After years in Iraq and over 1000 dead America is finally starting to wake up. And they dont like what they see. From the left we hear "run away". From the right we hear "fight to the end damn the consequences". From middle america.. we hear cash registers ring as people stock up on Maalox, Rolaids and pepto bismol. But Why are we losing in Iraq.
The answer, despite the insistance of the right wing press, is not that we are in an impossible situation. Nor that Iraqi's cry out for a repressive theocracy. The answer is in our actions.
Each time someone fires an AK at american troops our response in Iraq is apparently switf and violent. We call in air strikes, we destroy a building, we call in apaches' to destroy everyone in the area. And that is exactly the response guerilla warfare aims for. Because each time a US bullet kills someone son or daughter or father.. we create another guerilla. Each time we destroy an innocent Iraqi's home because 'insurgants' fired a weapon from it.. we create a Guerilla.
The strategy isnt new. Che Guevara perfected them and took them the world over. In nations where he found it difficult to recruit people into a guerilla army he simply relied on heavy handed governments to overreact and create those troops for him. Even the North Vietnamese relied on our overreaction. Our use of b-52's when a rifle would have been the appropriate weapon.
The solution to 'winning' in iraq.. to allowing the Iraqi's a stable legitimate democracy and getting US troops out is simply to change our tactics. To get rid of the mercenaries and oil corporations calling the shots. To teach our troops to be police rather than an army. To target criminals rather than wage war on the occupied.
So long as we occupy Iraq.. rather than attempt to provide a police force to eliminate criminals.. we will lose. And that is far from a new lesson. It is one we claim to have learned after each hideous mistake.
Maybe we will learn this time..