November 10, 2004

Moving On

Ok, let all just put down our tin foil hats and our guns and move on to other topics. We have a new Attorney General, just in the manner that I was hoping for. The new guy is nothing to write home about, but I think we can safely call him “Less nutty than John Ashcroft.”

The much heralded assault on Fallujah is going down. There will be many headlines and plenty of fireballs but:

Guerilla force flees rather than stand and be slaughtered by better-armed foe. Who could have predicted that except every goddamn person on the face of the earth.

But I’m sure this will result in a much better political situation.

Politically, the insurgents have significantly advanced what could be called the Sunni persecution strategy: That is, to gather recruits, material, and political support for the insurgency by aggravating the sense among Sunnis that they have no future in the U.S.-sponsored political process. The only Sunni political party in the Allawi government has quit in protest and the largest Sunni religious organization has formally called for their adherents to boycott the January elections. One member of the Iraqi Islamic Party who refused to resign his position--and who has since been renounced by the party--explained his decision: "It will be a big mistake not to have the Sunnis' participation in the election. We would have problems for decades to come."

Did he just say decades? He did.

1 comment:

Chris said...

I'd like to echo Jess's comment. This guy is the one that argued that torture techniques could be used in Gitmo, and helped to start the whole culture of torture and humilation that carried over to Iraq.