As the death toll from Thursday’s barrage of car bombs, mortars and missiles in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim heartland of Sadr City rose to more than 200 on Friday, political cracks began appearing in the Iraqi government and retaliatory attacks against Sunni Muslims erupted in some Baghdad neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, U.S.-led forces clashed Friday with gunmen in Sadr City, causing some casualties, a Shiite politician and residents of the neighborhood told the Reuters news service. A Defense Department statement later said a U.S.-led helicopter crew destroyed a rocket launcher that had fired six rockets into a Sadr City neighborhood.
In an address after Friday prayers to tens of thousands of Shiite worshipers gathered in Sadr City, members of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s political party angrily denounced the U.S. military, saying it was responsible for fueling the violence and was doing little to stop the bloodshed.
They demanded a U.S. withdrawal or, at least, a timetable for the troops to leave. They also vowed to walk out of Iraq’s fragile coalition government if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki attends a scheduled meeting with President Bush in Amman, Jordan, next Wednesday…
Americans tend to think we can achieve almost any goal if we just expend more resources and try a bit harder. That spirit has built the greatest nation in history, but it may be dooming Iraq. As the head of the British Army recently noted, the very presence of large numbers of foreign combat troops is the source of much of the violence and instability. Our efforts, then, are merely postponing the day when Iraqis find their way to something approaching normalcy. Only withdrawal offers a realistic path forward…
The Shiites and Sunnis want to fight it out. And it’s not particularly pretty. We unleashed it, and there’s nothing at all we can do to put it back in the box. It’s what happens when you do something as stupid as Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush did, invade when you have no understanding of the place you’re trying to play God in. We are "liberators" all right. We liberated the Iraqis to fight a Sectarian War that’s been brewing since way before Columbus sailed to our country. Operation "Iraqi Freedom" gave them the freedom to do what they’re doing. Good job, Bushy…All of this absurd talk of a "surge option" to send in more troops to "bring order" and then pull out is silly. We might as well just execute 2.5 of our own soldiers a day [our current average] for all the good that will do. There’s greatness in admitting that you were wrong. Nixon passed up the opportunity in Viet Nam. We should remember the helicopters taking people off of the rooftops in Saigon, or the Russians hightailing it out of Afghanistan, and take the opportunity to leave Iraq with some dignity. Pretending we didn’t make a colassal mistake isn’t looking like a very good option right now…
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