I have not been able to comment on the mind-numbing slaughter taking place regularly in Iraq, but I thought this bit was worth preserving:
In Diyala Province, where American and Iraqi troops have been fighting Sunni insurgents for control, gunmen publicly beheaded seven people, the police said. One group of suspected insurgents shot six people in the head in a public garden in one of Baquba’s northern neighborhoods. A few miles further north, another group of insurgents beheaded a policeman with a sword in a public square where children usually played soccer.
In both cases, the police said, the gunmen forced residents from their homes and made them gather to watch the killings.
Oh yes, I know, “occupation breeds violence,” and often that’s indeed true. But the 67 Shia Muslims [update: it was far more] killed in today’s marketplace bombings were occupying nothing besides space. The East Timorese were occupied for more than 20 years and it was the occupiers, not the occupied, who perpetrated horrific violence. What is happening in Iraq is historically specific and far from inevitable, and it shocks the conscience by any available moral standard.
U.S. troops are playing a negligible security role; at worst they’re inflaming the situation. They should leave. But even then, scenes like the above will not stop.
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