Iraq Insurgents

Over 90% of the insurgents in Iraq are Iraqis. These are people who may, or may not, have liked Americans before the Iraq war, but would not have gone out of their way to become international Jihadists. But now, they hate Americans so much that they are willing to die to kill our young soldiers. Why ?

Over 90% of the insurgents in Iraq are Iraqis. These are people who may, or may not, have liked Americans before the Iraq war, but would not have gone out of their way to become international Jihadists. But now, they hate Americans so much that they are willing to die to kill our young soldiers. Why ?

For me, the answer is fairly obvious. Our leaders have decided to fight this unconventional war on terror by conventional means. For almost every bomb we drop to kill a bad guy, we kill innocent people who just happened to be near. Our collateral damage are the fathers, mothers, bothers, sisters or relatives of someone who loved them very much. We will never win the hearts and minds of people whose loved one's body parts are spread over the place where their home used to be. These are the majority of the insurgents we now face in Iraq.

If you dropped a bomb on my home and killed my family, guess what? I would want you dead. I would be willing to do anything, including sacrifice myself, to accomplish that. Isn’t this what we are seeing with so many of our enemies now?

We will never win the war on terrorism if we continue to make enemies with every bomb we drop.

After 9/11 there were no Republicans or Democrats, just pissed off Americans. We pulled together to fight a common enemy, because it was our country that was attacked and our citizens that were wrongfully killed. Almost every country in the world stood behind our right for retribution against those who attacked us.

I watched coverage of the Lebanese /Israeli war and in interview after interview with Lebanese citizens I heard the same angry sentiment, “we are ALL Hezbollah now". Israel has just made an entire group of new enemies and Hezbollah is stronger than they ever were. The Hezbollah they killed will be replaced 10 fold.

Yes, there are genuine bad guys who simply hate us for who we are, our beliefs, our way of life, and are willing to die to replace our belief system with theirs. These are the terrorists. We need to find and kill every one of them, but when the majority of those killed are innocents, we are only making our enemies stronger. There has to be a better way to fight the war on terror, because if we continue along the path we are on now, we can never win.