I meant to post this in the morning, but it’s been a busy day for us, and I’m only just now getting to it.
It looks like the insurgency in Iraq has grown by at least one. Read this piece from the Washington Post and find out how we’re fueling the insurgency in Iraq.
By all accounts, Imaad, 32, was a typical, mild-mannered college graduate who spoke English well and had quietly supported the U.S. presence in Iraq — until Jan. 5, the night the soldiers came.
… On the night of Jan. 5, Imaad and his mother, Um Imaad — both of whom declined to give their full names for fear of retribution — were watching a movie in the living room. As in most other parts of the capital for the past two months, their Adhimiya neighborhood has electricity about two hours a day. So the generators outside were humming at about 9 that night, and the television was turned up so they could hear.
Imaad said they were startled by a loud banging at the door. He went quickly to open it. When he did, Imaad said, there were about a dozen U.S. soldiers standing with their guns pointed at his head.
Imaad and his mother said the soldiers rushed in, ordering them to sit together while they searched the house. “You look poor,” Imaad recalled one of the soldiers saying. “Why?
… The soldiers went to search his bedroom. He heard laughing, and then they called for him, he said. Imaad went to his room and saw that the soldiers had found several magazines he kept hidden from his mother. They had pictures of girls in swimsuits and erotic poses. Imaad said the soldiers spread the magazines on his bed and put his Koran in the middle.
“This is a good match,” Imaad said one of the soldiers told him.
“It was a nightmare,” he said. “I will never forget those bad soldiers when they put the Koran among the magazines.”
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If that’s not bad enough, there’s the wing-nut-0-sphere response to the whole matter, chronicled by tex over at the AntiWar.Com blog. I’m not going to link to any of the warblogs, mainly because I don’t want the wingnuts finding their way over here. But check out their responses. They just don’t get it.
In Iraq, we’re losing hearts and minds by the day. In the wingnutosphere, hearts and minds were lost long, long ago.
I think that now is a wait-and-see-how-the-election-goes period. If the election goes well — and I think it will go well unless the insurgents bring massive violence — then it can be ‘the way out’ and, perhaps lead to a good future for the people of Iraq.
I think that the American soldiers are for the most part doing a good job and are probably in tens of thousands of ways earning some respect and good feeling from Iraqis, at least in the Northern and Southern parts of the country. The problems have come from decisions by Bush and Rumsfeld that allowed for torture and indescriminate violence, and, of course, being precipitant at going to war in the first place.
The Iraqis will elect a legitimate government and that govenment can decide how long the Americans can stay and what they will be allowed to do. I don’t want more American casualties, but I also don’t want us to leave too soon, before Iraq has a chance to put together a stable and peaceful future.
There is the danger that there will never be a perfect time to leave, but right now we need to stay and give the election process an opportunity to succeed. Perhaps after the election the new Iraqi gov’t and the Americans can put together a plan, including a timetable for US withdrawal.