Dennis Oflaherty Reader Comment On

Dennis O’Flaherty Reader Comment on Qaim Campaign

Cole: [Al-Zaman: Sunni Arab leaders accused the US of conducting a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in their sweep of the Western cities. (This allegation is, needless to say, not correct.]

Dennis O’Flaherty writes:

‘… you raise a point that has troubled me — and I hope other Americans
— for a while, which is precisely why we **are** blowing the living s*** out of one little border town after another. As an ex-marine (4 years peacetime, thank God) I can easily understand why my jarhead brethren want to work out their fury on just about anything after months of the kind of terror and debilitating general stress that led our people in Viet Nam to the same kind of “kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” mentality — despite Rumsfeld’s SpecOps daydreams our whole military tradition is still in massed battle won by gigantic firepower, and the constant hitting of our forces by invisible enemies who may be that same 14-year old girl who poured cold water for you in the last village ends up making you crazy. Bad crazy, it goes without saying.

But hey, the government is supposed to have some kind of **reasons** for unleashing that awesome combination of fear and frustration plus 40mm grenade cannons, helicopter gunships, attack jets, etc etc etc Otherwise it’s like: Whoa, a fire, let’s pour some gas on it.

Why **shouldn’t** sunnis of all ranks and backgrounds assume this is ethnic cleansing, when we direct that insane destructive force against miserable little mudbrick towns and handfuls of desperate men armed with AK’s and RPG’S? …

Is there a reason besides the ones I’ve heard so far for this (apologies to Blake) “…fearful **a -** symmetry”? ‘