Untitled Document
The U.S. military announced this week that a campaign of denial of
bridges across the Euphrates River from Syria to Iraq was underway. The goal
is to prevent use of the bridges by "insurgents" and "terrorists"
crossing over the border to fight U.S. occupation of Iraq.
But what about the use of bridges by others, by grandmothers who wish
to cross the border to visit their families, merchants who want to do business
deals doctors who may have business across borders, etc.?
Does the U.S. air force designate traffic lanes on these bridges, so that insurgents
can use certain lanes and then be subjected to precision bombings, while common
folks use safe lanes? How can the U.S. military use precision bombs to hit only
insurgents and allow other Iraqis and their visitors' safe passage across bridges
in the attack zone?
Is it possible that the U.S. military doesn't care about such matters,
and is willing to kill any and all persons who cross such bridges?
Is it possible that the U.S. is content to create victims by its bombing policies,
even though those victims may desire revenge by supporting or even joining the
insurgency?
Are American military policies designed to suppress the insurgency,
or to stimulate it? Perhaps the best way to suppress the insurgency is to stop
creating new victims, stop colonizing the nation, stop occupying the nation,
stop bombing altogether.
But that would be asking too much, obviously -- an American military in Iraq
has to have something to do, and they are trained to fight wars, not stop them.
