DU asks: Are you willing to entertain the possibility that this may be the Iraq version of the Tet Offensive? That the resistance might just have staked everything on this uprising and we put it down that they will be broken?
I’m certainly open to the possibility. It’s not that I’m impressed by the savagery of the resistance or anything, after all, as much as it grieves me greatly that a single Marine should be lost, this was hardly the first day of Tarawa. But I am not at all sure that lowering the boom, so to speak, is likely to work greatly against a populace against which numerous booms have been lowered for decades. Remember, the jihad considered Afghanistan a win against the Soviets, never mind that they probably lost 20-1 casualties there, possibly even higher. And if you’re accustomed to your neighbors being fed to plastic shredders, I’m not sure the notion of being arrested and being fed well by the Americans is particularly frightening.
I’m also not impressed with the Bush administration’s idiotic notion of keeping Iraq together in this bizarre forced embrace of bitter enemies. If they had any real desire to make the situation work and bring freedom to Iraq, they’d carve it up according to tribal and religious zones and allow each group complete independence. Of course, the administration is not seriously dedicated to freedom and self-determination for Iraqis, but it’s a pleasant-sounding fiction. I don’t know precisely what their goals are, but democracy and free self-determination are clearly not two of them.