Maine Owl

What's the meaning of "violence is down"?

Here's how well the "surge"--the whole bloody occupation, actually--is working:

US launches massive Iraq air raid
BBC - Thursday, 10 January 2008

US bombers and fighter jets have dropped 40,000lb (18,144kg) of bombs on suspected al-Qaeda targets on the edge of Baghdad in a 10-minute air strike.

The attack on the Arab Jabour district, said to be a safe haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq, was part of the wider Operation Phantom Phoenix launched on Tuesday.

Nine US soldiers have been killed since the start of the operation.

It comes as a World Health Organization survey says 151,000 Iraqis have died violently since the 2003 invasion.

Somehow I doubt this neighborhood was some sort of terrorist enclave. Sure, plenty of U.S. enemies there, but that's not the same thing. If they are our enemies, we made them that way.

For a reason why Iraqis might become enemies of the U.S., one needs only absorb the fact of the measure of bombing taken against them. Just think how Americans reacted to 9/11. An equivalent pattern would be for Iraq now to invade New York and declare certain neighborhoods "Zionist safe havens" and then bomb the hell out of them.

The Bush PR strategy has been remarkably effective. I'm sort of amazed. The major effect has been a whole lot of people have stopped caring about what's going on in Iraq. They've heard "violence is down", so everything must be okay. The surge "worked."

Beyond the bogus syllogism that the "surge" has done it, nobody needs to ask WHY violence is down in some areas, or even if it really is down--horrific violence is occurring like the US aerial bombing of neighborhoods as described above, and the under-reported Turkish strikes in N Iraq.

There are answers to why there's an apparent drop: (1) Large swaths have been ethnically cleansed already; (2) The US has bought off and co-opted its enemies in western Iraq--almost signaling a return to
the days of the 80s when the US allied strongly with the chiefs of Saddam's forces--basically the guys who ran the place forever until the US invaded; and (3) The Sadrists have more or less stood down (see 1 above).

This piece tries to explain what a "decrease" in violence in Iraq actually has meant lately, and how the notion is used by the wingnut war crowd.