From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jun 15 2003 - 15:58:43 MDT
> Michael Wiik writes
>
> > You know, I hear that the US troops occupying Iraq
> are driving up to towns, and searching house to
house for hidden weapons. It appears some Iraqis are
signalling their arrival to others by flickering their
porch lights. Hmmm, citizens warning their fellows
about occupying troops coming to search for guns,
using lights.... I seem to have heard something
similar to that before somewhere, maybe from
elementary school.... help me out here Ron...
To which Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> responds:
> Doesn't it bother you at all that you would consider
> the Baathist murderers to be analogous to the U.S.'s
> original revolutionaries and founders? Those like
Saddam Hussein ---criminals against humanity of the
first degree--- need to be hunted down after they lose
wars!
Hmmmm.
You have a point, Lee. Our culture holds the
revolutionaries in high esteem, and the comparison
thus colors the Iraqi-porch-light-flickerers in a
positive glow of dubious warrant.
Which leads us to notice--thank you, Lee--the missing
piece of the puzzle: what is the truth about the
porch-light-flickerers? Are they remnants of the
Baathist regime, color them criminal, or are they
Yankee-go-home Iraqis, color them how: troublesome,
uncooperative, unwise, patriotic? I don't know. I
guess we'll find out.
Anyway, take Michael's spin off the matter, and what
have we got? At best, pockets of resistance, at
worst, a guerrilla war.
What we can hope is that the US actors improve the
situation rapidly enough so that the Iraqis are won
over and cooperate by turning in or self-enforcing the
violently intransigent. I'm not optimistic that the
Bush crew will achieve so optimal an outcome.
We shall see.
By the way, I was conflicted on the war. There were
pros and cons. (When it became apparent that GB2 was
committed. I hoped for what I called "The One Bomb
War": find Saddam, kill Saddam, call it a day. And,
to his credit, GB2, gave it a shot. By the way, where
is Saddam?) What finally put me in opposition was the
combination of three factors: the poor US record vis a
vis nation building, the extreme "degree of
difficulty" of such an undertaking in Arabistan, and
the (to me) seeming implausibility of the notion that
born-on-second-base-thinks-he-scored-a-triple GB2
would be up to the task.
OK. Cheap shot. I'll eat it without relish if it
turns out well done.
We shall see.
Best, Jeff Davis
"No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental
ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of
our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we
should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and
love of power." - P. J. O'Rourke
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