It's a national disgrace to have such an ignorant man in charge of our military. Bush has reduced the violence in Iraq to "insurgents" trying to "cause us to lose our nerve and retreat, to withdraw." Nothing in his feinted mind can imagine any other reasons there might be for the violence than a test of wills with Americans?
Notice how he groups the "United States and Iraqi forces". There will not be an Iraqi government force that will be able to stand up to the type of widespread resistance from the population that we see today, or any other challenge for that matter, without the U.S. soldiers backing them up. These folks don't like the ruling authority they've been offered and they're set to upset it. The bulk of the violence is mainly a result of power struggles among rival sects. There will be no peace in Iraq unless they somehow come together and lead Iraqis to reconcile and share Iraq.
But, the sticking point in all of that is the U.S. installation of the initial authority after our invasion and occupation, the subsequent installation of the unpopular Allawi, and the apparent interference that the U.S. is now engaged in with the formation of a Parliament and the appointment of a leader, does not lay a proper foundation for any form of democracy that has been known to man in the entire history of governments. Democracy cannot be imposed from the top down. Nothing 'unifying' will come out of the formation of Iraq's new ruling authority as long as the heavy hand of the American military is still seen by Iraqis as manipulating events and stifling opposition.
But, what about the message of the 'insurgents'? We no longer wish to hear the voice of these bombers' violence. But, listening . . .
You have to wonder about these Iraqis - educated, ambitious, motivated nationalists. What would their reaction have been to a less arrogant approach by Bush? The goal of the Bush regime was to intimidate actors in that region with the massive display of military power. Less concern was given to the after-effects of such a heavy-handed invasion and the likely resulting resistance to an occupation.
We rightly condemn these bombers for their barbarous slaughter of innocents, as well as anyone who aided them in their attack. Violence as a means of political expression or for anything other than legitimate defense should be condemned.
But these perpetrators don't act out of a vacuum filled with their own unattributable hatred, or evil, as Bush and others like to brand all violent acts against the U.S. and our agents. Many are angered by a war of opportunity against a country which had nothing to do, at all, with the participants and perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
The invasion of Iraq was calculated to, as Tony Blair admitted a week before the London bombings, "draw a line in the sand". It was meant to send a message of 'shock and awe' throughout the world to bolster the weak images of Bush and Blair following the devastating attacks in New York. Here at home, we were led by the hand through the niceties of the administration's pre-war justifications.
Saddam was an evil-doer and madman bent on our destruction, we were told. The Iraqis, Bush warned, were enemies who had "no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality."
"The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East," the educator-in chief told us. "It has a deep hatred of America and our friends and it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda."
However, Osama Bin Laden, the ringleader of the 9-11 attacks, was not in Iraq. The rebel leader, in fact shunned and denounced the leadership of Saddam Hussein as a betrayal of fundamental Islam. The terrorist group, al-Qaeda, did not have a foothold in Iraq before Bush and Blair invaded. They do now. There are now daily attacks on our soldiers and Iraqi citizens by an Iraqi resistance - possibly aided by some outside terror network. This didn't happen in a vacuum either.
Last year, an Islamic scholar in the U.S. got life in prison for encouraging followers to fight American soldiers. (He) was accused of telling a group of young Muslim men just days after the attack that an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and nonbelievers was at hand and that Muslims were obligated to engage in holy war. He told the group that defense of the Taliban was a requirement and that U.S. troops were a legitimate target, according to court testimony.
But, there was another U.S. citizen who also encouraged attacks on our troops: "There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is 'bring them on'," Bush told reporters in the White House Roosevelt Room in July 2003.
It was Bush with his blustering who, by inviting attacks on our soldiers in Iraq, fueled the groundswell of resistance to our occupation and encouraged would-be attackers to cross the border into Iraq to challenge our troops, mindless of the effect his taunting would have on the behavior of those who might be inclined to actively oppose his bloody military expansionism into the Middle East.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
