If you’re in the Washington DC area on Thursday morning, note that I’ll be participating in what looks like (PDF) a pretty informative event. It’s brought to you by the Middle East Policy Council, former home of my esteemed friend, Amb. Chas Freeman:
- You and your colleagues are invited to the 57th in the MEPC’s Capitol Hill Conference Series on U.S. Middle East policy:
U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq:
What are the Regional Implications?
SPEAKERS:
James F. Dobbins
Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, RAND Corporation;
Former assistant secretary of state and special envoy to Afghanistan
Ellen Laipson
President and CEO, Stimson Center; former vice-chair, National Intelligence Council
Helena Cobban
Publisher, JustWorldNews.org; author, Re-engage! America and the World After Bush
Lawrence J. Korb
Senior fellow, Center for American Progress; former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration
MODERATOR:
Thomas R. Mattair
Consultant; book review editor, MEPC; author, Global Security Watch – Iran: A Reference Handbook
Thursday, July 16, 2009, 9:30 – Noon
Capitol Visitor Center, HVC-215
R.S.V.P. Acceptances Only: (202) 296-6767 or E-mail: info@mepc.org
It’s brought to you by the Middle East Policy Council, former home of my esteemed friend, Amb. Chas Freeman
Helena, where can I learn more about this Middle East policy council? Does it receive any funding from any foreign government?
Before participating in this event, don’t miss the reading of this article written by Michael Schwartz at Tomdispatch It is titled “Twenty first Century Colonialism in Iraq : Colonizing Iraq, the Obama doctrine ?”. You shouldn’t only look at the TV footage celebrating the withdrawal, but at what is really succeeding inside of Iraq and in shadow… It is an excellent article and a sad sad reading if you think to what the Iraqi have gone through.
the withdrawal,
The war on Iraq was built on lies now we got same mantra by most who talk US withdrawal.
It’s a big lie, the US not withdrawal troops, they just moved few km inside their bases.
Just two days they already on the street in Baghdad for a mission although Iraqi news Al-Nahrain said US spokesman denied US have any call from Iraqi to help.
To these who speaks about US withdrawal don’t twist your tongs and play the game is it US withdrawal means US force out of Iraq? NO and NO
They are there on the ground but the retracted to their spider holes they dinged for the last six years with billions of dollars.
BTW, some contract of supplying US military will pass 20011 date of Obama US withdrawal plane!! Be informed.
So now Helena telling implications of withdrawal from Iraq?
So US should stay isn’t according to the Middle East policy council.
What sadly before is tyrant regime kills millions of peoples, and the cry went on and on, then invasion its freedom for Iraqi went to bring’m on AQ we fighting terrorist there if we leave they will come to us, then “It is like deja-vu all over again. How many times will the media declare Iraqi Sovereignty with news of further US troop withdrawal in Iraq?
Now implications of withdrawal from Iraq…..
So how long the lie will be? And how long the lies will last?
You are right salah The war on Iraq was built on lies and because of oil resources. TheAmericans will stay there as long as oil reserves still remain.
The above is part a letter that was sent to former US President Clinton in January 1998 and was signed by 18 former senior government officials, including some who made a come back in the Bush administration, like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (Allawi 2007, p.62). Later that year regime change was officially on the agenda when the Iraq Liberation Act was signed by Clinton and outlined the measures to be taken to support Iraqi opposition groups in order to bring democracy to Iraq.
Some of the reasons for going to war include geo-political ambitions, oil, Israel, WMD’s, the war on terror, spreading democracy and a flex of American muscle.
“Regime change was on the agenda when Clinton signed the ILA but the wheels were set in motion long before the Act was even drafted. In July 1996, a new report titled ‘A Clean Break – A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’ was produced and signed by many neo-conservatives who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein as ‘a strategic objective for Israel’ (Ali Allawi 2007, p.65).”
Occupier Body Language
Abdelhafid Dib
If you think as MEM telling Iraq is OIL, this not true!
Iraq have more than oil, Iraq full of God Gifted richness of resources not just oil.
Iraq is a Honey pot isn’t? this is their words before the war.
Killing 500,000 kids under sanction “it’s worth it” (don’t tell me the snake she apologised for here pathetic words), 100,000 Iraqi, 5000,000 highly educated Iraqi out the country, 30,000 widows, 5000,000 orphans, 30% of Iraqi under poverty lines… all this do they care?
No never ever….
First, congratulations to Helena and MEPC for putting together such an extraordinary event. Wish I could be there. Look forward to the report.
As for the comments, Salah, who are you calling a snake? You guys are still fighting how the invasion started. This panel is about how the US will get “out of eden” — at last.
But of course, there will always be those who deem it ideologically impossible, that he US will always be there, even when they’re not…. not until the old order is restored perhaps.
and so it goes
scott h,
old order is restored perhaps.
Yeb, any Iraqi speaks about US he is Ba’athist, AQ followers, …all these names and tags.
Whatever Scott saying its all truth and peace full and objective for the people of Iraq.
Why not you keep your thoughts for yourself isn’t better the son of invader and occupier?
Of course this type of talk not fitting your mindset.
If US needs to set order inside Iraq there where better places that US should started not Iraq one of the weakest and less concerned to US security of the “Axis of Evil”.
Let be more optimistic as your statement, the goal of US is not here concern of Iraq and Iraqis order its strategic goals in the ME, mainly Israeli future in the region.
In all US historical invasions examples US have existed in those courtiers and region have control in that areas politically and militarily.
Scott h., you mistaken reading people mind here, what Iraqi looking for is not “old order is restored perhaps.” This completely opposite what you think.
Iraqis looking for national truthful government that have national pride for Iraq and Iraqi, not a poppet government that see the occupation and killing of people as freedom and call the invader our friends.
Do you like to live under invader and occupier hand Scott? You may be? Your mind mixed and lost with biased thoughts.
Anyway you have some sort a finger in Iraqi honey pot Scott, its very testy for you that you came with this statement.
“there will always be those who deem…that he US will always be there, even when they’re not”
I will believe that the US is not there when the US is, in fact, not there. So far I have not seen anything that encourages me to believe that the imperial project will ever really end – at least not until the Iraqi people force an end to it, as they inevitably will, sooner or later.
I am not impressed with the alleged “withdrawal” from the cities that leaves an undisclosed number of occupation forces still inside the cities full time, and the cities surrounded by bases filled with occupation forces ready to go charging back in to shoot up the place on a moment’s notice. I also note that the U.S. retains the ability to mount air attacks on Iraqis anywhere and at any time they like.
And then there is the Imperial Citadel in Baghdad. I have seen no hint of any kind that it will ever be transformed into an actual embassy.
salah, can’t make out much of your post…. Yet didn’t answer my question — who were you calling a “snake?” Helena? Sure looks like it.
I’m all for getting US troops out asap, as is Helena — as are most of the panelists on that program. Yet I can imagine there will be interesting debates therein.
I have my doubts too…. Shirin’s skepticism is understood.
bad english
So disgusting flavours Mullah Scott?
To Many Iraqis, U.S. Troops Have Not Faded Away
by Quil Lawrence
“Iraqi security forces in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, celebrate the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq’s cities, June 29. But two weeks after the official deadline, many Iraqis are wondering why so many American soldiers are still on their streets.”
……………..
“…the Iraqi government says that the arrangement is going smoothly. Many Iraqis, however, aren’t so sure. They can’t understand why American soldiers are still on their streets.”
Why Aren’t The Americans Gone?
“A resident of Ramadi who gives his name only as Omar, says that…there are more U.S. soldiers in the streets than before…adding that he’s not sure they are ever leaving.”
…………………
“But patrols of Americans are still visible throughout the country, some of them accompanied by Iraqi troops and others on their own. And Iraqis are lodging complaints every time they see U.S. soldiers.
“It’s a difficult job for the government to convince them that this is for the good of the country, says Ali al Dabagh, spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister.”
That last paragraph kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Well, yeah, they’re gone, but they’re not really gone, but it’s all for the good of the country, if only we could make you understand that – uhuh. Sure. Right.
It is fairly obvious, Scott, that Salah is calling Madeleine Albright a snake. It was she, after all who said that it was “worth it:” if half a million kids had died as a result of sanctions.
As to whether the US stays in Iraq: that is entirely up to the Iraqis, in the sense that, if Iraq decides to kick them out, they will have to go. They may however, decide to be cruel and leave it up to them to conclude that they are wasting vast amounts of money, lives and other resources while, back home, the economy shrivels up and famine begins to stalk the suburbs.
Scott, I believe Salah was refering to the despicable Madeleine Albright.
Bevin,
Small, but important correction: That was 500,000 kids under five years. The number does not include the many, many kids five and older who died during the same period also as a result of the sanctions.
thank ya’all for the clarification. I missed the reference. Here this thread started out with announcement of an event on how to get the US out of Iraq, and some would prefer to focus on what was said/written 15 years ago or more. Confused I not is. :{
But SH, they love going back to the halcyon days of Saddam’s totalitarian Iraq. The “if only”s and the “what might have been”s. Blocks out the memory of the new Iraq, four elections and that democratically elected shia govt, representing 80% of the population of non-Kurdish Iraq.
Goodness, their collective sigh of relief could be heard here in Australia when the reformists were crushed by the Iranian totalitarian state. They were worried there, for a brief, shining moment, poor things.
Scott wrote :
You guys are still fighting how the invasion started. This panel is about how the US will get “out of eden” — at last.
Scott,
I think that this is a rather condescending remark to make, particularly to an Iraqi and since you have just repeated it using different words, let me developpe why I think so.
1) It is very comfortable for the citizen of the aggressors/occupiers’ country to wipe the past away, including the deep harms done to the Iraqi and start on a new base.. what about the compensations due to the Iraqi ?
2) And that is the most important thing : the reason why the US invaded Iraq will have a deep influence on whether they are trustfull when stating that they are withdrawing. If they had really invaded Iraq only to suppress a tyran, liberate Iraqi and help them building a democracy (whatever that is in the mind of the US), then they should already have got out. If, as most believe, they invaded a weakened country only to controll the region producing the most oil, then I don’t think that they will get out eso asily, unless their goal of controlling the natural ressources of Iraq and the ME is completed.
3) Actually, what we are seeing now is not really the beginning of a withdrawal. I think that you should read the well documented article of Michael Schwartz at Tomdispatcht : it provides links to serious news papers reports for any of its assertions. Here are some extracts, but go and read the whole.
Acting in the dark of night, in fact, seems to catch the nature of American plans for Iraq in a particularly striking way. Last week, despite the death of Michael Jackson, Iraq made it back into the TV news as Iraqis celebrated a highly publicized American military withdrawal from their cities. Fireworks went off; some Iraqis gathered to dance and cheer; the first military parade since Saddam Hussein’s day took place (…) the U.S. handed back many small bases and outposts; and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proclaimed a national holiday — “sovereignty day,” he called it.
All of this fit with a script promisingly laid out by President Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. More recently, in his much praised speech to the students of Egypt’s Cairo University, he promised that the U.S. would keep no bases in Iraq, and would indeed withdraw its military forces from the country by the end of 2011.
Unfortunately, not just for the Iraqis, but for the American public, it’s what’s happening in “the dark” — beyond the glare of lights and TV cameras — that counts. While many critics of the Iraq War have been willing to cut the Obama administration some slack as its foreign policy team and the U.S. military gear up for that definitive withdrawal, something else — something more unsettling — appears to be going on.
(…)
After all, there can be no question that the Obama administration’s policy is indeed to reduce what the Pentagon might call the U.S. military “footprint” in Iraq. To put it another way, Obama’s key officials seem to be opting not for blunt-edged, Bush-style militarism, but for what might be thought of as an administrative push in Iraq, what Vice President Joe Biden has called “a much more aggressive program vis-à-vis the Iraqi government to push it to political reconciliation.”
An anonymous senior State Department official described this new “dark of night” policy recently to Christian Science Monitor reporter Jane Arraf this way: “One of the challenges of that new relationship is how the U.S. can continue to wield influence on key decisions without being seen to do so.”
the US out of Iraq, and some would prefer to focus on what was said/written 15 years ago or more.
Let me correct things to the “Iran/ME specialist” the writer of a book 15 years or more ago with A Spy In The House of Saud, undercover as veteran journalist, she cares about Human Rights!, but she kept tide lips about the human rights crimes in Iraq by here country..
here some thoughts:
The war on Iraq started long ago , Its took 20 years or more to US to ENTER Iraq,
Our Mullah Scott he could not read Arabic and what some Iraqi start talking openly after tyrant went off.
Stories by Iraqis telling when the tyrant were vice president, there were top US official visiting Iraq met the President (Ahmad Hassan al-Bakir) after the meeting they looked upsets then the Tyrant companied them to his office, then the cameout with smiles covering their faces.
later soon the tyrant took over and became the president and 8 years of war last with very supportive US efforts with famous hand shaking of war criminal Abu Ghraib follow.
The fact is what said and wrote 20 or more years, that when the time frame of the war on Iraq started which not yet ended with US occupied Iraq now.
(I had the link to that story in Arabic, but some how I lost.)
So every words and acts counts here either its now or 20 or more old then. Isn’t our Mullah.
It would be truly tragic if that story were lost to posterity, Salah. Please keep searching.
Meanwhile Wiki has some insights into the period of Mr al-Bakir’s distinguished presidency:
“In 1970, He passed a law to make it possible for sons and daughters of Ministers and University Deans to be exempt from any entry rules to any college they chose.
This is thought to be in anticipation of his son Mohammed graduation from secondary school, who was then admitted in 1972 to Baghdad university Medical College despite his lack of the normally high marks required for acceptance.
Saddam Hussein then repealed this law when became president. Probably because he was confident that his sons will not require this law and indeed, his son Uday “achieved” 99.8% in debatable circumstances.
Al-Bakr was quite strict with his family, who were raised to reasonably respect other people. His son Mohammed was expelled in 1973 from a Physiology lecture by Professor Sadiq Al-Hilali because he was “not paying enough attention and chewing gum during lecture”. Nothing adverse happened to Al-Hilali as a consequence and probably Mohammed never dared tell his father.
His son Mohammed never graduated from Medical school. He died in 1974 as a result of a head-on collision with a lorry on an intercity main road north of Baghdad. The lorry driver was soon released without charge after it became clear that Mohammed was dangerously overtaking at excessive speed in the Mercedes he was driving.”
Uday Hussein … another martyr at the hands of George W and I’d almost forgotten him. What a loss to medicine, don’t you feel Shirin?
bb,
I will try I hope not with other stuff I lost when HD of my computer crashed last year.
bb, I tell you this story I don’t know about the law 1970.
Mohammed was not normal guy he was some sort of sickness/ schizophrenia or some thing else,
His fathre married him to very nice lady the duture of Abdu Kareem Nida.
I was in thierd year in the university of technology she was in the first year. she was very polits respectable girl.
She was coming evey day to the school, goes to the lectures. eche day one car (Black Marcedes Benz) drop here in the front of the school she waite in the department office and goes to lectures then.
She died with him when he was driving a car with his son when the car was jumped the roads carp fallen in Tiogers revier.
Some acused Tyreant have hand in that to complacte his father health which in the end he killed him as many stories telling.
Thank you, Christiane. Even during the presidential campaign it was quite obvious to anyone who was really listening that for both candidates the real intention in Iraq was not to end the occupation, but to reconfigure and continue it indefinitely.
Thank you, Christiane, I double my thank you, as I forgot to mention well done by putting things in prospective.
But let teach our mullah Scott who came with his rhetoric, nonsense theory of timing and “to focus on what was said/written 15 years ago or more. Confused”.
There is no confusion here our Mullah, could you tell us where you have been with your focus… Confused with your country not ignored and Passover the Lockerbie story that happened 21 years ago or the Berlin disco story 23 a years ago.
So if that the case as with your “focused and confusion” about ILLIGEL WAR on Iraq and Occupation of a country be ignored, why should this very simple incident dominated US life media and MSM and not confused you?
Here it comes all to the MONEY mullah Scott, Honey Pot,……Libya has paid $1.5bn into a US compensation fund for relatives of victims blamed on Tripoli, the US state department says.The attacks include the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco which killed three and wounded more than 200.
300 people killed compensated $1.3Billions…….
Iraqis killed by US forces or Brits compensated their families $US100-$US200 dollars? Yah US design freedom and democracy
This public relations farce of an American “withdrawal” from Iraq’s cities (primarily by redrawing the borders of the cities) reminds me of nothing so much as that scene in Alice and Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts orders the execution of her unexpected guests and then demands to know: “Are their heads off?” To which one of her equivocating military henchmen replies (of his escaped prisoners): “Their heads are gone, if it please Her Majesty!”
Not to put too fine a point on the obvious obfuscation, President Obama has promised the American people, not to mention the Iraqis and the world at large, that American troops would leave Iraq’s cities by an agreed-upon date this summer; and when inquiring of our General Motors Generals, Petraeus and Odierno, if American troops have “left,” he appears perfectly willing to accept as answer: “The cities have moved ‘right,’ sir!”
Now I think I see the way that “all” American forces will withdraw from Iraq by yet another date certain two years hence: “Iraq” will simply move to the right on some American-drawn map until it merges with Kuwait and Iran. This will leave American troops, mercenaries, and corporate camp followers in exactly the positions they occupy today, only in some nebulously named territory not named “Iraq.”
President (and Army General) Dwight Eisenhower spoke truly when he said that he pitied any future President who did not understand the American military the way he did. Certainly, President Obama — America’s newly-minted Commander-in-Brief — clearly doesn’t understand the U.S. Military one bit, or else he would have long since cashiered Generals Petraeus and Odierno for flagrantly and publicly deriding, while actively working to undermine, his announced policy of withdrawing all American military forces from Iraq within a perfectly reasonable — indeed far too leisurely — time frame. Coupled with the disastrously dumb idea of escalating an equally stupid quagmire conundrum in Afghanistan, it appears that President Obama has settled, by default, on the same failed “guns AND butter” policies of his failed predecessors Johnson, Nixon, and Bush, Jr.
At any rate, I’d like to know what this up-coming panel discussion has to say about neutralizing the ticket-punching American military careerists who put personal promotion and Orwellian Newspeak ahead of sane national foreign policy any day.
Salah, did your university entry score surpass Uday’s 99.8%?
bb,
My University (University of Technology) is and engineering university will al sort.
Tyrant Son was in Baghdad University, school of Civil engineering, but there is no doubt that his marks was faked in part of academics fear from him and his father, put you can add to hypocrisy by academics.
And More on Iraq….
Helena,
I asking you if you really love Iraq and defending the human rights, as you we know before the war you are against it and against the occupation of Iraq.
I am asking to work to invite Dr. Omar Al Kubaisy as outspoken Iraqi what really this war and occupation did and doing to Iraq and Iraqi. If not so please I asking you to work to read Dr. Omar Al Kubaisy Speech in the European Parliament. March 18 th , 2009. In Middle East Policy Council event.
Here is the link to Dr. Omar Al Kubaisy: Speech in the European Parliament.
Michael M., you speak as if Obama were not in on the scam, despite the fact that his very words during the campaign made his true intentions toward Iraq quite clear, just as Hillary’s words made it clear that her intentions were essentially the same. He is doing just what he said he would do. He never actually said he would end the occupation, did he? One did not have to be terribly skilled to understand that all along his intention has been to continue it indefinitely after reconfiguring it to look less like an occupation. Most Americans are buying the scam (apparently including the AFSC and their Iraq consultant Ra’ed Jarrar, who I expected to be more skeptical), but Iraqis are not so easily fooled.
Obama never said during his campaign that he would end occupation. His only promise was to withdraw all the fighting troops. Now, this leaves him almost complete freedom : all depends upon how you define what a combat troops is.
About six months after his arrival at the WH, where are we ? Obama is trying to delay the vote of the Iraqis concering the SOFA (without the agreement of the Iraqis, any US troops left in IRaq, whether fighting ones or not fighting ones would be illegal), what the US wants of course.
That’s for the legal aspect of things; on the ground now : the US supposedly has evacuated Iraqi cities, leaving control to the Iraqi. In practices, they have only evacuated small bases; in order to be able to stay/keep big ones, they have shifted the official borders of Iraqi cities, with the complicity of the actual government. The US still has about 130’000 troops in Iraq, almost as much as during the first years of occupation. And last but not least, the withdrawal of the “fighting troops” has already been delayed from 16 months to 19 months. Obama is cautious enough not to tell how many US troops will stay in Iraq, neither how many will wait “combat ready” in bases in Kuwait or else. Further, the US is keeping military advisers accompanying Iraqis forces inside the cities and then only the US is able to fly in Iraqi air, because the US has prevented the IRaqi to rebuild their own air force.
Despite all this, I think that it is good to organize such panels of discussion : it is a good tactic to remember Obama of the promises he did during the electoral campaign and to request a whole and true withdrawal.
It is a tactical question. If you make as if he was trustfull in his promises of withdrawal, you can use that in order to pressure him more effectively.
I hope that the panel will be a success and that it will put pressures on Obama to proceed to a whole withdrawal, denouncing the actual hypocrisy. Please Helena, keep us informed of the results.
Christiane.
I find it hard to believe that after the US military built some 14 military bases in Iraq that any “real” withdrawl will occur within the next decade.
I do agree with you that it is good to organize such panels of discussion and in time hopefully a logical/practical withdrawal will occur.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Has been attributed to Gandhi and reflects past US actions since WWII.
What a waste.
Omop,
To say nothing about the huge “ambassy” housing an army of special advisers which is entranched in the Green Zone, and looks more like the fortress containing a second shadow government controlling the other they have installed.
I agree with you, but it is still important to make something against it, hence the interest of such panel discussion.
I hope that Helena will report how it went and what was told.
“…looks more like the fortress containing a second shadow government controlling the other they have installed.”
You are referring, of course, to the imperial citadel the U.S. laughably calls an “embassy”. Christiane, I think it does not only LOOK like a fortress containing a second shadow government controlling the one they have installed. That is exactly what it is, and more. It is a command and control center for U.S. military, political, and economic operations in the region. Establishing that was one of the primary goals of the invasion it seems.
Shirin,
With all due respect, I do not care to defend President Obama’s wrong-headed imperialistic tendencies, whether malevolent (as you apparently assume) or simply mistaken. I only want to see them brought to an end. This will take some time. Unrelenting pressure from the oft-maligned but seldom sighted “Left” in America – meaning now a comfortable majority of citizens – can result in changed policy if sustained. I can still remember when Congress impeached President Richard Nixon for his lawlessness and then cut off funding for America’s moribund War on Southeast Asia. Those two salutary milestones in the history of democracy did not happen overnight or without millions of Americans, from all walks of life, marching in the streets and demanding peace and justice. As Gandhi said about the four stages of revolutionary change: “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” Peace can win again in America and the world, but it will take a determined struggle against entrenched military and corporate power, or that “undue influence,” against which President Eisenhower warned us long ago. But does America still have what it takes to wage peace? I agree that present signs do not look especially encouraging, but I do see signs of potent protest here and there.
As for President Obama himself: he has no personal experience with the American military and this shows in everything he says and does. He seems positively smitten by medal-encrusted uniforms and the General Motors Generals who sport them so ostentatiously. Nonetheless, in order to win the Democratic Party nomination and general election in 2008, candidate Obama clearly and consistently called the Iraq War “dumb” and one that “never should have been waged and never should have been authorized.” In this he spoke a truth clearly — if belatedly — recognized by the American people. Obama also campaigned to close down that Iraq war within a period of about sixteen months after assuming office, a schedule which he has now extended, supposedly on advice of his military staff, to nineteen months. I, for one, plan to hold him to that pledge, even though I see no reason why he cannot accelerate the process. If he fails to deliver on that promise, then he ought to pay a heavy political price for betraying what the American people clearly elected him to do. But he hasn’t exhausted his nineteen months yet. I think the American people will give him that before rendering political judgment.
Unfortunately for peace on this planet, the American people have also made it clear that the domestic Economy and Health Care come first with them. Certainly, President Obama recognizes that his presidency rests on delivering on these two issues first. Kicking the Iraq occupation down the road until after the 2010 mid-term elections probably gives him time to clear the domestic policy hurdles before winding up the misbegotten misadventure in Mesopotamia before his own reelection bid in 2012. Simply put: President Obama has this year, 2009, to get his domestic policy issues settled; he has 2011 to wind up the Iraq misadventure. As you no doubt realize, the Congress doesn’t work much, if at all, during biennial election years. At least, the normal political calendar looks like this to me.
Escalating the quagmire in Afghanistan, though, constitutes President Obama’s very own unforced blunder. He seems to have calculated that he could throw the U. S. Military a “splendid little war” bone in Afghanistan as the price he had to pay for the Pentagram’s acquiescence in withdrawing from Iraq (which the big brass have made abundantly plain they will resist until the last microsecond of 2011). Democratic Party presidents often succumb to this kind of petty haggling out of fear that the reactionaries in the military bureaucracy will politically combine with their reactionary allies in the Republican Party to blame the Democrats generically for “losing” something somewhere overseas that America never owned in the first place. Barbara Tuchman wrote in The March of Folly that the American government responds only to this “intimidation by the rabid right at home,” and it appears to me that President Obama hasn’t yet shaken off the discredited Stockholm Syndrome that normally afflicts fearful and timid Democrats in matters requiring the downsizing of our bloated and largely irrelevant military colossus.
Naturally, the career military ticket-punchers think that they can have both Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan as long as the Iraqis stay “quiet” and don’t really insist (by killing more Americans in Iraq) that we “really” withdraw from their country and airspace as we have publicly agreed to do. I don’t think that President Obama can let the military foot-dragging continue past November of 2010, but if he does, then he will only have himself to blame for the Democratic Party primary challenger that he will deserve and get.
It seems obvious to me that President Obama does not understand how the U. S. Military looks out after its own career prospects before anything else. He had better learn this damn fast if America has any hope of surviving an imperial and domestic economic collapse on his watch. At any rate, I can’t vote for a Democratic Party challenger to President Obama before 2012. I will surely do that, and encourage others to do the same, if all American military forces have not exited Iraq by the end of 2011. Eight years on the road to nowhere will just have to do for our vaunted Visigoths. So hand out those medals by the basketful and start up those “welcome home” parades. Surely, the Iraqis will more than happily supply the flowers and flower-throwers as they wish the departing Americans all the best somewhere else other than Iraq.
Michael Murry, can see where you are coming from but back in the 60s and 70s the anti war/Left movement was galvanised and fuelled by the drafting of 18/20 year olds. As it was in Austalia.
I’m afraid you will find that Americans will be much less inclined to be exercised by US military adventures that rely on professional volunteers and massive airpower. That’s why the anti war movement re Iraq never got mass traction even with the unrelenting MSM coverage of the horrors there. It was the same in Australia.
The only way all US troops will leave Iraq is if the Iraq government insists that they do. It won’t come from public pressure at home.
Barack Obama considers expanding US army
Telegraph, 16 Jul 2009
US Occupation of Iraq Continues Unabated
Monday 06 July 2009, by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t
Oregon troops ‘ready’ for Iraq despite bumps
by Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian
Thursday July 02, 2009, 9:00 PM
My last post blocked by Helena’s Spam trap..
“Obama also campaigned to close down that Iraq war within a period of about sixteen months after assuming office…”
Obama never once said he would end the occupation of Iraq – NEVER. On the contrary, he has consistently insisted that he intended to leave an undisclosed number of “residual” forces there indefinitely to, among other things, “protect American interests”, including the Regional Imperial Command and Control Center on the Tigris, which by the way he has never made a scintilla of a hint of a suggestion should EVER be scaled down, let alone abandoned in favor of an actual embassy. In short, Obama’s plan is and has always been to reconfigure the occupation and continue it indefinitely.
“Closing down the Iraq war” does not now and never meant ending the occupation, and he never said it did. The American Imperial Project in Iraq will continue until the Iraqi people force an end to it.
“The only way all US troops will leave Iraq is if the Iraq government insists that they do.”
Wrong as usual, bb. The Iraqi “government” will never insist that all U.S. troops leave Iraq because the Iraqi “government” is designed to be dependent on the U.S.
The U.S. imperial project in Iraq will end only when the Iraqi people forcibly put an end to it.
“I’m afraid you will find that Americans will be much less inclined to be exercised by US military adventures that rely on professional volunteers and massive airpower.”
bb, I did you wrong by not acknowledging this. You are very correct that the lack of any real risk or obvious sacrifice to themselves keeps many Americans too complacent to take action. If they or their loved ones were threatened with conscription it would be a very different story.
I WOULD, however, quibble with your use of the term professional to describe the majority of those who volunteer for the military, though I guess that depends somewhat on what you mean by the word professional.
“Barack Obama considers expanding US army
Nothing new about that. One of Obama’s campaign promises was that he would expand the army by around 100,000 troops.
bb,
the first two to three months Maliki were taken US chop every from US base in Kuwaiti to Baghdad and then flow back to the base afternoon.
Do you think he can be that sort of man have the ability to tell US Go Home?
bb, go find some Iraq (Normal Iraqis) who worked with the Americans during Bremer time?
Please go ask them how they treated and how American talk to them.
قليل من الحياء يا حكومة ..
يأتي اوباما الى زيارتنا ونحن دولة مستقلة ذات سيادة .. يجلس في مكانه وتتوافد عليه الوفود .. واية وفود؟
رئيس الدولة المستقلة.. يقدم واجب الطاعة ويخرج .. يتبعه الباب العالي .. يقدم الولاء ويخرج .. فيتبعه فلان من نواب الباب العالي .. والامريكي جالس في مكانه
وعوضا عن ان يدخل الامريكي على العراقي كما هو متبع في بروتوكولات الدول المستقلة ذات السيادة، صار الاخوة الاعداء يدخلون (وربما كانوا واقفين خلف الباب في “سرة” يشبه سرة اللبن مال ايام زمان ..!!) الواحد خلف الاخر ..
يا صخام الوجه .. اخزيتمونا بالله العظيم ..
Mayada Al-Askari
Shirin – was using professional in the career sense.
Salah, I understand your feeling about the deep pain you are suffering from American occupation, but your strong words ” (don’t tell me the snake she apologised for here pathetic words), if you really mean Helena,I must say you are wrong in your judgement. She is an activist woman who beleives ln just cause and she is struggling for it. I tell you as a brother who loves his arab nation so much and as an orphan of a freedom fighter against french colonialism during ( 1954-62 ). I can see some American peronalities such as Michael Moore and Ramzi Clark served the Arab cause more than Arab and moslim personalities and I must confess Helena is one of these great personalities who keeps travelling through the world and sacrifying herself of being homeless.
My apology to Helena, I meant homesick and not homeless.
Hafid