Fighting a Civil War
The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.
Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
October to be worse....
The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say.
......
U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred, according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement in sectarian killings..
(It should be said, in fairness, that Iraqi police have sustained heavy casualties themselves 4,000 dead, 8,000 wounded in the last two years. )
Now, the casualties and deaths -- 20,000 Americans wounded and 2,739 killed -- would be bad enough if something was being accomplished but Pentagon officials say that we are only buying time. Or as Senator Warner put it "we are drifting sideways."
But not according to Condoleeza who insisted just two days ago in this self-contradictory statement that we are making "progress" in Baghdad:
BAGHDAD, Oct. 5 -- Wearing a helmet and a flak jacket and flanked by machine-gun-toting bodyguards to defend against insurgents, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came here Thursday, insisting that there were new signs of progress in Iraq and that the Bush administration had never sugarcoated its news about the American occupation.
Maybe we should listen instead to Nicholas Kristoff who asks us to listen to the Iraqis:
And Iraqis are crystal clear about what the U.S. should do: announce a timetable for withdrawal of our troops within one year. They're right. Our failure to declare a timetable and, above all, our coveting long-term military bases in Iraq feed the insurgency and end up killing more young Americans.
A terrifying new poll conducted last month found that 61 percent of Iraqis now approve of attacks on Americans. That figure, up from 47 percent in January, makes counter-insurgency efforts almost impossible, because ordinary people now cheer, shelter and protect those who lay down bombs to kill Americans. The big change is that while Iraqi Sunnis were always in favor of blowing up Americans, members of the Shiite majority are now 50 percent more likely to support violent attacks against Americans than they were in January.
The poll, by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, also found that 78 percent of Iraqis now believe that the American military presence is "provoking more conflict than it is preventing."
And, finally, this from an Iraqi teenager:
Three and a half years after the American invasion, the relentless violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five Baghdad neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to make plans.
"I can't go outside, I can't go to college," said Noor, sitting in the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. "If I'm killed, it doesn't even matter because I'm dead right now."
May God forgive us.
