Sunday, May 18, 2008

End the War

From the first of the Sun Times coming stories on the weekend of April 18 to the 20th.

TV weathermen predicted Friday would be the start of a glorious weekend — perfect for throwing open upstairs windows and barbecuing in the backyard.

Angry people with scores to settle, though, had other ideas. The flurry of bullets they unleashed during a deadly 59 hours, from 12:50 p.m. on April 18 to 11:25 p.m. on April 20, sent beat cops scurrying to a blur of calls of “shots fired.”

In all, 40 people were shot. Seven died. Seven children were shot, five of them out after curfew. And by Monday, a national media spotlight focused on the blood spilled in the streets of Chicago.
A few weeks earlier, I was having some email exchanges with the NYT's James Glanz about his Alley Theory of Iraq: that Iraqi's were reacting just as Glanz's fellow Chicagoans would if Iraqi troops were patrolling Chicago's allys.

I thought better analogy was to our mobs and gangs as forces equivelent to the Sadrists occupying our neighborhoods, and everyone hunkered in their bungalows and two flats praying for an Iraqi Army like the one that cleaned out Basra to drive out the thugs.

It's going to take more than M-4's for Chicago cops to drive out the hoodlums. It's going to take strategy. We need a General Petreaus.

xp Bill Baar's West Side

2 comments:

Anonymous,  6:45 AM  

I think an EVEN better analogy is a city, rife with poverty conditions, worsening still due to a slumping economy and rapidly inflating prices for gasoline and food, dealing with an escalating gang turf war.

Because the City of Chicago did not invade the City of Chicago. Comparing this to our noble leader's glorious triumphs over Iraq is more than a little forced.

Though many would say that, using your analogy, we already have a Gen. Petraeus. A man talented enough in strategy to make a little difference, and talented enough in PR to call it a big difference.

Bill Baar 6:52 AM  

Live in a neigborhood overcome by gangs and it feels like an invasion.

I asked public defender friend of mine once how Cicero could get away with all of these b-girl joints, gambling, etc, and he said easy, try and do something about it and you get a phone call saying we just watched your kids go to school, we know which store your wife shops at...

...those Iraqi troops cleaning out Basra were getting phone calls on their cell phones telling them the same about their wives and children.

Know Chicago, you know the world... and those Iraqi's cleaning up their city were pretty brave guys by the way.

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