Why the “surge” is “working”

In 1258,  Mongol leader Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, captured and sacked Baghdad.  Up to 200,000 people were killed. The city took centuries to recover. (Siege shown at right, from an ancient manuscript.)

I never thought the American government would do something so cruel, despite the total destruction by bombing in World War II of Dresden and Hiroshima, Hamburg and Nagasaki. At least, I thought, the government wouldn’t have its ground forces do that, only the Air Force.

But it has. That’s the reason the “surge” is “working” in Iraq: Bush, egged on by murderous Neocon ideologues, has destroyed Iraq. William Blum explains:

Allow me to point out that while there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq — now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation — we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile.

Thus, the number of people available for being killers or victims is markedly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in the country (another good indication of progress, n’est-ce pas?). Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down; and the powerful movement of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has had a cease-fire in effect for many months, unconnected to the surge. On top of all this, US soldiers, in the face of numerous “improvised explosive devices” on the roads, have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like … well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.

Just imagine — If the entire Iraqi population over the age of 10 is killed, disabled, imprisoned or forced into exile there will probably be no violence at all. Now that would really be victory.

No American should be allowed to forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.

But there’s a warning from the Mongol days, too. The Mongol Empire was the largest ever, spanning almost all of Eurasia, was overstretched. Two years later, the Mongols were defeated by the Mamluks at the Battle of Ain Jalut.

In 1274 and 1281, Kamikaze — which means “divine wind” in Japanese — typhoons destroyed Mongol fleets invading Japan. From there, it was all downhill. Today, Mongolia is a minor country in central Asia, a shadow of its former self.

(Although Genghis, the biggest rapist in world history, left behind the largest “genetic footprint” of anyone yet identified by modern DNA research. Genghis is pictured at right.)

Americans should take heed and just dump our Empire. Bring our troops home — all of them. Empires never last, and always bankrupt the home country — as we’re seeing with America’s ongoing financial meltdown.

Genghis Khan and his cohort should not be an example for America.