SOMALIA REVISITED
 

I'm sure by now most of you have read accounts of four American contractors being killed in Fallujah and their mutilated bodies being dragged through the streets.

My question is how do we still paint the violence in Iraq as being perpitrated by 'insurgents' 'Baath party loyalists' 'terrorists'? When a mob drags mtuilated bodies out of a car, ties them to automobiles ties them to bridges, parades the through the street, is it some small group of holdouts trying to stifle democracy? Or do the people of Fallujah really, really hate us, to a degree we can't even comprehend?

You can't occupy a place that hates you this much, you can't steer it toward democracy. This isn't greeting us with flowers. This is what comes from sewing the wind.

Careful, Max. You're starting to show the symptoms of Vinthanosis.

I'm going to sound dumb here but is Fallujah in Iraq? I haven't heard anything about this incident. Can you link me? Thanks in advance.

edit: Nevermind I just saw it on the news.

General Schoomaker said this was a "small" group of Iraqis who "just don't get it."

That must be the case. Not getting it....

Is it necessary to post every friggin' article in caps? That doesn't make the contents any less boring, you know.

It's so hard to say what's neccesary and what isn't. Like your blowing me. It's really all a matter of perspective.

It's certainly smaller than the majority of Iraqis, but I imagine that the size is larger than has been alluded to.

My fears are of a rising nationalist sentiment among the Iraqi people.

I wasn't really crazy about the "providing democracy to an oppressed people that I really didn't care about" thing but ... well, we're there and already in it, so to speak, and we've just received a world class slap in the face from basically a piss-ant class of a country. If it is indeed, a "small pocket of resistance" relative to the rest of the country, then this resistance needs to be made to bleed horribly and feel intense pain and humiliation ASAP. That is all.

Interesting that you brought up Somalia. There certainly is a parallel there. Do you think it is true that this was just a small group with lots of influence causing trouble as it was in Somalia?

Do you think C-in-C will have our boys come scampering home with their tails between their legs instead of letting them finish the job?

Well they won't be going home. They are actually going to send the Marines into the city. And apparently where this happened is one of the areas that had the strongest Saddam loyalty.

Also I didn't find this boring...

Re: SOMALIA REVISITED
 

Can't it be all of the above? While you would have to be a fool to think these actions represent all Iraqi's, or all Arabs, or all Muslims, aren't you just realizing that there isn't much difference between what "the people" believe and what "the terrorists" believe? All that p.c. stuff of saying "just because you agree with a terrorist, doesn't make you one" is a foolish way to combat these sentiments. I mean compassion is nice, but wake up. Look at Arabic TV, look at the books that are popular, look at their opinion of the West, and THEN look at what happened in Somalia.


The British did just fine for years, and the argument that the region was more stable isn't too farfetched. The "Occupation" isn't the reason they hate us. They're very vocal about why they hate us, we just want to pretend it's for more deserved reasons. You can't occupy a place that hates you that much and try to be delicate about it. That's what it comes down to. Removing ourselves from the Middle East wouldn't change anything but the confrontational aspect.... because the hatred in the Middle East isn't just in the Middle East.[/quote]

PLEASE bear in mind these "contractors" the media refers to without going into much detail were actually ARMED security for the American corporations who are "rebuilding" Iraq. They don't answer to anyone other than the men paying them, and perhaps a less media-friendly, but more realistic title for them would be "mercenaries".

Not to trivialize the indignities done to these four, but we aren't talking about unarmed engineers and architects here. There is MORE to the story that you aren't being told.

Ziggy is absolutly right. They were definatly mercs.

One thing that the media really doesn't really touch on is the increase of Mercenaries being hired. For the past ten years Mercs have been popping up all over the place. Especially the Middle East and Africa.

People need to quit saying "Ziggy is absolutely right" before I get some kinda ego thing going.

But I wonder what the mercs were doing to get themselves ganked and dragged around town like that? Were they doing "horrible things (TM)" or were they only guilty of being "white in the wrong neighborhood"?

Mercs have been popping up in Iraq like a boom industry because people don't feel safe. Those who don't feel policed hire their own.

Whether they were "mercs" or not, NOBODY deserves that kind of dehumanization. It was barbaric.

I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise, Kevin.

It's not a secret. Haliburton has been sending over armed security gaurds or whatever you want to call it to compensate the 100,000 soldiers Rumsfield didn't get. I'd think you could find some better mercernarys for hire if you were just looking to fuck shit up. We already have Hizzballah guerrillas, and Czechnian rebels running around there. The IRA have long had a presence working the Middle East for hire. This didn't happen because they were mercenaries, it happened because they're Americans.

They were actually Blackwater employees....the guys who train the SEAL teams in firearms, etc. They were hired to provide security at oil wells and shit like that. The Americans are management for the most part, the guards are South American mercenaries...Chilean I think.

So did it happen because they were Americans, or because they were perceived as thugs guarding stolen oil wells?

AbcdXXXX would have us believe it's the former, but I've heard so little about the story that I'm unsure.

My point is that it is a muddy, complicated, ugly situation. I don't think there are any speciffic groups to 'root out' or 'perpetrators' to punish. I think there is a large, angry, dangerous, barbaric, undifferentiated mob. I'm not even at the moment going so far as thinking about the reasons.

I'm pointing out a quagmire.

It's all very well to say (as compared to Somalia) 'well, this time, we won't run, we'll finish the job."

What exactly IS the job? When would you know it was 'finished'? And when it' a whole city that hates you enough to do what people their did and celebrate what can you possibly do? We've already committed ourselves publicly to a 'strong response.' Who are we going to respond to?

I appreciatte the 'however we got there, we're there now, and we have to stay until the job is done' argument, I honestly do, but I think somebody needs to start painting a realistic picture of what the 'job' is and some way of getting there.

Because at least as far as Fallujah goes, I don't see options outside of 'destroying the village in order to save it.'

I read that these guys were actually guarding a food convoy. The Chilean mercs are guarding oil wells

I think Max is rights...it's starting to look Quagmire-ish to me too....a messy situation all around.

mercs! were they hired to protect our military or corporate interests?

we're talking about 'pacifying' falluja by killing everyone?
a violent response in falluja will harden more Iraqis and more of the world against the US. i'd say it's worse than a quagmire, its a huge disaster.

even iraqi police forces have to wear masks to hide thier identity from iraqis revenge for working with the US.

how much taxes are we giving to private corporations to protect US interests? we're giving over 50% of our tax dollar to the war machine but that doesnt include these private security deals right?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/national/02SECU.html

Here's an article on the Blackwater subject. It was a headline in today's NY Times.

I don't think it really would've mattered what they were doing. I think we need to be careful to not turn this into some twisted rationalization. "Oh...they were doing that???? Well now I can see why a 10 year old boy would step on the head of a burning corpse."

The "mercs" from Fiji were hired out by a British company, me thinks. But aside from corporations and government officials hiring these guys out, it has also been done by Iraqi communities that wanted to protect their property in light of the post-war anarchy that had been going on.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18193

here's the article I read originally about the mercs.

A agree with Kevin. I think these are two unrelated issues. It doesn't matter what the hell these guys were. They could have been soldiers or cake decorators, I don't think it changes what happened.

The issue of the military privatizing what used to be army jobs, wether that saves or costs money and wether it's a good idea is a whole nother bucket of beans, and worth discussing, but it's unrelated.