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TechnoratiIn a couple days, Americans will be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush's brilliant so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq.
There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi's "need to do more" to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.
He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki's "defining moment" attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance-a statistical aberration.
And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq.
Just to keep our sanity and clarity, it would be good to listen to another general, Lt. General (ret.) William E. Odom, who on April 2 testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Gen. Odom told the committee that the last time he had testified about Iraq was in January of 2007. He had been asked about the "surge". He said, "Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims."
Gen. Odom said, "Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province. More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
Odom went on to say, "No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities."
As for the Bush claim that Sunni Muslims in western Iraq and Fallujah were now siding with the US (the government never mentions that they are being handsomely paid to do so), Odom said,
"Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime."
Then Odom let fly a real bomb. "As an aside," he told the committee, in a statement that you won't read in your daily paper or hear on the TV news, "it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran."
Odom said America was buying Sunni backing in just one region for $250,000 a day, and he warned, "we don't own these people, we rent them."
Saying the Bush administration's argument that it could build a stable democratic government by working with local strongmen in Iraq, he challenged the senators to "Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. "
The general's conclusion: "We face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy."
Odom instead called for immediate withdrawal, "rapidly but in good order." He said, "Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq."
He said if Bush and Cheney would simply stop threatening "regime change" by force as a policy, and in specific if it stopped threatening Iran, it would lead Iran to reduce its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and to change its policy toward Iraq, too. The US "needs to make Iran feel more secure," he said.
Odom took the occasion to debunk arguments against early and rapid withdrawal. To those who say the US needs to continue to train Iraqi forces, he said, "Training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
To those who warn of chaos following a US withdrawal, he recalled the warnings of a "domino" effect if the US left Vietnam, he said, "the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not." He added, "The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume."
Finally he said those opposed to withdrawal warn it would create regional instability, but countered, " This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards.
Odom concluded, "I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq."
Congress, and the two candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, both of whom are hedging their way towards a continued military presence for years in Iraq, should listen to this general, and not the one whom the recently resigned Central Commander, Admiral William Fallon, called an "ass-licking little chickenshit," Gen. Petraeus.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
51 Comments so far
Show AllHector (and others):
Regarind just the Empire part of "imperial warrior":
Odom's book on empire is called "America's Inadvertent Empire."
He has written articles also, arguing along the lines of the myth (repeated by Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney) that America has no intention of expanding an empire. Other neocons have said empire was thrust upon us, so now we should press our advantage (as the sole superpower standing after the fall of the Soviet Union) and promote democracy, economic development and trade, blahblahblah.
Keven Zeese at Counterpunch writes in the article below about how Odom is in favor of Empire but against the war:
http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese01252006.html
Conservative Charles Krauthammer argues the same kind of line as Odom: Let's embrace and promote the sole-superpower model, the "Unipolar" moment or era. He wrote an essay on the Unipolar moment in the '90's, and another available online called "the unipolar moment revisited" (13 pages, I think):
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/krauthammer.pdf
The other choice, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was to reduce military spending after the Cold War, to have a "peace dividend," increase spending on social programs, health care, education, (renewable energy?) etc., and to work toward a model of a multipolar world of international diplomacy and cooperation. The UN-hating neocons would have none of that, and pressed for increased military spending. If you have power, increase your power, and tell the folks you'll always do so responsibly, with people's best interests at heart. Many will believe you.
There is another viewpoint from folks like Howard Zinn and others like David Ray Griffin, that at least since the Spanish-American or Mexican-American war, we have been an intentional and non-benign empire, not an accidental or inadvertent-but-benign one.
You know the drill. We liberate everybody with our military-economic empire; sometimes we do so through military actions for "regime change"; sometimes we give lots of money to the candidates we want elected in other countries, and thereby manipulate elections. Sometimes we stage a coup (Iran, Guatamala, Chile, etc.) and overthrow democratically elected governments. Sometimes we dump our subsidized grain on small countries whose economy is agriculture-based, we ruin their economies, and then we can exploit them for cheap labor; sometimes we smear efforts at land reform, calling people socialists and commies, and we fund contras who kill people living out "liberation theology." Sometimes we have covert proxy-wars, as in Afghanistan (when at first we claimed not to be funding Islamic groups fighting the Soviets there).
The press for global empire uses whatever means necessary, and advances on many fronts.
See "The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: A Political, Economic, Religious Statement" edited by David Ray Griffin. Nice treatment of American Empire as non-accidental and non-benign.
See also Howard Zinn's comic book, "A People's History of American Empire."
Zinn has other books that cover some of the same material, and has a recent article at TomDispatch about what the classroom didn't teach him about American Empire, which is a very short and concise treatment:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174913/howard_zinn_the_end_of_empire_
Tsunami,
Iran's trading with and visiting a neighboring country is not the same as 'hegemony'. That is normal, mutually beneficial state to state relations - which Iran appears to be cultivating throughout the Gulf despite the US presence in Iraq and its bellicose threats against Teheran. While - Iran may have benefited from the destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime, the continued chaos is not in its security, trade or diplomatic interests. A genuine Iraqi initiated 'regime change' instead of this Washington-Tel Aviv orchestrated meat-grinder on the Euphrates would have been far better for Iran because strong bilateral trade would have created a major block to the US and Israel's ambitions. Anyway, Iran as a 'beneficiary' of the American destruction of Iraq is hardly in the same league with the inflamed bellicosity of Israel and its starvation blockade of Gaza and massive bombing of civilians and infrastructure in Lebanon.
What I meant by Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and other opponents of US imperial policy having 'benefited' from Bush's quagmire in Iraq is that now the US military is not in a position to attack those countries as they challenge US hegemony in their regions and establish or maintain their own independent foreign and domestic policies and the US' surrogate, like Colombia, runs the risk of becoming isolated in the region. That is what the American brass find alarming - as they understand, better than the Neo-Con Israeli agents in the Administration and policy making institutions, that the basis of US global power is being undermined by the war in Iraq and the domestic economy is greatly weakened. Besides, America's imperial competitors in Europe and Asia are taking advantage of this breech in US power to deepen trade relations with these countries signing fat contracts which would have been unthinkable 7 years ago.
On the other hand, Israel's eternal need, as a militarist colonial state, for the US to destroy its real and potential opponents, like Iraq and Iran is the main (but not the only) force behind the invasion and continued occupation. That is why the US is stuck in Iraq with the American politicians afraid to do anything to upset the 'Lobby' - to the dismay of General Odom, et al.
The U.S. military armed the Sunnis to fight Al Qaida in Iraq and now they have armed one side in a civil war. The Sunnis will always want to get back in power and the opposition will always keep them from doing that. The surge only produced the illusion of peace as long as we had more and more troops to create that temporary illusion. We will never "win" in any sense of the word. We went there for WMD, even though Bush knew there were none. Then they said we were there to liberate them, even though they never asked us to do that. The only thing Bush managed to liberate is Iraqi oil for his rich friends.
RE: to Robinea:
**Mr. Tsunami,
Where is the historic evidence that Iran has a hegemonic expansionist policy towards its neighbors?**
So you believe that's the only way a country can benefit.
**No. Iran and Syrian and Venezuela and Ecuador and Cuba…have benefit from the US imperial war machine being tied down by the heroic Iraqi resistance which has prevented Bush from expanding his great war.**
There, you answered your own question.
When Ahmedinejad visited Iraq, he was greeted with the red carpet. He went anywhere without 100 soldiers surrounding him, without choppers whirling above him. Bush took out Iran's #1 enemy,Saddam Hussein. But when Bush, or Cheney, or Rice....visits Iraq, They travel by darkness of night,to some fortified bunker, and leave within hours.
Mr. Tsunami,
Where is the historic evidence that Iran has a hegemonic expansionist policy towards its neighbors? Has Iran really benefited from the chaos and the stationing of hundreds of thousands of foreign imperial troops on both its borders - Iraq and Afghanistan? Has it benefited from the hundreds of cross border attacks and sabotage from 'separatist' groups sheltered by the US and Pakistan? Lets go beyond the selected sound bites from Iran's President or from its religious leaders and look at its diplomatic policies. Iran, whatever you may think of its internal political system, has not invaded another country for hundreds of years. Its hegemonic ambitions, if they exist have to do with trade and religious influence and not with military conquest. Iran was invaded by Iraq in the 1980's and not the other way around.
No. Iran and Syrian and Venezuela and Ecuador and Cuba...have benefit from the US imperial war machine being tied down by the heroic Iraqi resistance which has prevented Bush from expanding his great war (remember Bush's list of 60 offending nations?). And the US' imperial competitors (China among others) are reaping enormous benefits in terms of trade and strategic contracts while the US is quagmired in Iraq - serving the regional interests of the Israeli militarist state.
That is why General Odom, General Zinni and many other traditional imperialists are so alarmed at Bush's Iraq adventure which is breaking the imperial war machine with little material benefits from the pillage and conquest of Iraq and increasingly defiant, former client states.
Maine-ah wrote:
**Al Qaeda is a CIA front in conjunction with the dark lord Cheney and his neocon minions. To have power in this world you have to have an "enemy" even if you have to create it yourself. Be afraid, be very afraid!**
Amen!
That's what happened with Afghanistan,Iraq, and now, Iran.
When we supported Bin Laden in Afghanistan, his group was called Mujahedeen. When we turned against him, we called the group Al-Qaeda.
Robinea said:
**Only one country has benefited from the destruction of Iraq and the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US occupation troops there…Israel. Sorry to be so blunt - but serving the hegemonic interests of a thoroughly militaristic Israel has undermined the our republic domestically - in terms of our society's needs, our economy and our civilian rights**
One more country has benefited...Iran. Otherwise, you are exactly. After all, Israel was the primary Bush selected Iraq as the place to PREVENT future terror attacks on the USA.
NO MORE BLOOD FOR BUSH... IMPEACH THE VAMPIRES!
Nice posts folks.
Hi ThadStone--That Kennan quote was from early 1948, thus the differing numbers from today. I used to provide a copy of that whole, once Top Secret, policy planning paper to students so they could better understand the motivations of the Cold War and the US Empire's actions. Later in the course I would also provide copies of the Operation Northwoods planning papers. These and a few others, like the Pentagon Papers, were key components in teaching students the true nature of the US Government, There are a few other history teachers that frequent CommonDreams, and I hope they would have the courage to use these sorts of primary documents in their classrooms. In my experience, priciples and school boards have a hard time arguing against the use of primary docs and are often ignorant of their existence.
It's easy to cage and defuse one Winston Smith; it's much harder to do the same to thousands. The US Empire is reeling and wheezing, while its financial core is rotting and certain realities like the energy crisis cannot be hidden by the propaganda media machine. The Great Decline won't occur overnight, but it is happening now as I type, and we all have front row seats.
Did General Odum say, "Our Vice President and some U.S. Senators are aligning themselves with Al Qaeda to attack Iran."
Did V.P. Cheney play with the security of the United States on September 11, 2001. Did he have Generals and Senators that were willing to use Al Qaeda to mount an attack in the United States? Or, did he have allies in Saudi Arabia that were willing to Demolish World Trade Center #7 and the Twin Towers in case the two jets were not enough?
To think that the Mass Media did not report on General Odum´s presentation and is willing to go along with the government´s positions from 9/11 to the Invasion of Iraq and to deny the American People the knowledge that the Sunnis were linked to Al Qaeda and that the Sunnis are supported and armed by Saudi Arabia and that they have killed more Americans than any group. That, to me, is a co conspirator in the murder of innocent civilians in the United States, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The "Evil" has been planned for us is in the "Detention Centers" being constructed by Kellog, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
It is time for all the fired: Generals, Admirals, FBI Agents, CIA Agents,U.S. Attorneys to come forward and lead this nation out of the abyss that The Neo-Conservative Movement has put us in !!!!!!
Hector et al
Please read my post more carefully. General Odom is an imperial warrior. As such, he is concerned about maintaining the US Empire as it has evolved to cover more than just the Middle East...and indeed maintaining areas much closer, more strategically important and lucrative to the imperial interests than Iraq and Israel. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was heavily pushed by Israel's agents in the US - whether we speak of the AIPAC, the propagandists or the agents directly within the decision making apparatus (try the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon) of this Administrations, has undermined the capacity of the US to maintain the greater Empire and meet new military challenges. An Israel-centric foreign policy directing a huge proportion of the US military to the Middle East benefits Israel - as a colonial-militarist state with regional hegemonic ambitions. But it has proven bad for the US as an imperial power. In other words. General Odom is no democrat.
While I would welcome the demise of the US Empire - I weep at the cost in terms of the precious lives of Iraqis and others and I fear that the declining giant will turn on its own people as internal contradictions become more acute and painful. Would that we had a genuine class-based mass movement in our country to counter the inevitable fascistic trends of our decline.
Thank You Greg Bacon; Is that not the second off-the hook post I've seen by you?
ThankYou. Yeah, the WolfowitzPerlemanKristol cabal made the war happen.
American and Arab blood knee deep while these filth laugh....and they should because they have manipulated this country so totally-has one Israeli died in Iraq? Why should they? It's a proxy war and ignorant Americans are doing the dying for them. Murder. Mass Murder.
Praise Allah
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical
White man's burden By Ari Shavit
1. The doctrine
WASHINGTON - At the conclusion of its second week, the war to liberate Iraq wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as soon as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. The Shi'ites didn't rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American generals unprepared and endangered their overextended supply lines. Nevertheless, 70 percent of the American people continued to support the war; 60 percent thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in President George W. Bush.
Washington is a small city. It's a place of human dimensions. A kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another. Everyone is busy intriguing against everyone else; and everyone gossips about everyone else.
In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the fall of the Berlin Wall).
Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It's the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.
2. William Kristol
Has America bitten off more than it can chew? Bill Kristol says no. True, the press is very negative, but when you examine the facts in the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction, no attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air control has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from Baghdad. So, even if mistakes were made here and there, they are not serious. America is big enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the slightest doubt that in the end, General Tommy Franks will achieve his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon enter the fray, and another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible that instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but nevertheless Bill Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq Liberation War is a just war, an obligatory war.
What is the war about? I ask. Kristol replies that at one level it is the war that George Bush is talking about: a war against a brutal regime that has in its possession weapons of mass destruction. But at a deeper level it is a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle East. It is a war that is intended to change the political culture of the entire region. Because what happened on September 11, 2001, Kristol says, is that the Americans looked around and saw that the world is not what they thought it was. The world is a dangerous place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine that would enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine they found was the neoconservative one.
Source: Haaretz
ThadStone - Hoa binh means peace in Vietnamese.
Hoa binh
karlof1 April 6th, 2008 2:18 pm:
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population.
The United States is even smaller than 6.3%. It is 4.6%
U.S. and World population is 303,796,561 and 6,659,710,547, respectively (while I write this).
since1492 April 6th, 2008 3:00 pm
What exactly does Hoa binh mean ? I've seen you use that a lot, I looked it up in Wikipedia, seems to be the location of a battle against the colonial French in Vietnam in the early 1950's where the Viet Minh were victorious ?
hedology April 6th, 2008 4:07 pm:
"...war-torn nation and in the war tearing nations."
Nice phrase, haven't heard that before :-)
JAN STEINMAN: Thoughtful and helpful response to ROBINEA.
Thank you, Karlof1, for your characteristically thoughtful comments.
This business of renting allies is how we created the Taliban and the mess in Afghanistan which, after watching it suck the Soviet Union into a bottomless pit, into which we have also plunged. Why didn't we achieve Shock and Awe by dropping bales of dollars instead of cluster bombs in the first place? This is a desperate, rearguard action designed to hold things together, after a fashion, until the election so McCain (or the next best thing, Clinton) can ascend to the throne of the American Pharaoh--King (or Queen) of Denial.
All too Relevant Quote:
How is the World Ruled & how do wars start?
Diplomats tell lies to journalists & then believe what they read.
(Karl Kraus, Austrian Press,1874-1936)
General Eisenhower's warnings concerning the dangers of the military industrial complex were preceded by Albert Einstein in 1932 when he cited munition makers as the main thrust for war machines. Warnings concerning the need to scrutinize such misadventures by the executive branch had earlier been made by John Adams and other constitutional framers.
Unfortunately this war is an example of the neglect and/or ignorance of pertinent history, along with the profiteering motives. Such misguided disasters can occur only when a compliant & apathetic populace allows their legislators to tolerate these types of abuses from arrogant and unlearned administrations guided by special interests.
What YANTACAW PARK said.
And so well, too. Thank you
Al Qaeda is a CIA front in conjunction with the dark lord Cheney and his neocon minions. To have power in this world you have to have an "enemy" even if you have to create it yourself. Be afraid, be very afraid!
"Odom said America was buying Sunni backing in just one region for $250,000 a day, and he warned, "we don't own these people, we rent them.""
Yup, and when the rent payments stop, eviction notices will be forthcoming. It's like paying the Mafia protection bosses. You stop paying the "bosses" and you're out of business - if not dead!
Assume for sake of argument that an Obama presidency kept its campaign pledge and, working with a slightly saner congress, quickly got US ground forces out of Iraq.
Would Obama and a new congress also agree to abandon the long term military bases the US MI complex has built there at a cost of hundreds of $billions?
Unlikely - to the point of Predictably Not.
But even assuming with the wildest optimism that base abandonment occurs too, what about Obama's campaing pledge to pursue and increase the fight against what he, like Bush, calls " 9/11 linked Muslim extremists," in Afghanistan?
Assuming the huge unlikliness that the first two steps were taken, wouldn't it then be virtually certain that in light of Obama's OTHER campaign pledge, major US troop deployments would simply be transferred from Iraq to Afghanistan? And wouldn't this keep the same self-destructive US poker in the same bottomless hornet's nest of the Middle East?
The US needs to get out of these hopeless messes, entirely. 9/11 can't be undone, least by imcompetent vengence. But another 9/11 in the US could liely be prevented by simply letting Arab-Muslim moderates vs extremists fight it out among themselves. In the end, the innerly-conflicted Arab/Muslim word is going to have to do this anyway.
RE US protecting Israel: If Israel wants continued US protection as a 'Jewish State' (wrongly placed in Palestine, in 1948 to begin with) inside a 2000+ yr ocean of fitful, sub-self-warring Arab/Muslim nationalisms/religious sects, the Israeli price for such US protections should be that its people agree to:
[1] remove all post-1967 Israeli settlements in non-UN mandated 1948 Israeli boundary areas
[2] promptly agree to work with the US, adjoining states, and the international community, to establish a Palestinian state in the 1948-defined surrounding area - no matter subsequent Israeli territories gained by defeat of allegedly unprovoked aggressor states in that interim.
The multiple forces and interests arrayed against any such solutional policies may make any such hoped-for outcome(s) semmingly laughable. That is understood.
But any US-led foreign policy template that approaches a roughly fair solution to the Middle East's religiously-fragmented hornet's nest (a very roughly-fair solution being all that remains), needs now to be articulated by any US presidential candidate who wants to be taken seriously in this issue.
The utter maddness of religiously Jewish Israeli's fighting to the death religiously Moslem Arabs, in the Middle East, must be cut-loose from the USA's own, overwhelming domestic problems by a fairly offered US-solutional template; which if not accepted by Israel should then end the US People's intervention in its defense, and including the US's also hopeless task of our persuing-to-justice, the alleged 9/11 bombers in Afghanistan.
The US took its 9/11 hits because its people allowed their government, for decades, to behave like cockey ecomomic pigs and manipulated political pigs in the Middle East, to begin with.
The hits were monstrous, but so have been our policies.
Hello megaronin--Intersting idea. A qick point, oil until refined remains crude; after refining it becomes a variety of petroleum products. So, oil and related minerals should be defined as all underground hydrocarbons existing within Iraq. Also, there's a problem regarding representation for the many displaced Iraqis, several millions en toto. Further, why offer it to the "United States Head of State via live telecast. The United States can then accept or reject the proposal?" And in addition, there's still no clause related to lopsided SPAs, which could cut the Iraqis out of the majority of revenues even while "owning" the underground resource, which is how the BushCo written "Oil Law" reads.
An arrangement similar to that used by Saudi Aramco would be better where international involvement is limited to oil field servicing.
The bottomline is that global oil extraction and market supply would increase greatly if the US Empire would exit Iraq and end its economic war against Iran. If those two events were announced, oil would fall by 50% the next day, but would eventually recover to about $75/bbl or higher as it will take time to realize an actual increase in flow rates in the volumes required to keep oil below $100 for any great length of time.
Sorry Hector, I didn't realize what you were specifically looking for. As for the first, "Imperial Warrior," the US is an Empire, which makes any of its soldiers imperial warriors/stormtroopers. That he is no 'democrat' implies he prefers some other form of government, but the USE has never been a democracy, and the Constitution he swore to protect is NOT a democratic document; it sets out a rather restrictive republic, so it would seem 'democrat' is a non sequitur. As for Odom working to advance the interests of the colony of Israel, his Senate testimony linked above and his further radio interview I linked above clearly disprove this hypothesis as his calls for withdrawl and impeachment are NOT in the Israli colonialists' interest.
It would be helpful if robinea, who I think is european based on useage of single 'quote marks, would return to explain, but I think I've supplied enough evidence to prove one assertion correct and the others wrong.
Solution to Iraq – U.S. Military acquires one large building to hold a conference. U.S. military enforces a 5 by 5 city-block perimeter around this building to ensure the safety of all conference participants.
Conference participants are locally "elected" throughout Iraq. Each neighborhood elects one participant via town hall meetings. No ballot voting shall be used in this process. These meetings shall be small-scale and open forum in nature, occurring in each neighborhood of every city throughout Iraq. Current elected officials are welcome to lobby for a nomination through their respective neighborhoods. Participants must live in the neighborhood they are nominated from. Each participant is allowed a 2 working staff escort. Participants may be male or female, and of good health.
Participants of the conference shall create a living document that immediately declares Iraqi ownership of all Iraqi oil. This document must satisfy all Iraqi ownership of oil.
All oil within the borders of the sovereign Iraqi nation will immediately belong to Iraqi citizens and any Iraqi citizen will become an immediate shareholder in the Iraqi Oil reserve. The Oil reserve will consist of both refined and unrefined oil deposits. The conference members must achieve a workable consensus and create the document.
The document must be written by hand. All participants will then sign this document in front of U.N. Security Council witnesses.
This proposal is then offered to the United States Head of State via live telecast. The United States can then accept or reject the proposal.
Conference participants are elected in the summer of 2008. Once all participants are registered the conference shall begin no later than October 28, 2008. The conference, once commenced, shall last no longer than 13 days. Upon entry of the conference building all participants will be protected by the U.S. Military and no personnel will be allowed to either leave or enter the grounds of the conference perimeter whatsoever.
Food and any necessary medical supplies will be provided by the United States military and any interested foundations. All living supplies of this nature are supplied once. The supplies must be more than adequate to feed and sustain the well-being of all participates for 13 days. Each participant and his or her staff member is given a package which includes all the necessities they will need for the duration of the conference. Participants are welcome to bring their own food. Microwaves will be available for cooking. All items however are subject to Military screening before being permitted into the conference perimeter.
Local and International press will be allowed to attend the meeting's conclusion, when the document will be formally released and offered in a televised reading. The reader will be elected within the conference by the participants. The reading of the document aloud marks the official adjournment of the conference.
Solution to Iraq – U.S. Military acquires one large building to hold a conference. U.S. military enforces a 5 by 5 city-block perimeter around this building to ensure the safety of all conference participants.
Conference participants are locally "elected" throughout Iraq. Each neighborhood elects one participant via town hall meetings. No ballot voting shall be used in this process. These meetings shall be small-scale and open forum in nature, occurring in each neighborhood of every city throughout Iraq. Current elected officials are welcome to lobby for a nomination through their respective neighborhoods. Participants must live in the neighborhood they are nominated from. Each participant is allowed a 2 working staff escort. Participants may be male or female, and of good health.
Participants of the conference shall create a living document that immediately declares Iraqi ownership of all Iraqi oil. This document must satisfy all Iraqi ownership of oil.
All oil within the borders of the sovereign Iraqi nation will immediately belong to Iraqi citizens and any Iraqi citizen will become an immediate shareholder in the Iraqi Oil reserve. The Oil reserve will consist of both refined and unrefined oil deposits. The conference members must achieve a workable consensus and create the document.
The document must be written by hand. All participants will then sign this document in front of U.N. Security Council witnesses.
This proposal is then offered to the United States Head of State via live telecast. The United States can then accept or reject the proposal.
Conference participants are elected in the summer of 2008. Once all participants are registered the conference shall begin no later than October 28, 2008. The conference, once commenced, shall last no longer than 13 days. Upon entry of the conference building all participants will be protected by the U.S. Military and no personnel will be allowed to either leave or enter the grounds of the conference perimeter whatsoever. Local and International press will be allowed to attend the meeting's conclusion, when the document will be formally released and offered in a televised reading. The reader will be elected within the conference by the participants. The reading of the document aloud marks the official adjournment of the conference.
This what you were looking for ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eldridge_Odom
"William Eldridge Odom (born June 23, 1932) is a retired U.S. Army 3-star general, and former Director of the NSA under President Ronald Reagan, which culminated a 31 year career in military intelligence, mainly specializing in matters relating to the Soviet Union. After his retirement from the military he became a think tank policy expert and a university professor and has since became known for his outspoken criticism of the Iraq War and warrantless wiretapping of American citizens."
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Look at it this way, if there's ever anyone who knows what's really going on, its the guy sitting at the center of all the NSA's eavesdropping capabilities.
"But it also leads me to believe (if Arabs were unified enough) that the whole al Qaeda thing is to bankrupt the USA with it's "war on terror" where it will no longer be able to support Israel."
Anyone read Gabriel Kolko's book on Vietnam? He makes the point that the flaw in the American system is that our wars are incredibly expensive to fight. That's what eventually decided Vietnam.
It seems absurd to be blowing up stone huts with million dollar missiles, and eventually too much absurdity crashes the system.
Decisions about Iraq have nothing to do with what this General said or that or what the America people think. It all has all to do with control of oil and future strategies by the ruling junta in the States.
Don't Americans realize that their system has broken down, that their dream has gone, that they are becoming slaves of a fascist regime? Some do but not enough!
Join in the conversation about 'Saving America' on my blog. Start up the topic on your own blog. Something must be done.
www.dangerouscreation.com
It does not seem to matter as long as the US can find an enemy with whom they think they should be fighting. The administration are never happier than when they have a military quagmire. More military hardware sales, and punitive suppression of the people in the war-torn nation and in the war tearing nations. A great excuse for monkeying around with peoples money and rights. It makes their right wing souls very happy.
I've read with interest and gratitude the several responses to my wondering about the nature and source of Robinea's evidence that General Odom is best understood by the very general characterization "an imperial warrior" of the kind that "is no 'democrat'" and is most concerned with "working for the interests of the Israeli state".
Interesting as the responses have been, I don't think that they provide evidence -- or refer to any information about -- General Odom. I'm therefore still unable to know on what Robinea, or those who responded to my query, know about General Odom -- as opposed to US policy in the Middle East or about the interests of various groups within the US -- that led Robinea to make the claim I quoted.
bush and cheney would not know how to govern without war ......bush knew he would have been a 1 term president if it wasn't for the SEPT 11TH ATTACKS.....(just like his father)
The General we should all be listening to is General Smedley Butler, author of WAR IS A RACKET. This general tells the truth about who our military works for and what our military fights for. He will tell you what his experiences were at the turn of the century and you will see that it still continues today. Our empire is in rapid decline and Americans don't even know it.
Hoa binh
wilmoor--I saw the same article. Funny how it's from AP. http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.support.viewStory.cls?...
Future President McCrazy, any comment?
"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says."
Jan Steinman says... "So if you want to blame some "country" for Iraq, pick on Switzerland, Channel Islands, Cayman Islands, etc. where those getting rich from Iraq live."
A story in my southern Oregon newspaper on Friday -amazingly, a front page story! says members of Congress are heavily invested in the war, and John Kerry leads the pack with the millions he's earned from stock he owns in companies that do business with the Defense Department. Joe Leiberman is also making money off it, as is House Whip Roy Blunt (R). It goes on to say that more republicans hold stock in defense companies, about $578,000, while the dems hold about $3.7 million.
Its also called the neocons and PNAC. They are all related.
Hector its called AIPAC.
Hector--Presumably the author thinks it would have been in the better interest of the US Empire to cultivate friendly relations with those countries it would become dependent upon for its future hydrocarbon needs, Iran and Iraq specifically. This would seem to be the intent of FDR, as it makes sense that he would want to advance the agreement between Saudi and the USE to other countries having the same or similar capacities. But he died before any such could be furthered by him. Instead, in 1947-48, we got the rise of the National Security State and rapid Imperial expansion in connection to the Kennan-led policy goal of maintaining the USE's disparity of importing and consuming resources of all types, oil being fundamental. (This is still the primary USE policy goal.) As the new nationalist leaders emerging in the newly decoloialized countries wanted to gain control over their resources, ALL nationalist movements were deemed Communist in support of the above mentioned policy priority. This led to the Iranian coup and installation of the Shah, and later for total support of the colony of Israel as a bulwark against Arab and Persian nationalism.
The fundamental decision that undermined "the security of the American global empire" was that enunciated by Kennan in 1947, because such a policy is all but impossible to sustain on a finite planet. That the Israeli colony became attached to this policy is important, but is not the basis for US imperial decline or deterioration of its "security."
Here is the text of the Kennan Policy Plan from, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=...
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.
robinea wrote: "Only one country has benefited from the destruction of Iraq and the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US occupation troops there…Israel."
I don't think it's so simple.
Have you read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"? More than anything else I've seen, Klein ties it all together.
It isn't a matter of a "country" benefiting from Iraq's invasion and occupation; it's a matter of trans-national war profiteers benefiting.
Israel surely benefits indirectly, as all the dominant security systems companies are now in Israel. But the primary beneficiaries -- by a huge margin -- are the likes of Haliburton, Blackwater, etc. As public corporations, they owe no allegiance to any single country, just to their stockholders, who typically live where the tax laws are most to their advantage.
So if you want to blame some "country" for Iraq, pick on Switzerland, Channel Islands, Cayman Islands, etc. where those getting rich from Iraq live.
Having lived in the Middle East I can tell you that the Arab (including Israel/Palestine) world always takes the long view of everything.
I was once at the gravesite of Joshua [جوشوا] in Jordan and all of a sudden an argument broke out between a Jew and an Arab regarding some slight (the Jew made, or it could have been the Arab, no one was quite clear how it started) was made regarding Joshua and it got quite heated. Man, that happened almost three thousand years ago and they are still arguing over it. You think there could ever be a peace in the region with memories like that.
But it also leads me to believe (if Arabs were unified enough) that the whole al Qaeda thing is to bankrupt the USA with it's "war on terror" where it will no longer be able to support Israel. And without American support, how long do you think Israel would last.
However, that would require much more cohesiveness within the Arab world than they have. It is very much a fragmented area, and not just between the Jews and Arabs.
Petraeus is a very typical American.
He is very skilled at killing and lying for the purpose of stealing Iraq's resources.
"The security of the American global empire has been undermined by this policy of working for the interests of the Israeli state…that is what most concerns an imperial warrior like General Odom- he is no 'democrat'."
What -- and where -- is the evidence supporting this statement?
You can listen further to General Odom here, http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_sw_080317_audio_3a_general... as he calls for defunding and impeachment!! Now we know why nothing was published by the propaganda networks.
Only one country has benefited from the destruction of Iraq and the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US occupation troops there...Israel. Sorry to be so blunt - but serving the hegemonic interests of a thoroughly militaristic Israel has undermined the our republic domestically - in terms of our society's needs, our economy and our civilian rights. Glorifying and legitimizing torture and 'targeted' assassinations as a tool of domestic and international control comes directly from the practices of the Israeli state and suggests an even uglier future on the homefront.
The security of the American global empire has been undermined by this policy of working for the interests of the Israeli state...that is what most concerns an imperial warrior like General Odom- he is no 'democrat'.
Anti-imperialists may find some comfort in the prospect of a crippled giant - unable to effectively police its interests elsewhere...But don't think the Europeans are so keen to do our stable cleaning for us. Europe, China and Russia have reaped huge benefits from the weakening of the US imperial war machine and its quagmire in Iraq. They agree with McCain...we should be there for a hundred years while they sign rich contracts with our former subordinate regions in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
When we sink into nasty domestic imperial decline - don't turn to our Israeli allies to bail us out. They will be eagerly signing contracts with Iran and other emerging powers and ridiculing our nation's 'self-destruction'.
General Betray us gets the front page headlines while General Odom gets the back page coverage or none at all.Admiral William Fallon knows Betray us is nothing more than a sychophantic, hypocrite, but the whore, press will keep on telling us how to think. We are inundated with the same old Goebbels, propaganda and nothing about the U.S. rent a soldier, or the highest treason to our country:" it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with Al Qaeda with spreading the war in Iran". We do not care how thugish they are as long as they are our thugs.INSANITY!
Butt, it's all in the processing of it
When one "ass-licking little chickenshit" reports to another "ass-licking little chickenshit" you get a really big load of crap.
Don't hold your breath that anyone will listen except those of us that already knew this. The possibility of anything more than scant coverage by the MSM is nothing to hold your breath for either.
Paragraph 11 is most revealing and shocking. "Then Odom let fly a real bomb.".... Sounds like Michael Ruppert and David Ray Griffin in their investigation of the events leading up to 9-11.
Put the pieces together. The neo-con plan is world domination, next step Iran, and if the US thereby actually aids al qaeda with its aggression who is going to notice?
The resignation of Admiral Fallon
http://www.voltairenet.org/article155950.html
The neo-conservative agenda
http://www.voltairenet.org/article153013.html