When you got money, you got lots of friends...
By Libby
I found this piece in the BBC rather cheering. It's good to read about peaceful days in Baghdad.
I can't help but think if we had been throwing money to the locals like this, instead of shooting bullets and dropping bombs, we could have avoided a whole lot of bloodshed over the last few years and by now a true and lasting peace might have taken hold in Iraq.
But I also can't help but hear another line in the song that inspired the title of this post, echo in my head. "When the money's gone and the good times and spending ends, they don't come round anymore." I wonder if we tried this too late, as we clearly can't sustain it much longer. No matter what our politicians say or pretend to do to direct policy, the troop levels will have to be reduced because we simply don't have enough soldiers. Will the peace hold when they're not there to drink tea and perhaps more importantly, was it worth it?
Now Pt Mazzarella has been there a long time and has seen too much death and violence in his short lifetime but "everybody in the platoon believes their success is fragile. It could all easily still go wrong." One can only hope, for all concerned, that this time we can beat the odds.
I found this piece in the BBC rather cheering. It's good to read about peaceful days in Baghdad.
For the American soldiers patrolling Baghdad's southern suburb of Dora these are days of trial by tea. For in many houses they enter in this largely Sunni part of the city, hot sweet tea is offered and they know that refusal can offend.
It does not stop at tea either. As a goodwill gesture, the soldiers have taken to buying roast chicken, cheese, bread, and the Iraqi delicacy called samoun - bread dipped in sweet syrup - as they make their rounds of Dora. [...]
I have padded around this part of Dora for four days with Lt Carlisle and can report that this 25-year-old's job is now largely about dishing out money. This young officer from Wisconsin is supervising a $200,000 (£100,000) school project and numerous other contracts to get the local economy going again.
Nearby Dora market is thriving. Back in April when we visited, about 200 stall or shop owners were risking snipers and bombs to open for business. Now there are more than 1,000.
I can't help but think if we had been throwing money to the locals like this, instead of shooting bullets and dropping bombs, we could have avoided a whole lot of bloodshed over the last few years and by now a true and lasting peace might have taken hold in Iraq.
But I also can't help but hear another line in the song that inspired the title of this post, echo in my head. "When the money's gone and the good times and spending ends, they don't come round anymore." I wonder if we tried this too late, as we clearly can't sustain it much longer. No matter what our politicians say or pretend to do to direct policy, the troop levels will have to be reduced because we simply don't have enough soldiers. Will the peace hold when they're not there to drink tea and perhaps more importantly, was it worth it?
"None of this was worth the life of even one member of our platoon," Pt Mazzarella replied.
Now Pt Mazzarella has been there a long time and has seen too much death and violence in his short lifetime but "everybody in the platoon believes their success is fragile. It could all easily still go wrong." One can only hope, for all concerned, that this time we can beat the odds.
Labels: Bush Administration, Iraq, military, policy, surge
posted by Libby Spencer at 2:16 PM
4 Comments:
slightly OT- here is a letter to the editor I sent to the Boston Globe regarding another guy who can't accept good news, jeff jacoby, our resident neo con wackjob:
According to the latest NIE, said to be the best sourced NIE ever, we are apparently safer than we thought we were just a few weeks ago. One of our major enemies on the world stage, Iran, doesn't, according to the best guess of a myriad of experts, have a nuclear weapons program. After being starved of good news for years we have an embarassment of it with the , for now, success of the surge and the knowledge that Iran, even if it wanted to develop a nuke now, wouldn't be able to till long after we have likely left the region, as least a decade. Of course, they have little reason to want such a program as their principle reason for having one in the first place, most likely Saddam Husseins regime in iraq with whom they were at war officially for 8 years and unofficially long before and after, had by mid 2003 been eliminated. it would appear we are actually seeing and end to this endless war! Finally, we can tend our gardens, which in our case is trying to resesitate our badly debased currency , rebuild our military and re- everything else that's fallen by the wayside since 9/11.
You'd think Jeff jacoby in particular would be positively ecstatic about this development but no, He is instead worried. A curious reaction, it's almost like he WANTS Iran to have nukes!!! While democrats hemmed and hawed about the surge till it's success, at least tactically if not politically, could not be denied, Jacoby is adamant that we need to ignore this good news. Amazingly, he notes that if the report is true, it is because of "international pressure". If this sounds an awful lot like "heads I win, tails you lose" it ought to, that's preceicly what it is. This is the face of neoconservatism. They don't want the war in iraq or war in the middle east to end. They want us to fear. They envision us as a sparta depended on handouts and condemned to a life of paranoia and militarism. Kind of like the country in the middle east they are all such big fans of.
lester
Good letter Lester, but I'm guessing it's a little too long for them to print it. Still it's good to write them. They make a difference.
I've long ago given up on getting my letters printed. I just like informing Jeff jacoby of how widely disliked he is
The key to getting published is to keep them short, but it's never enough room to fully express the kind of disgust Jacoby deserves.
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