Sassy Suicide Bombers Take On Mr. Clean

A few days ago our military high mucky-mucks assembled at Camp Victory in Iraq for steak and potatoes and to say goodby to General David Petraeus, Lurch’s Hannibal, who is going to Central Command in Florida to take charge of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
According to reports, Petraeus is a smart guy, leader of his class at West Point and all that, developer of the “surge,” and the author of our recent “victories” in Iraq.
He also was credited with preparing the army’s strategy and tactics on counter-insurgency. One could assume he was also smart enough to copy Ho Chi Minh’s insurgency manual.

The powerful Pentagon public relations brigade produced and showed a highlight film on Petraeus in Iraq accompanied by the rock music “Surge of Hope.”
Back in 2003 Petraeus told Congress that the Iraq War was not “mission impossible,” that it was “hard but not hopeless.”

David Ignatius of the Washington Post summed up Petraeus’s tour this week: “By force of will, Petraeus and his president George W. Bush, turned that around. They didn’t win in Iraq, but they created the possibility of an honorable exit.”

We also should be reminded that at that same Congressional hearing Petraeus said, “Tell me how this ends.”

History always seems to come back to haunt us. President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided that in order to win the 1972 election, we had to leave Vietnam with “peace and honor,” which resulted in 20,000 more names on the Vietnam Memorial.

Camp Victory, my ass. More like Camp Boondoggle.

John McCain and his Joan-of-Arc Sarah Palin keep talking about “victory” in Iraq. What constitutes victory? A friendly “democracy” on top of all that oil in the Middle East? A trading partner? A military partner that would help us keep the Middle East in line—and pumping oil? A united country that would spend its oil profits on infrastructure, education, and health care for its citizens?

Let’s remember that all the forces which will tear Iraq apart when we leave—Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds—are still there, and will always be there until the Muslims resolve their 1500-year religious split. The way things are going, that will not be soon.

“We’re Killin’ ‘Em. We’re Killin’ ‘Em All”

Back in 2006, according to Bob Woodward in his book “The War Within:A Secret White House History,” the overwhelming consensus among the military and the public was that we should get out of the war.

Lurch—stubborn, righteous, ignorant, and dependent on his gut for answers instead of knowledge—said at the time: “Not one doubt, we’re killin’ ‘em. We’re killin’ ‘em all.”

Studies conducted by both foreign and domestic entities have estimated that we have already killed about 1,033,000 Iraqis since 2003. All of the studies have a range of between 946,000 and 1,120,000.

But we have to remember that there are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world—and 85 percent of them are Sunni. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who ruled the majority Shiites in Iraq with fear, bullets, torture chambers, rape, and murder. So Lurch says we are going to kill them all. Well, I guess that would be a victory, wouldn’t it?

In five years, 151,000 Baghdad families have fled their homes but only 7,112 have returned to their homes, surge or no surge.

Baghdad Sunni and Shiite areas have now been separated by blast walls up to 20 feet high, and checkpoints must be crossed in order to enter sections.

In some areas there is no tribal enemy left to kill. In one Sunni area there are 8,350 displaced families who have had to leave Shiite areas on pain of death.
In a country of 27 million, over five million Iraqis have been displaced by the war, with over two million living as refugees in foreign countries.

It is true that the number of attacks on Americans and Iraqis are down to about 20 a day.

Since the war started 105 different “insurgent” groups have claimed responsibility for attacks within Iraq. Petraeus has managed to cobble together shaky cease-fire agreements with over 200 tribal and regional groups in Iraq.

A few incidents could blow all of those agreements to smithereens and start a very serious civil war, instead of the little one that is now raging throughout Iraq.

“In Revenge There Is Life”

We just don’t seem to understand the severity, brutality, and pernicious longevity of this religious war.

In one telling scene a member of the Islamic Army of Iraq insurgent group kills two Shiites from Syria to avenge the death of his uncle. He doesn’t know whether the two are directly responsible for the death, but he takes a vial of blood from each and presents them to his widowed aunt. The aunt drinks them and then says revenge is complete.

At Muslim executions throughout the Middle East loudspeakers often proclaim “In revenge there is life.” Is a “victory” possible where there is such enmity and volcanic emotion?

It’s evident Lurch is trying to turn Iraq into the Petraeus War. Although we are supposed to have civilian control of the military, Bush’s mantra is “we have to wait to see what Petraeus says.” Can we trust a Mr. Clean who changes his uniform several times a day so he looks good for the press? The headquarters staff has raised this point.

One thing about the colonels and the generals in the Iraq Theater: they are always spiffy with starched and tailored “camies” and fresh haircuts or shaved heads. They always remind me of politicians rather than fighting generals.

My old commander Marine General Lewis “Chesty” Puller always looked like he got out of one of Bill Mauldin’s foxholes to relieve himself in the closest bushes, but believe me, he was a first-class leader, not a politician.

If he caught a Marine officer eating before his men ate in the field, he would likely end up guarding goat herds someplace in Swaziland.

I still have a hard time trusting generals who primp constantly and smell nice. What kind of general runs up the biggest laundry bill in camp? A political one who is not to be trusted by the troops.
Remember that the name “General Betrayus” in the controversial MoveOn.Org political ad did not come from Democrats. It came from his own troops.

“Why Don’t They Come Out and Fight?”

Even General Ray Odierno, Petraeus’s successor in Iraq, says that conditions in Iraq remain “fragile”: “Where chaos reigned, hope now prevails. However, we must realize that these gains are fragile and reversible.”

A couple of years ago Odierno matched the stupidity of Lurch’s “Bring ‘em on!” when he commented that insurgents were cowards because they “wouldn’t come out and fight in the open.” Fighting tanks and F-16s with AK-47s?!! How do some of these people ever get to be generals?

I suppose success in Iraq really boils down to what “victory” means. Things have not been going well in Iraq since Donald Rumsfeld decided that the only Iraqi ministry worth protecting after Baghdad was “conquered” was the Oil Ministry complex.

That seemed to define the Bush-Cheney goal in Iraq. We don’t care about your 5,000 year history illustrated in your National Museum or the National Library. We care only about your oil. What a message to send to the Iraqis who were going to “welcome us as liberators.”

We may not know what is going on in Iraq now. When we invaded Iraq in 2003 we had 775 journalists embedded with the troops. As of March 2008 we only had 23. Most of them are in the Green Zone stronghold because if they go out on the streets they will be killed or kidnapped.

The latest tactic of Al-Queda is to employ vulnerable women as suicide bombers. Our Pentagon propaganda machine says the use of women as bombs demonstrates that insurgents are desperate. In the last year 31 female suicide bombers, one as young as 13, have been active. Since 2003, 53 females have blown themselves up and killed 370 and wounded 650.
Twenty bombers of this group have been the wives, sisters or daughters of insurgents killed by the U.S. Some of the suicide bombers, driven by hatred and a sense of revenge, came with their husbands to fight in Iraq. Some seek martyrdom as their male counterparts do.

A leader of a women’s suicide group expressed pride in the fact that her organization had a pregnant woman who would blow herself up “in an act of martyrdom” as soon as she delivers her child.

I think we all know that “victory” in Iraq, whatever that is, will not come easy when Iraqi women drink the blood of their husband’s killers and then walk into markets and malls with explosive vests loaded with nails, ball bearings, and C-4 or TNT and push the detonator button.

An Anbar Province Al-Queda leader said, “We consider the women’s (suicide) battalion a winning card…They have a penchant for vengeance more than men sometimes. Also, a woman blowing herself up applies pressure on the men who refuse to do the same.”

We are now paying 91,600 Sunnis in the The Awakening an average 0f $300 a month not to fight us. We were spending $4,563.18 a second on the war in March 2008. That grows to $411 million a day. A U.S. family of four is spending $330 a month on the war.

We’ll have to pay the Chinese sometime, folks. Estimates range to $25 billion for monthly costs. We have had over 4,400 troops killed, about 23,000 seriously wounded, and 300,000 diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder out of the 1.668 million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.

We have also deployed 43,000 troops back to Iraq after they have been declared medically unfit for combat.
I just don’t think a spiffy Mr. Clean is going to win out over the sassy suicide bombers.