The Workday Liberal

The International Crisis Group released a report on the Iraq insurgency today. Part of the report read:

"The harm from excessive use of force, torture, tactics that inflict widespread civilian injury and reliance on sectarian militias outweighs any military gain,"

Whoa there ICG dudes... you obviously have been infiltrated by Osama's islamo-commie minions! Erm... on second thought let us consider what this group had to say in their last report on Afghanistan:

With a deteriorating security situation, this is no time for wobbling when it comes to desperately needed reinforcements for Nato’s International Assistance and Security Force. Robust peacekeeping forces must go where they are needed most – not, as has all too often happened, to the safest areas.

So we see that in calling for the reinforcement of Nato's troop level, and the call to send them to danger zones rather than keeping them holed up in safe areas that the ICG is hardly a mouth piece of Taliban/Al Qaida.

So when the ICG says that torturing the locals and acting like cads in the pursuit of security strengthens the insurgency in Iraq, we might do well to listen. Of course the self evident truth of this statement should be obvious to any analyst who cares to think it through. Unfortunately these analytical types seem to be few and far between in the current administration. Let us consider some more points in the ICG report.

The report also urged the United States to make "repeatedly clear at the highest level" that Iraqi's oil resources "belong to the Iraqi people and no one else," and that withdrawal will occur as soon as the new government requests it.

Ooops... what was that noise I just heard from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? It was the sound of this report being crumpled up and tossed into the presidential round file. The oil belongs to the Iraqi people? By 'the Iraqi people' the ICG must mean whichever people happen to live in the area that produces oil, because we already see the Kurds reaching deals for the oil in north Iraq without consulting the central government.

This whole notion that we will leave when invited to by the central government hardly matches with president Bush's oft stated goal of basing strategy on the say so of American military commanders on the ground. If the commanders do not agree with the central government that the coalition should withdraw, does the president over ride them?

The ICG report also hardly paints a rosy picture of the strength of the insurgency:

"There is little sign of willingness by any significant insurgent element to join the political process or negotiate with the United States. While covert talks cannot be excluded, the publicly accessible discourse remains uniformly and relentlessly hostile to the occupation and its 'collaborators.' "

snip

"The insurgency is increasingly optimistic about victory."

So all the yakking by administration toadies from vice president Cheney (the insurgency is in it's last throes ) to the white house described 'senior U.S. general in Baghdad', C.D. Alston (the insurgents show no ability to carry out numerous and persistent attacks) really is just hokum. Who woulda thunk it?!

What this all boils down to is that the ICG reports findings are just obvious. Do not torture the citizens or you may tick them off. The nations resources belong to the nations citizens. Tactics that cause large amounts of casualties amongst innocent civilians do not please the locals. You read this stuff and just think... "Well DUH!"

Yet deep in my heart I just pray some flunkie in the white house reads this, bites down hard and marches up to the president to lay these facts on the line. We can only hope said flunky does not get bawled out too much, and maybe some of this will get through to the president and lead to some positive change in Iraq.