Surge and Destroy-The Brutality Escalates in Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0312-23.htm

Surge and Destroy
The Brutality Escalates in Iraq
by Michael Schwartz

snip//

The Bottom Line: We are looking at desperate measures aimed at reversing the decline of American power in the Middle East. In all three areas designated by the surge plan, this desperation has led to the consideration of, or even the embrace of, more destructive strategies.

The immediate results on the ground already look disastrous in ways that -- though they shouldn't -- invariably seem to catch Americans officials off-guard. For instance, when they focus the limited forces available to them on Baghdad, the guerillas begin to look for less well guarded targets elsewhere as seems now to be happening in the city of Samarra. In addition, even the so far modest American incursions into Shia areas of the capital have had the horrifying effect of facilitating some of the most horrendous suicide car-bombings yet recorded. One instance of this was succinctly described by New York Times reporters James Wong and Wassam Habeeb:

"On Feb. 18, just two days after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called the opening stage of the security drive a 'dazzling success,' two bombs ripped through a market in the New Baghdad neighborhood, where American soldiers had been on patrol just minutes earlier, killing at least 60 people."

The way an American patrol and a car bombing coincided was no accident. The New Baghdad neighborhood, like almost all Shia communities in the capital, has been policed by the Mahdi Army on an ongoing basis. Besides enforcing all manner of local law, the Mahdis are also vigilant about possible suicide bombers, quickly recognizing strange people or vehicles that enter their neighborhoods. At the same time, wary citizens are also on the look-out, alerting the local Mahdis whenever they see someone who looks suspicious.

snip//

There is a larger pattern that should, by now, be clear in these developments, and all that have come before. The architects of American policy in the Middle East tend to keep escalating the level of brutality in search of a way to convince the Iraqis (and now the Iranians) that the only path that avoids indiscriminate slaughter is submission to a Pax Americana. Put another way, American policy in the Middle East has devolved into unadorned state terrorism.