President Bush made several mistakes in the days and hours leading up to the invasion of Iraq and several more after the US removed the tyrant.
Of the several problems, Bush was unable to articulate an idea, a path, purpose. He could not deflect the crap thrown at him nor was he able to address the crap, instead, he retreated and those who flung crap, piled on more until Bush was on the defensive about everything from believing in God to apple pie. And worse, he didn't have the ability to deflect and return shots of crap.
Iraq had several opponents the US had to deal with - former Ba'ath party members who had lost everything and were fighting to restore something they could grasp on to after losing everything from 35 years of Saddamite control. These people were Sunni, and while as religious as Barney is green, they immediately found religion and played up their faith and opposed the US not on Ba'ath party grounds but on religious. With the inclusion of Ba'ath party members into the government again, most have given up their fight and returned to the political process.
Another group - Shi'a who had, for 35 years been tortured, chopped up, eaten, mutilated, executed, blown up, ripped apart, starved, driven over, thrown into the ground in mass burial plots, used as experiments in chemical and biological testing by Saddamite followers, and or otherwise exploited, oppressed, and repressed politically, academically, and in employment. After 35 years they stood up and smacked back. They took their shoe off and smacked the Baathists. They killed the killers, they burned the murderers homes, they looted from those who had starved and exploited. They destroyed all that had been built upon their bodies and families. We cannot imagine this emotion. Of 300 million Americans a few, a select handful can imagine. Everyone else fails to understand what is lost and why people act as they do, instead they see shi'a killing and think it no different than Sunni killing no different than Saddamites killing. But the reasons and purposes are so far apart as to make the mind spin. One cannot justify murder, but for Arabs and arab culture, it isn't murder - it is restoring honor. When Americans got in the way, they were the enemy, not because they were the enemy, but because they would not allow the shi'a to finish what had been started 35 years before.
The third group didn't exist in February 2003 ... the families of people killed during the invasion and after - either accidentally or mistakenly or intentionally - the families, in the same way as the shi'a set upon the Sunni for 35 years of grievances, set out to exact revenge upon the Americans for the deaths of their family members. With the death of an Iraqi their family sent out another to retaliate. This is the saddest part of the entire invasion and removal of Saddamites. Innocents killed become the impetus for others to kill Americans who in response kill yet more Iraqis. There is not a great deal to do about this, but for Americans to be extra careful in all actions to not harm an innocent (which I know they already try very hard to prevent).
The fourth group are al-qaida and Muslims inspired by the call to jihad to come to Iraq and kill. They are not Iraqi. They are not family nor friends of people who have died (although many of them died and their comrades were enraged and killed yet more Americans and innocent Iraqis to avenge their deaths - odd given the fact they should not have been in Iraq to begin with.) This group needs to be exterminated and the sheikh on the video addresses group 4.
We can eradicate group 4. Group 1 have now been accommodated and taken in to the fold while group 2 have finished or nearly finished their honor killings and have accepted the political process. What is left are those members of group 3 and there is little we can do about that group but let Iraqi police and courts administer their rights and grievances.
Group 4 blow up women, children, men, old women, babies, soldiers, citizens, medical doctors, UN, peace keepers, construction workers, police men - they blow them up, cut off their heads and seek only to destroy civil society and all who desire hope. We are bound by human rights declarations yet the animals we fight understand no such declaration. We cannot, say some, violate those beliefs or we become no better than those we fight. I cannot make it any clearer - we cannot win against evil that will use anything and everything against us if we are bound by one hand and blinded in one eye. I am not interested in the argument to the contrary. It is naive and will result in hundreds and thousands of American deaths. When that happens, the moral responsibility will lie with those who argue 'but for' the human rights we would be no different. It is naive. We believe in life, freedom, opportunity, justice. The killers we kill want to erase all we know and they will do so using our laws against us and when the final nail is hit and as it sinks into the coffin, the naive fools will realize what they have done, and it will be too late.
This individual will help lead Iraq out of a morass of death and destruction at the hands of foreign killers in al-qaida to a better Iraq.
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