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Sunnis offer "exit plan"...,
2005-08-22 12:16:17
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if hillary clinton won't stop the war, who will...,
2005-08-22 18:22:38
if grins could only kill:
Christopher Hitchens writes:
The news of a pullout would put a wolfish grin on the faces of the "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" brigade, as Mr. Zarqawi's force has named itself in order to resolve all doubt. Every effort would be made to detonate every available car-bomb and mine, so as to claim the withdrawal of coalition forces as a military victory for jihad.
Oh no, a wolfish grin! Anything but that!
US withdrawal means a significant withdrawal of Sunni tolerance for Zarqawi's band of international fanatics of mystery, which would spell the demise of their operational capacity. They can grin all they want, it's absurd to think that without their base of Iraqi support that Zarqawi and his ilk would be much more effective than he was prior to the war, which is to say hardly at all.
Iraq, "a country that was already almost beyond rescue in 2003" was still slowly recovering as of early 2003, hindered mostly by a still aboveboard sanctions regime and absurd reparations claims from Saudi Arabia and Toys'R'Us. The Hitch helped throw it into a destructive chaos, tossing it backwards from 2002 to who knows where, the Iraq GDP dropped 20 billion due to the war, much of the worst damage irrepairable, with negative impacts on all but a few fronts mostly relating to communications - and you can't fax potable water. I've got a suggestion: why doesn't Hitchens demand more reconstruction funds not spent lining pockets at politically connected US firms? Regardless of whether US forces stay or not, or whether podunkville Indiana makes Baghdad its sister city, that seems more significant for the welfare of Iraqis than if a foreign army continues to undermine the legitimacy of Iraqi moderates.
:: posted by buermann @ 2005-08-22 17:23:06 CST |
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