PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE: The butchers of Baghdad

[babylonsister]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/30/EDOUR99282.DTL&feed=rss.opinion

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
The butchers of Baghdad

Louis Freedberg

Monday, July 30, 2007


DESCRIBING what is going in Iraq as a civil war doesn't come close to capturing the horror of the depth of the depravity destroying that country.

Civil war implies two sides with reasonably clear goals going at each other - in which civilians often and regrettably get caught up in the conflict.

Think of iconic civil wars such as the one in Spain in the 20th century, and in the United States during the 19th.

What is going on in Iraq involves cruelty of a type and scale that seems to spring directly from the worst kind of horror movie, not from the minds of human beings with even half-baked goals.

In this case, the goal seems to be to kill as many innocent civilians as possible - and involved a level of planning and detail that stretches far outside the boundaries of imaginable human behavior.

Some of the incidents seem especially depraved:

-- Blowing up bombs in marketplaces, and waiting until rescue workers arrive - and then detonating even more bombs to kill rescue workers.

-- Handing out candy to children to entice them to a central gathering place - and then blowing them up when they arrive.

-- In one especially maniacal act, terrorists came up with idea of placing two children in the back seat of a car filled with explosives as a way to get the vehicle past security barriers - and then blowing up the car.

snip//

Perhaps if those who led us into Iraq were more repulsed by the violence, they might be more motivated to devise an effective strategy to end it.