William M. Arkin -- (WP) Early Warning: We Are Losing the War In Iraq.

You can read his column at "Unmanned and Dangerous: The Future U.S. Military? ". 

He decries the impersonalization of war as was called for by General Petraeus when he asked for more drones for Iraq from the Air Force.   Using drones is sends a bad message to the people who would view it as a depersonalization on the part of the American forces.

It also allows, it seems to me, another step of escalation.

And escalation brings us full circle back to the Vietnam war.  

Arkin notes a more aggressive use of  air fire power in general.  I read reports of an attack that killed a family just a few days ago.  And again our officers did their song and dance about militants hiding among civilians ignoring the fact that we are invading their area, where they have always lived among their people and families, but what does it mean that we are attacking the civilians more and more?

It means we can't win the war.

We are told that what we need to do is to win hearts and minds (or at least that's what we were told earlier when the Bush administration wanted to give their generous political donors big rebuilding contracts, any of which were never completed). 

But we're blowing up civilians right and left.

This is what we did in Vietnam.   We simply need to look at how well that worked in the earlier war.

In case anyone has forgotten that's  "Not at all".

They have large re-education prisons in Baghdad where inmates are supposedly taught a milder form of "Islam", one that doesn't allow killing of 'innocents'.  Whether or not the idea of "re-education camps" starts an annoying pain in your brain stem like it does to me, you have to appreciate the irony.  We teach them not to kill innocents and then we release the prisoners to their neighborhoods where we are killing civilians.

How in blazes is that going to convince people to not take up arms against soldiers that have called in airstrikes  on family houses, maybe even their own family's house?   Especially since now we are fighting to set up our favorite militia to control the entire nation, just because it's the one that promises Exxon and Chevron the oil.

I don't know how long it will be until a set of stairs is put up on a roof and people cling to the bottom of helicopters in their desperation to get out of Iraq, but winning hearts and minds is not happening there. With Petraeus in charge it's a new game, ie. kill kill kill.

In Nam the Generals said the killing of civilians was an outright plan to eliminate those who could help militants, Now the officers are pretending that the civilians just got in the way.  

It's all disgusting though, and will lead to the same end. 

tags: iraq  war  troops  air power  civilian deaths  

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