Blast from the Past: HRW report on the Town that Just doesn't get it

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraqfalluja/


An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Discuss.

The Irony is killing me. We, the US, invade Iraq, send soldiers to Fallujah and basically the soldiers, untrained for police duty, and ill-equiped to communicate effectively with locals, insult the populace, disturb the peace, occupy and vandalize a school building, and then when the locals protest, they get itchy trigger fingers and open fire on a crowd of young people. Imagine the Boston Massacre with school children. It's that bad.

So, after months of tit for tat, with massacres and misfirings and wierd psychodramas like Operation Desert Scorpion, complete with "Flight of the Valkyries," children in bondage and live ammunition, an angry crowd gets hostile with some corpses, and what's the response?

"Fallujah remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don't get it." That's the word from Army Brigadeer General Mark Kimmitt.

That's Chutzpah for you. Massacre civilians, including children, and then act all surprised when people go out seeking to exact revenge.

There is a way to settle this. We must own up to our responsibility for the deaths of the children of Fallujah. That's the way forward.