A car bomb was remotely detonated outside of a popular ice cream parlor in central Baghdad overnight, killing at least 13 people and wounding 24 others,, according to local officials. Video showed a catastrophic aftermath of the bombing, which was claimed by ISIS.
The attack took place around midnight. The area is particularly busy because this is Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during the day, and feast after sundown. Restaurants and other food vendors are open late, and particularly busy at this late hour because of the holiday.
Busy crowded civilian targets are popular targets for militants during Ramadan, particularly in places like Baghdad where targeted neighborhoods are broadly Shi’ite, and the militants can assume that the casualties will also overwhelmingly be Shi’ites.
With Iraq heavily focusing their military on an invasion in Mosul, there are fewer and fewer forces remaining to provide security in the rest of the country, and with ISIS feeling pressure in Mosul, they are likely to be even more eager to lash out at soft targets around the country.
Stopping terrorism is police work, not military work. All those resources in Mosul should make no difference unless detectives are being pulled from detecting police from policing, and sent into military-level combat instead.
In fact a militarized police is the last thing you’d want combating terrorism because a militarized police is optimized far less to investigate and prevent or pursue terrorism in the first place, but instead clean up after it happens.
All those massively armed and armoured paramil SWAT types swirling like flies after every terrorist incident in the West look distinctly powerless, an empty show of force intimidating innocent citizens moreso than terrorists.
Both police and military are SOURCES of terrorism.
Abandoning these institutions and spreading LOVE is the way away from violence.
Hah, no way, there needs to be protection for the citizens. The problem is when offensive wars are started.
Roger Roots at Constitution.org wrote an interesting essay called “Are Cops Constitutional?” and concludes they are not, and the founders would have reviled them as undesired standing armies.
Its a convincing argument and any serious reform of policing should apply its findings. The police take the oath to protect the Constitution, but the application has become radically different.
That said, we have no way of securing our everyday lives from crime without the police. Criminals are incapable of loving their fellow citizen to the point of leaving other people’s property alone and lives unbothered by assault.
In the meantime, define love. People often get into violent spats over that. Often its the criminal trying to leverage that emotion as a con.