What are we Doing in Iraq?

[From Katrina, currently in Iraq, doing contractual oversight work for a U.S. contractor rebuilding Iraqi water, oil, electrical, and irrigation systems at waterside facilities and branch systems, mostly in the Shi'ite area.]

It strikes me that some people in the U.S. find some great separation between the persons who might be labled Al Qaida, insurrgents in say, Fallujah, and those who call themselves the Mahdi Army. The AP lables the later a "Shite Militia" rather correctly. But the fact is, there are several Shite Militias who are having nothing to do with the Mahdi or with Sadr, and have no desire whatsoever to mix it up with either the established Iraqi government troops or with the Coalition troops. Many, in fact, are helping to bolster security in out of the way areas where Coalition and Iraqi troops are unable to be.

Al Qaida recruits from Islamics who believe in the exact same principles that Sadr teaches. We're not speaking of an audience who has any love for or patience with any country carrying western beliefs or religions. Instead, we're speaking of people who are exceptionally prideful, completely impatient with anyone who doesn't follow their beliefs, and emotionally separated from any form of reality beyond their own strict Islamic principles. When Al Qaida wants to impress people to come to their support, they don't speak to all Iraqis, or Arabs, and definitely not to any westerners. They speak to other Islamic extremists, a term that completely suits Sadr and his followers, as well as the various scum holed up in Fallujah.

It is pride itself, and the mystic pull of place, that brings these idiots to pool themselves together in order to be slaughtered. Anyone who has missed this outstanding feature of all of the zealots simply hasn't been giving them sufficient thought. We don't have to have a huge plan, with many of them. We can simply wait for them to band together and display their pride through violence, and then wipe them off the face of the Earth, if they insist upon it.

No, we don't want their message to resonate, though it certainly could. But those with whom it would resonate the most already think much like them. These fence sitters could go over the edge for any number of reasons. But they could also be completely repulsed by the outright violence and stupidity of those who they would otherwise glorify. And regardless of which way they ultimately decide to turn, every one of those who has chosen to kill infidels and ends up face down in the sand turning cold is one less that Al Qaida can reach out to in the future when they want to kill off a few hundred or thousand infidels.

I'm in favor of killing every one of the prideful little bastards wherever they chose to congregate. And I'm here to show as much as possible of just how much better things can be if the pride and stupidity thing gets dropped and they decide the rest of the world has a right to live, too.

What are we doing? We're doing every trick in the book to try to find the people who want to do us and average Iraqis harm, and eradicate them, while trying to make a civil life look more appealing. That's pretty much what you do in this type of situation, unless you've got a better solution.