What? You mean withdrawing from Iraq won't be the same cakewalk as the invasion and occupation?

Training people to kill will little or no compunction has its downsides …

The new collateral damage effects are far less easy to swallow ( for Americans, that is ).

Are we proud of what we've created ( yet ) ?

Perhaps it's as simple as asking the Iraqis to do what we say, and not to do as we do ?

Namaste

"So for every American soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this mission, we should imagine carved in stone 'they gave their life for the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being, the gift of freedom.'"

-- [Clinton Campaign Press Release from March 17, 2008]
______________________________________________________

So sayeth our present Secretary of State about the noble invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It's the damndest thing-- here, "we" "gave" the Iraqi people "the gift of freedom", and this is how they repay "us"!

And since we're imagining this "carved in stone", "we" can't even stick around and take that gift back! That oughta learn us!

· Yr Obd't Servant

President Carter was correct - this war is a catastrophy.

Jarhead
We lost our freedom we we gave them theirs. We got rid of their dictator and gained one of our own.

In any war where youe enemy can look like your friend, this can happen. The easiest way to cure the problem is to remove our troops as soon as possible.

Remember VE Day? Victory in Europe. And VJ Day, Victory in Japan. The last "good" war.

Then, later, came DV Day. DEFEAT in Vietnam. April 30, 1975. In Berkeley they marched down Telegraph Avenue to celebrate.

So pretty soon now, DI Day: DEFEAT in Iraq. Certainly also something to celebrate. Trouble is, it won't be swift and neat in a single day like DV Day was, so maybe we'll have to settle for DI Week or DI Month, maybe even DI Year. Looking forward to that happy event. (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o) (:o)

Do those Iraqi soldiers hav immunity for their acts?
If it had been the other way around and the US soldiers had killed Iragis, then the Americans would have immunity from prosecution.
Do you wonder why there is anger?
Desmond Tutu said that you can not have peace with first having justice.
There is no justice in Iraq.
Therefore there will be no peace.
It is time to leave both Iraq and Afghanistan now.

It would be interesting if the United States would declare a truce and cease fire in Iraq (and Afghanistan?) announcing that the United States military would withdraw in, say 90 or 120 days. US troops will cease fire and hereafter shoot only in self defense if this truce is recognized by the Iraqi people (and Afghan?). At the end of that time, we will destroy what we cannot dismantle and remove, of our permanent bases and the embassy fortress compound.

We would be watched with suspicion, as we have broken so many promises already, but if it was seen that we actually were leaving, Iraq would fall quiet. All these countries want is to get rid of the foreign occupiers of their country.

As this is an almost universal wish, as it was in Vietnam, we cannot know who are our friends and who the foes. Our propaganda arm brands everyone who takes a shot at us as Al Qaeda or terrorists, but if the truth were ever admitted, most of them are just patriots trying to rid their country of the occupiers, just as we would if the tables were turned.

Later (international) reports say only one U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded. U.S. corporate media is not reporting this story at all.

the end of the fight
is a tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased
the epitaph drear
a fool lies here
who tried to hustle the east
-Rudyard Kipling

Defeat in Iraq Day? And you want to celebrate that day? Sounds like something Jane Fonda would say. Are you celebrating now about the death of our troops?

I'll repeat a quote I saw from a sargeant in Iraq - "what does winning look like?" I remember saying the same thing about Vietnam. It might surprise most people to find out a majority of our troops in Iraq support withdrawal. The difference of opinion is mainly about the time table.

Our troops are not the enemy.

The other question I can remember we were asking in Vietnam but which also applies to Iraq is "what does the enemy look like?" A house to house quagmire war without front lines where you will be confronted with split second decisions in contact with the locals to decide if they are non combatants or the enemy is the ugliest assignment we can give our troops.

We owe it to our troops to avoid having future quagmire wars. Quagmire wars are created by Washington DC desk warriors that have never been in the military or been in combat and most likely do not have anyone in their extended families involved in war.

Here is what the real enemy looks like, the desk warriors that lied their butts off to get us to invade Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld was a pilot and never saw combat or especially the ugliest type of ground combat. His assistant Secretary of Defense was Paul Wolfowitz. What's wrong with that picture? Paul is a scrawny little nerd that has never been in the military, but was appointed to the position only because he was a member of the neo con think tank, PNAC just like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and about 30 other PNAC members on the white house staff. The most rabid foam at the mouth liars promoting the war had never been in military or in combat. Cheney had FIVE requests for deferment before it was granted. Bush had the white rich VIP kid alternative to Vietnam, the National Guard. These are the guys that kept saying "stay the course, stay the sacrifice" when it is abundantly clear they were sacrificing nothing at all and were actually getting richer off of the war.

I have opposed the Iraq War from the start. Our mission was to depose Sadam and install an elected government. That has already happened and the Iraqi people clearly want us as an occupying force out of their country. We need to withdraw. Hopefully more deaths like these will be avoided in the meantime.

Add to the desk warriors the strategy of massive outsource funding needing mouthpieces to the house & senate and you've got Joseph Heller's Catcha 22. The interior culture of slowly adapting the footsoldiers to the machismo delusion of being an inside player on the big bucks makes the line very easy to swallow. Add even more the ersatz "God's"war racism/delusional distortions and hearts and minds become filly equivocated and more easily traumatized where killing really begins to appear as though it makes sense.

When will we reach the point when men (and women) realize that true courage is being willing to die for a cause - but not to kill for it.

War is not the answer.

Correct. War is not the answer. Sure is profitable though (for a few).

"MountainMike February 25th, 2009 1:20 pm

...

... It might surprise most people to find out a majority of our troops in Iraq support withdrawal. The difference of opinion is mainly about the time table.

Our troops are not the enemy."

It's good that most of them support withdrawal, but for as long as they are there and carry out the criminal orders handed down to them, then they are the enemy of the Iraqi People. As long as they are willing to commit or back up raids, crackdowns, etcetera, they are then always working for the criminal occupying forces which [do] retain very much control over the still puppet Iraqi govt.

More than wanting to withdraw, they [must] want to dissent and then follow through on that desire with real dissent. Then they will cease being of the enemy for the Iraqi People; not before.

AFP propaganda again and referring to where the article reads, "It was the third such fatal shooting involving US soldiers in just over a year in Mosul, one of the country's most restive cities"!

Try the following article for a "somewhat" contrasting description of how restive, or not, Mosul and that general area of Iraq are. His reference to Al-Qaida in Iraq is a topic I'd elaborate upon ... some, but won't, given this post won't be able to take more than a few words more before reaching max. length. Briefly though, we don't really know who is behind AQ in Iraq.

I have to snip out parts of the article to fit within the max. number of characters or words CD allows and which I think is 1,000.

"Iraq faces a new war as tensions rise in north
Violence between Iraqi Kurds and Arabs is threatening an all out conflict that could complicate US plans to withdraw troops",

by Patrick Cockburn, Independent, UK, Feb 23 2009

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m52080

QUOTE:

A new war is threatening Iraq just as the world believes the country is returning to peace. While violence is dropping in Baghdad and in the south of the country, Arabs and Kurds in the north are beginning to battle over territories in an arc of land stretching from Syria to Iranian border.

A renewal of the historic conflict between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, which raged through most of the second half of the 20th century, would seriously destabilise the country ....

The crisis between the government of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the Kurds, who make up 20 per cent of the population, is coming to a head now because a resurgent Iraqi army is beginning to contest control of areas which Kurds captured when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003.

There has been a mounting number of clashes between predominantly Arab Iraqi army units and the Kurdish peshmerga forces along a 260-mile line that stretches diagonally across the northern third of Iraq, from Sinjar to Khanaqin in the south.

The tensions underpinning the conflict have always attracted less international attention than the US-Iraqi war or the Shia-Sunni conflict.

...

In some respects, the Arab-Kurdish war has already started. Kurdish leaders say that in Nineveh province, Sunni Arab gunmen have killed 2,000 Kurds and 127,000 Kurds have turned into refugees over the past six years.

Baghdad and Basra have become safer in the past year but Mosul, the capital of Nineveh and Iraq’s third largest city, remains one of the country’s most violent places.

Khasro Goran, the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province, who operates from heavily-fortified headquarters in Mosul, said it was "not acceptable" for non-Kurdish military units to move into disputed areas. "If they try to do so we will stop them." On the streets outside Mr Goran’s office, once a Baath party office and now the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, an array of competing military forces holds power.

...

Mosul is majority Sunni Arab but on the east bank of the Tigris river which flows through the city, there are large Kurdish districts ....

Most of the Kurds living west of the Tigris have fled or have been killed. The Christian community was driven out by attacks last year, although some Christians are now returning.

There have been so many bomb attacks in Mosul that in many places damage is no longer repaired. Pieces of smashed concrete lie where they landed after blasts several years ago.

The city is al-Qa’ida’s last stronghold in Iraq. Earlier this month, a bomb killed four US soldiers and an interpreter while gunmen killed two prominent local politicians. The police also come under frequent attack. Shortly before we arrived in Mosul, one officer was killed by a roadside bomb, the sound of which echoed across the city.

Yesterday, US and Iraqi government forces said they had launched a new military campaign to eradicate al-Qa’ida in the province, although US troops were being used only for back-up.

The Kurds in the oil province of Kirkuk and in Diyala province have also often been targeted by suicide bombers. For their part, Arabs in these areas accuse the Kurds of launching a campaign of ethnic cleansing against them.

The Kurdish regional prime minister, Nechervan Barzani, says that if the disputes are not settled by the time the Americans withdraw, "it will be war between both sides."

...

What makes the situation so explosive in Nineveh and across the north is that over the past year the balance of power has been changing in favour of the Arabs and against the Kurds.

Minority Kurds had dominated the provincial government in Nineveh and Mosul after Sunni Arabs, despite being the majority of the population, boycotted the local elections four years ago. But new polls last month reversed the balance, ....

The Iraqi army is also becoming stronger. It contains both Kurdish and Arab units but it is the non-Kurdish units that are being sent north.

...

END QUOTE

Oh, a very restive place, wouldn't you say?

Regarding my first post about MountainMike saying that the U.S. troops in Iraq not being the enemy, I'll stand by my post, including while expecting that Thomas More's post about there apparently being "Fonda's" here was or is in reference to this first post of mine. The troops in Iraq are the enemy of whatever groups or individuals among Iraqis perceive the foreign occupation forces for what they are and which is: criminal invaders, aggressors, committers of supreme international crime against Iraq (among other countries), responsible for the war-caused deaths of over one million Iraqis since March 2003, so excluding the over one million Iraqis killed through the criminal economic sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1991 to 2003, and then the over four million Iraqis forced into extreme refugee conditions, internally and externally displaced, and all of them left to suffer in extreme conditions of hardship while the occupying aggressors are legally obliged to provide for all of the essential needs of all of these refugees criminally forced into the extrreme conditions they're in since March 2003; and ... more, including the corruption and criminal conotrol of their government.

So I stand by what's said in my first post, because I won't hide behind phoniness and half truths, or contribute to disinformation, etcetera. The troops are obliged to abide by law and they instead abide by criminal orders, so the Iraqis who perceive these troops as enemies are justified.

Meanwhile, however, we can understand that many of them suffer from severe PTSD and therefore aren't really responsible for their inability to dissent or to understand that they're carrying out criminal orders; and that other soldiers who aren't real racists, murderers, etcetera just are either too weak in terms of conscience or too ignorant of the fact that the whole war was criminal as of the very first mention of possible recourse to war on Iraq back in 2002.

I'm not condemning the troops who aren't outright racists and racist murderers, but also SEE the Iraqi perspective! Anyone who refuses to respect the Iraqi perspective isn't someone who's worth reading. Tell the whole truth, or at least cease the whiny defence of U.S. troops.

If that's being a "Fonda", then so be it, but it's not my name and I see no intelligence involved in referring to someone that way, by "a Fonda", that is. I of course need to be referred to by my name.

Website of Iraq Veterans Against the War
http://ivaw.org/

Website of Veterans Against the Iraq War
http://www.vaiw.org/vet/index.php

Website support for the excellent documentary DVD "The Ground Truth" - a set of interviews with Iraq War veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.