Iraq & The Forever War: To Everything There Is a Season: Burn, Burn, Burn

Conservatives, as absent minded as their president when it comes to the lessons of history, are forgetting a significant cyclical aspect of the history of the Iraq war in their hearty hosannas over the “success” of the surge.

In each of the first four years of the war, there has been a spike in violence as temperatures cool down, summer wanes and Ramadan approaches.

I pray that this year is different. But in a scary confluence of events, Ramadan begins on September 13 this year, two days after the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that President Bush insists were launched by insurgents in Iraq and two days before General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker go up to Capitol Hill to deliver the most anticipated progress report since the Bush twins got their braces off.

Brigadier General Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that insurgents are likely to attempt to make use of these events to launch “sensational” attacks.

In past years, frequent targets have been women, often with children in tow, who are queuing for cooking fuel to use throughout the holy Muslim month, as religious pilgrims and other civilian targets.

In August 2006, the Baghdad government reported that 2,966 Iraqis were killed. In September 2006, that number spiked at 3,539.

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