How to lose a guerilla war

[U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives during a 10-minute airstrike...flattening what the military called al-Qaida in Iraq safe havens on the southern outskirts of the capital...

A military statement said two B-1 bombers and four F-16 fighters dropped the bombs on 40 targets in Arab Jabour in 10 strikes. Al-Qaida fighters are believed to control Arab Jabour, a Sunni district lined with citrus groves and scarred by daily violence.] emphasis added
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22587715/


Certainly, 40,000 lbs of bombs killed innocent civilians.

During the Second Indochinese War (known to most Americans as the Viet Nam War) the US dropped more tons of bombs than in all off the WW2 without any positive strategic effect though many times for tactical advantage.

B-52 raids killed innocent civilians and increased hostility towards the US.

Since when do civilized people drop bombs on the basis of belief rather than knowledge? No wonder the Bush administration will not sign the war crimes convention.

In Arab Jabour, such slaughter increases insurgency and does nothing to achieve a political settlement.

These raids yield no positive effects in fighting a guerilla war; only providing keywords for headlines in US press like flatten, crush, destroy insurgents--headlines which conceal gruesome civilian casualties which come with such attacks.

"Danger=, Will Robinson. Crush, kill, destroy." Yay America!!!

If only Americans and US politicians read more foreign news sources, maybe they could see past the jingoism of headlines in the US press.

[Post-invasion death toll in Iraq put at over 150,000
By Stephen Fidler in London and Steve Negus, Iraq,Correspondent
Published: January 10 2008 02:00 Last updated: January 10 2008 02:00
At least 150,000 Iraqis died violently in the 40 months following the US-led invasion in 2003, according to an estimate derived from the most comprehensive survey yet of mortality in post-war Iraq.

The new estimate, based on an Iraqi government survey supervised by the World Health Organisation, falls in the middle of the two most commonly cited assessments of the death toll following the invasion. It is published in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7d38be4-bf9e-11dc-8052-0000779fd2ac.html