![]() Wednesday, January 6th, 2021
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Louisville police fire 2 detectives, others disciplined, in Breonna Taylor shooting |
RE: Louisville police fire 2 detectives, others disciplined...
The author is correct. The overpower, demonize and purge strategy has failed the people in Washington on this country's foreign misadventures. We've lost 2 wars in 20 years with it, rather than try to use diplomacy and straight talk with our opponents, but you can't fix stupid.
"Paul Bremer's first step was Provisional Authority Order Number 1, issued on May 16th. Order Number 1 banned the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had run Iraq for decades. The previous temporary governor of Iraq, General Jay Garner, and his staff were appalled by the decision and warned Bremer "It was too deep." One of Garner's staff recalled saying "if you do this, you're going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 Ba'athists underground by nightfall. And the number's closer to 50,000 than it is 30,000." The CIA Station Chief in Baghdad agreed with the number of 50,000 Baathists being driven underground and said "In six months you will regret this." By banning the Baathist Party, which had as many as 700,000 members who were used to being in power, Bremer turned this mass of powerful leaders and their dependents against the US occupation overnight. This act had a negative impact on everyone from civil servants to the technocrats who ran government ministries. In some Sunni areas, such as Fallujah, there were no schoolteachers left after Order Number 1 was promulgated because most of them were fired as members of the Baath party. Far from helping to stabilize Iraq, this act led to unemployment and economic hardship for tens of thousands of Iraqis who had joined the Baath party often just to get a job.
One US general furiously said, "You guys just blindsided Centcom. We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and created an insurgency." Another expert on Iraq stated "We made hundreds of thousands of people very angry at us and they happened to be the people in the country best acquainted with the use of arms."