Boy, it's really Bad Moon Rising in Iraq, when even our hand-picked and painstakingly-installed leaders can't get behind us. Here's this morning's dispatch from Reuters:
The Iraqi provisional Government has condemned US air assaults as "collective punishment" as US forces claimed victory in an offensive against the rebel city of Samarra.
"Air strikes on cities are a very annoying issue and not acceptable in any way," Iraqi interim President Ghazi Yawar told al-Arabiya television network. "I consider it collective punishment."
Iraqi religious leaders also condemned the assault and warned that other towns in the restive Sunni triangle would not fall so easily.
Seems to me Yawar has summed up a key issue that a lot of Americans don't understand: why do Iraqis have a problem with us being in Iraq?"
("I mean...you know, we're giving 'em freedom and all that, right? Why aren't they grateful? Do they ALL hate freedom?")
The key phrase here is "collective punishment." We don't seem to be able to prosecute the war in a way that makes a distinction between those for us and against us. End result: why should anyone be for us?
The Goopers want us to believe that the insurgents are small pockets of America-hating terrorists, when in truth many of them were our supporters not so long ago. These are not surgical strikes, they're sledgehammer strikes.
Americans have to understand that we're fighting a losing battle in Iraq, on two fronts: on the guerrilla level, and on the hearts-and-minds level of the general populace. This blunderbuss strategy is NOT the only recourse available to us. And it's...just...not...working.
But my question is this: is this something we need to articulate, or is it already viscerally understood by the electorate?