> On 11/19/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> Can someone explain the strategic rationale behind this?
>>
>> > HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 22 people south of
>> > Baghdad on Sunday by offering poor Shi'ite workers day laboring
>> > jobs and then detonating explosives packed inside his minibus as
>> > the crowd gathered around it.
>>
>> Nihilism? Sectarianism? Making Iraq ungovernable? I don't get it.
>
> You should have supported Saddam Hussein's government. Terrorism
> against that government was not unknown, and it committed its own
> state terrorism on a large scale, but it provided security to the
> Iraqis, who will not enjoy it again for many, many years to come.
==========================
Or you could have opposed the US invasion of Iraq, as was typically done,
without declaring support for Saddam's government. In fact, the latter would
have been counter-productive in that it would have alienated the mass of
antiwar protestors who saw the two issues as quite separate.
As for the bombing, my wife recalls that this kind of day labourer ambush has happened before. Certainly crowded marketplaces and mosques have frequently been hit. There is no rationale; it's another mad reprisal killing of civilians characteristic of these barbaric ethno-religious conflicts. Unfortunately, it's gets conflated with legitimate resistance to the US occupation, and begins to supercede it as the intercommunal divide deepens.