November 27, 2005
TURN 'EM LOOSE:
Shiite Urges U.S. to Give Iraqis Leeway In Rebel Fight: Americans Have Blocked Tougher Tactics, Cleric Says (Ellen Knickmeyer, November 27, 2005, Washington Post)
The leader of Iraq's most powerful political party has called on the United States to let Iraqi fighters take a more aggressive role against insurgents, saying his country will only be able to defeat the insurgency when the United States lets Iraqis get tough."The more freedom given to Iraqis, the more chance for further progress there would be, particularly in fighting terror," said Abdul Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite Muslim religious party that leads the transitional government and whose armed wing is the most feared of Iraq's many factional forces.
Instead, Hakim asserted in a rare interview late last week, the United States is tying Iraq's hands in the fight against insurgents. One of Iraq's "biggest problems is the mistaken or wrong policies practiced by the Americans," he said.
Easy enough for us to be unserious about terror since it's so little threat here, but for them it's an existential matter. Let them do what needs to be done. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 27, 2005 8:49 AM
"Let loose the dogs of war."
It's going to eventually happen anyway. And it's their country now. Let them protect themselves as they see fit. If it gets out of hand we can withdraw to South Kurdistan and let the French handle it.
Posted by: Genecis at November 27, 2005 10:00 AMWe know the day is coming when Cynthia McKinney, Joe Biden, Howard Dean, and George Galloway are damning the Iraqi government for being too tough on terrorism.
But most of us will be smiling.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 27, 2005 12:22 PMstrategy page had a great article about how the sunnis are pretty much guranteed to be driven out of iraq because of their support for the terrorists. of course the well known philanthropy of arab states means they will be helped aplenty to get restarted somewhere else. it's a shite world, baby, get used to it.
Posted by: Gen. Custer at November 27, 2005 9:08 PMTime for some more UN-sponsored refugee camps, then. That will be the Sunni future for the next 50 years at least.
Then they will demand their right to return, of course - to a country that has skipped several centuries to become a modern capitalist state. And the UN will back them by passing countless resolutions, demanding that Iraq return to its original borders - or something stupid like that.
Posted by: obc at November 27, 2005 9:23 PMJust another way of getting the last of the Sunni hold outs to cave. We offer them self-gvt in their provinces with one hand, while in the other we hold the shia and Kurd cudgel to whack them with if they don't accept.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 27, 2005 11:04 PMthe camp for the iraqi sunnis won't have to be that large, since there won't be many survivors.
i think the u.s. is using the sunnis in the same way you use kittens to train a pit bull. their anhilation will prove a useful lesson to the remaining sunni states, as a secondary pay-off.
oh, and the saudi oil fields will be seized by the iraqi military as compensation for the saudi financing of the terror campaign. irony is a wonderful thing.
Posted by: pol pot at November 28, 2005 1:38 AM