Surging Forward...Falling Back
The so-called surge in Iraq has been going on for about 7 months now. Almost everyone that has an opinion on this subject says that the results have been very uneven and mixed. The initial purpose of the surge was to reduce the violence and killings in Baghdad and to stablize other parts of Iraq. The early results show that yes...violence in the capital has decreased, but the flip side is that the killings have increased in other parts of the country. Today there is a report coming out of north western Iraq revealing that over 250 people have been killed by a couple of car bombs in the last day. This is very bad news. The AP reported:
A U.S. general said the nearly simultaneous strikes against the Yazidis -- who have been attacked by Muslim extremists who consider them infidels -- was an act of "ethnic cleansing." An American military spokesman blamed the attack on al-Qaida. Zayan Othman, the health minister of the nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said the casualty toll had risen to at least 250 killed and 350 wounded as bodies were pulled from the rubble. That surpassed the death toll of 215 people from mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City on Nov. 23.
The carnage in Qahataniya dealt a serious blow to U.S. efforts to pacify the country, with just weeks before top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a pivotal report to Congress amid a fierce debate over whether to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and commanders have warned they expected Sunni insurgents to step up attacks in a bid to upstage the report.
It is stories like this that remind us of the nearly impossible mission we currently find ourselves in. All of our weapons...all of our soldiers...have not stopped the violence in the civilian communities. This is just the beginning, I am afraid, of a long bloody struggle...civil war...that will lead to more slaughter of both Iraqis and Americans. I don't know what the answer is. But the current road is not the path we can tolerate for very much longer.
A U.S. general said the nearly simultaneous strikes against the Yazidis -- who have been attacked by Muslim extremists who consider them infidels -- was an act of "ethnic cleansing." An American military spokesman blamed the attack on al-Qaida. Zayan Othman, the health minister of the nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said the casualty toll had risen to at least 250 killed and 350 wounded as bodies were pulled from the rubble. That surpassed the death toll of 215 people from mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City on Nov. 23.
The carnage in Qahataniya dealt a serious blow to U.S. efforts to pacify the country, with just weeks before top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a pivotal report to Congress amid a fierce debate over whether to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and commanders have warned they expected Sunni insurgents to step up attacks in a bid to upstage the report.
It is stories like this that remind us of the nearly impossible mission we currently find ourselves in. All of our weapons...all of our soldiers...have not stopped the violence in the civilian communities. This is just the beginning, I am afraid, of a long bloody struggle...civil war...that will lead to more slaughter of both Iraqis and Americans. I don't know what the answer is. But the current road is not the path we can tolerate for very much longer.
posted by An Army of One at August 15, 2007
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