Re: State of Iraq
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I think you may be misunderstanding why I call the insurgents evil.
It is not because I view their side as "wrong" (although I do). It is rather because they are targeting and killing ANYONE they can, basically. They are killing their own countrymen, not just American soldiers; not even just government/security Iraqis, either: they are deliberately killing innocent civilian Iraqis as well. In short, they are no better than terrorists
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It is primarily their tactics to which I am objecting. The fact that they have adopted terrorist/nihilistic tactics is what makes them evil. If they were targeting only political leaders/soldiers of the other side, I would disagree with their view, and think them rather stupid for continuing to fight, but I would not think them evil. However adopting terrorist tactics crosses the moral line in a very deep way which I believe is worthy of the appellation "evil". Even more so for the al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq who have made it their business to terrorize and behead uninvolved innocent persons. If that isn't "evil", then nothing is.
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The problem with this view is that the insurgents are not one single unified group; there are several large groups and dozens of smaller ones, split between various groups of Islamists, Baathists, adn Iraqi nationalists. Not all the groups engage in the civilian attacks; indeed there's been a lot of recent reporting on some of the bigger nationalist groups issuing threats to the people engaging in the attakcs that target civilians. A recent report also showed that 75% of inusrgency attacks target occupation troops. In terms of the number of victims however, civilians and Iraqi forces have paid the highest price as they are much much softer targets than the coalition forces.
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