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The U.S. has massive military superiority - we essentially control the air in Iraq, except for the occasional helicopter shot down by ground fire. In a conventional war, where our nation is threatened by another country, we can respond with overwhelming might.
However, in a guerilla war, history should have taught us, the situation is much different. Shock and Awe does not win Hearts and Minds...
People may be horrified by this friendly fire "incident", as they were when NFL star Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan, but that is not why we are not winning in the Middle East.
If it were Iraqi's that were struck instead, even innocent civilians, do you think this would have garnered the same attention? Yet that is a nearly daily occurance.
I would not be surprised to learn that the U.S. military has been responsible for more Iraqi deaths than all of the suicide bombers combined; yet the advertising driven domestic news machine reports the daily insurgent inflicted body count, and the handful of Americans ground up in this quagmire, while ignoring the ever increasing numbers of Arab people we are killing, often without cause or concern. Those people all have families - many all too willing to sacrifice their own lives to avenge the unfair and unlawful taking of life of their loved ones.
We do get the occasional Pentagon report of scores of Al-Qaeda killed in this operation or that (often curiously timed with elections or military budget appropriations votes), even though we sometimes learn later that it was simply our military personnel snapping and raping/killing innocent Iraqi's (the convenient cover-up is that those killed were "suspected insurgents", just as the British convoy was mistaken for not being a "friendly").
The reality for many people in the Middle East is that U.S. bullies indiscriminately wreck similar havoc on innocent civilians every day. Many people are still without basic services such as water and electricity, and the situation is growing worse, not better. How can we expect to win, when the status quo is unnacceptable to the majority? How would you react if you had to live under similar conditions?
We U.S. still likes to act like a savior in Iraq, ignoring all of the time, that for many Iraqi's this is the most unstable time they can remember in their lives.
And what is the real result of all of the money that the Bush neo-con driven Administration has poured into attempting to bring false democracy to Iraq?
Well, we now know that the whole premise for the war was a farce. Nothing but lies piled upon lies. Human rights abuse has become systematic from Al Ghraib, to Guantanemo, to the secret prisons the CIA has kidnapped people to throughout the world.
The current Iraqi puppet government is a joke. Their leaders must live inside the U.S. protected "Green Zone" (the area where they are paid off in green dollars, and siphon off the riches belonging to the Iraqi people) because they are afraid to face the day-to-day reality that the average Iraqi must face in a country at war with itself.
So who benefited? Follow the money...billions and billions of dollars of it - enough to make Social Security solevent for the Baby Boomer generation. The money has been squandered on bad policy and an absolutely misguided war.
It is time to put the magnifying glass upon the septic (think) tanks that promoted the war (and continue to support it, since so many on their Boards benefit directly from it), and to put even more focus on the Adminstration benefactors that kicked over campaign contributions in exchange for huge no-bid contracts, of which so much of the money is unaccounted for, or clearly was wastefully spent lining the pockets of war profiteers.
Day by day, our civil rights have been eroded, and yet we are no more secure than we were prior to the establishment of the Homeland Security Department (the Bush Administration end-around on dissenting viewpoints within the NSA, CIA and FBI).
The tide is turning - the Bush agenda is on the ebb.
We certainly face some difficult days ahead, however, I am confident if we can chart a new more enlightened course as a nation, which understands that we can not always lead by might, and that we are better served by doing what is right, then we may some day be able to overcome this dark and turbulent time in our history.
/rant
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