America's Gaza

The Left Coaster today provides a link to a June 9th Financial Times article about U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor. It didn't have to be this way in Iraq, Col. Madgregor reminds us.

"We have people in special forces that know how to work with local populations. We could have adopted that particular model, opted for a very light presence, and focused our occupation largely on Baghdad, maintaining some mobile armoured reserves that could rapidly move in and crush any real resistance.

"But to conduct house-to-house searches, to conduct heavy-handed raids, to run checkpoints that were extremely humiliating, to arrest people in front of their families, put bags over their heads, handcuff them and treat them with extreme disregard for human dignity, was a serious mistake - and it was not necessary."

Isn't it obvious that we would have done things Col. Macgregor's way if our only intention had been to liberate Iraq? Isn't it equally obvious that we did things quite differently because the true intent of the White House and the Pentagon was to subjugate Iraq and maintain an indefinite occupation on the model of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza?