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It Became Necessary To Destroy The Town To Save It

Sunday, 08. 10. 2008  –  Category: Analysis Briefings Commentary, News, Photos

A U.S. army soldier from Fox Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, sets a mud hut on fire in a deserted village on the outskirts of Balad Ruz, in Diyala province, some 75 kilometers ( 46.6 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008. Soldiers from Fox Troop burned down a deserted village in the area, in order to deny safe haven to possible terrorists in their area of operation.

Source: AP

One of the most famous quotes of the Vietnam War was a statement attributed to U.S. Air Force Major Chester I. Brown by AP correspondent Peter Arnett. Writing about the provincial capital, Ben Tre, on February 7, 1968, Arnett said: “‘it became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a U.S. major says.” To this day, “Ben Tre logic” is a common saying for whenever a “logical” conclusion is to destroy something out of the perceived best interests of everyone involved. Papa Bravo Romeo - U. S. Navy Patrol Boats at War in Vietnam, by Wynn Goldsmith (pages 184 to 186) attributes the quote to USAF Major Chet Brown.

Source: Ben Tre From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Balad Roz — Diyala, Irak, August 9th -10th 2008:

I have pasted unaltered above and into the photos below, the captions supplied by AP to accompany the photos by Marko Drobnjakovic. There’s a telling little line in three them (emphasis added by me):

Soldiers from Fox Troop burned down a deserted village in the area, in order to deny safe haven to possible terrorists in their area of operation.

I know the villages around there. I know them well, my wife’s family are from one of them, my mother’s family from another, my father’s family from yet another. My wife and I both still have family there. I very much doubt that the farmers who lived in the homes that the Americans and their GZG underlings burnt down and that the AP photographer dismissively calls “mud huts” left them “deserted” for long.
I very much doubt that the farmers who worked the fields and orchards that the Americans and their GZG underlings burnt down left them “deserted” for long. Quite apart from anything else they have nowhere else to go to and no money to buy water, shelter, or food even if they did have somewhere else to go to.
I suspect very strongly that the farmers whose burnt down homes the embedded AP photographer dismisses as “mud huts” and who made a living from the fields and orchards burnt down by the Americans and their GZG underlings did what they did during the terror campaigns waged by the death squads on all sides, that they did what they did during Operations “Arrowhead Ripper”, “Lightning Hammer” (which was itself a part of Operation “Phantom Strike”), and all the other “surges” that have taken place in Diyala. They temporarily “deserted” their homes for the dubious shelter of the fields and villages a few kilometres away hoping to find something still there when ever latest campaign ends.

No such luck, not this time.

In order to steal Irak’s Oil “free Irak from Saddam” it was necessary to first starve, then bomb, then drown my country and my people in a river of their own blood, to create a nation of five million orphans and one million widows, to create a nation five million of whose citizens have been forced to flee their homes, to turn our capital into a series of gigantic open air prisons in which the Americans and their GZG hirelings can do as they want, to destroy the means of livelihood of our farmers because their could possibly be “terrorists” in the the area, and of course to demand that we pay for the privilege of having our country and children’s patrimony looted again, under American tutelage,  .

I am left wondering is their any depth to which America and Americans will not sink in Irak. I am forced to the conclusion that the answer to that question is:

“No.”

Omar Khdhayyir

Tags: "War on terror", American election, American War Crimes, Balad Roz, Death Squads, Diyala, Diyala "surges", Editorials, Orphans, Photos, Refugees, Vietnam, Water, Widows