Oil Kills

When Bush stood before the nation for his SOTU address, he said the following:

“So we are deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq. The vast majority will go to Baghdad, where they will help Iraqi forces to clear and secure neighborhoods, and serve as advisers embedded in Iraqi Army units. With Iraqis in the lead, our forces will help secure the city by chasing down terrorists, insurgents, and roaming death squads.”

Army Gen. David Petraeus will lead this effort and plans to assign 15,000 of the troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the ever increasing sectarian violence and mayhem that is everyday life there. The problem that makes this whole crusade a fools errand is that the Iraqi's are just not in agreement with Bush's plan. The hearts of Iraqi citizens are not with us – they are opposed. As stated so well by Joseph Galloway, we may see sickening scenarios like this in the near future:

The new U.S. commander in Iraq plans to parcel out the newly arriving American soldiers in small groups attached to Iraqi forces in widely scattered Baghdad neighborhoods.

How those soldiers will be supplied and supported and protected is the primary question. It's one thing for Americans to fort up in the Green Zone or at the huge U.S. base at Baghdad Airport by night and venture out by day to patrol a mean city's streets.

It's quite another for them to spend their days in those streets and their nights in vulnerable Iraqi army and police stations scattered throughout the city. Their lives will depend on Iraqi troops whose training and equipment leave much to be desired, and whose loyalty in the sectarian civil war is suspect.......

It's not too great a leap to look back to a chilling situation that American advisers to some South Vietnamese Army units found themselves in during that war. When a South Vietnamese battalion was surrounded by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army regulars, the enemy would break out bullhorns and shout: "Give us the Americans and we will let you go free!"

What happened then? The best Vietnamese commanders stood and fought, the Americans by their side. Others accepted the enemy's invitation, threw down their weapons and ran for their lives, leaving the few Americans to their fate.

Why do we continue to sacrifice American lives in an effort that realists know is doomed to failure? It's still all about the oil. From Chimpie's lips at the SOTU:

"Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America’s economy running and America’s environment clean. For too long our Nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists — who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments ... and raise the price of oil ... and do great harm to our economy."

Posted on The Human Stain