Remarks courtesy Eric Schwappach:
The Baghdad carnage continues for a second day as the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency claims another 31 lives with two suicide attacks. From AP:
Suicide bombers inflicted another day of mayhem in the capital Thursday, killing at least 31 people in two attacks about a minute apart that targeted Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos. The carnage left nearly 200 people dead just two days.
A dozen bombings during a nine-hour spate of terror Wednesday killed at least 167 people and wounded nearly 600 “” Baghdad’s worst day of bloodshed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.U.S. officials blamed the bombing onslaught on efforts by the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency to answer the Iraqi army’s successful offensive in the northern city of Tal Afar and to undermine the Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq’s new constitution.
“These spikes of violence are predictable around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief American military spokesman.
“Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency. So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum. That’s power, that’s movement toward democracy.”
Does the insurgency equal failure for democracy? At this point, one must ask how much “democracy” can the Iraqi people handle? Maybe if Maj. Gen. Lynch and others called it by its right name — jihad — instead of “insurgency,” he would be able to see the implications of this insurgency for his democratic goals.
Al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing campaign launched after an Iraqi-U.S. force of 8,500 soldiers stormed Tal Afar, an insurgent bastion, this week.
Al-Zarqawi then purportedly declared “all-out war” on Shiite Muslims, Iraqi troops and the government in what the United States has called a desperate propaganda campaign to derail the political process.
Leaders of the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq have vowed to defeat the constitution, which they claim favors the Shiite majority and the Kurds.
One definition of democracy is majority rule. Will Iraq ever be democratic in the sense of ensuring minority rights along with that majority rule?