America needs friends to help it out of the Iraq mess
Bob Herbert NYT Friday, August 22, 2003
NEW YORK How long is it going to take for America to recognize that the war it so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco - tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?
At the United Nations on Wednesday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.
"This is a dream for the jihad," said one senior UN official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans."
"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The United States is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the United States does not know, with cultural images the United States does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs."
The American people still do not have a clear understanding of why the United States is in Iraq. And the troops don't have a clear understanding of their mission. America is fighting a guerrilla war, which the bright lights at the Pentagon never saw coming, with conventional forces.
...MORE ....
http://www.iht.com/articles/107277.html
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