I’m not making that up. That’s what the plan is: to bulldoze buildings in the central core of Ramadi to create a “Green Zone” in the center of the city:
… In three years here the Marines and the Army have tried nearly everything to bring this provincial capital of 400,000 under control. Nothing has worked.
Now American commanders are trying something new. Instead of continuing to fight for the downtown, or rebuild it, they are going to get rid of it, or at least a very large part of it.
They say they are planning to bulldoze about three blocks in the middle of the city, part of which has been reduced to ruins by the fighting, and convert them into a Green Zone, a version of the fortified and largely stable area that houses the Iraqi and American leadership in Baghdad.
Yeah baby! Another Green Zone is just what we need in Iraq, cuz that first one has worked out so well:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Baghdad’s central morgue received 1,595 bodies last month — the highest number since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine sparked a wave of sectarian killings, a morgue official said on Wednesday.
The figures show the level of violence in Iraq has increased even after the killing on June 7 of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.
How do you know when you are losing the hearts and minds of an occupied people? Whe you start repeating strategies that have already failed, because you can’t think of anything better to do. In the past week the “unity” government of Prime Minister al-Maliki has been torn apart by Sunni defections, bombs and the killings go on despite the “turning point” represented by the Death of Zarqawi, yet the only tactic we can think of to deal with the insurgency in Ramadi is to bulldoze a bunch of buildings in the center of the city and build another “Green Zone” fortress.
This reminds me very much of how the Soviets tried to deal with Afghanistan in the ’80’s: military strongholds in the center of urban settings. It’s a strategy as old as the one the Crusaders employed in the Middle Ages. They were occupiers too, occupiers of “The Holy Land”, and you know what? Eventually their fortresses proved insufficient. They were forced to abandon them.
Just like we will.
Just a brief story on Iraq before my wife comes home from the hospital today.
I’m glad to hear she’s doing so well.
Steven,
Glad to hear that your wife will be home today. I like good news. Especially in the morning.
I wonder if the bulldozers that will be used to level the center of Ramadi are the same one’s that the U.S. sells to Israel to use against Palestinian homes? The same bulldozers that the Israelis used to run over and murder Rachel Corrie, a peace activist?
I’m just waiting for her call to say the paperwork is done.
Thanks supersoling.
Hey, it’s not easy being green.
Delighted to see your post, Steven. Best to you and your wife.
Nope, green is the loneliest color, lol.
If you’re out of ideas, maybe the best idea is to give up and go home.
So I suppose, the military in Iraq and primarily Ramadi, did not get the memo “the war is over, mission accomplished” “the new SOVEREIGN GOVERNMENT is making headway and yet another turning point for the good has occurred”, I want to know why these memos do not get to the most important ppl in the company! :o) BTW, early on, it was determined that our military was not very good at urban warfare. I think that is becoming a proven, even tho I had hoped that was a wrong observation. Sitting up yet another fortified “green zone” is a wrong move for when we do leave that area, it will not be of any benefit to anyone, or am I wrong on this. [ well, maybe yet another setup for a dictator], maybe
Good Morning, Steven and to your wife as well. I know how happy you both are to be coming home and getting back to normal and recovery. So good to see ya today. Give my best to her and hope the rest of your family is doing well, too. hugs.
PS: I have a name for the new green zone…we can callit the alamo…what ya say…;o)
The Black Hole of Ramadi. “The Alamo” sounds noble. There ain’t nothin’ noble about this.
Steven, I’m happy to hear about your wife. I’ll take any good news I can get these days.
Robert Fisk wrote a piece last year about going on vacation to the Crusader castles of Lebanon, and realising he was visiting a series of 13th century “Green Zones”.
Uri Avnery said a while back that of all the things you could criticize Bush and Sharon for, the one he would highlight is the fact that they are “a-historic”. They are blinded by their own military strength and think that because they are strong now, they will always be strong. They don’t look back in history and see that every military power has thought the same thing and been wrong, and they don’t look forward and imagine what kind of situation they will have created for themselves after their military dominance is over.
I would expand his criticism to all of us: I think as a nation we lack any sense of history. And so we don’t stop to think about our own place in history and how future historians will judge us. All we know is that right here and now we have overwhelming military might and we will bulldoze anyone who gets in our way. I’m glad I won’t be here in 100 years to read what people write about us.
I’ve never been to the Middle East but the third world countries I’ve been in, the town center is just family stores with the extended family from grandma to little kids living upstairs and cooking quarters on the ground in the back. The bigger cities had market squares where farmers sold their produce, a mosque or a church, a bank and a few professional offices; the typical organization of towns since the rise of agriculture. Also characteristic of the last 4,000 years, Overlords ride into town, rape and pillage. They destroy the old town to build a new castle to protect themselves from their rebellious serfs.
Steve D. Good news that your wife is coming home. Hope it turns out to be something that you will be able to think back on without any pain.
Whenever I read items like this, the question pops into my head, ‘on what authority is the United States doing this?’ What is the legal basis for this destruction? Is the US warranted by the supposedly sovereign government of Iraq to do whatever it pleases to Iraqi cities?
It seems to me that whatever the legal basis is — and I strongly suspect there is none — the policy itself is being borrowed from the notoriously successful Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
‘Bushie — you’re doing a heckuva job.’
Howzabout we make all of Iraq into a Green Zone? Y’know, kick everyone out of the country, build a big wall, then let in everyone who meets, erm, certain criteria.
Hell, we could even leave them a bit of land, what could we call it, The Iraqaza Strip? Maybe even get the Minutemen to go over to build the wall!
my country makes me more and more sick.
I do hope some other country liberates us from this terrorist dictator. Because most of our countrymen sure don’t have the gonads to change it themselves.
DJ,
I gave you a four for thinking outside the box ;o)
but I sure don’t want to be liberated by any other country. Well maybe Canada…I could live with that.
Seriously though. If it ever came to that, I think you would find that most Americans would mount the barricades and defend the country, no matter who the president was. I can’t even tell you honestly what I would do in that event. But I think I would be driven by instinct to defend my homeland.
I’m not so sure what I would do. But last night… hearing all the firewordks… and feeling the anger inside me mount…
My husband made a comment that jolted me but I agreed with him…
I wouldn’t feel any sadness right now if we woke up to the morning news to hear that the WH was “gone”.
That to secure these Rights,
Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just Powers from
the Consent of the Governed,
that whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these Ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it,
and to institute new Government,
Ok, I’m in. You know reading that aloud in the wrong place with anyone who doesn’t know what the Declaration says or really does stand for I got a chilling feeling saying those words could actually get us arrested. And the idea that I can even think something like that is even more chilling to me.
I’ve been having a similiar reoccuring dream, Chocolate ink, that chills me. That I’m not free to truly speak my mind.
so I feel compelled to say what I know. What they are going to remove as far as buildings go is mostly rubble now. From repeated attacks over the past three years that have sometimes involved around a total of 100 insurgents at a time…….there isn’t much left of the surrounding area. It has basically been blown to shit already. What they are isolating is what is left of the government center. The government is going to have to be defendable in some way if we want these people to have a government at all. Saddam is gone now, other people desire to possess the power that Saddam had and some of them will do whatever they can to claim that for themselves. The Sunnis working with the evolving Iraqi government aren’t shooting for all the power to be had in Iraq but the Sunnis who want things to return to the way they were and having them at the helm have other ideas. They aren’t creating a Green Zone though. The Green Zone is fortified with enormous huge thick cement walls surrounding it…….this is going to be a large flat open terrain that they would rather call a “park” and what they are going to bulldoze is mostly blown to shit rubble.