Mike's Blog

What, perhaps they thought the soldier fell down a well? Maybe he hit his head and got amnesia? Could it be that he was abducted and about to be sold into a life of sex slavery? What the hell were they thinking?

It's a war. Its an occupation. There are a thousand attacks a week. A hundred US soldiers are killed each month. Civilians are dying by the thousands each week. The whole country is going to hell. And the one thing that the vast majority of Iraqi's can agree on is that they hate Americans. It's just not a good place.

So an American soldier disappears and the most sensible thing the US military can do is lock down 1.5 million people and set up checkpoints and barbed wire. And the point of this was.... what?

Someone figured all 1.5 million were in on it? Or maybe only 1.2 million? 350,000? What was the plan, were we going to make 1.2 million people turn out their pockets? Or how about if we just announced we were going to turn around, and when we looked back, that missing soldier had better be there?

Was there any plan apart from screwing over and antagonizing 1.5 million people? Investigation perhaps? Police work? Covert ops? Negotiating with go betweens? Or was it just a matter of the dumbest thing anyone could come up with. Did someone say, 'Hey, its a million to one shot, but theres' a million people there... so statistically, its got to work!' Or was it 'Wow, this is a really dumb and counterproductive plan, but we can't think of anything better and we don't want to do nothing.'

I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens when a cat gets stuck up a tree.

I mean seriously, why not, eh? What could be the downside of being in Iraq, radically undermanned, in a hostile enviroment, and just going all punitive and antogonizing the entire population?

And what a great message to hand to Iraqi's who are picking up bodies at the morgue with drill holes every day? "Our lives are worth infinity, and your lives are worth shit." 650,000 dead Iraqi's and 2800 dead Americans translate to 230 dead Iraqi's for every dead American, and just to show them where they really stand, you went out of your way to screw over 1.5 million for the sake of one guy.

Do we blockade an American city every time a pretty white girl goes missing? A kid? A cop?

So what comes out of this. Guaranteed, you don't find the soldier cause that's the most screwed up approach you could take. What you will bet is 1.5 million screwed over angry people. And Sadr or even more militant groups get 10,000 new recruits and sympathizers. And over the next few months, thousands of additional attacks, and hundreds of extra dead Americans.

This isn't Saving Private Ryan, or Indiana Jones, its not Blade or Die Hard. Its not the movies, because in the movies mawkish sentiment wins. This is real life, and in particular, this is war, and its hard and its ugly and painful and mawkish sentiment will not save the day. Instead, we get horrible fatal math. The Iraqi's are very familiar with that math.