Things are going wrong for the Americans in Iraq. Which is fine. No war is perfect.
Their solution is to build a new Iraqi army from scratch. Recruitment begins this week for 12,000 men, building up to 40,000 in three years. This is less than fine. It is insane, an idea so bad it grinds my teeth to a fine powder. It will one day backfire badly on the Americans.
Let's look at the beginning of this quagmire. Okay, sinkhole, but Daniel Ellsberg's already taking notes for Pentagon Papers II.
Normally when things go badly, Americans send in the Marines. Iwo Jima, Panama, it's the script. Call in air strikes, bomb some palm trees, dump 40,000 kilos of Fruit Loops, wonder why the locals are cranky, and get the hell out.
The problem is that this time things are going wrong in a way Americans really don't like and can't cope with emotionally. "Saddam's dead if our forensics work out, and so once again, you're welcome, Iraq, but we'd really like to leave now."
But they can't. The consensus seems to be that they won't be leaving for at least five more years. This has not yet sunk in with the American voter, but it will.
U.S. soldiers are still being shot at by AK-47s and rocket launchers. The British, who are soft targets, are being hit hard. Even U.S. Republicans are saying, "If you wanna be popular, you really oughta get them clean water."
Then there was that bizarre assault-rifle attack by a little girl on the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment.
The Americans, accustomed to kids with guns, took the weapon, which was found hidden, wrapped in a red dress (there's a Steve Earle song here, or perhaps a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels), but left the 12-year-old girl for the parents to deal with.
Marines do not arrest little girls. It looks lame.
An American therapist-type creature would call the mullah and take a proactive approach — an intervention — to teach the girl how acting out affects others. Next would come the psychobabble: Think of the tensions that have impacted this girl since her parents moved into separate tents. Peer pressure, body image, a stash of bullets. What does the school say? ADHD? Ritalin? Paxil?
After Vietnam, Americans should have learned never to start a war where the good guys and the bad guys look alike. Shiite, Sunni, Christian, Yazidi, Mendean or Wahabi, they look rather similar, at least to U.S. soldiers. And which of these remains a secret Baathist (Saddamite)?
Iraqis are enraged by unemployment, much as Americans will be when the recession settles in and they discover that 250,000 Iraqi ex-servicemen (mass murderers included) will soon get support payments of $50 to $150 a month, with 300,000 conscripts getting a lump sum. Ironically, it's more than some single mothers get in Ohio.
The real problem is this: A properly equipped Iraqi soldier has an assault rifle, grenades, Humvees, tanks and those cool helmets. What if tens of thousands of them decide to use their weapons on the Americans?
-snip-
(Heather Mallick in The Globe and Mail, June. 28, 2003)
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Well put. I would also like to add the Iranian factor to the equation, because the mad mullahs would love nothing more than to expand their power into and over Iraq, once and for all.