[lit-ideas] Re: the latest body count
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 22:02:21 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 7/22/2005 7:42:50 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: the latest body count
>
> > They have to be the most violent country in the world. I'll risk
sounding
> > dramatic and say in the history of the world. (...) Just going on
facts.
>
> Oh, there you go again.
>
> Only (!) 10-20 die per day in Iraq.
>
> Lebanon. Colombia. Honduras under the USA. Los Angeles on a lively
weekend. Many more places
> are more violent.
>
Maybe equally violent, but I doubt more violent. Lebanon's total
casualties for the entire war were 100,000 not counting injuries. The most
recently released number of civilian casualties in Iraq is 25,000 not
counting police, etc. Even if it is only 25,000 so far, Lebanon was
fighting a civil war, neighborhoods were fighting neighborhoods, so there
was some overlay of, what's the word, rhyme or reason on the conflicts.
Iraq isn't in a civil war. The Sunnis are pushing for civil war with the
Shia and may get one, but the violence over there is chaotic. The unknown
are the foreign fighters, read: al Qaeda recruits, streaming into the
country to train for the jihad against the west, making everyone in Iraq a
potential target, whether they're American or Iraqi. The foreign fighters
are why the U.S. works so hard trying to close the borders into Iraq.
Needless to say the borders are hardly closed. Woven into this is the
criminal element, not the least of which is kidnapping for ransom.
A crude analogy perhaps, but Iraq might be compared to having, say, the
Crypts, the Bloods and that Salvadoran gang in Los Angeles form an
insurgency against the police, then have the Jamaican gangs and Mexican
gangs and white supremacist gangs other gangs head over there and jump in.
During their insurgency, the gangs would blow up electricity generating
plants and other infrastructure, shake down and kill anybody, and
eventually move into the rest of the country. All the while regular people
would be trying to lead their lives while getting caught in crossfire,
explosions, compromised water and sewage, etc.
Even in Vietnam, with millions dead, people were fighting for their
country in a predictable fashion. Group A fought Group B. Here it's just
mayhem, with the worst part being al Qaeda exploiting it as a training
facility to take the place of the one that was disrupted in Afghanistan.
Another unknown, and this is just personal speculation, is why the Iraqi
people themselves don't do more to combat the insurgency, such as tip off
the police and so on. It's true that the police are infiltrated, but even
so, it seems to me that the people can do more. The only way I can explain
it is stating the obvious, that they see the Americans as occupiers and
want them out, plus the Sunni minority of course feeds their end of the
insurgency. It's a Catch-22; we can't leave because there's no government,
but there's no government because we're there. An average insurgency in
the 20th century lasted 9 years. Iraq will probably take a decade as well.
You're right in that history is extremely bloody. My point is that usually
violence has some sort of reason or predictability to it. Occasionally it
doesn't, such as Russia under Stalin, and now in Iraq. That's what makes
it so outstanding.
Andy Amago
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
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