Reply #63: Blowing up innocent civilians [View All]

When the resistance fighters in Vietnam blew up officers' clubs to try to kill US soldiers in Saigon, they took a bunch of innocent civilians along with them. To them, it didn't matter. The fact that there were dead bodies that were American in the rubble was enough to justify indiscriminate bombings in their minds. They were monsters.

In Iraq, as it was in Vietnam, there are several different groups that oppose the US. There are Ba'athists, foreign fighters (mujahadeen), Al Qaeda terror agents, Shi'ite militias, Sunni militias, and general Iraqis seeking revenge for wrongs.

Some of these guys want to establish their own totalitarian rule, while others are simply fighting to be free from foreign occupation and to be free and independent. It's the latter that we should be most worried about. The ones who want power and control are few in number, but the ones who want revenge because they lost someone they knew--friends, family members, relatives--are perhaps many. Maybe even too many. Bullies are few in number, but angry victims of war can be legion.

If the war continues to go as badly as it has, the numbers of those who want revenge because someone they loved died will continue to grow. Killing these people, accidentally or intentionally, will only create more in their place. That's not the same with foreign fighters and terrorists. They have no one who will fight for them except themselves. They are hated even by many Iraqis.