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| Iraq | |||
| Iraq War "Over, in a Sense", sez WaPo | |||
| 2009-01-02 | |||
| Maybe it was the only shot heard for days in a neighborhood once ordered by the cadence of gunfire. Perhaps it was the smiles at checkpoints and the shouts of Iraqi policemen navigating the always snarled traffic. "God's mercy on your parents," they beseeched. "God's blessings on you." Maybe it was the music box still playing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" at a kiosk overflowing with Christmas tree decorations and heart-shaped red pillows. For anyone returning to Baghdad after spending time here during its darkest days two years ago, when it was paralyzed by sectarian hatred and overrun by gunmen sowing despair, the conclusion seemed inescapable. "The war has ended," said Heidar al-Abboudi, a street merchant. The war in Iraq is indeed over, at least the conflict as it was understood during its first five years: insurgency, communal cleansing, gangland turf battles and an anarchic, often futile quest to survive. In other words, civil war - though civil war was always too tidy a term for it. The entropy, for now at least, has run its course. So have many of the forces the United States so dangerously unleashed with its 2003 invasion, turning Iraq into an atomized, fractured land seized by a paroxysm of brutality. In that Iraq, the Americans were the final arbiter and, as a result, deprived anything they left behind of legitimacy. I beg your pardon?
But perhaps not as many as in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Nor is there victory. For any Iraqi, the word, translated into Arabic, draws a dumbfounded look. Victory for whom? Certainly not the tens of thousands of civilians - perhaps many more - killed in the frenzied clashes of those once inchoate forces. How about victory for civilization? Victory for the rule of law? Victory in the war on despots? Victory against totalitarianism? A victory in the War on Terror?
Baghdad feels much as southern Lebanon did after an asymmetrical war there in 2006, between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement that fought Israel to a draw. Survivors rose from the rubble of their homes, offices and stores with the satisfied smile of survival - in war, its own victory. Then they beheld the destruction the fighting had wrought around them. Their faces turned grim as they realized the task at hand.
"We don't know what's next," Shidrak George, a bystander, said April 9, 2003, as he watched men vainly assault Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdaus Square with chains, a sledgehammer and a cascade of rocks before making way for a bulky Marine M88 armored recovery vehicle to pull it down. The vehicle stopped for no one. It didn't have to. He said everything remained ghamidh - mysterious and unclear. "We want to know how this turns out." | |||
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #8 Hey WAPO - where are you more likely to die to vioilence Iraq or Detroit (per capits)? Yep Detroit's a quagmite! And so is Baltimore by that standard. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-01-02 18:33 |
| #7 The decisive turning point for the JIHAD will the failure or manifestation of the Islamist Hidden-Imam/Mahdi to make His Appearance by and for God-Islam, + Iran to successfully indigenously NUCLEARIZE 2010-2012 [2016?]during PEBO's first term, ESPEC NLT 2010. THE LONGER LEAD TIME THE USA = US-ALLIES HAS TO ENTRENCH, THE GREATER THE LIKELIHOOD OF JIHAD REGIONAL-GLOBAL DEFEAT IFF NOT ABSOLUT DESTRUCTION [includ agz ISLAM AS A FAITH]. Always bear in mind that OSAMA + RADICAL ISLAM are as much FIGHTING FOR THE VALIDITY OF ISLAM AS A DIVINE = GOD-BASED FAITH AS MUCH AS EVERYTHING ELSE. * PRE-WW2 "GREAT DEPRESSION I" > lasted roughly 10 years, time which I doubt this Islamist Jihad will be able to asymetrically emulate widout the above + "Great Power(s)" MILPOL Conflict scenarios. IN SHORT, THE ISLAMIST HIDDEN-IMAM/MAHDI CANNOT "NOT APPEAR". |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-01-02 18:28 |
| #6 2008 is over, too, in a sense. |
| Posted by: KBK 2009-01-02 18:02 |
| #5 Hmmm, wonder how the WaPo managed to notice. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-01-02 17:39 |
| #4 Anyone else think this guy will be singing a different tune once Obambi's sworn in? |
| Posted by: Raj 2009-01-02 13:21 |
| #3 It is mind blowing to see everyday Iraqis celebrating Christmas While our anti-West, anti-American academia spend their time trying to shut it out. Back to A&Ms [ie practical functionality] for state universities. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-01-02 12:06 |
| #2 "Irag war over" And it ended in failure for the New York Slimes, Washington Post, Daily Kos, and all the other treacherous scum who were rooting for Al Qaeda. Don't worry though. Barak still has time to cock it up with Iran. P.S. It is mind blowing to see everyday Iraqis celebrating Christmas |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-01-02 11:51 |
| #1 Ick, give the writer a hanky pls. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-01-02 07:51 |