Six Years of War
For what?
Three days from now, on the 19th of March, the United States invasion of Iraq will mark its sixth year. A million dead Iraqis, more than 4,000 dead U.S. military persons, an eventual cost, according to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, of 3 trillion dollars.
Many people who voted for President Obama believed, quite irrationally as far as I’m concerned, that once elected, Obama would remove all U. S. troops from Iraq within sixteen months. I said many times on my radio program that Obama was being too clever by half with his semantics about withdrawal. He said then, and he confirmed my worst suspicions a couple weeks ago, that he would remove “combat” troops from Iraq, as if every service person there is not in combat. His intension during the campaign, confirmed in a late February speech, was to leave thousands of U.S. military personnel in Iraq beyond the now 19 month period of his supposed withdrawal. 50,000 troops to be exact. Non-combat troops to be sure. I suspect that by the time August 2011 rolls around the 50,000 will have grown considerably, more in line with the 60 to 90,000 I predicted during the campaign.
According to the withdrawal agreement drawn up by W. and his puppet in Iraq, the United States must have all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2012 - - just in time for the November 2012 election. Don’t count on it.
The speech Obama gave at the end of February could very well have been delivered by W. We found no mention in the speech of the on-going and worsening conflict between the Shia and the Kurds that will undermine any Iraqi government. We heard no mention of what is now to happen to the Suni forces the United States has been paying not to kill U. S. soldiers for the last two years.
According to the highly respected military correspondent Tom Ricks, author of The Gamble, Obama’s plan for exiting Iraq is the “sixth plan he has covered that attempts to get U. S. forces out of Iraq.” Mr. Ricks warns in his book that Bush’s war is about to engulf Obama. He writes that the United States will be in Iraq for many years to come, “and that in the end, we will be the losers.” What will emerge, Ricks told MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, “is not a democracy, not an American ally, run by a strongman, probably tougher, smarter and more adept than Saddam Hussein and who is, ironically, an even worse guy.” The winners, as far as I’m concerned, are the mullahs in Iran who will be quite content to have the war continue to bleed billions from the United States every month.
If you are concerned about the continued occupation of Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, join with your fellow citizens for an anti-war vigil on Thursday, 19 March, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm at Zelasko Park, in Aberdeen, Washington.
Labels: Afghanistan, costs of war, Iraq, Iraq War, war crimes, war dead
Letters To Heroes
I was astonished at the sentiments expressed by Mike Root, Angela Bishop and their fifth grade students as related in Callie White’s article in the Aberdeen Daily World, “Harbor Kids Remember Our Soldiers Serving Overseas,” that appeared on Christmas day.
Ms. White characterizes as “overreaching” one student’s fear of being shot on the way to school if U.S. troops were not occupying countries around the world. Ms. Bishop singled out for approval a fifth grade student’s letter that claimed U. S. soldiers are “making a ‘path of peace’ for generations to come. You are out on the battle field fighting for independence of the present and future.” Mr. Root asks, “what better way to cheer a soldier up than with a pack of fan letters from his class. . . .”
Let me take Mr. Root’s comment first. What better way? One thing that occurs to me would be for thousands of citizens in our community to take to the streets, with their children and their children’s teachers, marching, demonstrating, demanding that the U. S. government withdraw all U.S. troops from more than 750 bases in more than 125 countries around the world. Thousands of citizens marching on Washington, D. C. demanding the end to the U. S. empire and the restoration of our republic. Thousands of citizens demanding that government look to the general welfare rather than the welfare of generals.
Where did Ms. Bishop’s students learn that the invasion of another country in a preventive war, a war crime, means that U. S. soldiers are making a “path of peace” and “fighting for independence?” In her class, by writing letters to “heroes?” Peace for whom; independence for whom; at what cost? This is a fantasy land and a disservice to the young people who will one day be called upon to take the place of those occupation forces - - called upon by recruiters in their schools, urged on by teachers who filled them with propaganda about the heroic actions of U. S. troops overseas.
U. S. soldiers are not fighting for liberty; they are occupying countries that the United States invaded. Heroes? Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 150,000 mercenaries who supplement them, are being used as imperial storm troopers, as occupation forces. Torture. Indiscriminate killing. Secret prisons. Extraordinary renditions. The compliance of citizens in these grotesque actions has been extracted through fear. Of course the “overreaching” student reflects the propaganda being fed to all of us - - we are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.
What better way, Mr. Root? How about teaching students the difference between a republic and an empire? How about teaching students that no republic in history has lasted more than 300 years - - that they have been destroyed as they degenerated into empires? Instead of “a pack of fan letters,” how about teaching them to write letters about their inheritance being squandered by the imperial dreams (nightmares?) of their leaders?
LinkLabels: Education, Iraq, Iraq War
Words of a President
On September 24, 2007 two Presidents of two different nations made
these comments:
1.
"You've isolated your nation. You've taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world."2.
"What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? ... You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious."3.
"I think your ideas are weird, your religion is bat-shit, and you talk funny."Who said which one?
Comment #1 was said by President Bush but it sure sounds like a description of President Bush.
Comment #2 was said by Iranian President Ahmadinejad about President Bush supposedly being "a very religious man".
Comment #3 was silently thought by both Presidents (but President Bush's lips moved!).
Labels: 60 Minutes, Ahmadinejad, Bush, Iran, Iraq
Why the White House wants to write the Petraeus Report
The Washington Post will probably be branded as traitors and not supporting our troops for giving us an
advance look at the Patraeus Report... BEFORE the White House propoganda ministers get hold of it.
What our military would write:
Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress., according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday. comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.
After some "editing only for space", what the White House will release:
Iraq has failed to meet three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a positive assessment by the White House which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.
Labels: Bush, Iraq, Petraeus
It’s All al Qaeda All The Time
Where have all the Iraqi insurgents gone? How about those remaining Baathist loyalists? The Shiite militia? They’ve been magically turned into al Qaeda!
Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon.com notices a newly emerging pattern throughout the MSM. He notes the fact that recent reports have been referring to enemy casualties as "al Qaeda". Such as... "today in Iraq (x) numbers of al Qaeda fighters were killed"…as if they were wearing name tags.
He quotes from McClatchy news agency: U.S. forces continue to battle Shiite militia in the south as well as and Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. Yet America's most wanted enemy at the moment is Sunni al Qaida in Iraq. The Bush administration's recent shift toward calling the enemy in Iraq "al Qaida" rather than an insurgency may reflect the difficulty in maintaining support for the war at home more than it does the nature of the enemy in Iraq.
Greenwald writes:
This sudden shift in describing the "enemy" in Iraq as "Al Qaeda" is the by-product of a very familiar information-producing system: namely, the administration formulates narratives, the President announces them, his top officials and military commanders recite them endlessly, and then establishment.
Of course, most reporters in Iraq, spending their time in the relative security of the Green Zone, are happy to pass along whatever is spooned to them. The talking points are free, too. Labels: al Qaeda, Iraq, media
