Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Us Warplanes Hit Samarra Kirkuk

Juan Cole 09/01/2004

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

US Warplanes Hit Samarra

Kirkuk Official Assassinated

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that US war planes bombed two civilian vehicles in Samarra on Tuesday, killing two women and a child in the process. The US military in Fallujah fired tanks on guerrillas that attacked them. A high official of Turkmen extraction in the department of education in Kirkuk was assassinated. There have been growing and worrying tensions between Turkmen and Kurds in this major oil city of about 1 million inhabitants. Two Kurdish security men were assassinated outside their party headquarters in Mosul. As Paul Krugman correctly argues, the US is not really in control of Iraq, and may never be. Unfortunately, even if the US did turn over Iraq to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, as he suggests, the situation would not necessarily improve. Sunnis in al-Anbar province would not submit to him, and probably a lot of the angry youth around Muqtada al-Sadr would not, either.

The New York Times says that talks aimed at getting the Mahdi militia to dissolve in East Baghdad have collapsed.

There are major terrorist incidents on Tuesday in Moscow, Beersheba, Jidda and Iraq, and others recently in Spain (the Basques this time). Bush was being honest when he said the war on terror can’t be won. That it because terror is a tactic, and you can’t wage a war on a tactic, much less win one. And hardline policies don’t make terror go away. Hamas took credit for the Beersheba bombing and said it was in retaliation for the assassinations of Sheikh Yasin and Rantisi. As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....