READ THIS to imagine yourself living in Iraq: "If L.A. were Baghdad, if California were Iraq"

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Patt Morrison: If L.A. were Baghdad
Imagine our reaction to suicide bombers killing 40 USC students and blowing up South Coast Plaza in the same month.
March 8, 2007

....Each of the incidents outlined below happened in the last month in Iraq; I just moved them to familiar locales and agencies, approximating where they could have happened after comparing a map of Baghdad and Iraq with one of L.A. and California.

Feb. 1: Twin bombings at South Coast Plaza killed at least 73 people. Moments after the first bomb, a Costa Mesa police officer spotted a man flinging open his jacket to show his explosives belt. The officer shouted "Suicide bomber!" and ran toward the man. He flung his arms around the bomber to shield others from the force of the blast and was killed in the second explosion....

Feb. 13: One employee was killed when the offices of the weekly Sacramento News and Review burned down under suspicious circumstances. Investigators have not determined the cause of the blaze, which came 10 days after eight car bombs went off in central Sacramento and suicide bombers tried to ram a car into a state office building....

Feb. 25: At least 40 USC students were killed when a suicide bomber blew herself up at the university's Marshall School of Business. Last month, 70 USC students were killed in an attack, and two months ago, gunmen fought across a playground at Brentwood Elementary School. Across L.A., attendance at K-12 schools is down by nearly two-thirds....

Feb. 27: A suicide car bomber outside a busy Starbucks in Whittier killed three people. At about the same time, at an El Pollo Loco restaurant on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, a bomber ate lunch and left behind a sack of explosives, which killed three people and injured 13 when it went off....

March 2: A videotape sent to KCBS-TV appears to show 18 kidnapped and blindfolded Long Beach police officers being shot to death. The bodies of 14 of the missing officers, their hands tied behind their backs, were found near a Long Beach middle school the day before, the same day that a Santa Monica police officer and his bride were the target of a car bomb that blew up as the newlyweds arrived at their new home. They were unhurt, but three wedding guests were killed....


More at link:


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison8mar08,0,3904965.column?coll=la-home-commentary
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[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

1. k & r

What a stunningly hoorible comparison! Every citizen in the country should read it.

[Initech]

2. Damn, that's some scary shit!

:scared:

[Journeyman]

3. Since early on, I've made this comparison. . .

though Morrison has made it both better and more dramatic than I.

Last summer, this is how I made the comparison (with 2600 coalition dead at the time):

Iraq is approximately the same geographic size as California, has roughly the same population (25 million), and about the same number of foreign troops as California has law enforcement (~150,000). For the past three years, the foreign occupation troops (that would be US) have functioned as the law within Iraq.

Here's the true comparison: Would anyone in this country be complacent if -- on average -- 2.3 policemen were being killed in California every day? If 2600 police officers had been killed in California in the past three years, would anyone feel this was anything less than total anarchy? Would any pundit scoff and compare California to, say, Darfur, and conclude that the situation's acceptable because it could be much worse?

And this doesn't begin to include the civilian toll. Who believes that carbombs and IEDs, dozens of citizens dead in the streets on a regular basis, thousands kidnapped and hundreds assassinated, beheadings, churches bombed and clergy hacked to death with machetes, undrinkable water, people freezing to death in the dark . . . who believes such a total disintegration of civilized society in the most populous State of the Union would warrant a shrug or a smirk or a dismissive wave of the hand? Who would send snarky emails about such Left Coast chaos? And how long would a politician -- any politician in any state or at any level -- how long would they last in office if they made smug and condescending comments about how well the true situation is in California? How obscene would observations about school paintjobs be in such a crisis?

[DeepModem Mom]

6. Good work, Journeyman!

"And how long would a politician -- any politician in any state or at any level -- how long would they last in office if they made smug and condescending comments about how well the true situation is in California?" Imagine what you, and the LAT writer, describe, with powerful people assuring everyone that progress was being made in California, but the press just wasn't reporting it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. I've been making that comparison for years

Not taking anything away. You state it extremely well. But I think it is the go-to comparison, so I'm glad you're using it. Yes, the analogy is striking, and makes much more sense than the stupid right wing comparisons of US troop deaths to Detroit murders, or whatever nonsense they make up.

Iraq ---- California
US Troops ---- California law enforcement

That's exactly the right analogy.

[zbdent]

15. I've also made that point, too (but not on the numbers specifically)

about the policemen being killed.

It's the old skewed analogy ... likening second-hand smoke to "second-hand ice cream" ... you don't see people flinging ice cream into children's mouths from across the room ... the "second-hand smoke" argument is more like living next to someone who really loves playing his stereo ... at 3am and at 11 on the dial ...

[Solly Mack]

4. I wish most people understood that

So many don't

This is their lives - every single day. Not just one day. Every single day.

[beltanefauve]

5. And here are some excerpts

from Juan Cole, written Sept 22, 2004. (I saved this one for myself, now I gotta find the link!)

(snip)

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

(snip)

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totaling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?

(snip)

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?

[beltanefauve]

7. The link...

http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juanricole_archive.html

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Thanks for adding this, beltanefauve! nt

[beltanefauve]

9. Your welcome,

DeepModem Mom. That's what we're all here for!

[DeepModem Mom]

10. a.m. kick

[GreenZoneLT]

11. Yep. Good piece of writing.

Yeah, I don't get all that worked up about U.S. military casualties, since I don't personally know any of the guys, and they're so relatively infrequent compared to Iraqi deaths. I've only really e-mailed back and forth with one U.S. person who got killed; nobody in the Green Zone ever gets killed to speak of.

I work with Iraqis, though, and the carnage in Baghdad proper is just gut-wrenching. Two of our guys have had their brothers kidnapped and presumably murdered. One of our guys, just a great, wonderful man, got killed in a car-bombing a couple months ago. Sucks.

[Toots]

13. If our nation continues to tumble toward criminal anarchy it will be real news

We are headed in that direction if we allow this Administration to stay in existence.. It is our destiny.. In a society that declares every man for themselves it is inevitable..

[Rosa Luxemburg]

14. that's why we need more homeland security funding

if you were in Northern Ireland a few years ago you might have the same feeling.

[MrSlayer]

16. Right. Imagine if the Crips and Bloods ran the city for real.

That's the situation over there.

[huskerlaw]

17. That literally made me cry.

K&R...and I'm forwarding this article to EVERYONE I know.

[quiet.american]

18. Yet in Bush's world, he doesn't understand why Iraq shouldn't be grateful to him. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

19. Thanks for the thread Mom

Kicked and recommended

[ComerPerro]

20. Laura Bush would be annoyed that one or two bombings a day in CA distract from how great everything

is going

[Lisa]

21. 30 January, 2007 -- three UCLA law professors kidnapped, assassination feared

Dr. Jones from Riverside, Dr. Wilson from Oakland, and Dr. Smith from Santa Barbara.

Dr. Smith's son, a student at the law school, was also kidnapped as he was in the professors' company. The number of Californian academics assassinated since April 2003 and until the end of 2006 exceeded 185, the detained 142 and the kidnapped more than 52.

(see original article here -- places and personal names have been altered, BUT THE NUMBERS ARE REAL)
http://www.iraqupdates.com/p_articles.php/article/14035

[robinlynne]

22. Now take that scenario, and imagine our current senate debates.....

one year and six months from now we stop it? no. six months, if beverly Hills hasn't met a specific benchmark, then we withdraw....2 years from now.
think about redeployment.
jesus.
let's get the hell out of that poor country!

go to the march on the 17th.
go to the march on the 17th.
get your friends to go to the march on the 17th.

[Zenlitened]

23. Wow. That is utterly chilling. K & R

:scared: