« As the blood flows | Main | back up this weekend »
January 25, 2007
What is this "this"?
There is an illuminating story in today's NYT about American soldiers going through Haifa street... It's well worth reading in full. At one point, one of the American soldiers exclaims that it might be better to "do this" without the Iraqis. I kept reading and rereading the article to try to understand what "this" they thought they were trying to do was.
They were supposed to clear the street but it wasn't clear from whom. They were being shot at but they weren't sure who the shooters were, or even if they weren't the Iraqi soldiers they were with that were shooting at them. The Iraqi soldiers with them were absolutely not on board with whatever "this" was and the problem clearly isn't "lack of training" as the punditocracy, Republicands and Democrats keeps parroting. They simply do not want to do "this", whatever it may actually be, in cooperation with the Americans.
Meanwhile, Iraq plunges further into secterian mass murder. Who knows how many we kill? So it goes on.
Posted by zeynep at January 25, 2007 11:37 AM
Comments
The Iraqi "soldier" with the unloaded weapon is one of the most striking details, because it suggests that the whole Iraqi part of this operation was play-acting from beginning to end, and that the Iraqis, if not the US forces, knew this perfectly well. Maybe "do this"
in the sentence you quote means "stage this photo op?" The colonel does like his tight bomb pattern. Of course (as Yossarian points out in "Catch-22") there's real German anti-aircraft fire, and people, like the US soldier in this article, actually get killed, but that's show business. This war is all sizzle and no steak.
Posted by: rootlesscosmo at January 25, 2007 06:14 PM