your Great Patriotic War of conquest and occupation has absolutely no practical, attainable, comprehensible, justifiable -- or even explicable -- objectives...
No ending...
No goal...
No hills to take...
No line to hold...
No hedgerows to breach...
No beaches to storm...
No Empire to crush...
No villains left to hang...
No wall to smash...
No treaty to sign...
No commitment to a dénouement that says when we progress from here to there, we are done...
...then by tragic default you can end up with no other metric than the tallying of the dead to measure success.
This from the AP.
U.S. raids Baghdad slum; 26 Iraqis die
By HAMID AHMED, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 19 minutes ago
American soldiers rolled into Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum on Saturday in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as "an intense firefight."
But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past.
Separately, two American solders were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said Saturday. And in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.
A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later.
The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 "terrorists" who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.
An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. "Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. "It was an intense firefight."
U.S. troops detained 17 men suspected of helping Iranian terror networks fund operations in Iraq, a military statement said. There were no U.S. casualties.
Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning.
"At about 4 a.m., a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses — bombing them," said Basheer Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City's Habibiya district. "What did we do? We didn't even retaliate — there was no resistance."
According to Iraqi officials, the dead included three members of one family — a father, mother and son. Several women and children, along with two policemen, were among the wounded, they said.
The assault brought quick criticism from al-Maliki. "The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations ... conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military command," al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. "Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation."
Sadr City is the Iraqi capital's largest Shiite neighborhood — home to some 2.5 million people. It is also the base of operations for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighters are blamed for much of the sectarian killing in Baghdad.
…
And when you are reduced to using bodycounts to tabulate proximity to Victory in Iraq -- and when your Dear Leader demands Total Victory before you may leave Iraq -- the more bodies you count, the better you must be doing.
Until, inevitably, anyone who runs must be
And anyone who stands still must be a well-disciplined
9 comments:
If there are no metrics for victory or defeat, why don't we just leave?
Total Victory over the infinite.................... now that's going to be a hard one to pull off.......... no matter how many M1 Abrams' you have.
Deja vue all over again and again and....
when will it end?
As long as Bush imperialism pervades this world, there will be no end to the suffering. There needs to be a pervasive change in Washington foreign policy.
The reporters cover Paris Hilton for hours, skipping the most important matters of the day. Sorry to link the two disparate thoughts, but I see a pattern immerging.
"Why don't we just leave?"
Because, Clete:
Then, the families of those 3500-plus dead troops, and the half-million or so dead Iraqis, will, strangely enough, be asking the same question. That being:
"What the fuck?"
Then: there won't be any sweetheart oil contracts for Exxon-Mobile, etc.
Then: there won't be any neato malls being built to peddle Apple and Motorola cellphones to the people of "greater Iraq". (greater Iraq now being about as "great" as it's EVER going to be.)
Then: Iran, and Syria, will come out out of this looking like a zillion bucks.
Then: the Turks might weigh the relative merits of EU membership versus taking a shot at those big fields around Kirkuk, and make the "wrong" decision.
Then, the Saudis have openly said they will support the Sunnis with money and arms, to protect them from the Shiites.
Then: the Kurds will be able to drop the "greater Iraq" bullshit themsleves; grab those fields around Kirkuk, and start using all those petro-shekels to leverage independence and to buy some really neat war-toys to help them deal with the Turks.
Then: the dicks of all of the barcalounger badasses who helped wank us into this misery, will shrink by half, which means they will be 2 inches long.
Then: george bush's "legacy" will be of interest to historians for the sole purpose of showing how americans can put an utterly mediocre little fratrat within a Supreme Court decision of the white house.
Then: we will lose most of our influence over the world oil situation, and the SUV-Panzers will be sitting in their owners yards with petunias planted in them.
Then: "Iraq" will centrifugally spin off into at least three new "states"; none of whom will be very user-friendly to corporate america.
Then: Al Sadr will become the most powerful man in a large part of what used to be Iraq, and all of the wizards who dragged us into this misery will have to regularly look at him on television, as THEIR legacy.
Then: all of the race-baiting "immigration" paranoiacs will have to stop worrying about Mexican "terrists" and begin worrying about Iraqi "terrists", because there will be a load of swarthy, arabic-speaking Mesopotamians coming to america, to avoid being converted into Alpo, for helping bushCo.
Then...oh fuck, I'm using up all of Drift's bandwidth...
But we really, really, could go on for quite some time...
Oh. That "Grand Square" that Perle thought would be named after bush?
That won't happen when we leave, either.
Sounds like the drug war too:
No ending...
No goal...
No hills to take...
No line to hold...
No hedgerows to breach...
No beaches to storm...
No Empire to crush...
So much bull .... you should make better use of your time....and make use of the manure ...
Hey, Nonny @ 10:38, what's with the driveby? Afraid you'll get smoked in a real fight? Got nothing to bring to a debate, do ya?
Yeah, we thought so.
Who said there is no goal or ending point.Perhaps the ending point/goal would be killing all the Iraqis and move the camp to Iran.
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