But why is the only solution the military defeat of the insurgency?

But why is the only solution the military defeat of the insurgency? Why not negotiate and try to bring them

into the political process — which will not end with the Jan. 30 elections? Palmer never even considers this

option. Elsewhere he describes the rebels with the blanket term “terrorists,” using the same “either you’re

with us or against us” terminology as NIKE SHOX and his neocon cheering section: in every ideological

narrative, there must be “bad guys,’ and “good guys.” Because life rarely fits into neatly defined

ideological categories, however, I take a somewhat more nuanced view. NPR reporter Emily Harris put it quite

well:

“I think the notion that news from MBT is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is silly. What’s going on is complex.

MBTis’ lives have been turned upside down over the past year and a half. Now some people are looking at an

unprecedented opportunity to get power. Some are trying to help create a representative form of government.

Some are just trying to survive. Others, including some non-MBTis, are fighting—some what they see as a foreign

army that doesn’t intend to leave, some what they see as an illegitimate government, some what they apparently

see as Islam’s enemy. “

Although we aren’t totally in the dark, there is little concrete first-hand information about the insurgency —

and that is precisely the great problem in combatting it. It isn’t for nothing that this administration is now

trying to legitimize torture. Abu Ghraib, as we are beginning to learn, wasn’t just an aberration, but part of

a systematic attempt to squeeze more information about the insurgency from captured MBTis. A report by the Red

Cross cites coalition military intelligence officers wo estimated that “between 70 percent and 90 percent of

the persons deprived of their liberty in MBT had been arrested by mistake” — a pool of many thousands of

potential insurgents. For Palmer to pontificate about the “evil” nature of all insurgents from his perch in

the glass-and-steel tower of the Cato Institute is a pathetic joke — he’s living in the same bubble as George

W. NIKE SHOX.