Gee, who could have seen this coming?
An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3,438, is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January.
The rising numbers indicate that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control and seem to bolster an assertion that many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have been making in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one, and that the American-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias.
There are no good options left here. We squandered the small shot at success we had when we screwed around with the bare minimum number of troops required to keep the guerrillas at bay. At this point we can either 1) stick around until they kick us out and try to stay out of the crossfire, or 2) leave and let the Iraqis determine their own fate. I don't see much benefit in sticking around other than staying in the general vicinity of Iran.
posted by Logic101 at 8/15/2006 09:29:00 PM
2 Comments:
Can't simply pull out. Have to wait until we are told we can leave (or, more likely, until we tell them to tell us it's ok for us to leave).
The "world" governments really fucked us all in not helping. Hope it was worth the couple Millions Putin, Annan, and Jocq Strap lined their pockets with.
Senor cheeseburger, I wish I felt as strongly as you do that I know what the answer is but in the end I may agree with you (although maybe not for quite the same reasons).
Our presence there won't add any value to the Iraqi cause... the situation has become way too FUBAR'ed for us to have much influence. All I foresee is our young soldiers getting slowly, randomly picked off in the middle of that mess.
We've backed ourselves into a corner and leaving, however approrpiate, could send the wrong message to the region.
Additionally, I really believe that the rest of the region is going to start popping soon and by the time we redeploy we could have to turn around and come back. Maybe it's better to ride it out a bit longer and see what happens.
I have a hard time feeling your angst over the response of the "world" governments since I agreed that the Iraq invasion was a fool's errand from the beginning with a whole big aftermath of unintended (and somehow unforeseen, although I can't imagine for the life of me how anyone did not see them coming) consequences.
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