The Bloody Failure of ‘The Surge’: A Special Report
It was supposed to mark a decisive new phase in America’s military campaign, but six months after George Bush sent in 20,000 extra troops, Iraq is more chaotic and dangerous than ever. In a special dispatch, Patrick Cockburn reports on the bloody failure of ‘the surge.’
The war in Iraq passed a significant but little remarked anniversary this summer. The conflict that President George Bush announced was in effect over on 1 May 2003 has now gone on longer than the First World War. Like that great conflict almost a century ago, the Iraqi war has been marked by repeated claims that progress is being made and that a final breakthrough is in the offing.
In 1917, the French commander General Robert Nivelle proudly announced that ” we have the formula for victory” before launching the French armies on a catastrophic offensive in which they were massacred. Units ordered to the front brayed like donkeys to show they saw themselves as being like animals led to the slaughter. Soon, the soldiers broke into open mutiny. 
On 10 January this year, President Bush announced that he too now believed he had the formula for victory. In an address to the American nation, he announced a new strategy for Iraq that became known as “the surge” . He said he was sending a further 20,000 US troops to Iraq. With the same misguided enthusiasm as General Nivelle had expressed in his plan, President Bush explained why “our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed” and why the new American formula would succeed: in the past, US and Iraqi troops had cleared areas, but when they moved on guerrillas returned. In future, said Bush, American and allied troops would stay put.
As if the US was not facing enough enemies in Iraq, Bush pointed to Iran and Syria as the hidden hand sustaining the insurgency. “These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” he said. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”
He added in his State of the Union address on 23 January that “Shia extremists are just as hostile to America [as al-Qa’ida], and are also determined to dominate the Middle East”. The implication was that US troops were going to move into areas such as Sadr City, home to two million Shia Iraqis, in pursuit of the powerful Shia militia, the Mehdi Army of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Six months after the surge was actually launched, in mid- February, it has failed as dismally as so many First World War offensives. The US Defense Department says that, this June, the average number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces, civilian forces and infrastructure peaked at 177.8 per day, higher than in any month since the end of May 2003. The US has failed to gain control of Baghdad. The harvest of bodies picked up every morning first fell and then rose again. This may be because the Mehdi Army militia, who provided most of the Shia death squads, was stood down by Sadr. Nobody in Baghdad has much doubt that they could be back in business any time they want. Whatever Bush might say, the US military commanders in Iraq clearly did not want to take on the Mehdi Army and the Shia community when they were barely holding their own against the Sunni.
The surge is now joining a host of discredited formula for success and fake turning-points that the US (with the UK tripping along behind) has promoted in Iraq over the past 52 months. In December 2003, there was the capture of Saddam Hussein. Six months later, in June 2004, there was the return of sovereignty to Iraq. “Let freedom reign,” said Bush in a highly publicised response. And yet the present Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, claims he cannot move a company of soldiers without American permission.
In 2005, there were two elections that were both won handsomely by Shia and Kurdish parties. “Despite endless threats from the killers in their midst,” exulted Bush, “nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity that we should never forget.”
In fact, he himself forgot this almost immediately. A year later, the US forced out the first democratically elected Shia prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with the then US Ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, saying that Bush “doesn’t want, doesn’t support, and doesn’t accept that Jaafari should form the next government”.
Fresh US initiatives in Iraq seemed to succeed each other about every six months. Just as it was becoming evident in the US that the surge was not going anywhere very fast, there came good news from Anbar province in western Iraq. The Sunni tribes were rising against al-Qa’ida, which had overplayed its hand by setting up an umbrella organisation for insurgents called the Islamic State of Iraq. In Sunni areas, it was killing rubbish collectors on the grounds that they worked for the government, shooting women in the face because they were not wearing veils, and trying to draft one young man from each family into its forces. Sunni tribal militiamen backed by the US fought al-Qa’ida in insurgent strongholds such as Ramadi, and attacks on American troops there fell away dramatically.
The US administration could portray this as a fresh turning-point. It had always pretended that the insurrection in Iraq was conducted largely by al-Qa’ida. In reality, Anthony H Cordesman, an Iraqi specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, points out that al-Qa’ida’s attacks make up only 15 per cent of the total in Iraq, although they launch 80 to 90 per cent of the suicide bombings.
As with many a development in Iraq portrayed as a sign of progress by the White House, the recruitment of Sunni tribal militias by the US is not quite what it seems. In practice, it is a tactic fraught with dangers. In areas where they operate, police are finding more and more bodies, according to the Interior Ministry. Victims often appear to have been killed solely because they were Shia. The gunmen from the tribes are under American command, and this weakens the authority of the Iraqi government, army and police - institutions that the US is supposedly seeking to foster.
A grim scene showing Sunni tribal militiamen in action was recorded on a mobile phone and later appeared on Iraqi websites. It shows a small, terrified man in a brown robe being bundled out of a vehicle by a group of angry men with sub-machine guns who cuff and slap him as he cowers, trying to shield his face with his hands. One of his captors, who seems to be in command, asks him fiercely if he has killed somebody called “Khalid” . After a few moments he is dragged off by two gunmen to a patch of waste ground 30 yards away and executed with a burst of machine-gun fire to the chest.
It is a measure of the desperation of the White House to show that the surge is having some success that it is now looking to these Sunni fighters for succor. Often they are former members of anti-American resistance groups such as the 1920 Revolution Brigade and the Army of Islam - Bush has spent four years denouncing these groups as murderous enemies of the Iraqi people. To many Iraqi Shia and Kurds, who make up 80 per cent of all Iraqis, the US appears to be building up its own Sunni militia. So, far from preventing civil war (a main justification for continued occupation), the US is arming sectarian killers engaged in a murder campaign that is tearing Iraq apart.
The White House says it is too early to know if the surge is succeeding, and that it will wait for a security report due next month from General David Petraeus, the top US military commander in Iraq, and the US Ambassador to the country, Ryan Crocker. But the new strategy was never going to turn the tide in Iraq. Its main advantage for Bush is that it puts off the moment when failure has to be admitted, a potentially disastrous confession for Republicans standing for election next year. If an American withdrawal can be postponed until after the poll, then the neo-cons can blame the Democrats for a stab in the back, pulling out the troops at the very moment when victory was almost in their grasp.
I was in Baghdad in January, when Bush made his State of the Union speech outlining his plans for the surge. Iraqis were pessimistic from the beginning about its chances of success. A friend called Ismail remarked gloomily: “An extra 16,000 [sic] US troops are not going to be enough.” A Sunni, he had recently fled his house in the west of the capital because he was frightened of being arrested and tortured by the paramilitary police commandos - like most Sunni, he regarded them as uniformed Shia death squads.
Baghdad was paralyzed by fear. Drivers were terrified of being stopped at impromptu checkpoints where they might be dragged out of their cars and killed for belonging to the wrong religion. Conversation was dominated by accounts of narrow escapes. Most people had at least one fake ID card so they could claim, depending on circumstance, to be either Sunni or Shia. This might not be enough; some Shia checkpoints had a list of theological questions drawn up by a religious scholar that they would use to interrogate people.
It was extraordinary how little control the US forces and the Iraqi army exercised over the very center of the capital. There was black smoke rising from Haifa Street, a two-mile-long Sunni corridor just north of the Green Zone, which US forces had repeatedly invaded but failed to secure. When a helicopter belonging to the security company Blackwater was shot down or crash-landed in the al-Fadhil district in the centre of Baghdad, the survivors were executed by insurgents before US forces could get to them.
****
TSectarian warfare between Shia and Sunni began in August 2003 when al-Qa’ida suicide bombers started targeting Shia civilians. It escalated over the next two years, but it was the bomb that destroyed the Shia shrine at Samarra on 22 February 2006 that unleashed a Shia pogrom in Baghdad in which 1,300 Sunni were killed in days.
A struggle for the capital was waged between the two sects for the rest of the year, and by January 2007 the Shia had largely won it. My surviving Sunni friends were terrified that the Mehdi Army, often used as a catch-all phrase to describe Shia militiamen of all descriptions, would launch a final “battle of Baghdad” to wipe out the remaining Sunni enclaves.
A weakness of the US position in Iraq is that it has always exaggerated its own strength and underestimated that of its opponents. Outside Kurdistan, it has no dependable allies. Among Iraqi Arabs, both Shia and Sunni, the occupation is unpopular. A US military study recently examined the weapons used by guerrillas to kill American soldiers, and reached the unsettling conclusion that the most effective were high-quality American weapons supplied to the Iraqi army by the US, which were passed on or sold to insurgents.
US commanders are often cheery believers in their own propaganda, even as the ground is giving way beneath their feet. In Baquba, a provincial capital north-east of Baghdad, US and Iraqi army commanders praised their own achievements at a press conference held over a video link. Chiding media critics for their pessimism, the generals claimed: “The situation in Baquba is reassuring and is under control but there are some rumors circulated by bad people.” Within hours Sunni insurgents, possibly irked by these self-congratulatory words, stormed Baquba, kidnapped the mayor and blew up his office.
The surge got under way in February, and from the beginning the sceptics seemed to be in the right. Its most positive impact was that Muqtada al-Sadr decided not to risk an all-out military confrontation between his Mehdi Army and the US army. He sent many of his senior lieutenants out of Baghdad, stood down his men and disappeared, either to Iran, as the US claimed, or to the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf, according to his followers.
The Sunni bore the brunt of the surge in Baghdad. Districts like al-Adhamiyah in east Baghdad were sealed off. But this probably achieved less than was intended, because Adhamiyah is a commercial district in which half the people who work there live elsewhere. Joint security stations were set up in every neighborhood manned by US and Iraqi forces, but these posts seem ineffectual and tie down troops.
There was intense pressure on the US military and the civilian leadership in Baghdad to show that the surge was visibly succeeding. US embassy staff complained that when the pro-war Republican Senator John McCain came to Baghdad and ludicrously claimed that security was fast improving, they were forced to doff their helmets and body armor when standing with him lest the protective equipment might be interpreted as a mute contradiction of the Senator’s assertions. When Vice-President Dick Cheney visited the Green Zone, the sirens giving warning of incoming rockets or mortar rounds were kept silent during an attack, to prevent them booming out of every television screen in America.
By the end of May, I found it a little easier to drive through Baghdad, but the danger was still extreme. I sat in the back of the car with my jacket hanging inside the window so it was difficult for other drivers to see me. We were pulled over by an army checkpoint. A soldier leaned in and asked who I was. We were lucky. He looked surprised when told I was a foreign journalist, and said softly: “Keep well hidden.”
Back in my hotel, I phoned an Iraqi friend in the Green Zone who was close to the government. “Be very careful,” he warned. “Above all, do not trust the army and police.” There was an example of what he meant a few days later when a convoy of 19 vehicles carrying 40 uniformed policemen arrived in the forecourt of the Finance Ministry. They entered the building and calmly abducted five British security men, who have not been seen since. The kidnappers may be linked to a unit of the Mehdi Army.
The surge has changed very little in Baghdad. It was always a collection of tactics rather than a strategy. All the main players - Sunni insurgents, Shia militiamen, Iraqi government, Kurds, Iran and Syria - are still in game.
One real benchmark of progress - or lack of it - is the number of Iraqis who have fled for their lives. This figure is still going up. Over one million Iraqis have become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) since the Samarra bombing, according to the Red Crescent. A further 2.2 million people have fled the country. This exodus is bigger than anything ever seen in the Middle East, exceeding in size even the flight or expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. A true sign of progress in Iraq will be when the number of refugees, inside and outside the country, starts to go down.
****
The surge was never going to bring Iraq nearer to peace. It always made sense in terms of American, but not Iraqi, politics. It has become a cliché for US politicians to say that there is a “Washington clock’ and a ” Baghdad clock”, which do not operate at the same speed. This has the patronizing implication that Iraqis are slothful in moving to fix problems within their country, while the Americans are all get-up-and-go. But the reality is that it is not the clocks, but the agendas, that are different. The Americans and the Iraqis want contrary things.
The US dilemma in Iraq goes back to the Gulf War. It wanted to be rid of Saddam Hussein in 1991 but not at the price of the Shia replacing him; something the Shia were bound to do in fair elections, because they comprise 60 per cent of the population. Worse, the Shia coming to power would have close relations with Iran, America’s arch-enemy in the Middle East.
This was the main reason the US did not press on to Baghdad after defeating Saddam’s armies in Kuwait in 1991. It then allowed him savagely to crush the Shia and Kurdish rebellions that briefly captured 14 out of 18 Iraqi provinces.
Ever since 2003, the US has wrestled with this same problem. Unwittingly, the most conservative of American administrations had committed a revolutionary act in the Middle East by overthrowing the minority Sunni Baathist regime.
The Bush family has always been close to the Saudi monarchy, but George W Bush dismantled a cornerstone of the Sunni Arab security order. This is why the US and Britain opted for a thoroughgoing occupation of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. They put off elections as long as they could. When elections were held in 2005 and voters overwhelmingly chose a Shia-Kurdish government, Washington tried to keep it under tight control.
“The US and Britain have a policy of trying to fill the vacuum left by the Baath disappearing, but it is unsuccessful,” says Ahmed Chalabi, out of office but still one of the most astute political minds in Iraq. ” Now the Americans and British want to disengage, but if they do so the worst fears of their Arab allies will come to pass: Shia control and strong Iranian influence in Iraq.”
The hidden history of the past four years is that the US wants to defeat the Sunni insurgents but does not want the Shia-Kurdish government to win a total victory. It props up the Iraqi state with one hand and keeps it weak with the other.
The Iraqi intelligence service is not funded through the Iraqi budget, but by the CIA. Iraqi independence is far more circumscribed than the outside world realizes. The US is trying to limit the extent of the Shia-Kurdish victory, but by preventing a clear winner emerging in the struggle for Iraq, Washington is ensuring that this bloodiest of wars goes on, with no end in sight.
The real death toll
More lies have been told about casualties in Iraq and the general level of violence there than at almost any time since the First World War. In that conflict, a British minister remarked sourly that he suspected the military authorities of keeping three sets of casualty figures: “One to deceive the Cabinet, a second to deceive the people and a third to achieve themselves.”
The American attitude to Iraqi civilian casualties is along much the same lines. The Baker-Hamilton report drawn up by senior non-partisan Democrats and Republicans last year examined one day in July 2006, when the US military had reported 93 attacks on US and Iraqi forces. Investigation by US intelligence agencies revealed that the real figure was about 1,100.
The Iraqi government has sought to conceal civilian casualty figures by banning journalists from the scenes of bombings, and banned hospitals and the Health Ministry from giving information. In July, AP reported, 2,024 Iraqis died violently, a 23 per cent rise on June, which was the last month for which the government gave a figure.
This is almost certainly an underestimate. In a single bombing in the district of Karada in Baghdad on 26 July, Iraqi television and Western media cited the police as saying that there were 25 dead and 100 wounded. A week later, a list of the names of 92 dead and 127 wounded, compiled by municipal workers, was pinned up on shuttered shopfronts in the area.
The US military began the war by saying that it was not keeping count of Iraqi civilians killed by its troops. It often describes bodies found after a US raid as belonging to insurgents when the local Iraqi police say they are civilians killed by the immense firepower deployed by the American forces. Almost the only time a real investigation of such killings is carried out is when the local staff of Western media outlets are among the dead.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
This is madness. Where is the mutiny now? Why do American troops remain so willing to commit atrocities at the behest of their ‘leaders’. These men are not true leaders. They are criminals, they are self-deceived at best and completely knowingly iniquitous at worst. Of course atrocities are being committed on both sides, but who is going to wake up first? Who is going to be the first to not murder innocence in the name of God?
People, people, rise up! Stop tolerating the rule of false leaders. We must not allow those people who are in power to deceive us any more that they have any interests but their own in mind and realize that they see us as chattel for them to buy, sell and manipulate. Stop following those leaders, find true leaders who are truly humble and who truly care about others, who serve others, and put others before themselves. They are few, but they exist.
Find them, follow them.
The Bush admin and numerous MSM quislings are now touting the “low” number of US casualties in July as indicating success by the surge. Juan Cole points out the fallacy in this claim. It seems that, although the 80 Americans killed in July is indeed the low for the year, July is always the low month for deaths because of the extreme heat. But the 80 this year is about 50% higher than the average for July since 2003. Last year the number was 43, and in 2004 and 2005, 54 Americans were killed each July. So actually there’s been a significant uptick in American deaths.
Either way, they are going to say that the surge is working. U.S. troop deaths are down, for lots of reasons. In July fewer of our troops got killed because more Iraqi troops got killed so see, the surge is working. More of our troops get killed in May or June then this is what you expect when you take the offensive.
It has less to do with logic, reason and facts than it does with power, arrogance and oil. Bush is on the record as saying that he does not have to explain himself to ANYONE, because he is the president. That includes the American people.
Failure is Success!
War is Peace!
Crime is Justice!
With Iraqi and foreign “death squads” killing over 100 a day in Baghdad alone, I don’t see any hope soon of the Iraqi police and military getting control of the situation.
See it’s simple.
As surveilance drones ar replaced by bomb-dropping and missle firing kinds. the easier and more efficient it will be to exterminate greater numbers of population (the Eichmann principle)
The more Iraqis killed, the fewer to put up any fuss when their country is used as a staging area for Iranian and Pakistani invasions and their oil is finally secured for western oil companies.
All America wants is to be able to extract (steal!) resources in peace. If it is necessary to destroy the people to save the place and its resources then so be it.
Winning and Democracy in Iraq: Oxymoronic Concepts
Iraq (as with its neighbors) was ruled by brutality and armed suppression before America began its occupation.
Iraq (as with its neighbors) will be ruled by brutality and armed suppression after the U.S. leaves.
No amount of troops or time frame under a half century will alter this formula.
America seeks to align itself with this, to-be-decided, new ruling force.
That this new ruling force will be a democracy is oxymoronic.
That the new ruling force will be a democracy aligned with the interests of the U.S. is even yet more naively ridiculous.
What the Cheney/neocon aggressors wanted and could have best hoped for, no matter how incompetent in assessing the tribal/religious nature of Iraq they were, would be to establish a “palmocracy.”
When Arafat died I opined that hopefully, eventually, a Sunni palmocrat of Arafat’s scheming mold would appear who would collect the graft and grease together a new working government. Tribes, religions, criminal elements, power seekers, moneyed neighbors with agendas and foreign born terrorists , as a mix, simply overwhelm this possibility.
Chalabi as a symbol of what a palmocracy might be was so enticing. Oh well!
Brutality and suppression will eventually create a new Iraq. The Iraqis want America out now. This desire can only increase.
It is entirely illogical that a ruling body will appear from the ashes of Iraq that will kiss the hand of its invader.
–One last tip, if you can, by stock in Crescent Condominium Development Limited. It’s listed on the Iranian Stock Exchange and is reputedly a real favorite of the Mullahs.–
cognitorex
Welcome to the United States … the largest terrorist state in the world. Our hands our bloody and we have in essence become the ‘evil’ we supposedly claimed to eliminate. I wish i could move forward 20 or 30 years into the future and see how we spin this bloody carnage that we created into the history books.
I am heartsick at what we are doing to those people. And heartsick that we ourselves are willing to do such things. What kind of people are we? What kind of people are we raising our children to be?
I just previewed War Made Easy, the DVD by Norman Soloman. None of this was news to me, but all at once, up close, it felt overwhelming. I just wish Americans could put themselves in another’s place and know how it feels before condoning such acts. I don’t wish such horrors on ourselves, but what does it take for Americans to realize what we are doing to innocents? We are not innocent. We are criminals. It makes me very sad to say that but it is true.
Excellent article! I agree totally.
Prior to the Bush Administration creating this insanely horrific,” War on Terror” from 1960-2001 (including 9/11) less than 6000 people WORLDWIDE had died in terrorist attacks. I would guess that is less than the number of people that drowned in their bathtubs. So maybe next the Bush Administration abetted by the MSM will declare war on bath water. I doubt the gutless; kiss-ass generals could beat bathwater.
The illegal war the Bush administration declared on the Iraqis could have been declared on any of a dozen maybe a hundred nations. It would have made no difference as long as country was helpless to defend itself. The other countries are aware of this which is why there is world-wide fear and terror. This is the Bush plan which started in 1980.
The republicans and the MSM will continue to eat their, “freedom fries”. America will simply crumble into a third/fourth world nation. Can you image what the rest of the world thinks of, “American Democracy”?
Bushie was just misunderstoodimated.
When he said he wanted to send in the “surge”, he was actually meaning “The Red Serge” …
…meaning the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Serge
The Mounties always get their man, and are the only ones who could possibly save Bushies sorry ass now.
Please excuse this relevant, but off topic post:
===================
JOHN PILGER fans:
Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire
Most of today’s DemocracyNow program is a recording of a great/ recent JP talk:
http://www.democracynow.org
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/07/130246
“Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship. This is an historic shift, and the media must not be allowed to be its façade, but itself made into a popular, burning issue, and subjected to direct action,” said John Pilger. “That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now.” We spend the hour airing a recent lecture by the acclaimed Australian filmmaker and muckraker.
http://www.democracynow.org
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/07/130246
===============
CD editors: it’d be very cool if CD had a general bulletin board for posts and discussions.
THanks!
A few days prior to the opening round of the current “war” in Iraq, one of our “news-people” was interviewing an Iraqi businessman as they sat at an open air restaurnat in Baghdad.
I can still see the man’s face and eyes and hear his words, as he rather sadly remarked.
“You Ameicans will come here and win your war and Saddam will soon be gone or dead. Your president has no idea of what he is getting you into,__ this is Iraq. Before this is all over, a few years from now, you Americans are going to wish you had left us alone and will wish Saddam was still here ruling the country.” Then he just stared at the camera and shook his head.__ He knew__ and one could see the knowledge and the wisdom of his words in his eyes!
It was right then that I had a grim realization, that Bush was stepping into a cess pool___ no, pole valuting in __ and deep shit does stink and it isn’t easy for one to climb out of a slippery pit. This mess we are crawling around in destroying Iraq is not going to get better any time soon. The so called Surge will be re-Surged and our congress will fund any additional requests for more money, allowing more loans from our Chinese bankers.
Meanwhile Congressman Conyers refuses to put HR Bill-333 up for a vote and because of him, impeachment is still a dead issue.
The reason Donald Rumsfeld would not give the generals the number of troops they needed is because Cheney/Bush want the iraq War to extend long enough to bankrupt the federal treasury so they can defund the social safety net the Republicans have hated ever since it began with Roosevelt in the 1930s. That is what they are doing, bankrupting the USA in favor of a corporate North America without federal oversight and without borders - and they will succeed unless they are impeached BEFORE the next terrorist attack or else they automatically become dictators.
SJC_1: You got that right!
Here are two bits of wisdom that elucidate why things can never go well in Iraq. I happen to believe Dr. Seuss was a shaman and brought esoteric truths to children in his wonderful stories. In what most take as a primitive book, THE CAT IN THE HAT, he explains one of life’s key axioms: Once you are responsible for making a mess, you can’t hide it. You have to own up and clean it up. This must be a book BUSH missed! In any case, Iraq is the mess and all the subterfuge, excuses, illegal conduct etc cannot be cleaned up except by owning what’s really going on. No point waiting for that any time soon given who’s in charge.
Point 2: As an astrologer, I place a great deal of respect in the MOMENT of anyone’s or anything’s “birth.” This debacle was born shall we say, under a bad sign. On merely moral grounds anything started under false pretenses is tainted. There is no alchemy to change around what was put into motion for devious and distorted reasons masquerading as other. This forms the crux of the law of karma which is respected in varied forms by probably every religious or spiritual tradition.
NO amount of surging, like putting “good money” after bad, can change around what has already become its own entity and is following the learning curve drawn of its own dark momentum. I pity the Iraqi people who have been caught in this net of fate, and pray for their deliverance. Although I have personally never voted Republican or endorsed ANY of these warrior policies, as an American I feel sorrow for the work of those who have rendered a coup and taken control of our military to serve their own evil ends.
The outcome in Iraq is a long, long way off. I agree with gyptian, it would be interesting to move forward 20 or 30 years and see how thi situation looks.
The crimes committed by America are MANY. The justice she is shown will determine the fate of the world. We must, MUST, prosecute ALL American war criminals and war profiteers.
Peace to you and yours.
Entelechy, in Shakespeare’s magnificent tragedy Macbeth, he crafts language to express the infinite degree of remorse a good citizen feels when he learns of the lengths Macbeth (and wife) have gone to further his personal ambitions. Shakespeare says, “Mabeth has murdered sleep.” The intent, that no one is safe in their own beds, and that any person of conscience would have difficulty sleeping peacefully knowing the dark deeds underway in their now corrupted kingdom. I put to you the proposition that Bush has bankrupted a great deal more than the social security fund and the basis for all the programs begun under The New Deal. He has effectively murdered justice, decency, and America’s claim to its own humanity.
Speaking of HR 333, I just got a note from my Representative Norm Dicks in Washington State. Norm explains to me that The Speaker has determined that at this late date impeachment would just distract Congress from doing the Nations business and then he goes on to itemize all the good shit they have passed since they were in the majority. Most of the stuff they have passed is of minimal or no positive impact that I can see. So what is it they do with all this time they are saved by not impeaching Bush and Cheney? We know they didnt read the Patriot Act before voting Aye for that piece of crap legislation-so I ask, what do they do that prohibits them from impeachment?
“A weakness of the US position in Iraq is that it has always exaggerated its own strength and underestimated that of its opponents.”
ALWAYS.
What a mess.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
RE: WWI CANNON FODDER
“In 1917, the French commander General Robert Nivelle proudly announced that ‘we have the formula for victory’ before launching the French armies on a catastrophic offensive in which they were massacred. Units ordered to the front brayed like donkeys to show they saw themselves as being like animals led to the slaughter. Soon, the soldiers broke into open mutiny.”
Not just time, but the evil of fascism & WWII causes us to forget the mad horror of WWI and the “Western Front.”
No, there was no “plan” for victory.
There was the Western Front, 1914-1918: two lines of trenches separated by ‘no man’s land;’ weeks of bombardment to ’soften up’ the enemy; and then - an order to advance - out of the trenches and over the barbed wire and through no man’s land…until they were mowed down by the machine guns on the other side. As they knew they would be.
Verdun, 1916, German attempt to break through - 2 million soldiers face each other, 1 million casualties
the British Somme offensive - to break off the Verdun offensive - 420,000 British dead; 60,000 the first day
No wonder they brayed.
Lots of work and words to describe face-saving. If a President and Vice President don’t want to be wrong, they won’t be wrong. It doesn’t matter how many lives are destroyed or how much treasure is invested.
Maybe someday we will find out why Democrats couldn’t muster enough votes to file Articles of Impeachment. Maybe not. Perhaps it is because many of them bought into this misadventure hook, line and sinker … and face-saving works for them too.
We have regressed from, ‘My Country Right or Wrong. If it is right, let’s keep it right. If it is wrong, let’s make it right’ … to … ‘My Country is Always Right. It can do no wrong. If it is wrong, let’s assert that it is right anyway. God Bless America’.
canuckchuck: “The Mounties always get their man, and are the only ones who could possibly save Bushies sorry ass now.”
Ha ha, right you are …though I don’t know if even they could save him at this point. Thanks for that Chuck, you’ve put me in the mood for pancakes and maple syrup!
Baska: I think it is worth pointing one way this war in Iraq is nothing like WWI. Because it is largely being fought by an all-volunteer force and mercenaries (sorry, I forgot to use the preferred euphemism, “contractors”) and the fatalies on the coalition side are comparatively low, most people in coalition countries are, for the time being, unaffected in any significant way by the war. As such, their tolerance for the status quo may be considerable. I contrast this situation with the end of WWI when in speech after speech the public figures of the day proclaimed an end for all time of such pointless destruction (only to start it all over again a few decades later). Given how insulated the civilian populations of the colation countries are now, I see no such general turning away from war. The answer, I believe, must lie in the systematic dismantling of our military-industrial-political complex which has shown that it is capable of manufacturing both the pretext and means of war.
Entechly and Siouxrose you are spot on. The occupation of the Middle East will lead to planned world domination by America. I have nightmares about this.
H. Ireton, please do not blame the troops. My son was one of them until he was killed guarding an oil refinery near Mosul in 2003. I truly believe the military men and women on the ground believe(d) they would help the Iraqi people. If they mutiny, where will they go? To Iran? Syria? Kurdistan? They’ll either be shot by their own commanders or killed the moment they leave the safety of cover. We here in the states have to stop the recruitment and stop our own government from doing any more damage. Change starts with the American people. We all own the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and it’s up to us to end them.
I agree. All our hands are bloody. We have paid for this with our tax dollars and the dereliction of our duty to the Constitution as American citizens.
I just read an article regarding the Iowa Republican Straw Vote that is coming up this Saturday. Not that I think Ron Paul is the Second Coming or anything, but he IS speaking out quite sanely for our collective civil rights and against what our military is doing in Iraq.
Ron Paul has consistently won every debate poll whether at Fox, CNN or most recently at ABC, yet the MSM is trying its best to ignore the voters and him.
Here is an article that speaks to my concerns about the Diebold computerized elections and THE COUNTING OF BALLOTS:
http://rense.com/general77/stop.htm
The article mentions going to YouTube to check out “Diebold Princeton University”.
I look forward to your comments.
Here’s the Princeton University Diebold YouTube link regarding computerized voting machine hacking:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aZws98jw67g
No, I don’t put too much blame on the troops (although they are accountable for their actions). Circumstances far more powerful than they are at work here. I do realize, however, the responsibility of the leaders who are perpetuating this war. They are far far more responsible than the average son or daughter who is caught in the middle of this tragedy. There has to be organized (but civil) resistance, and people must come out of their complacency and stand up for what is right and true. The American people are far too comfortable and distracted by the media and it’s lies and so must wake up and see how the rest of the world sees us…that at least would be a start. It’s easy to point out and be aware of the problems, but solutions are harder to put in to practice.
Again, leaders must be found and promoted who are willing to not compromise with the system, and who are willing to put their butts on the line…
Not only is the surge “working”, but the Vichy Democrats will vote next month to give it “more time to show even better results.”
We have an economic draft in this country. The vast majority of young people that found themselves in Iraq didn’t join the army to kill anyone; they are not mercenaries like Blackwater, did joined up because it might provide an alternative to MacDonalds.
You wont see lawyers kids or Doctors’s kids or the children of the members of congress over there in the main. When you do, it is because they are consciously joining to kill the “enemy”.
Of course, Iraqi’s aren’t the enemy at all. They never attacked this country, they never threatened this country, they were not responsible for 911. Hussein was a colleague and partner of Rumsfeld, Bush and other mass murderers.
It is something to hear of humans in prison in Guantanamo (ever wonder what a US base is doing in Cuba) for giving money to a charity that might have ended up in Islamic fundamentalist hands or for having resisted the US bombing of Afghanistan when Bin laded is also an old friend of the Bush’s and the US state Dept. They gave him over $3 billion.
The Democrats aren’t spineless. This is not an issue of personal courage. It is a class question. The Democrats, the former slave party that became a bourgeois party and dropped nuclear bombs on Japan represent the same class forces that the Republicans do—big business.
Michael Moore used a well known statistic in his recent movie that 18,000 people die in this country each year because they can’t get the medical care they need; six 911’s every year. What have the Democrats done about this?
They cannot solve this problem as they represent the same interests that are opposed to it. They are not spineless, they are conscious representatives of their class. If they can do that why be surprised they can do what they’re doing in Iraq? remember, after the collapse of the USSR the US capitalist class talked of achieving “Full Spectrum Dominance”, this is what Iraq is about, but it not as easy as they thought.
Sure, sections of the capitalist class war with each other and obviously the oil and energy sector are closer to the Cheney/Bush camp for obvious reasons. But the Dems along with their Republican colleagues terrorize US workers every day on the job. What a joke Kennedy’s minimum wage hike is. One starves to death on such an income.
The greatest criminals in some respects are the top leaders of organized labor in this country. They have the resources and social power to change this situation. Barak Obama threatens to bomb a country willy nilly and where are the voices of the leaders of the AFL-CIO and CTW coalition? They’ll sure turn on the spigot for the Democrats in the next election though. Their own members have long ago determined that voting for one or the other matters very little when it comes to their material well being.
A big obstacle to change is the view (an understandable one) among the masses of the population that nothing can be done, that we can’t change things, so they put their heads down, work more overtime and hope it passes them by. Years of defeats and no mass movement have led to this. But it will change.
Workers don’t have to be bribed with an education or a better house loan from the moneylender to join a militia to defend their rights. Why is there a student loan market? What nonsense?
These young people in Iraq, have been thrown in to a hell hole. We will see even more serious repurcussions of it when these folks return home. Increased violence, domestic abuse, alcohol and drug addiction and the Democrats will champion their rights in the halls of congress by argument against cuts of $10 billion to their benefits and for cuts of $8 billion.
Being thrown in to such violence can change the best of us, we are like all animals, conditioned by our environment. If a child threatens our life and experience teaches us that they do in a certain situation, then we defend ourselves if necessary despite that it sickens us.
The heads of organized Labor sit atop an organization with 12 million members. They
refuse even to advance the quality of life of their own members. They refuse to organize working people in to a just war, the war against capital, a war that offers them an alternative to Iraq. I am sure the mood in the military over there is becoming more demoralizing each day; maybe something will break but it is hard to act with no force there that can provide organizational expression to the anger and sense of betrayal and disgust at it all. We should not be surprised at the brutality that the US capitalist class unleashes on the Iraqi population. This has been their history, abroad and at home.
There was an interesting article in the Financial Times yesterday, it was about the Democrats. Here’s the link.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/54b1aea4-442a-11dc-90ca-0000779fd2ac.html
The last issue of Facts For Working People which is on debt can be read here:
http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.org/
If you would like to receive this publication in pdf file every six weeks or so contact:
erin@bringdownbush.org
Richard
aactivist@igc.org
To Richard Mellor:
Thank you very much for your insightful perspective and the links. I appreciate it.
Now onto MSNBC to watch Keith Olbermann and the Democratic Presidential candidates perform their play for us. Every person has their part.
Absinthe
Bush added in his State of the Onion address: “We need a surge.”
The world replied: “No, -it’s just that *you* need surgery!”
_____________________
“Let freedom reign,” said Bush.
Janis Joplin: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”
“Success!” says Bushbaby.
“Suck cess!!” say the Iraqi people.
“Mission Accomplished” says the raving puppet President.
“Mission FUBAR!” says all the world and his dog.
“Shock and Awe!” boasts Ronald Dumsfeld.
“Shocking and Awful !!” -replies God.
“We’ll continue slaughtering you damned Iraqis until morale improves” say US commanders.
“You’ll get yours yet…” retort Iraqi defenders of their homeland.
Security Report by General David Petraeus, -(come September 2007):
“All targets met,
All Iraqis satisfied,
All systems fully operational,
All military personnel keen and well motivated,
All pigs fed and ready to fly…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Daily impeachment hygiene prevents Presi-dental truth decay.”
(U-C-D)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathyodat asks:
“What kind of people are we raising our children to be?”
-Dear Kath, a report from University of Michigan: http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/tv.htm
“Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed.”
“An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18. Two-thirds of all programming contains violence. Programs designed for children more often contain violence than adult TV.
“Most violent acts go unpunished on TV and are often accompanied by humor. The consequences of human suffering and loss are rarely depicted. Many shows glamorize violence. TV often promotes violent acts as a fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences.
“Even in G-rated, animated movies and DVDs, violence is common—often as a way for the good characters to solve their problems.
Every single U.S. animated feature film produced between 1937 and 1999 contained violence, and the amount of violence with intent to injure has increased over the years.
“Even “good guys” beating up “bad guys” gives a message that violence is normal and okay. Many children will try to be like their “good guy” heroes in their play.
Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV.
Repeated exposure to TV violence makes children less sensitive toward its effects on victims and the human suffering it causes.
“Viewing TV violence reduces inhibitions and leads to more aggressive behavior.
Watching television violence can have long-term effects.
A 15-year-long study by University of Michigan researchers found that the link between childhood TV-violence viewing and aggressive and violent behavior persists into adulthood.
A 17-year-long study found that teenaged boys who grew up watching more TV each day are more likely to commit acts of violence than those who watched less.”
———————
Quotes from a few typical US gun owners: http://www.armedamerica.org/
Anthony: “I own a gun because I’m a f*ckin’ American and a Marine. It’s my God-given right.”
God: “Oh dear, I slipped up there didn’t I!”
Stan: “I think everybody should have a gun. It levels the playing field.”
U-C-D: “We use a lawn mower, but hey…”
Drew: “Owning a firearm brings me some sort of balance. When I am angry at the world I find relief in dropping a clip into the air.”
The world: “When I am angry at Drew, I will drop him into the air…”
Joe: “The first time I was introduced to guns was when I was 5 years old… I remember my dad shooting a ringneck pheasant and a rabbit… as a little guy, that made a great impression on me.”
The rabbit: “~ Made quite an impression on me too Joe.”
Fleming: “I think, in a way, a gun, if it’s used properly, can be a tool to teach good citizenship.”
(Fleming’s wife Jean): “I hate guns. Don’t get me started.”
~ Thank you at least Jean.
I know that we would like to see these war criminals impeached, but realistically it is not going to happen, because the votes are not there. Whine all you want about the Democrats, but the truth is they are barely in control of both houses and are in no position to get a “Guilty” vote on any impeachment articles. Democrats may be less than we wish for, but far better than the Republicans who still support this insane war with a few exceptions, e.g., Ron Paul. Democrats are changing things despite GOP opposition. Does any Progressive wish that the GOP won the last election?
This is a mess because people were stupid enough to vote for Bush and Cheney in the first place, and stupid enough to let them steal the election too. I think that if the U.S. were winning this occupation, people would be supporting Bush even if he killed millions of innocent Iraqis. Look at our violent history with regard to: Indians, Mexicans, Hiroshima, Vietnam, etc. Bush still has a third of the country behind him! When will we ever learn?
I co-wrote this with a friend during the last election cycle in response to many of my co-workers who said they would “hold their nose” and vote for kerry.
It is the same this time.
Should workers and Activists Vote for Kerry?
By John Reimann and Richard Mellor
October 04
The pressure is on to vote for Kerry. And there is no denying that the Bush/Cheney ticket present real horrors. First and foremost is their bloody invasion of Iraq and their intent to steal everything in sight in that country. But even beyond that, there is Bush’s close ties with the Christian fundamentalist far right here, along with the influence of the lunatic neo-conservatives. Both of these forces have developed an ideology that even major strategists of the capitalist class abhor because they are so extreme as to destabilize the world. As Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards pointed out, Cheney as a member of the House of Representatives even went so far as to vote against the Meals-on-Wheels program, Head Start, the freeing of Nelson Mandela, and making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. And bear in mind, this is probably the most influential vice president in recent history.
As usual, the entire union leadership is campaigning for Kerry and the Democrats. In addition, figures such as radical filmmaker Michael Moore, radical intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Global Exchange activist Medea Benjamin are out there campaigning for Kerry/Edwards. Nor is it surprising that a large layer of young people and workers are doing the same, or at least planning to vote for the Democrats.
“Lesser Evil”
“It is not true that there is no difference between these two”, the argument goes. “Bush and Cheney are so extreme and so evil that we have to get them out of office. Let’s help elect the Democrats, and then we’ll fight them for the things we need and want.” It is understandable why people would feel this way.
There is, of course, is a degree of truth to the argument that Bush is “worse” than Kerry. But what does this difference consist of?
The main difference consists of the following: As we explained in our analysis of the first presidential debate (“Debate 2004” by Sean O’Torain on http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com, the difference is over how US capitalism can best rule the world. Bush represents the view of some of the more crude elements within that class, including the oil industry. The US with its immense military superiority, does not need to rely on any allies. It can simply crush any opposition that dares raise its head, regardless of who likes or dislikes it. Kerry, on the other hand, represents the view of a more far-sighted wing of US capitalism that world stability and alliances are necessary in order to assure global profiteering. They believe that the best way to ensure world domination by US capitalism is in conjunction with their allies.
How Reforms Have Been Won
“Yes, yes, that is true,” some will respond, “but still, one of the two will be elected, and it will be easier to win some reforms under Kerry than under Bush.” When looking at the record, though, there is little evidence for this. It was under Nixon that some of the major reforms were passed, including Medicare. These were passed because there was a huge uprising in the streets (the Vietnam War protests), and US capitalism had to do something to prevent the dissatisfaction from spreading. They were pursuing a policy of “guns and butter” (as LBJ put it).
The great labor advances of the 1930s were not won by counting on President Roosevelt. In fact, in those instances where the labor movement relied on Roosevelt (such as in the “Little Steel” organizing drive) the movement was utterly crushed. The same was the case during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s; the reforms that were won were won on the streets.
In other words, nothing has ever been won by electing one representative of capitalism over another.
Beyond Mere Protests
Some will still argue that we should vote for Kerry but not rely on him, that we should vote for him while also continuing our protests. “They are not mutually exclusive,” they will argue. But this really goes to the heart of the matter. US capitalism has shown that it is not going to bend to mere protests. This was most clear in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, but the same has been true over and over. On the economic sphere, there were enormous protests against the signing of NAFTA; these went ignored. The labor movement has mounted protest after protest (some masquerading as strikes), yet wages and benefits continue to be slashed.
What must be built is an independent movement of the working class that actually starts to challenge the capitalist class for power over our lives. As revolutionary socialists, we believe that ultimately this challenge must be resolved by the elimination of capitalism and the building of a socialist society. But matters are not so black and white as this at present. A serious strike, which physically shuts down production through mass pickets and occupation of the work place is also a challenge for a certain degree of power. When tens of thousands shut down San Francisco on the first day of the US invasion of Iraq, this was a similar challenge.
Today, capitalism is on the offensive and everywhere the working class is being driven backwards. The key task is reversing this, and this can only be done by building an independent movement based on the working class, one which does not feel bound by corporate legality. This should be the starting point, not what one does in the polling place on an election day. How one votes should be determined by what one does the rest of the year.
History of Movement
History shows that it is not possible to build such a movement and then go out and vote for the corporate politicians. This is so because if a political activist is planning to vote for them, then they will have to advocate that others do the same; in other words, campaign for them.
Consider a few cases:
At one point the Civil Rights movement was forced to conclude that it needed to have a presence in politics, rather than just protest what others were doing. One of the things that came out of this conclusion was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). This was sort of a hybrid, a mixed bag, partly oriented towards the Democrats and partly towards political independence. When it could not find a way to build an independent party, and when the movement as a whole could not find this, then this movement got sucked into Democratic politics. Thus the political careers of such former civil rights workers as John Louis and Julian Bond. What happened was that the movement was demobilized, taken out of the streets and into the backrooms of politicians, where it was sold out and died.
It is a similar story with the labor movement today. Along with trying to maintain “good relations” with the employers, the union leadership is intent on not going any further than the liberal wing of the Democrats will accept. This is why it is steadily being driven backwards. It is also part of the reason why the Democrats are steadily moving further to the right. They know that the union leadership will ensure that they unions will back them no matter what.
Workers’ Representatives
These histories show that part of building an independent movement must include running candidates outside of the Democratic party “workers’ representatives” and the building of a mass workers’ political party. If this is not the strategy, then the movement will get lured over and over again back to the Democrats, since there will be no alternative to this. It is not possible to build this alternative while planning to vote Democrat, though.
Organize!
Some will say, “okay, when the alternative comes along, then I’ll support it, but until then I’ll vote Democrat.” But the point is that the alternative will not just “come along”, it must be fought for and organized. The argument of voting for the Democrats, in other words, is really based on the acceptance of things as they are. It is based on failing to commit to organizing and struggling.
If a person limits their political “activity” to casting a ballot once every few years, then there is little reason not to vote for the lesser evil. However, the very best that that person can argue is that they will be slowing down the rate at which we are all driven over the cliff. What we argue is that we must reverse the direction. In order to do this, we must organize an independent workers’ movement. This cannot be done while planning to vote for the politicians of big business.
The Right to Vote
This does not mean that the right to vote is unimportant. It is no accident that whenever a military coup takes over, or when the capitalist class decides it is necessary and possible to deliver a crushing blow to the working class, they put in power a dictatorship one of whose first acts is to eliminate the right to vote. This is because often in those situations workers are electing or about to elect real workers’ leaders.
In this country, we saw the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60s, in which thousands off people made huge sacrifices, including sacrificing their lives in some cases, in part for the right to vote. We also saw what happened in the last presidential election, which was stolen by the Bush family, based on fraudulent voting counts and the denial of the right to vote to thousands. As socialists, we believe the working class movement must defend the right to vote and oppose all restrictions as well as other undemocratic procedures. This includes the Electoral College, as well as the use of touch screen voting machines with no paper record. This is too open to fraud.
In the future these issues will become more important, when real workers’ representatives are running for public office.
November 2
As already explained, we do not believe that which representative of Corporate America gets elected on Nov. 2 will have a major affect on what happens in the US or globally. Also, as explained, we think that what activists do the rest of the time is what is most important, and that how one votes should flow from this. However, there is still the secondary question of whose name to put on a scrap of paper (or a computer screen, nowadays). In California, there is the small “Peace and Freedom Party” which is an openly anti-capitalist party. This party is running Leonard Peltier for president. (Peltier is serving a life sentence in connection with a shoot out with the police. He was a leader of the American Indian Movement AIM.) We recommend voting for him in California, as a means of registering a vote against the two major capitalist parties.
In many other states, Ralph Nader is likely to be on the ballot. However, Nader is running on the far-right, racist and nationalist Reform Party ticket. This is the party of the right wing bigot, Patrick Buchanan. There is no way that a socialist or anti-capitalist can give any vote to a candidate associated with this party. This is true despite the fact that Nader’s campaign is in general oriented to the “left”. But every vote for him will also strengthen the Reform Party. In some states, there may be other left wing candidates on the ballot. Where there are not, we recommend either writing in some name such as Eugene Debs or Fred Hampton, or else casting a blank ballot.
We believe that this approach would be the most in keeping with the struggle for an independent workers movement and a real workers’ political party.
Notes on WWI-
read John Mosier’s “The Myth of the Great War”.
The Brits and French deluded themselves as to casualties. As they almost always lost the battles (and had to retreat), they really didn’t know German losses. To convince themselves and their governments that they were winning they highballed (wishful thinking) German casualty figures.
The Allies (Brits were worse than the French) convinced themselves that Germany was losing as many or more men than they were and was running out of men.
One more battle then, one more big push, would make the German army crumble. Thus the never-ending series of catatrophic failures with horrendous losses of real men, real lives.
The Somme 1916 epitomizes the stupidity and butchery.
The Allies were inept in strategy and tactics and that didn’t help, either.
But it was all wrong. If it hadn’t been for American intervention the Allies would have deluded themselves into defeat.
Deluding oneself and others to give the appearance of progress and success. Now where else have I heard that?
Richard Mellor: Great job! Your analysis is right up there with David Michael Green! Sure convinced me!
So the point about casuality figures that I forgot to make is this, and others have pointed it out.
The Iraqi insurgency, going by the numbers, has been wiped out several times over.
So what is the point of “today 15 insurgents were killed in such-and-such city in blah-blah province”?
It’s only the appearance of progress (military progress, that of defeating the enemy forces).
Just one more push, one more surge, and we’ll get them!
Wait till the September Report by the General who wants to continue his career. The msm will carefully repeat each and every false report and lie that Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick can put out there. I am sure the credibility of these outstanding political leaders will carry the day.
‘The continued honorable acts of the military and the contractors will just underscore the brilliance of operation Iraqi freedom.’
It is not an all volunteer military. It is a STANDING PROFESSIONAL ARMY with MERCENARIES.
The only reason Shrub had the surge is so he could move mass men, machine and supplies in preparation for the Iran Oil grab .
Stay tuned.
Richard Mellor:
nice!! thanks
woke up this morning wondering about the teamsters..
in the 60’s and early 70’s the teamsters could shut down the us of a,
and most probably the world..
what happened??
they still alive??
ken
Thank you Richard Mellor for analysis and references. Please stay with us.
cl8on in Tucson
Bush wants to bomb Iran and Syria, just as Nixon did Cambodia and Laos. Unlike Nixon, Bush, wants and expects Congress and Media support. Like Nixon, he may go it alone, subterfuge or not, and face the same personal failure.
It doesn’t take a huge intellectual to understand that the wars in the Middle East go on forever. The Shea Moslems [IRAN (Persia)] and the Sunni Moslems have been fighting since the beginning of time almost. It is amazing to me that the United States could have so many egregious dunces playing intelligence in the State Department and the Pentagon.
The Shea Moslems, I am certain, thank the U.S. Right Wing EXTREME for opening up this bowl of maggots since the Shea Moslems also would like to rule Baghdad and the World. The United States has given the Shea Moslems a chance at what they have wanted for thousands of years. When the Bush administration say they couldn’t have known, it is overwhelmingly disingenuous, because these ongoing warring tribes are a matter of history and very few people that know anything do not know.
Now, since the Shea Moslems want to rule Baghdad, and the United States, who say they are Christian, in their greed want to rule Baghdad, who do you think will succeed?
After ALL THE PEOPLE, much less the military, are dead, on a — 1 for 1 basis — in the United States, there will still be plenty of Moslems to rule Baghdad, possibly Shea Moslems. The United States controlling Iraq for the long-term is an endeavor in futility and stupendous ignorance. The British tried it and failed and collapsed the British Empire between 1919 and 1945, and if the United States continues down the same road will meet the same end.
The United States should pull out of Iraq. The protection of our ally Israel is of utmost importance, especially now. The United States MUST do all possible to support Israel from the humongous danger the United States has caused, since Israel is hated by both Sunni Moslems and Shea Moslems, as well as other Moslems in the region, like the Sunni Moslems of Syria. The United States through its greedy bungling has unbalanced the power between the Shea Moslems and Sunni Moslems who have always hated each other when it comes to power. The Sunni Moslems were a minority elite group in Iraq and the Shea Moslems were the Common Population; a power set-up that worked well for balancing the power against the Shea Moslems and the minority Common Population Kurds. ALL the Shea Moslems will die before they ever allow power to go back the way it was and the Kurds did not benefit from Sunni Moslems being in power.
People who can’t see that the United States fighting on BOTH sides against the Shea Moslems and the Sunni Moslems in Iraq are ignorant of history to the Nth degree. The United States doesn’t have the population or the money to be able to sustain a Moslem War.
IRAN Population = Majority Shea Moslems, Minority Kurds (Kurdistan)
IRAQ Population = Minority Sunni Moslems - Majority Shea Moslems & Minority Kurds (Kurdistan)
SYRIA Population = Majority Sunni Moslems
Saudia Arabia Population = Majority Sunni Moslems
Turkey Population = Majority Turkish Moslems & a minority of Kurds (Kurdistan)
The Kurds want their country (Kurdistan) back. It stands to reason that the Kurds in Iraq will unite with the Kurds in Iran and the Kurds in Turkey to reform Kurdistan because the United States has bogged itself down and can’t do anything about it. One can’t blame the Kurds for wanting their country back.
The United States only alternative is to withdraw from conquering Iraq. The more they mess the worse it is getting. Since the U.S. is fighting on BOTH sides, how could it matter, the war will go on no matter what. The United States should find some intelligence and bring the troops home.
If the United States decides to bomb Iran into oblivion, it will make the Kurds, who have been kicked out of their country, happy; because it will then be easy for them to get their country back, their enemy is gone.
The OIL isn’t worth it, forget the OIL, the United States can’t win anything in Iraq, but it is the United States’ duty to protect Israel, our ally, from the Shea Moslems and Sunni Moslems that the United States has unleashed, since both despise Israel. The United States should withdraw to Israel and let the chips fall where they may. The best the United States can do now is protect Israel. At least there is honor in protecting Israel. There is no honor, what so ever, in attacking a country for their resources alone, and that is what this United States Right Wing EXTREME Bush administration has done with their hijacked power.
cyon August 7th, 2007 4:57 pm
Agreed on the US casualty diff’s - a contrast some have pointed out w/Vietnam too - though it remains useful to put declarations of imminent victory in a wider context of the folly and deceptions of leaders, as Cockburn does. And the failure of this victory initiative was as predictable and predicted as the greater debacle of the whole lying invasion.
Take apart the complex - sure, the ongoing problem and frustrated topic on this website being how…
kucinich
Rush Limbough is right – American people do not like to loose. And the politicians are just trying to live up to the expectations of the American people, and so are the generals and the military contractors.
If I may so humbly add some thoughts as to why an independent working class party is becoming increasingly possible.
New methods of production are setting new conditions. Electronics applied to production not only reduces the number of workers needed on the shop floor, it eliminates entire categories of jobs and layers of work in production and in the management, design, communication and transportation associated with production. With this labor-replacing technology, comes the beginning of the end of value.
The immediate effect is the decline in the rate of profit in production. Productive capitalists make their profit off the labor of the workers; the lower the proportion of labor in the production process, the lower the rate of profit.
These are the objective facts that propel our domestic and foreign policy.
These same objective facts, open up new possibilities for how progressives carry out their tasks. The ties that bind the working class economically to its class enemy are being broken. The ties that bind them ideologically are weakening. Many people have lost a sense of direction. Some are looking for answers. Breaks in the continuity of any economic or political process mean it is possible for new ways of thinking to take root. An entirely new intellectual framework for responding to those changes becomes possible.
Nothing is truly inevitable, and no outcome is assured. It is the human mind and the human will that make the difference.
This is a great article, and I thank Cockburn for his courage to bring it. You can see why Cheney is itching to attack Iran. Essentially we are already waging a war through intermediaries, but Iran is remote from the conflict, as are we. That pisses Cheney off, only the US should be a peaceful homeland, bringing terror to others, never anyone else. He wants blood and death and children crying in Iran, oh so much.
In summary, we’re extending the death and terror until a situation arises to our liking. Utter callousness, utter cold-bloodedness. The USA is truly a horrible country.
aymon as usual puts it in the perfect prose ! You are absolutely right …
Vietnam…
it is obvious from day one, that everything that comes out of the mouths of these assholes is a lie. that 30% of americans still believe their bullshit is very telling.
I have the sickening feeling that “We the people” are the enablers.
AYMON: Thank you for the intelligent commentary. It makes me wonder if the military top brass have such infallible faith in their explosive weapons (while speaking of a Christian god) that in spite of all evidence of NO progress, they can still “surge” on. Here in “the homeland” as first New Orleans sinks, then a major bridge collapses, and let us not forget the tornado outbreaks and Florida’s vicious hurricanes (we are not approaching peak season)… no $ for domestic infrastructure as the hubris of warriors fights on, a scene straight out of mythology intended to expose the vulnerability of arrogance coupled with historical myopia.
There is an impeachment protest scheduled for September 15 in D.C. I am putting out to the CD forum the initiative to establish state to state caravans? Any interest?
oops.. should read we are NOW approaching…
Just one little point -
Remember the Soviet Union?
Remember their 10 year war in Afghanistan?
They couldn’t “win” against the poorest nation on earth.
Neither will we “win” against “terror”.
Winning is what happens in a GAME.
War is not a game.
We will continue to pour money, lives, resources, and our souls into this pit, just like the Soviets did.
They virtually bankrupted their economy - leading to domestic crises they couldn’t handle.
The fall of the Soviet Union had less to do with Ronny Reagan and more with disaster occurring from within.
Just a lesson…
For those interested in a psychological analysis of warmongering, I have recently completed a 10-minute online video entitled “Resisting the Drums of War.” It examines how the Bush administration has promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting five core concerns that often govern our lives–concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Looking ahead, the continuing occupation of Iraq–or an attack on Iran–will likely be sold to us in much the same way. The video examines these warmongering appeals and how to counter them. It’s available for viewing HERE.
Corvo - I love your expression “Vichy Democrats”! It will be my next over-used term in conversation!
General Petraeus will predictably give a positive spin to all of this in his official report and ultimately ask for more time. Iraq will totally fail in all benchmarks related to Shia-Sunnis reconciliation. The main point of the Iraq Study Group was that there was no military solution to the problems confronting Iraq. A political solution is needed, namely reconciliation. And that is not happening.
Nothing is more indicative of this impasse than our recruiting Shia Muslims for the new governments police and army and then find out that many of them are militia members. Anderson Cooper did a special report on the death squads going out at night in Iraqi police or army uniforms into Sunnis communities. The next morning, Sunnis bodies are laid out at the same sites day after day. Similarly, the Sunnis cooperation sounds like the same thing, with death squads going out at night to murder Shia Muslims.
My bottom line is that they Sunnis and Shia Muslims have NEVER lived in peace together with the exception of Saddam’s brutal suppression of the Shia majority in Iraq. The sectarian war has been going on for hundreds of years. Who are we to expect that we can march in and in a few years change the government to democracy with Sunnis and Shia doing something they have never done before, live together peacefully?
A partition of Iraq needs to happen and is in fact happening with Sunnis and Shia migrating back to their traditional tribal regions for safety.
The biggest insanity of the Surge needs to stop, picking a fight with BOTH Sunnis and Shia. Bush keeps pointing to Iran as fueling the Iraqi “insurgency”. Once again he is lying, as the main insurgency involves Sunnis, with the Shia militias protecting their communities from incessant Sunnis attack and making sure there is payback against the Sunnis. That is not the same thing as the real insurgency, Bath Party ex-Saddam regime thugs doing what they have always done, murder people. But the truth has never slowed Dubya down, especially as Iran has OIL FIELDS just like Iraq.
And in the meantime Osama and the Al Qaeda leadership have had a 2-3 year coffee break in W. Pakistan to regroup and probably plan the next 9/11.
A GENERAL STRIKE HAS BEEN PROPOSED FOR SEPTEMBER 11, 2007!
I saw it at www.smirkingchimp.com in one of today’s (8/8/2007)articles.
Al Qaeda continues to be a powerful ally in the US war of terror. The surge includes the built in concept of Al Qaeda, so that military actions can get done easier. Resistance can be placated and control restored on piles of bodies, including women and children as long as they “were terrorists anyway.” The MSM, similarly, but less violently, issues on command, a grainy video of threats from an imaginary kerchiefed nemesis, so that the general populace can be similiary placated and controlled when necessary. If only the concept of a boogeyman isn’t enough to get the job done, then other utilities are resourced.
My 6/8 year plan is: next election vote anyone but the incumbent, whoever (repub,dem,indy,green) has the best chance to unseat. 2 years later the same, 2 years later the same, etc, etc. Until I see MY employees doing a good job. Reason why: My BRAND NEW (Dem) Congressman has shown he does not see investigation toward impeachment as “a good option” since he hasn’t signed onto anything but “fluff”. Plus, it’s time for the old Senators to go out to pasture, also.
Are you sure the surge is failing? I mean, the goal is to kill a lot of people and destroy the substance and the will of a large portion of the Iraqi population, and on that the US is succeeding. The US is also proving once again that it can do whatever it wants, the more atrocious the better, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, not activists in the US, not the UN, not dissenting US officials, and certainly not the Iraqi people, who are being decimated. All the US military wants to do is slaughter and immiserate and they are successfully doing that. The Iraqi people may not have been dissuaded from resenting the US, but they are nowhere near throwing out the evil US troops nor dismantling the gargantuan military bases that the US has now put there.
THIS ISN’T A WAR! Please quit falling into the trap of calling it one.
It is a criminal act- an unprovoked attack with lies for justifcation, continued lies to cover up the crime, and an illegal occupation to hold down the Iraqi people and impose a puppet regime.
MarthaA, you write, “The protection of our ally Israel is of utmost importance, especially now. The United States MUST do all possible to support Israel from the humongous danger the United States has caused.”
Why, in your view, is “The protection of our ally Israel . . . of utmost importance”? More important than the protection of the US? Of those within Iraq whom we’ve left vulnerable? Does our “ally Israel” itself bear no responsibility for the current havoc in the Middle East?