An update on the End of Major Combat Operations in Iraq.

We won. Accept it and move on. :)

= = =

[note: While I can write a lengthy tome, I'm not a Whittle or Den Beste, so bear with me.]

I want to talk about a guy named Lee.

Once upon a time, I was a smart, yet picked-on middle school student. I suspect my school was filled with underachievers, or more likely ordinary kids I didn't understand.

Anyway, one day, I boarded the school bus, and I sat in a seat. Unfortunately, this was the usual seat of Lee.

Lee: a monster-sized teenager who apparently didn't have the brains to graduate from the sixth grade. And he hated my older brother for reasons I didn't know.

I, on the other hand, was a sweethearted thinker, not a fighter with a death wish. And unlike my current hero Kazuma, I had no desire to be the Number One Punk[as in, tough kid] in Norman C. Toole Middle School. [here in the States, we have Junior Highs and Middle Schools.] Oh, no--my plan was to move to another seat.

Then the bus driver--some friendly-yet-dim-witted woman--asserted that the seat was mine, and that I shouldn't change seats at Lee's behest. I listened to her....

Lee knocked a cosmic field of stars into my skull. Ouch.

= = =

From the above example, I was an Iraqi Shiite.

Let me elaborate. This painful anecdote is a piteous example of how said Iraqis think of Saddam and the US. Saddam was Lee; and my country under H. Dubya41 was that stupid bus driver. Only in their case, the Iraqis were far worse off.

Now, that driver has probably retired; Lee has most likely gone on with his life/is dead/is in prison. [hoping for bold] As for me, that memory barely registers.

But the Iraqis have had the Blaarg Party ruling over them for three decades; most of that time Saddam. Memories of an Iraqi middle school girl in the late 1980s might not be of a Lee bashing her skull in for "his spot" on the bus, but of the "president's" oldest son looking for a good time at her expense. Or perhaps her rapists were hired--and came with business cards.

Who knows? But one thing is certain...Odai[or, Likeitmatters, he's in his HFIL] and his brother Qusai are DEAD. We tried to take them alive, but they didn't want to surrender.

I have a small twinge of sympathy for the 14-year old kid. Small because of Malvo the Slime, the annoying 17-year old Jamaican brat that makes my entire "ethnic group" look bad. [not merely due to himself, but because the NoI and the NAACP will try to protect him.] Because that kid had a small glint of hope. Drat--why didn't he surrender? We wouldn't have sent him to Gitmo. Unless he knew where his Gramps was--if he's still alive. We might have nailed him in that first strike in March.

["Gitmo." Say that in an ornery Southern accent, Wild West style.]

= = =

March 20. To now. Four months ago: Saddam. Now: Council culled from all Iraq. Sinbad(a fictional Baghdadi) would be pleased--if the US company Dreamworks hadn't made that tacky, inaccurate cartoon movie about him. [for one thing, he was a merchant--not a PIRATE!]

Casualties. Hate them, but they come with the territory. I'd say about three of the guerrilas cheap shots on our troops per day--to give the weaklings too much credit. 365.24 days... approximately 1096 US soldiers dead. I don't like that number--I'd have preffered it to be zero--yet from CENTCOM's standpoint it's probably a very low number.

You know what would have prevented me from seeing stars? The bus driver could had simply kicked Lee off the bus. And you know how we could have spared ourselves many times the casualty estimate? Instead of egging on the Shiites to fight Saddam in 1991, we should have done it ourselves. We had him dead to rights...oh well.

Now we have him again. His brood is exterminated.

We, the Americons**, have won. Again.

* I emphasize tacky becaue Disney's Aladdin was WAY OFF--he was Chinese--yet still managed to craft a story so good that it spun off into an even better TV series and two DTVs(OVAs).

** Er, Americans; except you must think Decepticons. :D Imagine G1 Megatron.

[postscript: This bit was inspired by Whittle's Victory essay on Eject3.com, a website whose name makes me think of a certain dark blue robot.... Anyway, he was recounting a memory, which led to the Iraq issue. I hope mine did as well.]

(actually, the domain name is "eject" writ thrice--my way was faster.)