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On the 6th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq: A New Direction?
This week marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an event some have called the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history. I won't repeat here the tragic statistics of American lives lost and damaged, Iraqi death tolls, and the stories of the millions of displaced who are still trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. Nor will I recount the extraordinary failure of the media to question the rational for war. To those who say they didn't see it coming, I can tell you that two of my colleagues, working from our Bainbridge Island, WA., office, with no access to hidden information or insider sources, provided compelling evidence that undercut every one of the rationales for war, well before the invasion began. That evidence was missing from the lopsided media accounts that dominated the mainstream press.
Today, we have the Obama administration in Washington and a Democratically controlled Congress in large part because the American people have so soundly repudiated this aggressive military posture.
But if we are clear, now, about the failure of the neoconservative agenda of global dominance, the question remains: How should the U.S. relate to the rest of the world? Will we try to hold on to our place as the world's sole superpower -- and if so, can we? Writing in the "Superpower: Get Over It" issue of YES! magazine, John Feffer said that's not what Americans want:
In the year since Feffer wrote this piece, the global financial collapse has further undercut the capacity of U.S. taxpayers to continue pouring billions into weapons systems, two foreign wars, massive long-term medical needs of veterans, nuclear weapons programs, and, oh yeah, our 700-800 overseas military bases. And ironically, we are discovering that with "asymmetrical warfare," much of this military expenditure offers us plenty of opportunities to kill and destroy, but few opportunities to win the peace."Americans want their country to stop being the neighborhood bully and instead act like a good neighbor. In this, Americans are not giving voice to utopian aspirations. The polls in fact reflect a new realism. The nation's economy is flagging, our military is over-stretched, and our global legitimacy is exhausted. The public no longer wants to shoulder these various costs of empire."
So, as Feffer describes, we face a choice of future roles in the world. We could insist on claiming the role of empire ...
"Burdened by debt, armed to the teeth, and isolated from the world, the United States would become the "sick man" of North America, as the Ottomans were once labeled in Europe. Like many failing empires, we would be all the more dangerous the weaker we got.As we start into the seventh year in Iraq, and begin a military build up in Afghanistan, let's consider that second option -- that we gracefully let go of the empire role. In my December '08 blog, I laid out a five-point plan for doing this."Or the United States could try something unprecedented. We could turn our back on empire, much as Spain and Portugal did in the 1970s and the Soviet Union did in the late 1980s. But rather than waiting until the bitter end as these countries did, the United States could use its still considerable power to help create a more equitable world order that operates on a truly level playing field."
In these tough economic times, we could start by transferring the spending on budget-busting weapons systems to an investment in the super-efficiency, green energy, and sustainable transit projects that can create jobs now and improve our security by preparing us to live in a climate-constrained world. The Obama stimulus package is a good down payment, but we will have to make a sustained investment if we are to transfer to an economy that can provide lasting peace and prosperity.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllContrast these graphs showing the growing US war machine with Obama's drivel about other nations' "closed fist of war" to see what a bad joke America has become.
Correction needed. This is the 6th anniversary of 'shock and awe'. The US has been bombing Iraq since 1991. More Iraqi children died during the Clinton administration (not sanctions, but correctly called blockade which is an act of war) than during the Bush presidency.
Ms. Albright said "it was worth it" about the 500,000 dead Iraqis. There was no protest about those comments, just like there are no more anti-war protests now that Mr. Obama leads the charge to war!!!
"I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. […] As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong. […] I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one’s fault but my own"
- Ms. Albright 2003
Joe,
Go back and compare Madame Albright's 2003 backtracking with the actual Clinton Iraq policy described in an August 2, 2007 article at Common Dreams by Alan Nassar. (The Threat of U.S. Fascism: An Historical Precedent) So she was pawning off Leslie Stahl's question as a trick question? ("...I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean...") Please read Nasser's article and decide which of the two responses was most likely her honest one. I'm curious as to how Albright would have "answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it", but then she's had plenty of time now to rewrite that response.
rosemarie: thanks for pointing out that truth. Most are unaware of Clinton's disasterous policies in the region which are indeed an act of war.
Actually, the sanctions allowed humanitarian aid to get through, it was Hussein who robbed his own people of desperately needed food and medicine.
That it was "Hussein who robbed his own people of desperately needed food and medicine" may or may not be propaganda to whatever extent, but could the weekly bombings of Iraqi infrastructure be construed as "sanctions" or was it just blatant terrorism, similar in fact, to the Israeli operations against Gaza? Again, please read the Alan Nassar article: "The Threat of U.S. Fascism: An Historical Precedent", Common Dreams, Aug. 2, 2007.
No, no, you don't understand. The "weekly bombings" were merely deliveries of nitrites to Iraq to assist in their agricultural efforts. How all those nitrites managed to land on power facilities and water treatment plants is a mystery.
All you need to know about why the US destroyed Iraqi water facilities is explained by the words "export land model." If those Iraqi children had grown up they would be using petroleum that wouldn't be exported to the West.
Nothing like a little irony to make me snicker.one old atheist
You constantly post a black or white political outlook here Joseph, and the real world is never as simple as you portray it to be. Estimates are that over 400,000 children died as a direct result of sanctions, and the USA and Britain were the major supporters of those sanctions.:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/2002/paper.htm
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Introduction The United Nations Security Council has maintained compre-hensive economic sanctions on Iraq since August 6, 1990. The international community increasingly views the sanctions as illegitimate and punitive, because of well-documented humanitarian suffering in Iraq and widespread doubts about the sanctions’ effectiveness and their legal basis under international humanitarian and human rights law.
2. A Flawed Policy In the early 1990s, many policy makers saw comprehensive economic sanctions, imposed under Resolution 687, as an ethical and non-violent policy tool. Though Iraq sanctions produced some significant disarmament results, they failed to achieve all their policy goals and they have deeply harmed powerless and vulnerable Iraqi citizens. The Security Council implicitly accepts such a negative assessment, since it no longer uses comprehensive economic sanctions in other security crises.
3. Warnings of Civilian Harm Civilian suffering in Iraq is not an unexpected collateral effect, but a predictable result of the sanctions policy. Security Council members have received warnings of the humanitarian emergency in Iraq and the damage done by sanctions since shortly after the Gulf War. Warnings have come from three Secretary Generals, many UN officials and agencies including UNICEF, WHO and WFP, and two Humanitarian Coordinators who have resigned in protest. A Select Committee of the UK House of Commons offered a very negative judgment as well.
4. Causes of Suffering Sanctions are not the sole cause of human suffering in Iraq. The government of Iraq bears a heavy burden of responsibility due to the wars it has started, its lack of cooperation with the Security Council, its domestic repression, and its failure to use limited resources fairly. However, the UN Security Council shares responsibility for the humanitarian crisis. The United States and the United Kingdom, who use their veto power to prolong the sanctions, bear special responsibility for the UN action. No-fly zones, periodic military attacks, and threats of regime-change block peaceful outcomes, as do vilification of Saddam Hussein, pro-sanctions propaganda, and other politicization of the crisis. Though real concerns about Iraq’s security threat undoubtedly are legitimate, commercial interests, especially control over Iraq’s oil resources, appear to be a driving force behind much of the policy making.
5. Oil-for-Food Sanctions advocates proposed Oil-for-Food under Resolution 986 as a temporary solution to the humanitarian crisis. Oil-for-Food materially improved conditions in Iraq in contrast to the early days of the sanctions. But Oil-for-Food failed to resolve the humanitarian crisis, much less provide a long-term solution for Iraq. Punitive deductions for war reparations weaken the program as do unacceptable delays in delivery (less than 60%f of all items ordered from oil sales since December 1996 have actually arrived in Iraq). Politically motivated blocks and “holds,” imposed almost entirely by the United States, have plagued the program as well. Consequently, there has been little repair and renewal of Iraq’s badly-deteriorated infrastructure, including water treatment, electricity, and public health. Oil-for-Food has failed to improve sufficiently the nutrition and health of Iraqi citizens, who continue to suffer from conditions drastically worse than the pre-sanctions period. Less than $200 per year per capita has arrived in Iraq under the program. Studies have amply documented a substantial rise in mortality of children, five years of age and under and credible estimates suggest that at least 400,000 of these young children have died due to the sanctions. Various reforms, including Resolution 1284 have proven ineffective in addressing these problems.
..I find your attempt to whitewash this situation with a one line condemnation of Hussein to be simply inexcusable.
You certainly taught joehope a lesson, though I'm sure he's too busy watching FOX or CNN to care.
I do not understand it but I see Joe Hope as different from some of the other and much less palatable figures who haunt these threads. While I am used to posting facts contrary to Joe's stated opinions and being ignored for my efforts, as I am used to his almost hilarious one liners and comic portrayals of actual reality, what else can one do?
I have urged him quite often to go deeper in his posts, to give us reasons for his positions, and he regularly ignored said requests, posing the question as to why on earth he bothers to come to a political forum in the first place, I cannot allow his silliness and vacuously empty politics to go unchallenged.
Perhaps I see him as a sort of 'everyman'?
How do you sell responsibility to a population that has been sold relentlessly on plunder? Each individual must decide to do their part. So the most fundamental measure of progress is how many people have made this decision. We can gauge this. After deciding this, the individual enlightens him/herself. There is plenty of online resources for this, but a whole lot of interactive trench work is required here. The result of enlightenment of individuals is an understanding of the world, a recognition that universal fulfillment is the consensus ideal, and that universal enlightenment and empowerment is the way.
We need the progressive press to keep these ideas, universal enlightenment, empowerment, and fulfillment, and the basic strategy to achieve them, at the top of each discussion. Each article should be framed in these concepts. The details of the class conflict should only serve to illustrate the robustness of the progressive philosophy and strategy.
Obviously, letting go of empire is imperative for universal fulfillment. Only a perverse fulfillment is gained from global conflict. The strategy is to replace the elite establishment and its perversions with a people's establishment. The tactics include shifting all of the individual's exchange/association away from the elites and toward one's local community, effectively ostracizing elitism from the society. This enables common sense and decency to return to public policy, and all the feedback mechanisms will reinforce universal fulfillment.
Congratulations on being the first person on CD to actually use the terms strategy and tactics when discussing change. I believe you must be talking about things like community gardens, using the barter system (goods for goods instead of money for goods), banking locally, not shopping at mega stores.
Would you please elaborate a little on some ideas you may have for a practical application? I am overfed on talk and criticism, and starved for good ideas for action!
There's a good alternative to barter called LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System) it's basically barter for the computer age. I'm trying to get one started where I am.
National Initiative for Democracy: Direct Democracy via Direct Democracy
ni4d.us
We outspend the world in military spending just as we do in health care costs, and we get the same lack of value for all that money. I still await the Obama administration's promised line by line analysis of government spending with an eye towards eliminating two trillion dollars from the budget.
Obama fooled 60 plus million voters last year.
"Just two months after taking office, Obama has emerged as the front man for the military and Wall Street, while the aspirations of millions who went to the polls to vote against war have been repudiated. Such is the degenerated state of America's capitalist two-party system.
The fight to end war is a class question, bound up inseparably with the struggle against the capitalist profit system that gives rise to militarism. It requires the independent political mobilization of the working class based on a socialist and internationalist program, including the demand for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the holding of those who conspired to initiate these wars of aggression accountable for their crimes."
more at http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m20.shtml
The military budget is an open wound bleeding America dry. A solar panel produces power for thirty years; a gun, tank, submarine or missile produces nothing of value and further bleeds resources from productive enterprise.
The U.S. is writing checks it cannot cash. Failure is inevitable.
1. America was founded on genocide and slavery.
2. At least since 1845, America has used its military might to subjugate and exploit browner , littler people worldwide.
3. If there is such a thing as "karma," the U.S. deserves a long, drawn-out, humiliating, and stinging defeat.
4. We could save a little by closing a few of our 730 foreign military bases.one old atheist
Look, we've invaded Afghanistan; the graveyard of empires. I think that will be punishment enough in the long run.
You would have thought we'd have studied Vietnam before waging war there. That we would have seen how and why the French failed. But no, we forged ahead blindly on false premises. You would think the U.S. would have thought about the failure in Vietnam before waging war in Iraq on false premises. But no, we forged ahead again. Or look at Russia's failure in Afghanistan. If the U.S. could look at these and other lessons of history we could opt out of military overstretch, take the high road and start minding our own business, salvage our freedom and independence, and retain our share of leadership in the world. Otherwise, ultimately the only thing that will stop this brutal and mindless military machine is defeat or complete bankruptcy.