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To: ping jockey
The question is: if we go into Iraq and start bombing people in retaliation for the actions of a few foreign terrorists, are we really any different from the Germans?

And it must be noted that what people on this thread are trying to do, is to get rid of "people problems."

The real question, of course, would be: would such bombings do more harm than good? I believe in this case the answer is yes.

At present, the attitude of general population of Iraq toward us is probably somewhere in the range of moderate dislike to grudging respect. We can work with this, and are successfully doing so across the country. We cannot make the Iraqis love us. However, we can make them hate us -- and sieges and destruction such as are being suggested here are almost certain to do just that. There's no way we could hold our ground in Iraq if the population hated us -- our presence would be pointless, and we'd end up losing the war.

As to Fallujah, I think we do not know enough about it to be able to make a serious judgement on how that's shaping up. MSM reports on the situation there are not to be trusted. Letters from Marines in the area seem to indicate that things are much more encouraging there than the MSM reports, but perhaps they haven't got the big picture.

The recent bombings, which killed 50+ foreign bad guys, seem to indicate that the USMC reports are closer to the truth -- the pinpoint identification of safe-houses is a mark of very good intel, probably coming from people who live in Fallujah. IOW, Fallujah may not be as uniformly pro-terrorist as people like to think it is. (It's a city of 300,000, after all -- you'd expect a wide range of opinion there.)

902 posted on 06/24/2004 7:05:42 AM PDT by r9etb
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