In
todays AJC there is an opinion piece by
James Pinkerton. In it, he apparently is condoning genocide as the solution to all our problems in Iraq.
When will the anti-American violence in Iraq end?
It will end when we unleash the Shiite Arab Muslims and the Kurds to finish the job, all the way to the bloody extreme. We're not ready for such unleashing just yet, but we're getting close.
We're not ready for unleashing it yet, but we're getting close?
In the meantime, the United States is pursuing the opposite strategy: We are protecting the Sunni Arab Muslims, who represent no more than 20 percent of the population, from the Shiites and the Kurds, who represent the other 80 percent.
We're pursuing the opposite strategy from the one Pinkerton supports I suppose by protecting Sunnis along with the Shia's and the Kurds.
More...
The latest illustration is the American discovery of tortured and abused prisoners in a Shiite-run detention center in Baghdad, Iraq. The U.S. officer in charge, Gen. Karl Horst, acted according to the Geneva Convention rules. Seeing men in need of treatment, he recalled, "I brought medics in." Seeing further that the men had been abused, he added, "I brought in a legal team."
The latest illustration of us pursuing the opposite strategy than genocide is us helping men who are being tortured?
At a time when the United States stands accused of all manner of war crimes, Horst upheld the honor of the U.S. military. However, in acting ethically, Horst didn't help the United States strategically. After all, the detainees whom Horst rescued were undoubtedly guilty --- of being Sunni. And in the current context, just about every Sunni is associated, to one degree or another, with the insurgency.
For centuries, the Sunni minority has oppressed the Shiite and Kurd majority, oftentimes by extreme brutality. That's why the Sunni Saddam Hussein was never overthrown by rebels from within Iraq; he was perfectly capable of committing mass murder to hold on to power. And most Sunnis were Saddam's collaborators; in the violent context of the Middle East, for them it was kill or be killed.
And to top it off this person is clearly mis-leading or mis-informed as Saddam was not supported by the large majority of the Sunnis, and he pretty much treated them the same as the Shia's and the Kurds.
From this article on Al-jazeera
The removal of Saddam's regime was initially met with a considerable amount of popular support by Sunni Arabs. It should not be forgotten, after all, that if any threat to the continued survival of Saddam Hussein emerged in Iraq, it would have almost certainly come from within the Sunni Arabs themselves.
For this reason, they were targeted just as viciously and perniciously as their Shia and Kurdish countrymen with bloody examples existing of particular Sunni tribes suffering the terrible wrath of Saddam's vengeance such as the Dulaimi and the Samarraai.
Perhaps Professor Cole would like to comment more about the reality of Saddam and the Sunnis.
But while the intensity of hatred in Iraq is oceanic, the killing is a comparative drizzle. Why? Because the U.S. military is preventing an out-and-out civil war. In the words of Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, "Ironically, American troops are now interposed between the insurgents and our allies in Iraq, in effect protecting our enemies from our friends."
The U.S. military has chosen to interpose itself between the Sunnis, on the one side, and the Shiites and the Kurds on the other. U.S. military members operating in the Sunni Triangle are getting picked off with increasing frequency: November is shaping up as the fifth-deadliest month for Americans in Iraq in 33 months of fighting, according to globalsecurity.org.
Yep, it keeps getting worse, much worse and yet we are told they are in their last throes, or this month its a different excuse for staying, all the wile our troops are sitting in the middle of it all protecting Halliburton's claim on Iraqi oil reserves while doing so under the guise of "spreading democracy" and freedom for all Iraqi's, 20% of which this Pinkerton guy apparently wants wiped off the face of the earth! Does he not also understand that the large majority of the people in Iraq just want us to leave?
He finishes off
Yet, in the history of warfare, it's massacring that works. Gary Brecher, who writes the online column "War Nerd," observes, "The only effective counterinsurgency techniques are torture, reprisal and, ultimately, genocide."
As the politics of Iraq continue to shift in Washington, it's likely that one day the Americans will quit Iraq, and the Shiites and the Kurds will be unleashed on their foes. Slaughter is not the solution Americans were led to expect in 2003, but it's the solution that's coming, finally.
Massacring is the solution thats coming finally!
Wow, I'm left speechless. Does this person not understand how much the occupancy is driving this, does this person not know that throughout the Arab world the Sunni's are the majority and genocide will inflame the entire middle east?
Does the AJC condone this? Does the AJC not at least have some responsibility to their readers to keep totally false drivel like this off of their editorial pages? Don't they have a responsibility to us as citizens and our soldiers to not print editorials that blatantly support the slaughter of 6 million people?
I think so, I think we all should tell them so, you can write the AJC at letters@ajc.com and you can reach Cynthia Tucker, the editorial page editor at cynthia@ajc.com
Amazing, simply amazing.
P.S. I tried using the search feature to see if this had been posted but it just hangs on me...