Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

less brutal than saddam

An interesting article on Fallujah [via Kerim at Keywords] written by Rahul Mahajan.

A gentle, urbane man who speaks fluent English, Al-Nazzal is beside himself with fury at the actions of the U.S. military. (When I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, “It’s ok. It’s all OK now. Let the bastards do what they want.”) He talks of coalition snipers targeting ambulances, being hit, of them killing women and children. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah has become, he says, “I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization.”

Mahajan is also running a blog called Empire Notes about the war in Iraq. On April 12th, 1:20 PM EST [no permalinks], he had this to say:

Let’s just call [what’s happening in Fallujah] what it is. It’s an incredibly brutal collective punishment in defense of a regime, that of the occupation, that is less brutal than Saddam was but more than makes up for that with its negligence. Fewer people in the mass graves, more children dying for lack of medicine, more people being murdered on the streets or kidnapped. Hard to weigh all of the factors, but I’ve heard so many say, including Shi’a, that things are worse now.

Amongst the answers the President gave in his press conference yesterday was this:

Q: April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

The President: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It’s hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation’s interest.