The Common Ills: Hejira

Sunday, July 03, 2016

Hejira

For the second day in a row, Baghdad is slammed by a bombing. The news today covers two bombings -- the first was noted in Saturday's snapshot -- the suicide car bombing in the Karrada neighborhood -- whose death toll continued to climb and the second was in al-Shaab.

Mohammed Tawfeeq, Joe Sterling and Susanna Capelouto (CNN) report:

A suicide truck bomb ripped through a busy shopping district in Baghdad over the weekend, killing more than 100 in what was the deadliest single attack in the war-weary country in years.

The brazen Saturday night attack in the heart of the packed Karrada neighborhood killed at least 125 people, including 25 children and 20 women.

BBC NEWS notes, "The BBC's Jeremy Bowen says people were gathering to drink juice at the end of their day's fast when the bomb went off." They also note, "As night fell on Sunday, teams of workers were still clearing debris from the site and searching the charred remnants of buildings." Mustafa Salim and Loveday Morris (WASHINGTON POST) call it "the Islamic State’s worst single attack on the Iraqi capital."

CNBC has a very strong report worth reading in full but we'll note this from it, about the reception the US-selected prime minister of Iraq received when he visited the destruction:

Videos posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of Abadi as he left Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.

REUTERS reports that the White House is "saying the attack only strengthened the United States' resolve to confront Islamic State militants."

Really?

The confronting of the Islamic State by the US is a joke.

A tired one.

In fact, the daily dropping of bombs on Iraq that the White House started in August 2014 continued today:

Strikes in Iraq
Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 15 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Beiji, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and denied ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Mosul, four strikes struck four separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed eight ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL command and control node and an ISIL heavy machine gun.
-- Near Qayyarah, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed four ISIL assembly areas, three ISIL mortar systems, an ISIL mortar position, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL supply cache, an ISIL weapons cache, an ISIL front-end loader, two ISIL bulldozers and an ISIL oil tanker.
-- Near Ramadi, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position, five ISIL vehicles, an ISIL light machine gun, and an ISIL boat and damaged an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Tal Afar, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit, an ISIL improvised weapons factory, and an ISIL-used bridge and destroyed an ISIL bunker.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

And they accomplish nothing.

The only thing that sends the Islamic State packing is a united Iraq with a government that represents all Iraqis.

There has been no effort on the part of the White House or Haider to get to a solution.

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4517 (including 20 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 3 Iraq War fatalities).

Stephen Kaplan (REUTERS) has an important report on Falluja.

The following community sites -- plus DISSIDENT VOICE, the ACLU, THE DIANE REHM SHOW, Cindy Sheehan, Jody Watley and NPR MUSIC -- updated: