A few wonder about Simon Assaf's analysis. You don't have to agree with it. It's certainly in conflict with some of what I've offered here all week. It's an analysis from the left.
Deborah Amos joined Scott Simon (Weekend Edition, NPR -- link is audio and text) to offer analysis from the mushy center. You can refer to that which I agree with even less. Tomorrow on Fareed Zakaria GPS (CNN), Fareed will host a roundtable:
On GPS this Sunday: Amid an intensification of violence in Iraq, Fareed looks at what went wrong. Is it mostly Washington's fault, or does it have more to do with the region's history? A panel including Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, Columbia University Prof. Rashid Khalidi, former Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan Meghan O'Sullivan and CNN security analyst Peter Bergen discuss what could have been done differently.
Someone that I rarely agree with is Stephen Zunes who has a column for the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
The
tragic upsurge of violence in Iraq in recent months, including the
takeover of sections of two major Iraqi cities by al-Qaida affiliates,
is a direct consequence of the repression of peaceful dissent by the
U.S.-backed government in Baghdad and, ultimately, of the 2003 U.S.
invasion and occupation.
At the end of
December, Iraqi forces violently attacked a protest camp on the
outskirts of Ramadi, killing 17 people. Human Rights Watch noted how the
government's raid "seemed intended more to provoke violence than
prevent it." Indeed, al-Qaida, despite lack of popular support even
within the Sunni heartland, was able to take advantage of public anger
at the crackdown to launch their unprecedented assaults on major urban
centers in the Anbar province. The Obama administration has responded by
expediting additional military aid to the repressive Baghdad regime.
This was the fifth major incident during 2013 in which security forces fired upon and killed peaceful protesters. A recent Amnesty International report noted how, during the past year, thousands of Iraqis were detained without credible charges, hundreds were sentenced to death or long prison terms after unfair trials, and "torture and other ill-treatment of detainees remained rife and were committed with impunity." Even parliamentarians are not immune from imprisonment on dubious charges and extrajudicial killings have made Iraq the second most deadly country in the world for journalists.
On the lead up to the current tragedy, Zunes got it right. One of the few to do so.
I call out propagandists (Dan Murphy) but if people disagree and can back up their points factually, it doesn't really bother me.
And you can learn a lot about where you stand on an issue by bouncing your views of someone else, someone with a different opinion.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4489.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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