Remember which Bush said Iraq was a
"catastrophic success"?
And remember how everyone basically didn't know what the hell that meant?
And remember how, after all those purple fingers, the right started gloating that some on the left began saying...well, maybe Bush was right?
And remember how Bush told us that the terrorists were operating "mainly in a few areas of the country"?
And remember how Bush told us that "we have made progress, steady progress"
And remember how, when violence surged before the interim government was elected, we were told that was because the terrorists wanted to derail democracy? And that, once "freedom took hold", the violence would subside?
And remember months later, leading up to the Iraqi elections, when the violence flared up again, we were told that the increased violence meant we were winning the war?
I'll say it. Since no one else will.
We are losing the war.
It pains me to type out those words. And it'll hurt, I know, because some people, especially those on the right who think they have a monopoly on patriotism, they think when I say "we are losing the war" I mean "I WANT us to lose the war."
I want us to win. I didn't want us to be there in the first place, not dragged there under the cloud of lie, but that doesn't mean I don't want our soldiers to safe, for Iraqis to be safe, and for us to win.
But the facts don't match up with the reality.
When the Iraqi elections were held, the whole nation was suspended in an awed existence, thinking that these elections meant we had won. That freedom wasn't just on the march, but that it had trampled the insurgency.
But, some of dared to peep up and say in small voices that perhaps, just maybe, the worse was yet to come. We were called unpatriotic, undemocratic pessimists who had too much egg on our face to face the fact that Bush was right, the invasion was success, and neocon policy was exonerated.
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev who called the Iraqi parliamentary elections a "fake" and that "they may even have a negative impact on the country." "Democracy cannot be imposed or strengthened with guns and tanks," Gorbachev said.
And I tried to explain that to people. That beneath the flag waving and behind the puppetted press conferences, there was a dark underbelly of Iraqi existence that was not being covered. I felt joy that Iraqis finally voted, but at the same time, I felt paralyzed with fear because I knew that it wasn't democracy I was witnessing in Iraq; just a inadequate replica that would sadly be shattered in the coming months.
Today, I read about the "Islamization of liberal democracy" from ABC. And it bothered me, because it talked of calling out oppressive regimes (and I thought of Bush and the Prince holding hands) and it talked about sweeping democracy in the Middle East (and I thought about that wouldn't have happened without the assasination and deaths of two leaders). And it got me thinking that it seems no one fully appreciates the terror that is to come.
When things go (relatively) peaceful in Iraq, we are told it's because we're winning. When the violence swells, we're told it's because we're winning, and those terrorists don't like that. Thus, in the paradoxical logic the adminsitration has used, whether one civilian died or one thousand perish, it is because we're doing such a damn good job over there.
Well, we're not. And I'm not saying that we don't have the best troops in the world. I'm not saying our soldiers are not fighting with awe-inspiring courage and doing their best. I'm saying that, in this case, the strategy employed by the world's best military may not be enough in the battle for Iraq's soul.
Snippets here and there of a car bomb or a firefight are all we here of what happens in Iraq. Do you know what I see? I see what happening what has happened in Isreal/Palestine. Where day after day, month after month, year after year, a death trickles down the newswires. And in our daily lives, we listen and move on not realizing that these daily reports, when viewed in total, mean that thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost and that the heart of the conflict still beats.
Similarly, in Iraq, we here of sporadic violence, not fully appreciating the hell that Iraq is today. Yes, hell.
Here is a snapshot of the last thiry days in Iraq. 30 days. Multiply that by the dozens of months we've been in Iraq. Here are 30 days of Bush's "catastrophic success".
sources: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 )
MONDAY, May 2, 2005
- 25 people were killed and another 30 wounded in a car bombing in Tal Afar, a town near Mosul, located 390km north of the capital Baghdad. (The bomber drove his car into the funeral procession for a slain Kurdish official
- A bomb exploded in the Huriya district of northwest Baghdad as a small convoy of vehicles carrying Major General Fuleih Rasheed, the head of a police commando unit linked to the Interior Ministry, was passing. Rasheed and three of his bodyguards were wounded.
- A car bomb exploded in Karrada, a busy neighbourhood in the south of the capital. Six Iraqis were killed and 12 others wounded by the bomb.
- In the Zayouna district of Baghdad, 2 policemen were killed and 10 people wounded by a bomb.
- A British soldier also died in combat on Monday, Britain's Ministry of Defence said.
- Near Diala Bridge in eastern Baghdad, insurgents fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at a checkpoint. Other insurgents appeared from behind nearby trees and joined the attack, he said. Five police officers were killed and one was wounded.
- Four police officers were wounded in Baghdad after insurgents in three parked cars opened fire with hand guns on a police patrol in the western Jihad neighborhood.
- A roadside bomb exploded on a main road north of Hillah, wounding four civilians.
- In Hillah, insurgents staged a drive-by shooting on a police patrol.
SUNDAY, MAY 1
- A huge explosion rocked the southern city of Basra late on Sunday evening, Aljazeera reported.
- Three blasts and one shooting incident rocked central Baghdad late on Sunday, killing at least one civilian.
- One Iraqi was killed and two others wounded when two roadside bombs exploded near a small amusement park in central Baghdad, an Iraqi police official said on Sunday.
- In the Yarmuk district in the west of Baghdad, a roadside bomb attack wounded two Iraqi policemen.
- Unidentified armed men opened fire on an Iraqi police patrol in the Ghazaliya district, also in Baghdad's west, Abd al-Karim added. One of the police officers was wounded. and the assailants escaped after the attack, he said.
- Five Iraqi police officers were shot dead at a checkpoint.
- A car bomb killed four people in Baghdad, police said.
- Sergeant Andrew Miller, a US military spokesman, said a total of six car bombs exploded in Baghdad on Sunday, wounding at least five American soldiers.
- An Australian citizen has been taken captive in Iraq, according to a videotape delivered by his captors to news agencies on Sunday.
- A car bomb exploded near a US convoy in the Zafaraniya area, killing four Iraqi civilians and wounding 10.
SATURDAY, APRIL
20. At least
seven rockets into the city of Falluja,
killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding another, the US military said.
SUNDAY APRIL 24
- At least 21 in Iraq killed in bombings.
- At least one soldier was killed in the same attack.
- At least 15 people killed and 40 wounded after two car bombs were driven into a crowd in front of a popular ice-cream shop in western.
- In Tikrit, two remotely detonated car bombs exploded outside a police academy, killing at least six Iraqis and wounding 33.
- One American solder was killed when a roadside bomb hit a convoy in eastern Baghdad. Two other soldiers and two Iraqi civilians were injured.
FRIDAY APRIL 22
- A car bomb exploded Friday at a Shiite mosque in the capital, killing eight people and wounding 20, police said.
- In northern Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. Army patrol Friday, killing one soldier and wounding another, the military said.
THURSDAY APRIL 21
- At least six other people were killed in additional bombings and shootings in Ramadi and Baghdad on Thursday.
- Helicopter shot down. The dead included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats, three Bulgarian crew and two security guards from Fiji, officials said.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 13
30. A blast near the northern city of Kirkuk that
killed 12 Iraqi security guards trying to defuse a roadside bomb.
MONDAY APRIL 11
- A U.S. citizen working for a contracting company was kidnapped from a construction site in Baghdad.
- Diplomat Malik Mohammad Javaid was kidnapped on Sunday, a Pakistani official said.
- In another reported kidnapping, the deputy police chief of the southern city of Najaf, Brig. Gen. Basim Mohammed Kadhum, has been abducted.
- Insurgents wounded three U.S. Marines on Monday when they detonated three improvised explosive devices in three vehicles at a security checkpoint at Camp Gannon.
- An Iraqi working with the U.S.-led military in northern Iraq was "assassinated" Monday, becoming "the third public servant in the Nineveh province to be killed in three weeks."
- In Baghdad, Iraqi police officials said a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy detonated near the Amiriya district, in the western part of the capital, wounding four Iraqi civilians and damaging three civilian cars.
FRIDAY APRIL 8
- The bodies of 10 civilians shot to death execution-style have been found near Baquba in northern Iraq
- An Iraqi police officer was killed in Baghdad and a U.S. Marine died in Falluja.
APRIL 3
- Two car bombs detonated Sunday in separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding five others, health department and police officials said. Both attacks targeted U.S. military convoys, police said.
- Two U.S. troops were killed this weekend. One soldier died Sunday morning when a roadside bomb went off near Beiji, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, the task force announced. A U.S. Marine died Saturday in an explosion during combat in Haditha, about 150 miles west of Baghdad, the military announced.
APRIL 2
- At least 20 U.S. soldiers and 12 detainees were wounded when an estimated 40 to 60 insurgents attacked the infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad on Saturday.
- Earlier Saturday, a car bomb exploded near the police station in the Iraqi city of Kan Bani Saad, killing five people, including four police officers, police said.
- Along with the four dead, three people -- including two Iraqi police officers -- were wounded in an explosion, police said.
- In Mosul, insurgents set off a car bomb Saturday, injuring six Iraqis, including a child, and setting fire to a house, the U.S. military said.
- Meanwhile, Education Ministry representative Habib Zamil al-Sodani was shot and killed on his way to work in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, an Iraqi police official told CNN Saturday.
DOES THAT LOOK LIKE WE'RE "WINNING" THE WAR???
Do you know what happened when I was writing this? I couldn't finish. I couldn't continue sifting through report after report after report, just in the last thirty days, of how many Iraqis, American soldiers, and foreigners have died. So this diary is woefully incomplete. And what does that say?
As Nag pointed out yesterday, part of the redacted report on Calipari/Sgrena was this:
"From 1 November 2004 to 12 March 2005 there were a total of 3306 attacks in the Baghdad area. Of these, 2400 were directed against Coalition Forces."
At leat TWENTY-FIVE attacks a day. In Baghdad ALONE. Does that sound like we're winning the war?
In the last year alone, over 150 foreigners have taken captive THOUSANDS of Iraqis have been kidnapped and held do ransom. source Does that sound like we're winning the war?
And why are so many Iraqis being kidnapped? The kidnapping of jouranalists and officials, we understand (though don't agree with) the rational behind that. You get attention to your twisted cause, you get big money. But why are so many civilians being kidnapped? To wage the war.
A suicide bomber who survived his attack on a U.S. military base in Baghdad did it because his family was kidnapped in order to force him to commit the attack. source
Iraq is falling apart at its seams. The Iraqi elections that Bush and the right shoved in our faces as proof! Proof of his genius! You know what they did for Iraq so far? NOTHING. The mere fact they elected Chalabi in there proves that there are dark, dark times ahead for Iraq.
Bush thinks democracy is on the march. I see, with the reports above and others, that BushCo brand of democracy is failing there. That square peg he tried to shove into a round hole isn't working. And in that void, there is a sinister storm brewing.
Part of that storm is religious radicalism that Bush purported to be fighting againt. The elections Bush cheered put a 70% Shia majority in power. That, to use one of Bush's favorite words, "emboldened" the terrorists. Did you hear what happened in Basra in March? No. So let me fill you in:
Some young students were having a picnic in Basra. Dozens of armed men poured in to the area:
"They started shouting at us that we were immoral, that we were meeting boys and girls together and playing music and that this was against Islam....They began shooting in the air and people screamed. Then, with one order, they began beating us with their sticks and rifle butts."
Two students were beaten to death day. Two students died because followers of a radical Shia cleric have decided they can impose their own version of Islamic law.
Does that sound like we're winning the war?
Bush's measure of success is how many moving goalposts he can erect. First, it was the fall of Saddam. Then the CPA. Then the elections. As long as he can babble on about "freedom on march" and deceive Americans into thinking that things are actually getting better in Iraq, Bush's war will be a success. It will be a success for him.
But for the rest of us. For the rest of us who realize that this war is draining our economy dry; for those who realize take the time to sit there and count how many Iraqis and Americans have died; for those who give a damn about the reality of the war rather than the propaganda, we realize that this is a war we are losing. We are losing, yet plowing forward.
I hope things will turn around. I support our troops, and the Iraqi people. And I don't know how to fix this. But all I know is that President has a duty to fix this, instead of blindly proclaiming that we're winning, as we lose our grip our reality...