Yesterday, some 27 Iraqi civilans were murdered by insurgents in Tal Afar. Today, at least another 20 were. It’s worth recalling that Tal Afar was the object of U.S. military action only a month ago. The campaign was regarded as a success as far as it went, but as the New York Times explained, Rumsfeld’s refusal to commit enough troops to keep the peace in Iraq means that any victory was bound to be short-lived:
But as with previous battles, like those in Falluja and Qaim, a western city near Syria, a large number of insurgents also escaped the fight. That makes the battle, at least in some measure, the latest example of one of the most nettlesome problems faced in the war, what one marine in Anbar Province recently described as “punching a balloon”: American forces attack with overwhelming firepower only to have some insurgents leave and then return, or move on to fight elsewhere.
One year ago, Tal Afar was the scene of a major offensive to oust entrenched insurgents. After the battle, American commanders said the city was safe. But the military, stretched thin by demand for troops elsewhere, left fewer than 500 soldiers in Tal Afar and a surrounding area twice the size of Connecticut. Predictably, American officers said, the insurgents returned in force and were largely undisturbed until May, when Colonel McMaster’s unit, the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, was reassigned from south of Baghdad to take back the region from insurgents.
And so it goes. What’s important to understand is that this is a deliberate policy. Although we were morally responsible for security in a country we invaded, we chose not to provide it. The argument was that it would look too much like an occupation, that we would infantilize the population, that our forces would intensify the insurgency, rather than impede it, and so on. The argument against was that rampant and tolerated disorder would only increase Iraqi paranoia about America’s true intentions, and provide more of an opening for the violent to seize power in a lawless country. What we are watching today are the consequences of the Rumsfeld decision. The question is whether a critical mass of Iraqis can rescue their own country from the chaos the occupation provoked and appears incapable of suppressing. When observers call George W. Bush a gambler, they aren’t kidding.
NANO-SKINS: A possible fix for that scratchy plastic on the surface of your iPod nano.
HIV AND THE BRAIN: The virus lurks in the brain, which is protected by a blood barrier that is more resistant to medication than much of the rest of the body. (Your balls are similarly protected.) The good news is that we now have much better understanding of how HIV slowly damages motor coordination and some language and reasoning skills. We can monitor the virus’s effects more accurately. The bad news is that I’ll now get more than one email a day saying I have AIDS dementia. Oh well.
The Dish 