Click here to read the New York Times article
This is a very interesting article and a more conservative one for the New York Times. Typically a very liberally paper takes a different turn to write an article that is more pro-American/ government than usual.
The article discusses the change in attitude being shown to the American troops in Iraq and their current presence aiding the Iraqi Army in an attempt to control their insurgents and current state of violence in the country.
Now due to the large uprising of violence in recent months the Sunnis are no longer looking to push the American Army out but asking them to stay in order to control the situation that is ensuing and beginning to get out of hand.
It is interesting to me how Americans get treated when we are their to help someone out of a situation. Complaints and anger ensue intially and through the large part of the turmoil about the presence, then as soon as things change and are getting better they want to kick us out “now”. Then something goes wrong and all the sudden the tune changes and they “WANT” the American troops to stay. Why now, and not before?
America is constantly in a Catch-22 situation in pretty much any political/ military involvement throughout the world. If the US does anything about the situation, then it is completely about something that the USA can get out of it. If they don’t do anything then they are considered callous and uncaring? How does this make sense.
As basically the only major superpower left in the World, the US has some responsibility, at least, to help protect and aid those throughout the World who are having trouble controlling situations in their own country.
What is SO wrong about that? Comments welcome…
Apparently after over 1200 days of occupying Iraq, the New York Times reports that the U.S. military has finally decided that Shiite attacks on Sunnis deserve its attention just as much as Sunni attacks on Americans, and submits a front page article cheerily titled, “In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq”. On the U.S. reversal, the Times reports:
The Americans insist they are striking at the militias. On July 7, American and Iraqi troops stormed a building in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing or wounding 30 to 40 gunmen and capturing a high-level Shiite militia commander. Residents said the man was Abu Deraa, a leader of the Mahdi Army, which answers to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
But independent journalist Aaron Glantz reported on how the motivation of this crackdown was to punish proponents of a measure in the Iraqi Parliament that would have demanded a timeline for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq:
“We asked them to put a timetable on their withdrawal, and they think that they should stay. This is the main reason of the conflict,” explained Sadr movement spokesman Fadil el-Sharra, adding it was Sadr’s representatives in Parliament who had put forward the resolution demanding a timeline on a U.S. troop withdrawal.
The New York Times piece continues:
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a military spokesman, said it was clear that civilians were suffering heavily from “the activities of these illegal armed groups through murder, intimidation, kidnappings and everything else.”
He added, “We’ve made a very conscious decision here in the last few weeks to deal with them just as severely as we can.”
The article reports that this U.S. military reversal garnered plaudits by many Iraqi Sunnis. But absent polling data to show a diminishing of the 80-plus percent of Iraqis who want the U.S. out, I wouldn’t have gone so far as to pat ourselves on the back for turning around Iraqi sentiment.
And judging by the ulterior motives sited by Glantz, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed the explanation by a U.S. military spokesman ascribing noble causes to the U.S. reversal to go unchallenged.