographic location doesn't matter. Whether it be East Timor, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Rawanda, Iraq, El Salvador, BiH, Liberia....etc...it's all War defined in terms of the stake holders' concerns (however they define to be).
These are not cynical or empty words. They reinforce anyone who speaks against states that initiate wars of aggression.
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