Destroying Falluja

How will destroying Falluja end terror?

We can, city by city, make the entire Arab world into rubble. But they will not love us for it. They will not suddenly acclaim us as liberators, abandon Allah and worship our god, Mammon.

In the article I have linked, Madeleine Bunting, a commentator whose work I seek out, correctly notes that Falluja could become the ghastly mirror image of 9/11. Most of those killed will be civilians. Many of Falluja's citizens could not or would not escape before the destruction of their city by the Americans. As Bunting notes, this is the idea. We show the "militants" that we have the resolve to murder thousands and destroy whole cities if they defy us. (Of course, we are showing the militants nothing. We are showing the people of Iraq that if they dare support those who oppose us, this will be their fate.)

These people! Do they believe that you can crush dissent? That if you destroy enough of the world, it will come to love you? That we are errant children, who, if chastised hard enough and long enough, will not just do your will but agree with you that it is right?

Do they believe that the route to love is to destroy people's homes, their schools, their places of worship, everything dear to them?

It has cost $100billion plus to destroy Iraq and it will cost the same again before the Americans have finished. For that $200billion they will have created a mass of rubble and made their nation hated in places that once at least were neutral.

Yes, they will kill some of those who oppose them but they will have created many more. The broad opposition to them will continue, probably with increased ferocity. The rightwing press will be jubilant. For them, it's all about the bodycount. They don't care how many women and children die in the process. They are all "enemies".

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:59 pm