Three Seconds
AFP:
If someone told you in 2003 that, five years on, the Green Zone would be a latter-day mini Khe Sanh, what would you have thought?
With volleys of mortars and rockets raining down daily on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, security rules for soldiers and diplomats in the complex have taken on a chilling new urgency. |
If someone told you in 2003 that, five years on, the Green Zone would be a latter-day mini Khe Sanh, what would you have thought?
posted by The Cunning Realist at Monday, March 31, 2008
18 Comments:
If someone told you in 2003 that, five years on, the Green Zone would be a latter-day mini Khe Sanh, what would you have thought?
Of course...how could it not?
In 2003, I put myself in the place of an Iraqi. If another country invaded the US and put a puppet government in place, I'd spend all of my time trying to kill every last one of the invaders and puppets.
Empathy. Try it sometime.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Those who do not learn history's lessons are doomed to make the same mistakes...
The propaganda is truly insidious. Notice how the news article says "last Sunday, when the first waves of attacks began on the zone", as if the Green Zone had never been shelled before.
After you get below the fold, you read that "the Green Zone, [is] the most shelled 10 square kilometres of Baghdad", but I have noticed that whenever there is any uptick in the violence -- either that we take, or that we dish out -- the press tends refer to it with bright shiny adjectives like "new", "fresh", "shattering", etc. As if the whole Iraq issue had been completely settled during the last small lull in combat, and the latest violence is a surprise.
The press is clearly quoting armchair Beltway insiders who keep trying to claim any small, temporary dip in mortality as the 'beginning of the end' of the war. (anyone remember "Last throes of the insurgency," etc.?) And that message is being passed to the American people. Too bad for the Beltway that Americans are finally starting to remember how often they've heard those words. Again, the quote about "some of the people all of the time" springs to mind.
My thought would have been: told you so.
I'm on the empathy side.
judyo
But the surge is successful. We're winning! At least that's what John McCain keeps telling us.
Exactly what I WAS thinking at that time, "What the hell are we doing in Iraq?"
If someone told you in 2003 that, five years on, the Green Zone would be a latter-day mini Khe Sanh, what would you have thought?
I wouldn't have been surprised.
-- sglover
If the surge has been successful, what's happening now must be the best case scenario.
I feel very sorry for everyone who's caught in the middle of this nonsense.
Toppling Saddam and removing Sunnis from power, empowered the Shias, who are backed by Iran. Is that a surprise for anyone?
This comment has been removed by the author.
This comment has been removed by the author.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Surprised? Not so much? Appalled? Absolutely. At Bush? A little. At the insurgents? Not really; I'd expect people to not take kindly to occupation. At the congress, who could have taken action from the start, in the middle or now? Without a question. Pull the freaking plug. Let the Iraqis work it out, because we are not helping anybody, and our soldiers, contractors and diplomats are dying. I don't want to see Americans dying anywhere, but if there is a war anywhere and if Americans must be dying anywhere, it's in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A while ago, GW said, "Bring it on." We should have taken it to them like a flaming piston rod to a diesel engine.
The only candidate who is talking about going after OBL is Obama. The rest doesn't seem to care.
If someone told you in 2003 that, five years on, the Green Zone would be a latter-day mini Khe Sanh, what would you have thought?
That is what people were telling me in 2003, because I was listening to Liberals, not Conservatives. This is not to say that I didn't try listening to Conservatives. It's just that they kept spouting lies and nonsense, and I got tired of it.
I'd have said "Five years? It wont take that long." And it didn't.
Post a Comment
<< Home