Posted by: Eric on April 30, 19103 at 14:15:53 In Reply to: Typical posted by Art on April 30, 19103 at 10:40:26

First of all, NO ONE is claiming that the demonstrators were Saddam supporters, or Ba'ath party members. There were all poor hapless civilians who were irritated, rightly or wrongly, by the presence of american soldiers. Whether it was because they wanted to use the school, or becuase they thought the soldiers were showing children pornography, or whatever their percieved greivance was, doesnt really matter. And whether these greivance were real or imagined doenst really matter. What matters is that they have greivances, and they are clearly growing, and causing violence.

As to who shot first, we will probably never know--you werent there either, I imagine. Again, it is somewhat beside the point. The point is that the US soldiers, rightly or wrongly, are beginning to make a habbit of getting into these sorts of altercations, and that is clearly not a good thing for anybody, and it has to be stopped--soon.

The bottom line is that US troops have done an outstanding job at what they are trained to do, win a war. But there are growing signs that they are failing, not surprisingly, at a job they are not trained to do, adminster a civil society. The problem is that no one esle is available to do the job, and no one seems to have thought through how to deal with the issue.

It seems that US planners had hoped to be able to decapitate the Iraqi governmment, but keep the body of it in place. I think they underestimated to role that an army plays in a dictatorship in holding together the society. Either that, or they didnt expect the iraqi army to completely disintegrate the way that it did.

Read the Follow Ups: Re: Typical Art 13:21:04 5/01/103 (1) Re: Typical Fact Finder 15:40:37 5/01/103 (0)

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