November 2, 2003

TRIANGULATION:

Iraq War III (WILLIAM SAFIRE, 11/03/03, NY Times)

We thought we won the first Iraq war in 100 hours, but lost the peace to Saddam and his Baathist followers. We thought we won the second Iraq war decisively in one week, but Saddam's murdering class and his imported terrorists chose to run and fight from underground.

We are now six months into Iraq War III. The coalition is clearly winning on two of the three war fronts. As the team of ABC-TV and Time magazine reporters are persuasively showing this week, the people of Iraq's Shiite south and Kurdish north -- 80 percent of the population of 23 million -- are making substantial progress toward reconstruction and self-governance.

But the battle within the Sunni triangle around Baghdad -- where Saddam's rapacious sons and secret police long victimized other Iraqis -- is not yet won.


If things don't quiet down once we have Saddam--dead or alive--either we or the Shi'ites need to depopulate the Sunni Triangle by any means necessary.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 2, 2003 11:34 PM
Comments

Nice! I need to bookmark this the next time some prowar guy tells me that we're reforming the Middle East. By any means necessary! Excellent

Posted by: Wellbasically at November 3, 2003 12:51 AM

Wellbasically: Baathists, who were in power under Sadaam and looking at a lousy future at best because they no longer have that power, are in the fight of their lives and may be a tad harder to reform.

Factor in any threat of trials for crimes against humanity or simply backlash from the people they oppressed and terrorized and you have one very resistant group. What would you do with them?

Posted by: Buttercup at November 3, 2003 6:41 AM

Can't let the 20% unreformed ruin life for the 80% reformed, can we? We killed one hell of a lot of Southerners to reform the US.

Posted by: oj at November 3, 2003 7:46 AM

I can't help but think that once an Iraqi army is reconstitued the spelling of Fallujah, where we are having so many problems, will be changed to Hama.

Posted by: Jason Johnson at November 3, 2003 9:55 AM

OJ -

Yes, but the South's resistance was ended by honorable surrender rather than by desertion, after years of bloody battles, a very different situation. Lee's surrender at Appomattox all but ended armed resistance.

Posted by: Mike Earl at November 3, 2003 4:31 PM

How many people live in the Sunni Triangle that we're supposed to "depopulate:"

Six million?

Hmmhmmh? Where have I heard that number before?

Posted by: Steve Sailer at November 4, 2003 4:40 AM

Steve:

But of course, the vast majority of those six million are uninterested in fighting, although they may well aid those who are.

Thus, killing 60,000 will probably do.

Also, keep in mind, these guys are idiots. If they'd simply stash some weapons and keep their powder dry, they'd find Iraqi gov't troops, in three years, MUCH easier to defeat.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 4, 2003 6:34 AM

Steve:

That's how many Native Americans there were when we got to America?

Posted by: oj at November 4, 2003 7:41 AM
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