Sunday, February 04, 2007
A clear shot
In the AP today, you can read this sentence: “Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters that the investigations into the crashes of three Army and one private helicopters are incomplete but ‘it does appear they were all the result of some kind of anti-Iraqi ground fire that did bring those helicopters down.’”
If you read the news from Iraq less studiously than I do, you might be puzzled by the phrase “anti-Iraqi ground fire.” Ground fire is directed from the ground at targets in the air. A casual observer of the Iraq situation would assume almost every non-American on the ground to be Iraqi, and almost everyone in the air to be American. The casual observer would be right. So how could fire directed from the ground to the air be “anti-Iraqi?”
According to both the NIE and to Defense Secretary Gates, there are now four wars in Iraq. There is Sunni/Shia sectarian conflict, Shia on Shia internal violence, the old Sunni insurgency and widespread anarchic criminality. This being the case, it is difficult to name the enemy. President Bush just calls them “the terrorists” or “those who hate freedom,” but the armed forces have chosen the term “anti-Iraqi forces.”
The problem with this is that the vast majority of anti-Iraqis turn out to be Iraqi.
To get the proper sense of it, one has to imagine something like a Platonic concept of Iraq—a theoretical abstraction of what a true Iraq should be, rather than the unfortunate and temporary tangible manifestation of Iraq that we only think we see. This true Iraq exists only in the spirit realm: it is democratic, friendly to the US, and a model of moderation amidst the petty autocracies and seething fundamentalisms around it.
It is against this true Iraq that the anti-Iraqis train their anti-aircraft weapons. Their aim is true, for what more precise embodiment of the as-yet intangible spirit of the true Iraq exists than that of the American eagle hovering above it?
If you read the news from Iraq less studiously than I do, you might be puzzled by the phrase “anti-Iraqi ground fire.” Ground fire is directed from the ground at targets in the air. A casual observer of the Iraq situation would assume almost every non-American on the ground to be Iraqi, and almost everyone in the air to be American. The casual observer would be right. So how could fire directed from the ground to the air be “anti-Iraqi?”
According to both the NIE and to Defense Secretary Gates, there are now four wars in Iraq. There is Sunni/Shia sectarian conflict, Shia on Shia internal violence, the old Sunni insurgency and widespread anarchic criminality. This being the case, it is difficult to name the enemy. President Bush just calls them “the terrorists” or “those who hate freedom,” but the armed forces have chosen the term “anti-Iraqi forces.”
The problem with this is that the vast majority of anti-Iraqis turn out to be Iraqi.
To get the proper sense of it, one has to imagine something like a Platonic concept of Iraq—a theoretical abstraction of what a true Iraq should be, rather than the unfortunate and temporary tangible manifestation of Iraq that we only think we see. This true Iraq exists only in the spirit realm: it is democratic, friendly to the US, and a model of moderation amidst the petty autocracies and seething fundamentalisms around it.
It is against this true Iraq that the anti-Iraqis train their anti-aircraft weapons. Their aim is true, for what more precise embodiment of the as-yet intangible spirit of the true Iraq exists than that of the American eagle hovering above it?
Labels: Iraq
¶ 8:18 AM
