THEY SHOOT ZEBRAS, DON'T THEY?

Yet again, another acquaintance has likened the battlefield to the football field, with both Vietnam and Iraq in his terms, cases in point. You play to win say such bold (and safe) men, but are we in Iraq the players? I ask this because in uniform on a football field, there are 3 groups of people, the two competing teams, and the officials. Those lining up opposite each other, of course, (the two teams) agree on few things, except more often then not their dislike of the group in the striped shirts called derisively “the zebras”. And since this civil war in Iraq, and it is one with all its sub plots and splinter plots, is basically between the Sunni’s and the Shiites, now that the central government of Saddam Hussein is long gone, what else are we but the on the ground umpires and referees, et al.
Imagine then, a gridiron contest with no enforcement of rules, and the mayhem and bodily harm sure to follow. Chaos might ensue or . . . getting their violence unedited, and first hand, might just encourage the rival forces to ratchet on down, resulting in at least a bit of sanity not just for our sake but for their’s as well. In the meantime, with our forces as buffer targets, the combatants continue to IED and snipe away. Again, if people want to analogize this situation to a football game, remember our role, and that in this secular crossfire of a contest, they shoot zebras, don’t they?