Les Blough: Iraqi Resistance & Exit Strategy

Iraq, Palestine and Viet Nam

The Independent (UK) reports today:

"Two heavily-defended hotels in Baghdad, used by US officials and journalists, came under attack today from rockets launched from a donkey cart today."

It appears the Iraqi Resistance Forces will continue to badger and attack the occupation forces for as long as the creative properties of the human mind can invent new methods. We all know that can be for a very long time. The U.S. genocide in Iraq has taken on the profile of the Israeli genocide in Palestine - mass, indiscriminate destruction, and attacks on civilian populations in continued attempts to crush the human will and spirit. The city of Tikrit offers just one of many examples for this comparison of the U.S. and Israel wars. The U.S. has turned Tikrit into another West Bank and Gaza Strip:

"The entrance is guarded by soldiers, protected by sand bags, concrete barricades and a machine-gun nest. Only those people with an identification card issued by the occupation authorities are allowed in or, more importantly, out." [more]

Palestine and Viet Nam

History tells us these genocidal policies are a futile enterprise (two examples: Israel's war on Palestine and the Viet Nam war).

Yesterday a U.S solder killed by some sort of booby trap which the U.S. military refused to describe. Before that it was successful Iraqi RPG attacks on Blackhawk Helicopters, predicted as early as March, 2003, but unstoppable by the U.S. military. Today it is missiles fired from donkey carts on "heavily defended" hotels used by U.S. officials. Tomorrow, who can guess?

The 50 year attempt to crush Palestinian will and spirit has failed. Today we read that the "fissure" among Israel's forces is growing deeper and wider. Four former leaders of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security force, gave a joint interview to Israel’s leading daily, Yedioth Aharanoth, criticising Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s suppression of the Palestinians. They warned that the Jewish state was headed for disaster.

They called on Israel to dismantle some of the Zionist settlements in occupied Palestine and to sign a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

Do the U.S. occupation forces have some hidden methods or plans for winning this kind of war, never thought of by their Zionist counterparts in Palestine?

Or is it simply the desire among White House advisors to turn Iraq into another Palestine? Another Lebanon? Meanwhile, the good continue to die young. Just one example that made the news occurred on November 17, when an American patrol opened fire on people in Baghdad's gun market, killing three, including an 11-year-old boy - A story that could just as easily been written about Palestine. How will the Iraqi Resistance Forces reply? - A rhetorical question.

What would Americans do?

Forget about the mantra of the Christian Zionists: "What would Jesus do?"

Ask instead, "What would the Americans do"? If foreign military invaders were now occupying U.S. soil, what would all those 2nd Amendment gun owners in the U.S. be doing?

The Pennsylvania deer hunters I know well, would not be out hunting deer during the opening week of buck season which begins next Monday. I know them. I grew up with them. They would be zeroing in on invasion soldiers with their 30.06 rifles equipped with telescopic sights and firing hand-loads that chug along at 2700 feet per second - then retreating back into the Allegheny Mountains.

Even neighbors who may not have been their friends in the past would be giving them safe-haven and material support - just as the Iraqi Shias are now supporting the Sunni Muslims in Iraq according to a top-secret CIA report earlier this month.

The well-armed Iraqis are no different. They will be defending their honor, land and resources by whatever means necessary. The "donkey-cart attacks" are a perfect example of their creativity and resolve.

"Exit Strategy"

Recently our dinner guests raised asked the question, "If you were President Bush, what would you do with the mess he's created in Iraq? What would be your "exit strategy". As the question went around the table, views were expressed, mostly with reference to the U.N. When it came my turn, I had two things to say:

1. I'm not sure that George Bush is the one who will be permitted to make those decisions.

2. Since our birth, we have been trained to think that there is a solution to every problem. We have been conditioned to believe that we can "fix" anything. But perhaps there are some problems that don't have a solution. Perhaps, if one digs a hole deeply enough, he cannot climb back out.

Yesterday at lunch, a friend asked a similar question about "exit-strategy".

Again we talked about "the mess" ... "the hole" the U.S. has dug in Iraq. What to do now? Perhaps there is no way out of this mess ... this hole ... except at massive costs to the Anglo-American invaders. - Costs in tens of thousands of lives, stunning economic losses and the immeasurable costs of negative world opinion and future reprisals.

IMAGE: A casket containing the remains of Staff Sgt. Paul "Tony" Velazquez is carried to the Fort Sill Post Cemetery at Fort Sill, Okla., yesterday. Velazquez, 29, was one of 16 soldiers who died when their CH-47 Chinook went down near Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 2. - Randy Stotler/The Lawton (Okla) Constitution

Did we learn nothing from the deaths of 58,000 U.S. soldiers in the Viet Nam War?

The number of U.S. Troops killed in Iraq now exceeds the number killed in the early years of Viet Nam according to a recent Reuters analysis:

"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation".

Their analysis of Defense Department statistics showed that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964 - a period of 2 years. The killing of a U.S. soldier on November 12, 2003 brought the total of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 397 - in just 8 months of fighting.

If one considers the number killed in the Washington regime's "war on terrorism", the numbers of U.S. military killed is even greater. In the same report, Reuters stated:

"Larger still is the number of American casualties from the broader U.S. war on terrorism, which has produced 488 military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other locations."

How often I hear folks ask, "Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?

Can the embarrassing, tragic and costly American exit from Vietnam on April 29, 1975 be considered an "exit strategy"?

Can the invaders fleeing the country with their asses on fire be considered "an exit strategy"? Can we imagine any scenario in which the U.S. and British governments could possibly consider this a "successful war"?

Perhaps only in the minds of those White House advisors who apparently only wanted to destabilize the Middle East and turn Iraq into another Palestine and Baghdad into another Beirut. Also, perhaps those who profiteer from the war on Iraq will have considered it a success. But how can this ever be considered "a success" in the minds of civilized, sane and rational human beings?

- This article also appears here with a number of embedded HTML links… http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_3440.shtml

Les Blough, Editor Axis of Logic Boston, MA (USA) http://www.axisoflogic.com rmcmail@speakeasy.net

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