More American troops were killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months — at least 334 through Jan. 31 — than in any comparable stretch since the war began, according to an Associated Press analysis of casualty records.Not since the bloody battle for Fallujah in 2004 has the death toll spiked so high.
The reason is that U.S. soldiers and Marines are fighting more battles in the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and other cities. And while hostile forces are using a variety of weaponry, the top killer is the roadside bomb.
Roadside bombs are killing our soldiers. Not snipers. Not insurgent fire. Improvised explosive devices.
So now Bush wants to drop more soldiers into Baghdad. What will happen? More deaths. Why? Because more firepower isn't going to stop a bomb from going off.Escalation of this stupid war, and ultimately the war itself, must be stopped.
3 comments:
You peaceniks may be correct. I certainly believe that Bush mis-managed this war in many important ways, including:
1. Dealing with claims of WMD as certainties, and failing to include in his advocacy the possibility that Iraq's rougue govt might not possess these WMDs.
2. Failing to account for the certainty that some strong segment of US voters would loudly oppose every step of the war. I certainly agree that the anti-war expressions from the US help the bad guys, but a proper war strategy would have accounted for this.
3. Failing to effectively account for the possibility that various factions of tyrants and crime gangs, along with spontaneous mob lootings, would manifest.
4. Failing to eliminate torture from the tactics of US forces and their allies.
5. Failing to account for the possibility that a critical mass of Arab Iraqis would at this time possess a serious devotion to freedom and sensible, intelligent government, as opposed to the Iraqi Kurdish example which indicated otherwise.
6. Failing to act quickly and decisively in combat. My friends in Iraq report that for years US troops have failed to return fire and otherwise apply deadly force to pinpointed locations and individuals firing on US troops. Why did Bush give Hussein over a year (I believe it was) between declaring his invasion and implementing it? And then there was the delayed and the abandoned attack on Sadr City, and the entire strategy of attack and then retreat.
7. Failing to put Iraqis, such as Chalibi's expat Iraqi Natl Congress, into initial control, rather than US home-grown infidel honkies.
8. I am unsure about the criticism against disbanding Iraq's military; it appears to me to only be a mistake in hindsight, and even in hindsight it is unclear to me that leaving this intact would have been better.
Even if Bush had taken the above steps, I believe that it might have been better to not invade. The one good thing he did: explicitly and factually attempt to construct a free democracy "of the people and by the people".
I am 100% certain of the following: anything other than a capitalism-based democracy (actually, I think that capitalism and democracy are natural corollaries of each other) will not produce widespread prosperity to any nation. China's prosperity, for example, manifested and now spreads only as a function of increased political and social toleration (democracy) and outright capitalism.
I accept the point that with passive bombs killing most US troops that adding more troops may simply increase the US troop carnage without suppressing the anti-US activities. However, it might prove true that adding troops and switching to a more aggressive strategy for those troops will suppress even the bomb-planting activities. My confidence in Bush implementing a best-possible strategy, however, is low.
I am unsure if anything will work.
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