Further American aggressions?

Asia Times Online’s incomparable Pepe Escobar has a lengthy piece there today titled “Evildoers, here we come”… Evidently, that’s a reference to how he sees the mindset of the GWB-2 administration.
As Escobar says right up at the front of the piece:

    Iran is very much in the US spotlight at present over concerns that it is developing nuclear weapons, with much talk of “regime change”. Over the next four years … any of a number of countries could come into the crosshairs – Syria, Saudi Arabia and “axis of evil” original North Korea.

(I believe he actually meant to say that “Iran and those other countries” could come into the crosshairs, since that’s the tenor of what he writes thereafter.)
Then, before going through the situation country by country, he presents the considerable amount of evidence there isfor thinking that the 2nd GWB administration will be even more warlike than the first one:

    Vice President Dick Cheney’s concentration of power under Bush II will be even more complete. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld – despite Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the quagmire in Iraq – remains in place. The CIA under Porter Goss has been through a Soviet-style purge and is being turned into an ersatz Office of Special Plans (OSP), which everyone remembers was a Rumsfeld-sponsored operation that specialized in fabricating false pretexts for the invasion of Iraq. The OSP was directed by neo-conservative Douglas Feith (who now wants the US to attack Iran). The new CIA is Feith’s OSP on steroids. Goss’ job is to make sure the CIA agrees with everything Bush and the neo-conservatives say. Expect more wars.

In my humble opinion, this analysis is all good as far as it goes– But what it notably doesn’t take into sufficient account is the tough strategic/political reality of a situation in which the US military is already considerably bogged down and bleeding badly, in Iraq. At this point, the US commanders will be extremely lucky if they manage to pull the US forces out of Iraq anytime in the next four years without suffering a series of major battlefield debacles due to supply strangulation…


A good part of Bob Woodward’s intriguing book “Plan of Attack” describes in detail just how hard W had to work from November 2001 through mid-2002 to, effectively, seduce fellow Texan General Tommy Franks into believing that it just “might-could” be possible to undertake a war of the kind that Rumsfeld had in mind against Iraq and come out of it successfully.
After what all the service chiefs have experienced in Iraq in the past 21 months, don’t expect any member of the US officer corps at all to be open to a similar seduction today, with respect to any of the other countries in the neocons’ cross-hairs.
Yes, it’s true that here in the US we still have “civilian control of the military” (which is generally a good idea). But still, the service chiefs here are also all long-time adepts at working Capitol Hill. So don’t expect that “next time around”, the Bushies could get an “enabling resolution” through the Congress with anything like the alacrity and ease they enjoyed back in November 2002.
What’s more, the cumulative effect of the whole series of culpable mis-steps the US has taken over the past three years with respect to Iraq– including the deliberate buildup to and fanning of the flames of that quite unnecessary invasionr; the launching of it; and several significant mis-steps taken in its aftermath– has been that the considerable amount of international goodwilll the US enjoyed as of September 2001 has been completely dissipated.
They claim they have a “coalition of the willing” for Iraq? They couldn’t get even world-class brown-nose Tony Blair to sign up for any kind of a “coalition” going into any of those other countries…
So I’m not as worried as Pepe Escobar seems to be that the Bushies would actually be able to act on any of the extremely bellicose rhetoric now steaming out of their ears with regard to Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea. In addition, I think he’s raising an unnecessary degree of alarm when he concludes:

    Fallujah – flattened by “conventional” means – was just a test. On the road to Damascus, the road to Tehran, the road to Riyadh, the neo-cons would be much more tempted to go nuclear.

Still, Escobar is always a good read. And in that piece, he certainly does well in pulling together many disparate bits of evidence regarding the neocons’ attempts to beat the war-drums against the four “next target” countries…
(Another piece of evidence related to the Bushies’ attitudes towards Syria: Ori Nir of The Forward has a piece in there today in which he cites “knowledgeable American and Israeli sources” as saying that, “While Syria’s repeated offers to reopen peace talks with Jerusalem are triggering a fierce debate within the Israeli military and political establishment, the Bush administration appears united in its opposition to launching such negotiations… Washington has … quietly told Israeli leaders that this would be a bad time to resume talks with Syria.” Presumably, the Bushies are eager to keep the “threat” of a possible future Israeli attack on Syria as one of their many means of pressuring President Asad’s regime. Oh boy.)
Back to Escobar… He cites two really interesting sources. One is this recent post by Riverbend— her first in about four weeks. As with every single sentence that River writes, this post is definitely worth a read. She writes at length about the terrible effects that Iraq’s ongoing fuel shortage is having on the daily life of even middle-class Baghdadis. (Imagine the effects on people who find it even harder than her family does to pay around $4.00 per gallon for gasoline! … And this, in a country almost swimming on a sea of oil…)
Interestingly, she writes that,

    Most people I’ve talked to aren’t going to go to elections. It’s simply too dangerous and there’s a sense that nothing is going to be achieved anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes- tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of religious parties and tribal sheikhs- can anyone say Afghanistan? What’s even more irritating is that election lists have to be checked and confirmed by none other than Sistani!! Sistani- the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious clerics. Now, can anyone say ‘theocracy in sheeps clothing’?
    Ahmad Chalabi is at the head of one of those lists- who would join a list with Ahmad Chalabi at its head?

Interesting, huh? However, while I’m sure that many Iraqis share River’s views on these things, I think there are also many, many Iraqis who don’t share her view of Sistani, in particular– and the fact that Sistani has blessed the list may over-ride the distaste that the vast majority of Iraqis have expressed towards Chalabi…
And the other really interesting source cited by Escobar was this article about Iran’s planning to deal with a possible US attack, published on Asia Times Online on Thursday. It’s by Kaveh Afrasiabi, who’s evidently a very smart and well-connected professor of political science at Tehran University.
This piece is definitely worth reading and studying closely. Afrasiabi writes:

    A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as “spectacular” the massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at newly established draft centers for “suicide attacks” against any potential intruders in what is commonly termed “asymmetrical warfare”.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Afrasiabi’s publication of this glowing description is itself linked to a very sophisticated and multi-pronged Iranian campaign of deterrence. Deterrence of the United States, that is. As in, trying to deter US leaders from even thinking of launching an attack against Iran.
But still, it is definitely worth while for all Americans, including our leaders, to remember that when they even consider launching an attack against Iran, they are notably not talking about some penny-ante country that lacks its own considerable experience of running wars.
As Afrasiabi notes,

    Learning from both the 2003 Iraq war and Iran’s own precious experiences of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and the 1987-88 confrontation with US forces in the Persian Gulf, Iranians have focused on the merits of a fluid and complex defensive strategy that seeks to take advantage of certain weaknesses in the US military superpower while maximizing the precious few areas where they [the Iranians] may have the upper hand, eg, numerical superiority in ground forces, guerrilla tactics, terrain, etc.

Basically, as he describes it, the way the Iranians would seek to survive and then counter a US attack would depend on using a number of different strategies:

    (1) Using Iran’s rapidly developing and widely dispersed ballistic missile capabilities to “take the war” to the US rear in the Gulf, and possibly also to Israel.
    (2)Also, to “increase the arch of crisis for the US, in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which of course border Iran, and in both of which some of the US forces are highly vulnerable.
    (3) Psychological warfare, and
    (4) What Afrasiabi calls, “an emerging ‘proto-nuclear deterrence’ according to which, as he writes:

      Iran’s mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle would make it “nuclear weapon capable” in a relatively short time, as a sort of pre-weapon “threshold capability” that must be taken into account by Iran’s enemies contemplating attacks on its nuclear installations. Such attacks would be met by stiff resistance, born of Iran’s historic sense of nationalism and patriotism, as well as by a counter-weaponization based on quick conversation of the nuclear technology. Hence the longer the US, and Israel, keep up the military threat, the more powerful and appealing the Iranian yearning for a “proto-nuclear deterrence” will grow.

In the conclusion to the piece, Afriasiabi notes:

    The whole situation calls for prudent crisis management and security confidence-building by both sides, and, hopefully, the ugly experience of repeated warfare in the oil-rich region can itself act as a deterrent.

I agree wholeheartedly with that.

44 thoughts on “Further American aggressions?”

  1. I’m disappointed about the US view on the Syria talks.
    The idea of neo-cons promoting nuclear attacks on Damascus and Tehran is so insane that I am nervous. I assumed Bush II would never invade Iraq because it was so clearly insane. I thought he was just bluffing (to distract us from the Enron scandal was my theory). So if an idea is too insane to take seriously, then I take it seriously, because Bush II and company are capable of it. God help all of us. Please God, please, don’t let them go nuclear. Spare Damascus. Teheran too. Spare all of us. (Do the Israelis really think they would be safe from nuclear fallout in attacks on Syria? How dumb are they, anyway?)

  2. Re: nuclear bluffing – could US sword rattling over Syria and Iran, complete with nuclear threats, cause a nuclear first strike by some random group? This sort of talk could lead to real nuclear war. Doesn’t anybody get it?

  4. Dominic,
    Secularism at its best certainly does allow religion to flourish freely in all its varieties. Unfortunately, these days we are seeing it being used to abridge freedom of religion in many places. Mostly it is being used to abridge the religious freedom of Muslims, even in some predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, where backlash is as inevitable as death. France’s recent banning of hijab in schools and other government buildings is another example. As one of my interlocutors put it, in some cases secularism is becoming much too much like a religion itself.
    In many respects Iraq’s (pre-“liberation”) secularism came very close to the ideal. It neither enforced nor abridged religious expression, or the lack thereof. It simply left that to the individual. Those days are, alas, gone for the foreseeable future, thanks to the Bush administration.
    As for Juan Cole, as much as I respect him and as valuable as I find his website, I disagree with his analyses and conclusions more often than not, as does a good Iraqi academic friend of mine who happens also to be a friend of his. My sense is that he is not able to think and view the facts and realities he knows of from any put an American perspective and cannot put himself into any other framework. Even so, the information he imparts as well as his take on it is invaluable as part of the mix.
    Since I know very little about him personally this expulsion from the Baha’is business is news to me. What do you know about this?

  5. Another great post – thanks, Helena.
    I agree that if the Bush administration were rational, we could probably discount their threatening talk as so much bluster, although even that, all by itself, can do considerable harm to world stability, human rights, etc.
    But as Leila points out, the Iraq venture certainly was not rational, so we cannot take anything for granted which these people in charge. If the world had to vote on the “government most likely to use nukes just because they are there”, Bush II would no doubt come out ahead. All I can say it that I will breathe an enomous sigh of relief if we get though the next four years without seeing nuclear arms used anywhere in the world.

  6. Hi Shirin,
    Of course I am for the good kind of secularism and not the other one. That is why I was mad with Cole for using Nehru’s legacy in such a misleading way (not the first time I have heard somebody do that – there is a man called Tom Lodge here in SA who was trying it on a while ago).
    Juan Cole’s history with the Baha’is is all chronicled on the internet, if you are interested. I’m sorry, I don’t have any URLs to hand. He played his part honourably enough, I believe, and was ostracised for his pains. I respect that a lot.
    Yes, he is a scholar and a linguist and he is tireless. I don’t know of any other “public intellectual, ever, who has put out such a stream of top-quality material on a daily basis. I wish there were even a handful of other professors who took their work as seriously as he does. His work on Iraq has so far been incomparable.
    But indeed, he has his limitations. I think he has a blind spot when it comes to the general humanist legacy, including communism. He just “doesn’t go there”, and it weakens his whole oevre.
    On the other hand, he is not unfamiliar with the wider world (wider than the USA, I mean). I don’t find him as parochial as you seem to do, and especially not in comparison with other US intellectuals, or what pass for intellectuals over there.

  7. No doubt, GWB II would face many obstacles should my worst nightmares keep coming true and the US winds up using aggression against Iran, Syria, et al. I’ve followed “progress” in Iraq on a daily basis, so I’m well aware of how stretched our military is there. And that may indeed limit much of the damage they could do elsewhere.
    But it would seem that GWB II has plenty of support here in the US for more aggressive acts. Plenty of it. I just read an article this morning that states that according to a survey conducted by Cornell University “Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.” They cited what to me is the staggering figure of 44% (yes, after all that we’ve been through the past 4 years, I’m still shockable).
    And guess what this 44% figure directly correlated to? No shock to any of you, I imagine: “Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.” But they also found this: “Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.”
    Helena, that “good kind” of secularism is what I cling to these days. And this is why.

  8. Helena,
    Here is something I do worry about. It is precisely because our forces in Iraq are bogged down that some US leaders may be inclined to make another display of force elsewhere.
    The Iraq war has revealed, to a shocking degree, the limitations on US conventional power, at least when it comes to introducing troops into a country and pacifying it. While some predicted the problems, I believe this incapacity has also startled many people in the world, and induced world leaders to re-assess US power.
    In such an atmosphere, concerned about a loss of US prestige, and a declining ability to influence (i.e. intimidate) other countries, US leaders may be tempted to make a dramatic display of the kinds of power the US does still possess in reserve, just so the vassals and restless natives don’t get the wrong idea. One such kind of power is the ability to blow things up at long range, with very few losses of personnel or equipment.
    Using air power to blow up either Iranian nuclear facilities, or villages and encampments in Syria that are claimed to harbor insurgents infiltrating Iraq, would provide such a demonstration. It would be a way for the US to say, “Don’t assume that just because our ground forces are bogged down in Iraq that we, the empire, are bogged down. We have lots and lots of destructive capability to spare.” It would also remind the world that the US has the latent ability to flatten Iraq completely whenever it want to, and that the only reason it does not “pacify” Iraq more forcefully is because it chooses not to, and is willing to endure losses in order to achieve more “constructive” political goals.
    Of course, the more roguish US behavior bcomes, the stronger the coalitions that will build against us. Only the most cracked of hawks seem to think the US is so powerful that it can advance its interests in the world with virtually the whole world arrayed against us and working to undermine US power.

  9. Good points, Dan. Under different circumstances your concerns would be alarmist. But the current official US National Security Strategy, which Bush adopted in 2002, has as its basis the premise that the only aspect of US power which has no global competitor is our military. Therefore the US should base its global strategy on its military power.
    From that point of view it’s essential that the supremacy of our military might be completely unquestioned. The document says that one of the goals of the strategy is to be so strong that we will “dissuade future military competition”. In other words, nobody must even even think about challenging our military.
    The NSS is full of window dressing about spreading democracy and cooperating with others. However, what matters about it is not the boilerplate, but rather what’s in there that is really new and radically different. This is the proclaimed intention the establish permanent global military hegemony, and the declaration of our unique right to attack other countries preemptively “if necessary”.
    The latter is of course illegal under international law. However, the former is to me an even bigger problem. I think that it’s illegitimate for one country to even aspire to permanent global military domination. Even the wish to do so seems very fishy, to me. For that to become the basis of our global strategy is a big new departure. I’m concerned that there hasn’t been more discussion of it within the country, particularly among the elites including the media and the Democratic Party leadership. It makes me wonder if too many of us altogether have drunk the Koolaid.

  10. Dan, I believe you got it exactly right. The goal of the administration is destablization. Call it the ‘Chaos Theory’. With an added dose of ‘Cowboy Mentality’. The use of firepower totally removes the ‘bogged down’ arguement from the board.
    It can all be done with long range bombers and two air craft carrier groups.
    The most important lesson taken out of the Iraq war is the absolute power of air supremecy. The insurgents win if we don’t have it.
    Warren

  11. Warren, I disagree. We have air supremacy in Iraq now and look what good it does us.
    It’s fundamentally a political struggle there, one that we have already lost.
    For an even more pertinant point about the ultimate value of airpower, reread the last paragraph in Dan’s post.

  13. PS Air supremacy gives the U.S. the power to flatten the entire country and kill its inhabitants indiscriminately. And then what do you have? Victory? Well, if that is the term you want to apply to a demolished country filled with dead bodies, I guess victory is what you have.

  14. I’m sorry. I did not mean we WIN in Iraq. We are lost there, all that remains is to what degree. What I ment is the insurgents would win TODAY if we did not have air supremecy, instead of two years (or when ever) in the future.
    Iran is a different situation. Iran has ALWAYS been, and will ALWAYS be the greater threat to Isreal. In my opinion the war in Iraq has been based on two things. Revenge for what the neo-cons consider the mistake and humiliation of Sadam remaining in power after the first Iraq war. The second (and more important reason) is for military bases to threaten other countries in the area, mainly Syria and Iran. It is not necesary to invade Iran to remove its threat. All that is needed is air power to destroy its infrastructure. I would be more impressed with Helena’s list of Iran war preparation if it included a degree of air defense. In fact they need to have the best and most modern air defense in the world, with the ability to rebuild it as American firepower destroys it. With out it, Iran is helpless.
    THAT is what i ment by air supremecy.
    If the American population has not said one word of concern when air power destroyed Falluja (and make no mistake, it WAS marines calling in air strikes that did that), do you think they will say a word when it happens to Iran infrastructure? Iraq was (and still is) the ‘test’, both in military terms, and in American population terms.
    Warren

  15. Interesting read on the original post, and subsequent thread. I share some of the observations, including the realization that the US is better at breaking than fixing countries. In the Iranian case I assume the US would be looking to do some breaking, without the complications of an Iraq style occupation.
    As for the US military power credibility, the Iraqi invasion was a remarkable display of logistics half a world away, run by a bunch of 18 year olds. In Afghanistan, the so called “grave of empires”, fell in no time when the US moved in. As a remote observer I was impressed with the tax dollars at work. The Iraqi occupation itself, that is another story…
    E. Bilpe

  16. Bilpe, what is remarkable about sending aeroplanes and ships from the USA to Iraq? I’ll tell you what is remarkable about this particular case. It is wholesale death and destruction without a conscience. Of course it can be done by 18-year-olds. It is Wal-mart warfare, it takes no brain. In fact it requires absence of brain and especially of conscience.
    Don’t be so daft. Put your shock and awe away. The graveyard still awaits the empire, just as it awaits us all.

  18. Concerning Juan Coles’ informed comments. Of course it’s a very valuable blog with a lot of informations on the arab countries. However his positions surprised me several times. The last, but not the least was his take on the killing of a wounded insurgent in the Fallujan mosquee.
    He pretends that the US marine who killed the wounded insurgent in the Mosquee couldn’t be put on the same level as the fighters beheading hostages, since the US military was there legally (He brought forward the 1546 UN resolution which the US had extorted from the UN). But even if the US had any moral authority to occupy Iraq, that won’t grant the Marines the right to fire at wounded fighters.
    So since then I take what he says with a grain of salt. His biography indicates that his family had connections with the army; starting from there, he had a good evolution, but this probably leaves some traces.
    Anyway, some time ago Juan Cole had a very pertinent analysis : he wrote that US could well be the dominant military power in the world, but that would be very different than of being “the moral leader of the free world”. Indeed, asserting herself with blunt force would cut her from having any moral authority, any legitimacy in the eyes of the other states of the world and that won’t be a viable alternative in the long term (not exactly his words, but something to that effect).
    ****
    Concerning Iran, I’m not as optimist as Helena. With many commentators here (Dan and No preference), I think that the neocons gang is not acting rationally. I agree with Dan stating that :
    “In such an atmosphere, concerned about a loss of US prestige, and a declining ability to influence (i.e. intimidate) other countries, US leaders may be tempted to make a dramatic display of the kinds of power the US does still possess in reserve, just so the vassals and restless natives don’t get the wrong idea. One such kind of power is the ability to blow things up at long range, with very few losses of personnel or equipment.”
    And with No preference adding that :
    “But the current official US National Security Strategy, which Bush adopted in 2002, has as its basis the premise that the only aspect of US power which has no global competitor is our military. Therefore the US should base its global strategy on its military power.
    From that point of view it’s essential that the supremacy of our military might be completely unquestioned. The document says that one of the goals of the strategy is to be so strong that we will “dissuade future military competition”. In other words, nobody must even even think about challenging our military.”
    This insistence of the neocons on the military power of the US is very much in line with the book of Emmanuel Todd : “After the Empire. The Breakdown of the American Order” Todd thinks that the US is trying to assert herself through the use of military power because she has lost its predominance in other domains, but that the show off of her military power will draw her to bankrupcy and decay. The book was written before the Iraqi invasion and contains some premonitory pages.

  19. I tried and failed to find an article in asia times online that appeared a couple of weeks ago. It was about a report from the newly cleansed CIA about Iran being the power that props up the insurgency in Iraq. Therefore attacking Iran wouldn

  20. I also admire Todd’s book, which Christiane mentioned.
    The neocons are in one sense very rational. They plan and calculate, develop complex strategies and execute them. Given their strategic aims, and their perception of the realities in which they are operating, they are quite rational.
    But they in fact have a very distorted perception of reality. Their estimation of US power following the collapse of the Soviet Union is exaggerated. Even the title of their infamous strategy statement, “Toward a New American Centrury” reveals their deeply unrealistic view of the world. The first “American Century” was built when a dynamically growing United States stepped into the power vacuum created by the self-immolation of European civilization, the obliteration of the Japanese empire, and in an otherwise underdeveloped world, with no other countries even close to Western levels of industrial development. The notion that the United States holds a similar position at this time is silly. It is true that US military power is unrivaled for the time being, but we have just seen an example of the overestimation of the capacity of military power to bring changes. It is also the case that the ability of the US to maintain unrivaled military supremacy depends to some extent on that supremacy not being seen as dangerous. To the extent it is perceived as a danger, to the same extent others will be inclined to band together to counter it, either by military competition or economic pressure.
    A recent analysis by Michael Weinstein for the Power and Interest News Report presents a stark picture of the evidence for the real decline in US power:
    The United States has no choice but to work for its advantage in concert with other nations. My sense now is that much of the world has concluded, following Bush’s re-election, that the danger posed by America is not a temporary one caused by an anomolous rightwing Bush administration, but is a deep and systematic one, that in fact reflects the will of the majority of the American people, who appear to be in the grip of a dangerous xenophobic nationalism and various kinds of religious fundamentalism.

  22. Dominic,
    I was passing no judgement on the morality, the decision to fight is taken at the political level. When you think about military influence diminishing strongly with distance, the Afghani example is striking. With little and reluctant collaboration from surrounding countries, pilots flew remote mission where the flight time was say 8 hours just for a mission of 10 minutes. Same in Iraq, what collaboration did they have from neighbors? Turkey flopped, Syria and Iran counted as enemies for all purposes, Saudis paralyzed with paranoia about public opinion (in a country with no free expression!), left just a narrow entry from Kuwait.
    Think about most government bureaucracies, from education through infrastructure and to health care. The words speed and effectiveness don’t come to mind, in that sense the US military was a breath of fresh air. They did what they were asked, and they did it fast.
    As for the occupation, I think that part is unwinnable and the military are not trained for such a mission. Should they try anyways or just retreat to military bases and let the Iraqis cook themselves in their own juices? I am not smart enough to answer that one.
    E. Bilpe

  23. A breath of fresh air.. I wonder for whom ? For the 100’000 Iraqis or so the US has bombed out ?
    Invading a country whether in 20 days or in two years doesnt’ make a difference if you are not able to maintain order there after. I’d rather call that irresponsibility along with megalomany. Not really a quality for the leader of a big nation.
    I can’t understand how the Americans have been convinced to support such a folly and such a massacre. Nor can I understand how Bush managed to convince Blair to take part.

  24. “A breath of fresh air” – that has to win the prize for euphemism of the century.
    Bilpe, you ought to sell that one to the P.R. firms the Bush administration is paying tens of millions to put a good face on its bloody enterprise in Iraq. You’d get enough money for that to retire in luxury.

  25. Should they try anyways or just retreat to military bases and let the Iraqis cook themselves in their own juices?
    What right would the US have to maintain military bases in Iraq if it can’t fulfill its responsibility as an occupier to provide security for Iraqis? None. We should leave.

  26. No Comment, the U.S. has no right to maintain a military presence in Iraq for any reason. They had no right to invade it, they have no right to occupy it.

  27. Bilpe badly wants to believe that there is some kind of silver lining for the USA, and picks on the wonders of long-range bombing.
    Let’s do a very quick re-cap on bombing of civilians. A lot of the early work was done by the British in Iraq. Then there was Guernica (remember the Guernica tapestry had to be covered when Powell went to lie to the UN Security Council). Then there was WW2, Hamburg, Dresden, useless. It was the Red Army that won the war. After WW2 the B52 was designed and built. These 50-year-old monsters are the ones that make Bilpe’s “fresh air”.
    Bilpe is a fascist.

  28. I take part in a local weekly vigil, held at the main town intersection for one hour every Sunday. We hold signs with the current tallies of US dead, Iraqi dead, and US wounded. We stand in silence, just holding these signs. There is an older man who stands on the other side of the street. Sometimes he holds a sign that says USEFULL IDIOTS with an arrow pointing toward us. Sometimes he holds a sign with much small writing on it, the bottom line saying WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS OF 9-11? Last Sunday, a fellow believer stopped to chat with him and then crossed over to our side of the street. First he asked what we were protesting and one of the vigil holders told him we aren’t protesting anything, we are simply honoring the dead and wounded. So he came over to my end of the line and asked me, “What are you, a communist? You a member of the Communist Party or what?”
    Now, how does that work? We’re holding signs with the numbers of the dead and maimed and we’re Communists?
    What I’m saying here is that it isn’t hard to imagine that there is a significant percentage of Americans who will blithely go where nobody but Elmer Fudd would lead them. Syria, Iran, Turkey, Greece, hell, any of those places where the dark side resides … maybe even Macy’s if they don’t start saying Merry Christmas, by God!
    These are the same folks who think that they are the only people who recognize the true greatness of America. And I’m growing more and more inclined to agree with them…

  29. Hold on fellows and re-read what I wrote before calling me names. All I said is that the effectiveness of the military was a breath of fresh air compared to other national bureaucracies.
    That comment was in response to the view that the US military had lost its clout in the eyes of some countries. That is military clout, not moral.
    A very narrow technical point, please stick to it, no need to get carried away with Guernica and Dresden.
    E. Bilpe

  32. Dominic, the military can make the trains run on time, and bomb them to bloody smithereens all at the same time – a breath of fresh air with the stench of death on it.

  33. Shirin,
    There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to fascism and war.
    It was once said of Mussolini that he made the Italian trains run on time.

  34. E. Bilpe, I have been considering your statement on the effectiveness of the military in relation to the “other national bureaucracies” and find myself wondering which of them you had in mind. And how you are measuring “effectiveness”. I think the federal highway system is working quite well here and even, one must admit, the airways are quite safe once you’re up in the plane. Social Security isn’t really going bankrupt, although the Republican noise machine is saying it is. I’m getting lots and lots of mail and it only costs the senders 37 cents. My furnace is running and my lights are on, even though those things are not fully federalized, of course.
    But the military is supposed to be able to run a war without running out of what it needs: men, machines, weapons, the support of the citizenry. Doesn’t look that efficient right now to me.

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