HOW TO LOSE THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Insurgent attacks kill at least 24 Iraqis

Militants assassinated a general and a colonel who were en route to work today, and a car bomb exploded near a busy market and movie theater in eastern Baghdad, part of a wave of attacks that killed at least 24 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded more than 70, authorities said.

And

Two U.S. Marines were killed and 14 wounded when an explosive device hit their troop transport vehicle during the offensive Wednesday. At least five Marines and as many as 100 insurgents have been killed in all in Operation Matador, which entered its fifth day today.

Elsewhere, three American soldiers were killed and one was injured in separate roadside bombings.

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From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

Anti-U.S. protests over Quran spread in Afghanistan

Police clashed with anti-U.S. demonstrators in two Afghan towns, killing at least three people, and Afghan students burned an American flag in Kabul today as protests spread over reported abuse of Islam's holy book at the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay.

The unrest came a day after riots in the eastern city of Jalalabad left four people dead — the worst anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

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I know I've mentioned this before, but it's been a while and the situation's been heating up "over there," so it bears repeating. I asked my buddy Jim a year and a half ago how he thinks we should deal with terrorism. His response was simple, but poignant, probably the best comment I've heard on the subject: "Stop pissing people off." Indeed. That's why we have to deal with terrorism in the first place--we've pissed a lot of people off.

It's not because they "hate our freedom." It's not because they're religious nuts, although many of them, like our President, are religious nuts. Rather, they have very specific grievances about how the US supports repressive Middle Eastern regimes such as in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, how the US supports the Israeli government regardless of how bloodthirsty and murderous it is toward the Palestinians, and how the US has kept troops in the Islamic holy land since the first Gulf War. Really, all the US has done in the region for years is to bleed it dry of oil, enriching the powerful local elites, impoverishing virtually everybody else. It is not surprising at all that there is a massive and radical anti-American movement in the Islamic world. The US government has all but asked for it.

That's why the "war on terrorism" makes absolutely no sense. It simply adds fuel to the fire that America started in the first place. It's really a war to create more terrorism, and in that it's succeeding very nicely, if one defines "insurgency" as "terrorism" which seems to be in keeping with the rhetoric coming out of the White House. Making war on terrorism virtually assures that terrorism will continue--and that's nice for the Republicans who are very adept at stoking the fears of average Americans, who are promised that the GOP will protect them. It's a big fucking racket: wage war to create more war which causes fear that becomes votes for more war which creates more war and on and on and on. This country's insane with fear, as Michael Moore has observed in his film Bowling for Columbine. Alas, the insane are incapable of making the most rational of choices: stop pissing people off.

We'll be at war forever.

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