'We Destroyed the Cities to Save Them' and Other Future Headlines
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What Victory Looks Like
Lets start with an event that occurred in Iraq as 2015 ended and generated headlines that included victory, a word Americans havent often seen in the twenty-first century -- except, of course, in Trumpian patter. ("We're going to win so much -- win after win after win -- that you're going to be begging me: 'Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We can't stand it any more.' And I'm going to say: 'No way. We're going to keep winning. We're never going to lose. We're never, ever going to lose." Im talking about the victory achieved at Ramadi, a city in al-Anbar Province that Islamic State (IS or ISIL) militants seized from the Iraqi army in May 2015. With the backing of the U.S. Air Force -- there were more than 600 American air strikes in and around Ramadi in the months leading up to that victory -- and with U.S.-trained and U.S.-financed local special ops units leading the way, the Iraqi military did indeed largely take back that intricately booby-trapped and mined city from heavily entrenched IS militants in late December. The news was clearly a relief for the Obama administration and those headlines followed.
And heres what victory turned out to look like: according to the Iraqi defense minister, at least 80% of the city of 400,000 was destroyed. Rubblized. Skeletized. City may be what its still called, but its hardly an accurate description. According to New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard, who visited Ramadi soon after the victory, few inhabitants remained. Of an Iraqi counterterrorism general there with him, Hubbard wrote:
In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes. Homes? he said. There are no homes.'"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/we-destroyed-the-cities-t_b_9068606.html?utm_hp_ref=media&ir=Media
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)To win there, all we have to do is dig a giant hole, throw all the bodies and money in it, cover it up, and call it victory"