Weird feelings and reporting on Iraq

Thomas Ricks has another long excerpt from his book that hyper focuses on what he perceived to have been mistakes made of troops in Iraq, this time mostly from the 4th ID. One of his themes is that the insurgency happened because some of the troops ere not nice to the Iraqis. He could just as easily looked at the mistakes the Iraqis made that triggered harsh treatment.

I think that the insurgency happened because al Qaeda and the former regime elements could not live with the new reality in Iraq and sought to change it, and harsh treatment was not a catalyst for their movement that is based on harsh treatment and intimidation. In fact, their treatment of Iraqis has aliented the population and and as last year's elections have shown, their cause has been rejected by a vast majority of the population.

By cherry picking incidents, Ricks ignores many other things that US troops did for the Iraqis that turned them against the insurgents. It is the kind of reporting that makes many of the troops believe that they have not been given fair treatment and that some reporters have missed the story and have abused the troops and the military, in order to stir anti war feelings in the US.

Comments

  1. BGGB6:51 PM

    You write: I think that the insurgency happened because al Qaeda and the former regime elements could not live with the new reality in Iraq and sought to change it, and harsh treatment was not a catalyst for their movement that is based on harsh treatment and intimidation.

    I think a source of fuel for the insurgency fire is all the former Baathists who were thrown out on the street when the Americans arrived. As a higher up CIA agent said of this decision: in one fell swoop, the US created 30,000 insurgents.

    There are many reasons the insurgency is raging in Iraq, in my opinion.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more

Apple's huge investment in US including Texas facility

Blaze: Apple announced a $500 billion commitment to infrastructure in the United States over four years, its largest commitment to domestic spending to date. Apple said it will expand teams and facilities in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington as part of its new spending. With a new facility in Houston, Texas, Apple will reportedly double its investment in advanced manufacturing along with increasing investments in AI and silicon engineering. The company said in a press release that the Houston facility will produce servers to support Apple Intelligence, the "personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done." ... The Texas facility will be for advanced technologies.   Texas has become a place that is very supportive of the tech industries.  Austin and Houston have seen much of the tech growth in the state.  Texas universities have been active in the AI field.
Read more