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How NOT to win hearts and minds

The basic thrust of Arianna Huffington's piece in her The Huffington Post is not only spot on but applies to all countries making up the Coalition of the Willing forces in Iraq - the way things have panned out in war-torn Iraq won't get to winning the hearts and minds of the peoples of the Middle East:

"Last week's Blackwater hearings provided yet another instance of how the Bush presidency has forced us to examine what kind of nation we are. Already on the table are questions like: Are we a nation that tortures people? Are we a nation of laws? Are we a nation where the judgment of the chief executive is beyond the reach of the law? And now another: are we okay with a bunch of lawless mercenaries being the public face of the U.S.?

The events of September 16th, in which, according to a military report, Blackwater guards opened fire on unarmed civilians in Baghdad, killing 17, were just the latest in a long line of incidents that have been enraging the Iraqi people -- and the Iraqi government since Blackwater first landed in Iraq.

As one unnamed military official put it in the Washington Post: "They tend to overreact to a lot of things... when it comes to shooting and firing, they tend to shoot quicker than others."

Strange that we're not winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, isn't it?

Blackwater may be keeping the State Department individuals they guard in Iraq safe, but every day they're representing America in the Middle East, they're endangering the other 300 million of us."

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