By Robert Fisk
12/04/08 "The Independent" -- -After his latest shenanigans, I’ve come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam’s “programmes” for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).
Now he’s gone a stage further. After announcing victory in Iraq in 2003 and “mission accomplished” and telling us how this enormous achievement would lead the 21st century into a “shining age of human liberty”, George Bush told us this week that “thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success”.
Now let’s take a look at this piece of chicanery and subject it to a little linguistic analysis. Five years ago, it was victory - ie success - but this has now been transmogrified into a mere “prospect” of success. And not a “prospect”, mark you, that has even been glimpsed. No, we have “renewed” and “revived” this prospect. “Revived”, as in “brought back from the dead”. Am I the only one to be sickened by this obscene semantics? How on earth can you “renew” a “prospect”, let alone a prospect that continues to be bathed in Iraqi blood, a subject Bush wisely chose to avoid?
Note, too, the constant use of words that begin with “re -”. Renew. Revive. And - incredibly - Bush also told us that “we actually re-liberated certain communities”. This, folks, goes beyond hollow laughter. Since when did armies go around “re-liberating” anything? And what does that credibility-sapping “actually” mean? I suspect it was an attempt by the White House speech writer to suggest - by sleight of hand, of course - that Bush was really - really - telling the truth this time. But by putting “actually” in front of “re-liberate” - as opposed to just “liberate” - the whole grammatical construction falls apart. Rather like Iraq.
For by my reckoning, we have now “re-liberated” Fallujah twice. We have “re-liberated” Mosul three times and “re-liberated” Ramadi four times. The scorecard goes on. My files show that Sadr City may have been “re-liberated” five times, while Baghdad is “re-liberated” on an almost daily basis. General David Petraeus, in his pitiful appearance before the US Senate armed services committee, was bound to admit his disappointment at the military failure of the equally pitiful Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Basra. He had not followed Petraeus’ advice; which was presumably to “re-liberate” the city (for the fourth time, by my calculation but with a bit more planning).
Indeed, Petraeus told senators that after his beloved “surge” goes home, the US will need a period of “consolidation and evaluation” - which is suspiciously close to saying that the US military will be, as the old adage goes, “redeployed to prepared positions”. Ye gods! Where will this tomfoolery end?
In statistics, perhaps. By chance, as Bush was speaking this week, my mail bag flopped open to reveal a letter from my old American military analyst friend, George W Appenzeller. He gently (and rightly) corrects some recent comparative figures I used on US casualties in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. “In previous wars,” he writes, “the US army has not reported to the public the number of wounded who are treated and immediately released back to duty. They have reported these casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars”.
So here are a few Appenzeller factoids (glossed by Fisk, so the responsibility is mine!). The correct ratios for wounded in action vs killed in action for Iraq and Afghanistan is 8.13 to 1; for Korea, it’s 7.38 to 1 and for Vietnam it’s 6.43 to 1.
The true number of US wounded in Iraq until 18 March this year was 13,170, of whom 8,904 were so badly wounded that they required air evacuation to hospitals outside Iraq. The number of killed in action in Iraq is 3,251. (The other 750 died in accidents or of sickness.) But this does not include the kind of figure that the Pentagon and Bush always keep secret: an astonishing 1,000 or more Western-hired mercenaries, killed in Iraq while fighting or killing for “our” side.
But now I’ll let George Appenzeller speak in his own words. “There are widely ranging estimates, but roughly 450,000 individuals … fought on the ground in Vietnam … At the height of the Vietnam war there were 67,000 ground combat troops there. That is roughly the number of ground combat troops the US presently has deployed in Iraq. Interestingly enough, that is also about the number of ground combat troops the US had fighting at any one time in the Korean war.
“The US army now has a much leaner and meaner organisation than in the past with a higher proportion of combat troops to total troops. All those American civilian truck drivers and Bangladeshi cooks have freed up troop slots that have gone to the combat arms.”
No, Iraq has not yet reached Korea and Vietnam proportions. The three-year Korean war resulted in 33,686 US battle deaths and about 250,000 US wounds, an average of 94,562 casualties per year. The American phase of the Vietnam war lasted 14 years and resulted in 47,378 US battle deaths and 304,704 US wounds, an average of 25,149 casualties per year and an average of 66,792 during the four years of 1966-1969, the height of American fighting.
The Iraq war has lasted five years and has resulted in 3,251 battle deaths and 29,395 wounds, an average of 6,529 casualties per year. “Thus, the average number of killed and wounded during the Korean war was three times the total number of killed and wounded in the five years of the Iraq war. The average number of killed and wounded during each of the most difficult years of the Vietnam war was twice the total for the five years of the Iraq war.”
Now for much more blood, the civilian variety. According to George, “About 1,600,000 were killed in the Korean war, 365,000 (according to American authorities) and four million (according to the Vietnamese government) during the American phase of the Vietnam war, and who knows how many in Iraq. No fewer than 250,000, certainly.”
Not that long ago, Bush claimed that civilian fatalities in Iraq were “30,000 more or less” - again, note the “more or less” - but I can see why these statistics matter even less for him. It’s not just that we don’t care a damn about Iraqi lives. We are going to care even less about Iraqi civilian casualties when we walk backwards, when we are renewing and reviving and re-liberating all over again.
Robert Fisk’s new book, ‘The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings’, is published by Fourth Estate
© 2008 The Independent
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Sunday, April 13, 2008
Bush's Iraq War Double-Speak
By Ivan Eland
April 12, 2008
Editor’s Note: With the Iraq War now in its sixth year, there is increasingly a Groundhog’s Day quality to the conflict. There are always new signs of impending victory, corners being turned, the next six months being crucial and, of course, the mocking of anti-war skeptics as un-American defeatists.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland looks at the recurring pattern of George W. Bush’s upbeat double-speak:
Some things never change. In a continuation of the Bush administration’s Orwellian double-speak on the Iraq War, President Bush recently gave an upbeat speech in Dayton, Ohio, extolling the progress in Iraq and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s military offensive in the southern oil port of Basra against “criminal” elements.
Strangely, as violence erupted in many cities across the country in response to Maliki’s offensive, the president claimed that “normalcy is returning back to Iraq.”Yet the widespread violence belied the “security gains” of the U.S. troop surge.
Of course, the U.S. troop surge had little to do with the reduced violence—now seemingly temporary—in Iraq. U.S. forces were at comparable strength in 2005 to try to quell the violence during the Iraqi national elections. Instead, the violence increased during that year.
According to William Polk—a former U.S. State Department official who has studied many examples of counterinsurgency warfare, some in the field—for the administration to adequately execute its “clear, hold, and build” strategy under existing counterinsurgency doctrine, it would have to increase American forces six-fold.
That is something the already exhausted U.S. military could not possibly do.
In addition, Polk points out that two of the foremost authorities on guerrilla warfare, China’s Mao Tse-tung and North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, who defeated the United States in Vietnam, pointed out that holding an expanding amount of territory overstretches and weakens counterinsurgency forces and thus strengthens the insurgents.
So something else besides the surge must have temporarily lessened the carnage.
In all likelihood, the U.S. surge was a Bush administration-induced muscular mirage designed to mask the real change in American policy—a Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement and payoff of U.S. enemies.
In fact, the United States began the rather un-macho arming, training and paying of former Sunni insurgents to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. In addition, in many Shi’ia areas, the United States worked quietly with Moktada al-Sadr’s militias to provide aid and reconstruction, thereby enabling a nationwide truce with his Mahdi Army.
Although it looks bad, paying off your enemies, instead of fighting them, can be a smart strategy, at least in the short-term.
The problem is that when you stop paying your former enemies, the “former” label may be quickly rescinded.
One of the signs of progress touted by the president in the Dayton speech was Iraq’s new law allowing mid-level Sunni Baathists back into the government and military. Yet many analysts think that this legislation might have the opposite effect and actually be a way for the Shi’ia to remove Sunnis from those positions.
The Sunnis are impatient with being shut out of the Iraqi government and may return to the “dark side” if their high expectations for the new law are not quickly met.
With underlying suspicions between ethno-religious groups in Iraqi society—the Shi’ia who control the Iraqi government are leery of letting the Sunnis back into positions of some power—those expectations are unlikely to be met. Thus, new laws on paper mean nothing if there is an insufficient social consensus to make them work.
Another problem with paying off U.S. enemies is that in the long-term, the United States is strengthening all sides for the almost inevitable full-blown civil wars.
A preview of one of those civil wars was on display during the intra-Shi’ia violence in Basra.
Although President Bush, in his speech, supported Maliki’s offensive in the name of destroying “terrorists and extremists,” the prime minister’s offensive was apparently his own idea and not coordinated with American forces.
Although another measure of progress cited by the president was recent legislation setting a date for Iraqi provincial elections later this year, Maliki’s offensive seemed designed to weaken the rival Shi’ia Mahdi Army’s strong position prior to those elections. Many say that the Mahdi Army could win a majority of the seats.
As the United States learned in 2005, in a fractious nation, elections can often exacerbate societal cleavages rather than heal them. Thus, instead of demonstrating progress on national reconciliation, the law for local elections already may have destabilized the country further.
In contradiction to its formal nationwide cease-fire, the Mahdi Army fought back in Basra and throughout Iraq. In Basra, the Iraqi security forces had trouble subduing Mahdi fighters, and in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City the security forces were apparently so poor that the Americans took the lead in fighting al-Sadr’s militias.
In the long-term, Maliki’s ill-timed and freelance offensive may have backfired—by effectively torching the cease-fire with al-Sadr forces throughout Iraq and showing that the Iraqi government is too militarily weak to provide security. Some return to “normalcy.”
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
April 12, 2008
Editor’s Note: With the Iraq War now in its sixth year, there is increasingly a Groundhog’s Day quality to the conflict. There are always new signs of impending victory, corners being turned, the next six months being crucial and, of course, the mocking of anti-war skeptics as un-American defeatists.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland looks at the recurring pattern of George W. Bush’s upbeat double-speak:
Some things never change. In a continuation of the Bush administration’s Orwellian double-speak on the Iraq War, President Bush recently gave an upbeat speech in Dayton, Ohio, extolling the progress in Iraq and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s military offensive in the southern oil port of Basra against “criminal” elements.
Strangely, as violence erupted in many cities across the country in response to Maliki’s offensive, the president claimed that “normalcy is returning back to Iraq.”Yet the widespread violence belied the “security gains” of the U.S. troop surge.
Of course, the U.S. troop surge had little to do with the reduced violence—now seemingly temporary—in Iraq. U.S. forces were at comparable strength in 2005 to try to quell the violence during the Iraqi national elections. Instead, the violence increased during that year.
According to William Polk—a former U.S. State Department official who has studied many examples of counterinsurgency warfare, some in the field—for the administration to adequately execute its “clear, hold, and build” strategy under existing counterinsurgency doctrine, it would have to increase American forces six-fold.
That is something the already exhausted U.S. military could not possibly do.
In addition, Polk points out that two of the foremost authorities on guerrilla warfare, China’s Mao Tse-tung and North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, who defeated the United States in Vietnam, pointed out that holding an expanding amount of territory overstretches and weakens counterinsurgency forces and thus strengthens the insurgents.
So something else besides the surge must have temporarily lessened the carnage.
In all likelihood, the U.S. surge was a Bush administration-induced muscular mirage designed to mask the real change in American policy—a Neville Chamberlain-style appeasement and payoff of U.S. enemies.
In fact, the United States began the rather un-macho arming, training and paying of former Sunni insurgents to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. In addition, in many Shi’ia areas, the United States worked quietly with Moktada al-Sadr’s militias to provide aid and reconstruction, thereby enabling a nationwide truce with his Mahdi Army.
Although it looks bad, paying off your enemies, instead of fighting them, can be a smart strategy, at least in the short-term.
The problem is that when you stop paying your former enemies, the “former” label may be quickly rescinded.
One of the signs of progress touted by the president in the Dayton speech was Iraq’s new law allowing mid-level Sunni Baathists back into the government and military. Yet many analysts think that this legislation might have the opposite effect and actually be a way for the Shi’ia to remove Sunnis from those positions.
The Sunnis are impatient with being shut out of the Iraqi government and may return to the “dark side” if their high expectations for the new law are not quickly met.
With underlying suspicions between ethno-religious groups in Iraqi society—the Shi’ia who control the Iraqi government are leery of letting the Sunnis back into positions of some power—those expectations are unlikely to be met. Thus, new laws on paper mean nothing if there is an insufficient social consensus to make them work.
Another problem with paying off U.S. enemies is that in the long-term, the United States is strengthening all sides for the almost inevitable full-blown civil wars.
A preview of one of those civil wars was on display during the intra-Shi’ia violence in Basra.
Although President Bush, in his speech, supported Maliki’s offensive in the name of destroying “terrorists and extremists,” the prime minister’s offensive was apparently his own idea and not coordinated with American forces.
Although another measure of progress cited by the president was recent legislation setting a date for Iraqi provincial elections later this year, Maliki’s offensive seemed designed to weaken the rival Shi’ia Mahdi Army’s strong position prior to those elections. Many say that the Mahdi Army could win a majority of the seats.
As the United States learned in 2005, in a fractious nation, elections can often exacerbate societal cleavages rather than heal them. Thus, instead of demonstrating progress on national reconciliation, the law for local elections already may have destabilized the country further.
In contradiction to its formal nationwide cease-fire, the Mahdi Army fought back in Basra and throughout Iraq. In Basra, the Iraqi security forces had trouble subduing Mahdi fighters, and in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City the security forces were apparently so poor that the Americans took the lead in fighting al-Sadr’s militias.
In the long-term, Maliki’s ill-timed and freelance offensive may have backfired—by effectively torching the cease-fire with al-Sadr forces throughout Iraq and showing that the Iraqi government is too militarily weak to provide security. Some return to “normalcy.”
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Petraeus & Crocker
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were unsentimental in describing the road ahead. "We haven't turned any corners," Petraeus warned. "We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel." Crocker, whose world-weary answers sometimes sound as if they were scripted by Graham Greene or Raymond Chandler, often reduced his message to five flinty words: Nothing is easy in Iraq.
Iraq War 'Blank Check' Balloons
By Jason Leopold
April 11, 2008
Besides demanding Iraq War money with no withdrawal timetables attached, the Bush administration has insisted on another kind of “blank check” – war spending that has more than doubled in four years while evading serious congressional oversight because it’s wrapped in “emergency” appropriations bills – a study says.
The Congressional Research Service reported that the average monthly costs to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached about $12.3 billion, $10 billion for Iraq alone, more than double what it cost to fund the war in 2004.
CRS also noted that nearly all the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come from “emergency” spending bills that deprive Congress of the routine opportunity to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends the money.
Dozens of these “emergency” funding requests have zipped through Congress since 2001 in an unprecedented manner when compared with previous military conflicts, the CRS said. In past wars, the bulk of the spending went through the normal appropriations process.
The Bush administration’s use of emergency supplemental appropriations to fund the five-year-old war in Iraq and the seven-year conflict in Afghanistan may have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, according to the CRS, an investigative arm of Congress.
“Over 90 percent of [the Defense Department] funds were provided as emergency funds in supplemental or additional appropriations; the remainder were provided in regular defense bills or in transfers from regular appropriations,” said the CRS report, issued in February.
“Emergency funding is exempt from ceilings applying to discretionary spending in Congress’s annual budget resolutions. Some Members have argued that continuing to fund ongoing operations in supplementals reduces congressional oversight.”
Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow and budget scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency legislation is both unusual and troubling because it complicates tracking the real cost.
“While other wars have initially been funded using emergency supplementals, they have quickly been incorporated into the regular budget,” de Rugy said. “Never before has emergency supplemental spending been used to fund an entire war and over the course of so many years.”
De Rugy has just published an article on this topic, “The Trillion-Dollar War,” in the May issue of Reason magazine.
Skyrocketing Costs
The CRS report also questioned the reasons behind the skyrocketing costs for the wars.
“Although some of the factors behind the rapid increase in DOD funding are known — the growing intensity of operations, additional force protection gear and equipment, substantial upgrades of equipment, converting units to modular configurations, and new funding to train and equip Iraqi security forces — these elements” fail to justify the increase, the CRS said.
Furthermore, a $70 billion “placeholder” request included in the fiscal year 2009 budget that the Pentagon says will be used to finance operations in Iraq does not include any details on how the money will be spent “making it impossible to estimate its allocation,” according to the report.
The CRS added that the Pentagon has used these emergency supplemental requests to get Congress to fund equipment and vehicle upgrades that would otherwise come out of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
“Although some of this increase may reflect additional force protection and replacement of ‘stressed’ equipment, much may be in response to [Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon] England’s new guidance to fund requirements for the ‘longer war’ rather than DOD’s traditional definition of war costs as strictly related to immediate war needs,” the CRS said.
“For example, the Navy initially requested $450 million for six EA-18G aircraft, a new electronic warfare version of the F-18, and the Air Force $389 million for two Joint Strike Fighters, an aircraft just entering production; such new aircraft would not be delivered for about three years and so could not be used to meet immediate war needs,” the CRS said.
The CRS recommended that Congress immediately begin to demand more transparent accounting of the Pentagon’s “emergency” spending in order to prevent any cost-shifting chicanery.
However, in the short term, the Bush administration again is citing imminent budget shortfalls for the troops if Congress doesn’t approve the war funding requests immediately.
On Wednesday, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said the military will soon run out of cash if lawmakers don’t act to approve a $102 billion emergency supplemental spending bill to continue funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We start running out of military pay for our force in June, we start running out of operational dollars that we can flow to the force in early July,” Cody said. “It’s all about time now. Those will be the consequences of not getting the supplemental.”
The CRS and the Government Accountability Office generally accept Cody’s time-frames on the prospective shortfalls, but note that the Pentagon could dip into its budget and transfer other funds to finance operations in Iraq until late September or early October, which would give Congress more time to scrutinize the emergency funding request.
Dire Warnings
These dire warnings from the Bush administration – about troops in a war zone running out of money – have become routine since Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006.
Republican lawmakers and administration officials have said failure by Democrats to pass the emergency spending bills is tantamount to not supporting the troops, rhetoric that has often worked in spooking Democrats into capitulation.
Last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates threatened to fire more than 200,000 Defense Department employees and contract workers because congressional Democrats balked at approving the administration’s spending package for funding the Iraq War.
The Congressional Budget Office and the GAO told Congress that Gates could tap into the Pentagon’s $471 billion budget to fund the war while Congress continued to debate the merits of giving the White House another “blank check” for Iraq. But the Congress soon blinked.
The Democrats are likely to find themselves in a similar predicament this year, caught between political pressure to “support the troops” and accounting concerns regarding the administration’s financial data.
In a letter to Congress on March 17, the GAO said the $108 billion in war funding that the Pentagon has recently requested is based on “unreliable” financial data and should be considered an “approximation.”
A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls for comment. But a GAO spokeswoman said the DOD has been struggling with “deficiencies in the Pentagon’s financial management system” that contributed to the unreliable data. She would not elaborate.
Some academic studies have projected the total cost of the Iraq War soaring past $2 trillion. However, the Congressional Budget Office said trying to estimate future costs for the war is difficult “because DOD has provided little detailed information on costs incurred to date.”
April 11, 2008
Besides demanding Iraq War money with no withdrawal timetables attached, the Bush administration has insisted on another kind of “blank check” – war spending that has more than doubled in four years while evading serious congressional oversight because it’s wrapped in “emergency” appropriations bills – a study says.
The Congressional Research Service reported that the average monthly costs to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached about $12.3 billion, $10 billion for Iraq alone, more than double what it cost to fund the war in 2004.
CRS also noted that nearly all the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come from “emergency” spending bills that deprive Congress of the routine opportunity to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends the money.
Dozens of these “emergency” funding requests have zipped through Congress since 2001 in an unprecedented manner when compared with previous military conflicts, the CRS said. In past wars, the bulk of the spending went through the normal appropriations process.
The Bush administration’s use of emergency supplemental appropriations to fund the five-year-old war in Iraq and the seven-year conflict in Afghanistan may have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, according to the CRS, an investigative arm of Congress.
“Over 90 percent of [the Defense Department] funds were provided as emergency funds in supplemental or additional appropriations; the remainder were provided in regular defense bills or in transfers from regular appropriations,” said the CRS report, issued in February.
“Emergency funding is exempt from ceilings applying to discretionary spending in Congress’s annual budget resolutions. Some Members have argued that continuing to fund ongoing operations in supplementals reduces congressional oversight.”
Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow and budget scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through emergency legislation is both unusual and troubling because it complicates tracking the real cost.
“While other wars have initially been funded using emergency supplementals, they have quickly been incorporated into the regular budget,” de Rugy said. “Never before has emergency supplemental spending been used to fund an entire war and over the course of so many years.”
De Rugy has just published an article on this topic, “The Trillion-Dollar War,” in the May issue of Reason magazine.
Skyrocketing Costs
The CRS report also questioned the reasons behind the skyrocketing costs for the wars.
“Although some of the factors behind the rapid increase in DOD funding are known — the growing intensity of operations, additional force protection gear and equipment, substantial upgrades of equipment, converting units to modular configurations, and new funding to train and equip Iraqi security forces — these elements” fail to justify the increase, the CRS said.
Furthermore, a $70 billion “placeholder” request included in the fiscal year 2009 budget that the Pentagon says will be used to finance operations in Iraq does not include any details on how the money will be spent “making it impossible to estimate its allocation,” according to the report.
The CRS added that the Pentagon has used these emergency supplemental requests to get Congress to fund equipment and vehicle upgrades that would otherwise come out of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
“Although some of this increase may reflect additional force protection and replacement of ‘stressed’ equipment, much may be in response to [Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon] England’s new guidance to fund requirements for the ‘longer war’ rather than DOD’s traditional definition of war costs as strictly related to immediate war needs,” the CRS said.
“For example, the Navy initially requested $450 million for six EA-18G aircraft, a new electronic warfare version of the F-18, and the Air Force $389 million for two Joint Strike Fighters, an aircraft just entering production; such new aircraft would not be delivered for about three years and so could not be used to meet immediate war needs,” the CRS said.
The CRS recommended that Congress immediately begin to demand more transparent accounting of the Pentagon’s “emergency” spending in order to prevent any cost-shifting chicanery.
However, in the short term, the Bush administration again is citing imminent budget shortfalls for the troops if Congress doesn’t approve the war funding requests immediately.
On Wednesday, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said the military will soon run out of cash if lawmakers don’t act to approve a $102 billion emergency supplemental spending bill to continue funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We start running out of military pay for our force in June, we start running out of operational dollars that we can flow to the force in early July,” Cody said. “It’s all about time now. Those will be the consequences of not getting the supplemental.”
The CRS and the Government Accountability Office generally accept Cody’s time-frames on the prospective shortfalls, but note that the Pentagon could dip into its budget and transfer other funds to finance operations in Iraq until late September or early October, which would give Congress more time to scrutinize the emergency funding request.
Dire Warnings
These dire warnings from the Bush administration – about troops in a war zone running out of money – have become routine since Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006.
Republican lawmakers and administration officials have said failure by Democrats to pass the emergency spending bills is tantamount to not supporting the troops, rhetoric that has often worked in spooking Democrats into capitulation.
Last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates threatened to fire more than 200,000 Defense Department employees and contract workers because congressional Democrats balked at approving the administration’s spending package for funding the Iraq War.
The Congressional Budget Office and the GAO told Congress that Gates could tap into the Pentagon’s $471 billion budget to fund the war while Congress continued to debate the merits of giving the White House another “blank check” for Iraq. But the Congress soon blinked.
The Democrats are likely to find themselves in a similar predicament this year, caught between political pressure to “support the troops” and accounting concerns regarding the administration’s financial data.
In a letter to Congress on March 17, the GAO said the $108 billion in war funding that the Pentagon has recently requested is based on “unreliable” financial data and should be considered an “approximation.”
A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls for comment. But a GAO spokeswoman said the DOD has been struggling with “deficiencies in the Pentagon’s financial management system” that contributed to the unreliable data. She would not elaborate.
Some academic studies have projected the total cost of the Iraq War soaring past $2 trillion. However, the Congressional Budget Office said trying to estimate future costs for the war is difficult “because DOD has provided little detailed information on costs incurred to date.”
War Without End
by Helen Thomas
WASHINGTON - Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future.
The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week.
Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office.
That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch. Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass the Iraqi debacle on to his successor.
You can forget accountability for the yet-to-be defined U.S. military mission which has taken more than 4,000 American lives, possibly a million Iraqi lives and destroyed a country.
Think of President Harry Truman and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who both understood that war was too important to be left to the generals in the field.
Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
Those two presidents finally drummed up enough courage to just say “no.”
Petraeus is too smart to be pinned down on when the U.S. can pull out more troops, especially when there’s been a new flare-up of sectarian violence in Iraq. Let’s say he is careful and self-protective, trying to hold on.
When Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told him: “What you have given to your chain of command is a plan which has no end to it.”
The general replied: “Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year.”
Congress should wake up before it’s too late and listen to retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency.
NSA is the nation’s largest intelligence agency which monitors messages from all over the world.
Odom testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and urged an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He claimed the troop surge (escalation) has prolonged instability in Iraq and that the only “sensible strategy” is “rapid withdrawal.”
In a separate speech last week, the outspoken general said, “We are certainly to blame for the chaos in Iraq” but “we do not have the physical means to prevent it.”
Odom said the military situation in Iraq is worsened by “the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.”
“We are witnessing … the road to Balkanization of Iraq, that is political fragmentation,” Odom said
War makes strange bedfellows.
The Sunnis are now on our side — if we continue to pay them enough, of course. They would be happy to see the U.S. attack Shiite-dominated Iran. Odom said those new-found friends threaten to defect unless their fees are increased.
“The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al-Qaida if we withdraw is utter nonsense, ” Odom said. “The Sunnis will destroy al-Qaida if we leave Iraq,” he added. “The Kurds will not allow them in their region and the Shiites “detest” al-Qaida, he said.
Although the U.S. economic recession is expected to dominate the presidential election race, Iraq won’t be on the back burner if the Petraeus hearings are any guide.
The three presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and Barack Obama, D-Ill. — showed up at the high-profile hearings where Petraeus testified.
As expected, staunch-war supporter McCain said any promise to withdraw U.S. forces “would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”
In their disappointing comments, the Democratic rivals were as cautious as Petraeus.
Clinton said “it’s time to begin an orderly withdrawal of our troops.”
Obama told Petraeus that while he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, he “would not initiate a precipitous withdrawal.”
Ohio’s GOP Sen. George Voinovich seemed to express the frustration best when he told Petraeus: “The American people have had it up to here.”
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.
WASHINGTON - Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future.
The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week.
Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office.
That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch. Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass the Iraqi debacle on to his successor.
You can forget accountability for the yet-to-be defined U.S. military mission which has taken more than 4,000 American lives, possibly a million Iraqi lives and destroyed a country.
Think of President Harry Truman and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who both understood that war was too important to be left to the generals in the field.
Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.
Those two presidents finally drummed up enough courage to just say “no.”
Petraeus is too smart to be pinned down on when the U.S. can pull out more troops, especially when there’s been a new flare-up of sectarian violence in Iraq. Let’s say he is careful and self-protective, trying to hold on.
When Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told him: “What you have given to your chain of command is a plan which has no end to it.”
The general replied: “Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year.”
Congress should wake up before it’s too late and listen to retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency.
NSA is the nation’s largest intelligence agency which monitors messages from all over the world.
Odom testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and urged an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He claimed the troop surge (escalation) has prolonged instability in Iraq and that the only “sensible strategy” is “rapid withdrawal.”
In a separate speech last week, the outspoken general said, “We are certainly to blame for the chaos in Iraq” but “we do not have the physical means to prevent it.”
Odom said the military situation in Iraq is worsened by “the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.”
“We are witnessing … the road to Balkanization of Iraq, that is political fragmentation,” Odom said
War makes strange bedfellows.
The Sunnis are now on our side — if we continue to pay them enough, of course. They would be happy to see the U.S. attack Shiite-dominated Iran. Odom said those new-found friends threaten to defect unless their fees are increased.
“The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al-Qaida if we withdraw is utter nonsense, ” Odom said. “The Sunnis will destroy al-Qaida if we leave Iraq,” he added. “The Kurds will not allow them in their region and the Shiites “detest” al-Qaida, he said.
Although the U.S. economic recession is expected to dominate the presidential election race, Iraq won’t be on the back burner if the Petraeus hearings are any guide.
The three presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and Barack Obama, D-Ill. — showed up at the high-profile hearings where Petraeus testified.
As expected, staunch-war supporter McCain said any promise to withdraw U.S. forces “would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”
In their disappointing comments, the Democratic rivals were as cautious as Petraeus.
Clinton said “it’s time to begin an orderly withdrawal of our troops.”
Obama told Petraeus that while he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, he “would not initiate a precipitous withdrawal.”
Ohio’s GOP Sen. George Voinovich seemed to express the frustration best when he told Petraeus: “The American people have had it up to here.”
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.
It's Occupation, Not War
by Charley Reese
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended some years ago. In Iraq, the war ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein's government; in Afghanistan, with the fall of the Taliban government. What's been happening since is occupation and resistance to occupation.
It's always helpful to call things by the right name. One of the ways using the wrong word can trip us is illustrated by John McCain's campaign theme. We have to win the war in Iraq, he keeps saying. Ending a war implies either winning or losing. No such baggage is attached to an occupation. You can end an occupation without either winning or losing. You just withdraw your troops.
The fact that what is going on in Iraq is an occupation is proven by the nature of the conflicts. They are between factions of Iraqis. Our guys are caught in the crossfire or killed by Iraqis who oppose our presence. There are no large-scale attacks directed against us.
Those who want to continue the occupation paint a horrific picture of what they claim will happen if we withdraw – a massive civil war, genocide or a regional war. There is no hard evidence to support any of those suppositions. But even if they happen, they need not concern us. Lots of factions in different parts of the world decide to kill each other from time to time, and we don't interfere. As long as there are no Americans to get caught in the crossfire, let the Iraqis have their civil war if that's what they want.
On the other hand, there's never been civil war in Iraq. There were rebellions against the Baathist government and, before that, against the British-sponsored governments, but before our occupation, Sunnis and Shia intermarried and lived side by side. There were always Christians in Iraq and, until the state of Israel was created, Jews. That was, in fact, true throughout the Middle East.
As for al-Qaeda, it has been virtually wiped out in Iraq – not by us, but by Sunni tribesmen who turned against it because of its murderous fanaticism. McCain keeps confusing al-Qaeda with Shia and trying to link it to Iran, but al-Qaeda is a fundamentalist Sunni group way outside the mainstream of Islam. Most of its members are Saudis or Egyptians. It was never in Iraq until our war and occupation gave it an excuse to come in. It's never been in Iran. For American politicians to suppose that without us it would thrive and grow in Iraq is just proof of their ignorance.
Our presence in Iraq is the only thing that made al-Qaeda viable. Our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are the principal selling points in al-Qaeda propaganda. We have no interests, strategic or otherwise, in either country. The last thing al-Qaeda wants is for us to withdraw, which is why it should be the first thing we do.
Whatever someone imagines we gain by staying in Iraq and Afghanistan is far outweighed by what we are losing. We are losing lives in dribs and drabs, and we are losing treasure at an alarming rate. We have severe internal problems that our military presence in the Middle East aggravates. Our military is on the verge of being broken. Some Nobel laureates estimate the war will end up costing us $3 trillion. Well, plain and simple, we can't afford it.
We should never go to war unless there are tangible, identifiable benefits for the American people for doing so. Try to think of a benefit we have gained from Iraq or Afghanistan. There are none. We deposed two governments that were not attacking us or threatening to attack us, and we let get away the private terrorist group that had attacked us. It does not matter that they were bad governments. There are lots of bad governments in this world. The only bad government we have an obligation to change is the one in Washington, D.C.
If we don't change direction in this country, we're going to end up impoverished and bankrupt, and you know what? Iraq and Afghanistan will still be the messes they are today.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended some years ago. In Iraq, the war ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein's government; in Afghanistan, with the fall of the Taliban government. What's been happening since is occupation and resistance to occupation.
It's always helpful to call things by the right name. One of the ways using the wrong word can trip us is illustrated by John McCain's campaign theme. We have to win the war in Iraq, he keeps saying. Ending a war implies either winning or losing. No such baggage is attached to an occupation. You can end an occupation without either winning or losing. You just withdraw your troops.
The fact that what is going on in Iraq is an occupation is proven by the nature of the conflicts. They are between factions of Iraqis. Our guys are caught in the crossfire or killed by Iraqis who oppose our presence. There are no large-scale attacks directed against us.
Those who want to continue the occupation paint a horrific picture of what they claim will happen if we withdraw – a massive civil war, genocide or a regional war. There is no hard evidence to support any of those suppositions. But even if they happen, they need not concern us. Lots of factions in different parts of the world decide to kill each other from time to time, and we don't interfere. As long as there are no Americans to get caught in the crossfire, let the Iraqis have their civil war if that's what they want.
On the other hand, there's never been civil war in Iraq. There were rebellions against the Baathist government and, before that, against the British-sponsored governments, but before our occupation, Sunnis and Shia intermarried and lived side by side. There were always Christians in Iraq and, until the state of Israel was created, Jews. That was, in fact, true throughout the Middle East.
As for al-Qaeda, it has been virtually wiped out in Iraq – not by us, but by Sunni tribesmen who turned against it because of its murderous fanaticism. McCain keeps confusing al-Qaeda with Shia and trying to link it to Iran, but al-Qaeda is a fundamentalist Sunni group way outside the mainstream of Islam. Most of its members are Saudis or Egyptians. It was never in Iraq until our war and occupation gave it an excuse to come in. It's never been in Iran. For American politicians to suppose that without us it would thrive and grow in Iraq is just proof of their ignorance.
Our presence in Iraq is the only thing that made al-Qaeda viable. Our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are the principal selling points in al-Qaeda propaganda. We have no interests, strategic or otherwise, in either country. The last thing al-Qaeda wants is for us to withdraw, which is why it should be the first thing we do.
Whatever someone imagines we gain by staying in Iraq and Afghanistan is far outweighed by what we are losing. We are losing lives in dribs and drabs, and we are losing treasure at an alarming rate. We have severe internal problems that our military presence in the Middle East aggravates. Our military is on the verge of being broken. Some Nobel laureates estimate the war will end up costing us $3 trillion. Well, plain and simple, we can't afford it.
We should never go to war unless there are tangible, identifiable benefits for the American people for doing so. Try to think of a benefit we have gained from Iraq or Afghanistan. There are none. We deposed two governments that were not attacking us or threatening to attack us, and we let get away the private terrorist group that had attacked us. It does not matter that they were bad governments. There are lots of bad governments in this world. The only bad government we have an obligation to change is the one in Washington, D.C.
If we don't change direction in this country, we're going to end up impoverished and bankrupt, and you know what? Iraq and Afghanistan will still be the messes they are today.
Friday, April 11, 2008
How to win the Iraq war debate against your dumb friends
by Lee Camp
Recently I was arguing with one of my dumber friends about the Iraq war. He loves Bush and thinks bigger bombs is the answer in Iraq. I wasn’t gaining any ground in the argument until I used a simple analogy. I said, “Your solution is like shattering an expensive vase and then saying, ‘We need to keep smashing it until it’s fixed.’”
I stumped him. He was silent. So here’s a brief list of other analogies you can use on your dumb friends. And the truth is, I’ve seen similar ones work on some of the smartest political pundits.
1) The country of Iraq has essentially been demolished. The right-wingers keep saying the answer is continued large-scale military action. That’s like if someone got into a car accident, went into a coma, and the doctors believed the patient could be healed by more car accidents. So they just keep putting him into cars and sending him off cliffs.
2) I’ve heard people say that being against Bush or Petraeus or the war in Iraq is equivalent to being against the troops. That’s like if I knew someone who repeatedly sent brave puppies out into traffic. I called that person an asshole for abusing the puppies and abusing their power. Then you accused me of being anti-puppy.
3) The administration talks about the success of the surge because violence has decreased, but we’re in fact paying the militias not to kill each other or our soldiers. It’s like if you were treading water, two sharks approach and begin biting you, you give each one a small piece of fish to distract them. While they take a moment to eat the fish, you sit there treading water and yelling, “Problem solved!”
4) At the Petraeus hearings, he refused to give any sort of definition for “victory” in Iraq. That’s like running a foot race, you’ve gone 30 miles, you’re exhausted, and when you ask your coach driving along next to you how much farther, he just keeps saying “You’ll know it when you get there.” He keeps saying that until you collapse and die.
5) We claim to be “fighting the terrorists” in Iraq, but in fact our presence is helping to create more terrorists. The disaster in Iraq serves as a great training and recruiting tool for an entire generation of terrorists. It’s like trying to kill a gremlin by dousing him in water.
6) KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies have huge pull in our government (such as the vice presidency). So essentially they decide when the war is over. They also happen to be making millions upon millions of dollars from the war. So asking them to decide when the war is over, is like asking an ugly guy cast in a threesome porn movie to decide when the scene is over. Chances are the scene would go on for months, if not years. The entire crew would be standing around asking, “It’s not over yet? When will we know when it’s time to end it?” And the ugly guy would respond, “Um, it’s a bad idea to set timetables. Just trust me on this.”
7) Lastly, President Bush is like a colorblind child with a Rubik’s Cube.
Over the past four years Lee Camp has performed stand-up comedy at over 300 colleges nationwide, but we don’t hold that against him. He was called one of the best New Faces at the Montreal Comedy Festival, and he’s been featured on Comedy Central. He has also performed countless shows with Laughing Liberally, and writes and produces comedic activism videos. He recently went on Fox News’s morning show and called them a “parade of propaganda and a festival of ignorance.” The clip was viewed over half a million times online. An unmarked black SUV now follows him everywhere he goes.
Recently I was arguing with one of my dumber friends about the Iraq war. He loves Bush and thinks bigger bombs is the answer in Iraq. I wasn’t gaining any ground in the argument until I used a simple analogy. I said, “Your solution is like shattering an expensive vase and then saying, ‘We need to keep smashing it until it’s fixed.’”
I stumped him. He was silent. So here’s a brief list of other analogies you can use on your dumb friends. And the truth is, I’ve seen similar ones work on some of the smartest political pundits.
1) The country of Iraq has essentially been demolished. The right-wingers keep saying the answer is continued large-scale military action. That’s like if someone got into a car accident, went into a coma, and the doctors believed the patient could be healed by more car accidents. So they just keep putting him into cars and sending him off cliffs.
2) I’ve heard people say that being against Bush or Petraeus or the war in Iraq is equivalent to being against the troops. That’s like if I knew someone who repeatedly sent brave puppies out into traffic. I called that person an asshole for abusing the puppies and abusing their power. Then you accused me of being anti-puppy.
3) The administration talks about the success of the surge because violence has decreased, but we’re in fact paying the militias not to kill each other or our soldiers. It’s like if you were treading water, two sharks approach and begin biting you, you give each one a small piece of fish to distract them. While they take a moment to eat the fish, you sit there treading water and yelling, “Problem solved!”
4) At the Petraeus hearings, he refused to give any sort of definition for “victory” in Iraq. That’s like running a foot race, you’ve gone 30 miles, you’re exhausted, and when you ask your coach driving along next to you how much farther, he just keeps saying “You’ll know it when you get there.” He keeps saying that until you collapse and die.
5) We claim to be “fighting the terrorists” in Iraq, but in fact our presence is helping to create more terrorists. The disaster in Iraq serves as a great training and recruiting tool for an entire generation of terrorists. It’s like trying to kill a gremlin by dousing him in water.
6) KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies have huge pull in our government (such as the vice presidency). So essentially they decide when the war is over. They also happen to be making millions upon millions of dollars from the war. So asking them to decide when the war is over, is like asking an ugly guy cast in a threesome porn movie to decide when the scene is over. Chances are the scene would go on for months, if not years. The entire crew would be standing around asking, “It’s not over yet? When will we know when it’s time to end it?” And the ugly guy would respond, “Um, it’s a bad idea to set timetables. Just trust me on this.”
7) Lastly, President Bush is like a colorblind child with a Rubik’s Cube.
Over the past four years Lee Camp has performed stand-up comedy at over 300 colleges nationwide, but we don’t hold that against him. He was called one of the best New Faces at the Montreal Comedy Festival, and he’s been featured on Comedy Central. He has also performed countless shows with Laughing Liberally, and writes and produces comedic activism videos. He recently went on Fox News’s morning show and called them a “parade of propaganda and a festival of ignorance.” The clip was viewed over half a million times online. An unmarked black SUV now follows him everywhere he goes.
Iraq: Tell Us How This Ends
http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=12674
We are winning in Iraq, so the administration tells us. Gen. David Petraeus has appeared on Capitol Hill to explain the winning strategy. But his equivocal endorsement of current policy never answered the question he posed to a reporter at the war's start: "Tell me how this ends." It's time the American people demanded of President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain, and the rest of the War Party: "Tell us how this ends."
It seems like an eternity, but it was only five years ago when the administration cavalierly went off to war, convinced that it could effortlessly reengineer the globe. The U.S. would defenestrate Saddam Hussein, drain the Middle East swamp of terrorists, cow antagonistic governments in Tehran and Damascus, spread democracy throughout the Muslim world, safeguard Israel, and demonstrate American power to the world. Of course, all this would occur at little cost – there would be few casualties, the war would pay for itself, Iraqi oil revenues would cover reconstruction expenses, U.S. occupation forces would quickly drop to barely 5,000 now, allied nations would rush to help with Iraq's reconstruction, and statues to George W. Bush would rise throughout Baghdad and across Iraq.
Oops.
It all seems like a bad joke. Administration officials proved to be as incompetent as they were unrealistic. They failed to plan for the ugly reality which many others saw, deployed insufficient forces, failed to adequately provide troops with body armor and armored vehicles, didn't budget for the conflict's rising costs, refused to engage neighboring states, and dismissed criticism as veritable treason.
Although completely discredited, war supporters now claim that the past is history. Why waste our time crying over spilled geopolitical milk? But the past must be highlighted so that it won't be repeated in the future. No more preventive wars launched by hawkish ideologues ignorant of foreign realities, relying on rotten intelligence and ludicrous assumptions. No more wars of choice, where unleashing death and destruction is treated as just another policy tool, like raising marginal income tax rates, lowering tariffs, or increasing energy subsidies.
More important, the past must be highlighted so that the faux warriors who bungled this unnecessary war receive their just political desserts. Their views on both Iraq and the many other wars they want to fight around the globe should be dismissed unheard. Unfortunately, the incompetent fools – what is the President's posse but a collection of incompetent fools? – who got America and the world into such a geopolitical mess are still in charge. And they continue to advance policies as if their prior advice had worked. Even worse, one of them, John McCain, a man who jokes about bombing Iran, writes about attacking North Korea, and once lobbied for a ground war against Serbia, could win the presidency.
But the uber-hawks should no longer be listened to. The War Party took its chance and botched it, launching a war that has killed thousands of Americans, maimed tens of thousands more, killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, created millions of Iraqi refugees, diverted resources from the worsening conflict in Afghanistan, created an endless recruiting campaign for al-Qaeda, destabilized an already unstable Middle East, weakened America's military, degraded the nation's international reputation, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And we are nowhere near the end: thousands more will die, hundreds of billions of dollars more will be wasted, Islamic anger against the U.S. will continue to spread, and American power will continue to suffer as the war goes on and on. How will this end, Mr. President?
Indeed, Gen. Petraeus gave little reason for comfort even to the war lobby. He said the progress in Iraq was "significant and uneven." The gains are "fragile but reversible." Moreover, he added, "We haven't turned any corners. We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel." And while al-Qaeda in Iraq has been largely defeated, that is in large part because Washington put Sunni tribesman, who had tired of al-Qaeda's depredations, on the U.S. payroll and armed them with U.S. weapons.
That was a smart anti-insurgent tactic, but it hardly bodes well for the administration's original goal of creating a liberal, federal Iraqi state. Nor does the continued power of the Shia militias, such as Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Left unchecked, noted Gen. Petraeus, such groups "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq." But inserting the U.S. in the middle of a Shia civil war is the worst option of all. While endorsing the ongoing war effort, Gen. Petraeus pointedly refused to directly answer Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who asked: "Is all this sacrifice bringing about a more secure America?" Gen. Petraeus apparently was unable to honestly say yes.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was little more optimistic. He pointed to some political progress, but admitted: "Iraq is hard, and reconciliation is hard." Indeed, he added, "Almost everything about Iraq is hard." Of course, most Americans had come to that conclusion without his assistance. Crocker tried to put a positive spin on the recent government offensive in Basra, but the spectacle of Shia fighting Shia, a failed offensive reflecting unrealistic expectations and incompetence, government soldiers deserting, and Iran brokering a cease-fire is anything but positive.
But Amb. Crocker gave away the game when pressed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden on whether there was a greater national security need to eliminate al-Qaeda in Iraq, or in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crocker picked "al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." Yet the Iraq invasion prematurely diverted forces from the Afghan war, exacerbated popular Pakistani antagonism towards the U.S., and continues to limit Washington's effort in Afghanistan. Increasingly, it looks like "winning" in Iraq, whatever that means, may entail losing in Afghanistan.
The real bottom line is reflected in Gen. Petraeus' plea to put off consideration of any troop withdrawals until fall. It is possible for Washington to temporarily lower the sectarian violence in Iraq, but much more difficult to permanently transform the conditions generating the violence. Pull out U.S. forces and renewed chaos threatens. That's not much of an endorsement for administration policy after five years of war – longer than either the Civil War or World War II, which involved serious conflicts with major powers. Indeed, the aborted Maliki government assault on the Mahdi Army offers a depressing glimpse of Iraq's likely future. The Shia struggle for power and the Sunni Awakening Council's relationship to the central government ultimately will determine what Iraq becomes. That probably means sustained conflict punctuated by paroxysms of violence, something the U.S. cannot prevent at anything approaching acceptable cost.
Indeed, it is a mistake to simply view America's presence as a force for stability. Better U.S. tactics on the ground have helped suppress both al-Qaeda terrorists and nationalist insurgents. But Washington's presence may not be promoting political compromise and especially national reconciliation of any sort. Unfortunately, the U.S. forces serve as a source of antagonism for many, a target for some, and an excuse to avoid making hard decisions by others. Withdrawal might lead to an upsurge in violence. But it also might lead to greater pressure on the various factions to cobble together the necessary political and institutional compromises necessary for them to live together in relative peace.
Give Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker their due: they did their best to sell a failed policy by a failed president. But the administration's patriotic blather and demagogic attacks on critics cannot disguise the fact that no one in the war lobby is able to tell the American people how it ends. And the public knows that.
The American people have judged the war. Never mind the administration's emotional calls for victory and praise for democracy. The American people want out. A new Rasmussen poll found that 26 percent of Americans support withdrawing U.S. troops "immediately." Another 39 percent want to leave within a year, with no conditions. Only 31 percent take the Bush-McCain-War Party position of staying until "the mission is complete," whatever that means at any given moment. Political support for the war is disappearing.
The Iraq war should not have been started. It should not be continued. It should never have been fought. Spinning the surge cannot change the fact that the war was unnecessary and has been botched. Praising the surge does not change the fact that the continuing fight wastes too much blood, costs too much money, creates too much damage to America's international position, and causes too much harm to the U.S. military. Tell us how this ends, Mr. President. Since you don't have an answer, it is up to the rest of us to end it.
We are winning in Iraq, so the administration tells us. Gen. David Petraeus has appeared on Capitol Hill to explain the winning strategy. But his equivocal endorsement of current policy never answered the question he posed to a reporter at the war's start: "Tell me how this ends." It's time the American people demanded of President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain, and the rest of the War Party: "Tell us how this ends."
It seems like an eternity, but it was only five years ago when the administration cavalierly went off to war, convinced that it could effortlessly reengineer the globe. The U.S. would defenestrate Saddam Hussein, drain the Middle East swamp of terrorists, cow antagonistic governments in Tehran and Damascus, spread democracy throughout the Muslim world, safeguard Israel, and demonstrate American power to the world. Of course, all this would occur at little cost – there would be few casualties, the war would pay for itself, Iraqi oil revenues would cover reconstruction expenses, U.S. occupation forces would quickly drop to barely 5,000 now, allied nations would rush to help with Iraq's reconstruction, and statues to George W. Bush would rise throughout Baghdad and across Iraq.
Oops.
It all seems like a bad joke. Administration officials proved to be as incompetent as they were unrealistic. They failed to plan for the ugly reality which many others saw, deployed insufficient forces, failed to adequately provide troops with body armor and armored vehicles, didn't budget for the conflict's rising costs, refused to engage neighboring states, and dismissed criticism as veritable treason.
Although completely discredited, war supporters now claim that the past is history. Why waste our time crying over spilled geopolitical milk? But the past must be highlighted so that it won't be repeated in the future. No more preventive wars launched by hawkish ideologues ignorant of foreign realities, relying on rotten intelligence and ludicrous assumptions. No more wars of choice, where unleashing death and destruction is treated as just another policy tool, like raising marginal income tax rates, lowering tariffs, or increasing energy subsidies.
More important, the past must be highlighted so that the faux warriors who bungled this unnecessary war receive their just political desserts. Their views on both Iraq and the many other wars they want to fight around the globe should be dismissed unheard. Unfortunately, the incompetent fools – what is the President's posse but a collection of incompetent fools? – who got America and the world into such a geopolitical mess are still in charge. And they continue to advance policies as if their prior advice had worked. Even worse, one of them, John McCain, a man who jokes about bombing Iran, writes about attacking North Korea, and once lobbied for a ground war against Serbia, could win the presidency.
But the uber-hawks should no longer be listened to. The War Party took its chance and botched it, launching a war that has killed thousands of Americans, maimed tens of thousands more, killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, created millions of Iraqi refugees, diverted resources from the worsening conflict in Afghanistan, created an endless recruiting campaign for al-Qaeda, destabilized an already unstable Middle East, weakened America's military, degraded the nation's international reputation, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And we are nowhere near the end: thousands more will die, hundreds of billions of dollars more will be wasted, Islamic anger against the U.S. will continue to spread, and American power will continue to suffer as the war goes on and on. How will this end, Mr. President?
Indeed, Gen. Petraeus gave little reason for comfort even to the war lobby. He said the progress in Iraq was "significant and uneven." The gains are "fragile but reversible." Moreover, he added, "We haven't turned any corners. We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel." And while al-Qaeda in Iraq has been largely defeated, that is in large part because Washington put Sunni tribesman, who had tired of al-Qaeda's depredations, on the U.S. payroll and armed them with U.S. weapons.
That was a smart anti-insurgent tactic, but it hardly bodes well for the administration's original goal of creating a liberal, federal Iraqi state. Nor does the continued power of the Shia militias, such as Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Left unchecked, noted Gen. Petraeus, such groups "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq." But inserting the U.S. in the middle of a Shia civil war is the worst option of all. While endorsing the ongoing war effort, Gen. Petraeus pointedly refused to directly answer Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who asked: "Is all this sacrifice bringing about a more secure America?" Gen. Petraeus apparently was unable to honestly say yes.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was little more optimistic. He pointed to some political progress, but admitted: "Iraq is hard, and reconciliation is hard." Indeed, he added, "Almost everything about Iraq is hard." Of course, most Americans had come to that conclusion without his assistance. Crocker tried to put a positive spin on the recent government offensive in Basra, but the spectacle of Shia fighting Shia, a failed offensive reflecting unrealistic expectations and incompetence, government soldiers deserting, and Iran brokering a cease-fire is anything but positive.
But Amb. Crocker gave away the game when pressed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden on whether there was a greater national security need to eliminate al-Qaeda in Iraq, or in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Crocker picked "al-Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." Yet the Iraq invasion prematurely diverted forces from the Afghan war, exacerbated popular Pakistani antagonism towards the U.S., and continues to limit Washington's effort in Afghanistan. Increasingly, it looks like "winning" in Iraq, whatever that means, may entail losing in Afghanistan.
The real bottom line is reflected in Gen. Petraeus' plea to put off consideration of any troop withdrawals until fall. It is possible for Washington to temporarily lower the sectarian violence in Iraq, but much more difficult to permanently transform the conditions generating the violence. Pull out U.S. forces and renewed chaos threatens. That's not much of an endorsement for administration policy after five years of war – longer than either the Civil War or World War II, which involved serious conflicts with major powers. Indeed, the aborted Maliki government assault on the Mahdi Army offers a depressing glimpse of Iraq's likely future. The Shia struggle for power and the Sunni Awakening Council's relationship to the central government ultimately will determine what Iraq becomes. That probably means sustained conflict punctuated by paroxysms of violence, something the U.S. cannot prevent at anything approaching acceptable cost.
Indeed, it is a mistake to simply view America's presence as a force for stability. Better U.S. tactics on the ground have helped suppress both al-Qaeda terrorists and nationalist insurgents. But Washington's presence may not be promoting political compromise and especially national reconciliation of any sort. Unfortunately, the U.S. forces serve as a source of antagonism for many, a target for some, and an excuse to avoid making hard decisions by others. Withdrawal might lead to an upsurge in violence. But it also might lead to greater pressure on the various factions to cobble together the necessary political and institutional compromises necessary for them to live together in relative peace.
Give Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker their due: they did their best to sell a failed policy by a failed president. But the administration's patriotic blather and demagogic attacks on critics cannot disguise the fact that no one in the war lobby is able to tell the American people how it ends. And the public knows that.
The American people have judged the war. Never mind the administration's emotional calls for victory and praise for democracy. The American people want out. A new Rasmussen poll found that 26 percent of Americans support withdrawing U.S. troops "immediately." Another 39 percent want to leave within a year, with no conditions. Only 31 percent take the Bush-McCain-War Party position of staying until "the mission is complete," whatever that means at any given moment. Political support for the war is disappearing.
The Iraq war should not have been started. It should not be continued. It should never have been fought. Spinning the surge cannot change the fact that the war was unnecessary and has been botched. Praising the surge does not change the fact that the continuing fight wastes too much blood, costs too much money, creates too much damage to America's international position, and causes too much harm to the U.S. military. Tell us how this ends, Mr. President. Since you don't have an answer, it is up to the rest of us to end it.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Thursday 4/10: Iraq Call-In Day
On Tuesday, Gen. Petraeus told Congress, "We haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel."
So our top General in Iraq has no plans to end our endless occupation. But of course, we all knew that.
That means Congress has to end the occupation.
Our friends at United for Peace and Justice, the largest anti-war coalition, want all of us to call our Representative in the House on Thursday with a simple message:
1. Just Say No to Bush's request for $102 billion more for Iraq
2. Co-sponsor Lynn Woolsey's HR 5507 and safely bring all the troops home.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 or find your Representative's phone on the right side:
http://usalone.com
So our top General in Iraq has no plans to end our endless occupation. But of course, we all knew that.
That means Congress has to end the occupation.
Our friends at United for Peace and Justice, the largest anti-war coalition, want all of us to call our Representative in the House on Thursday with a simple message:
1. Just Say No to Bush's request for $102 billion more for Iraq
2. Co-sponsor Lynn Woolsey's HR 5507 and safely bring all the troops home.
Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 or find your Representative's phone on the right side:
http://usalone.com
Catch 2,200: Nine Propositions on the US Air War for Terror
By Tom Engelhardt
Thursday 10 April 2008
Let's start with a few simple propositions.
First, the farther away you are from the ground, the clearer things are likely to look, the more god-like you are likely to feel, the less human those you attack are likely to be to you. How much more so, of course, if you, the "pilot," are actually sitting at a consol at an air base near Las Vegas, identifying a "suspect" thousands of miles away via video monitor, "following" that suspect into a house, and then letting loose a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone cruising somewhere over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Second, however "precise" your weaponry, however "surgical" your strike, however impressive the grainy snuff-film images you can put on television, war from the air is, and will remain, a most imprecise and destructive form of battle.
Third, in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy. The farther away you are from a target, the more likely it is that you will have to guess who or what it is, based on spotty, difficult to interpret or bad information, not to speak of outright misinformation; whatever the theoretical accuracy of your weaponry, you are far more likely to miscalculate, make mistakes, mistarget, or target the misbegotten from the air.
Fourth, if you are conducting war this way and you are doing so in heavily populated urban neighborhoods, as is now the case almost every day in Iraq, then civilians will predictably die "by mistake" almost every day: the child who happens to be on the street but just beyond camera range; the "terrorist suspect" or insurgent who looks, at a distance, like he's planting a roadside bomb, but is just scavenging; the neighbors who happen to be sitting down to dinner in the apartment or house next to the one you decide to hit.
Fifth, since World War II, air power has been the American way of war.
Sixth, since November 2001, the Bush administration has increasingly relied on air power in its Global War on Terror to "take out" the enemy, which has meant regular air strikes in cities and villages, and the no less regular, if largely unrecorded, deaths of civilians.
Seventh, in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq (as well as in the tribal areas along the Pakistani border), the use of air power has been "surging." You can essentially no longer read an account of a skirmish or battle in one of Iraq's cities in which air power is not called in. This means (see propositions 1-4) a war of constant "mistakes," and of regularly mentioned "investigations" into the deaths of "militants" and "insurgents" who, on the ground, seem to morph into children, women, and elderly men being pulled from the rubble.
Eighth, force creates counterforce. The application of force, especially from the air, is a reliable engine for the creation of enemies. It is a force multiplier (and not just for U.S. forces either). Every time an air strike is called in anywhere on the planet, anyone who orders it should automatically assume that left in its wake will be grieving, angry husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, relatives, friends - people vowing revenge, a pool of potential candidates filled with the anger of genuine injustice. From the point of view of your actual enemies, you can't bomb, missile, and strafe often enough, because when you do so, you are more or less guaranteed to create their newest recruits.
Ninth, U.S. air power has, in the last six and a half years, been an effective force in a war for terror, not against it.
Who's Counting?
What does this mean in practice? It means something simple and relentless; it means dead people you might not have chosen to kill, but that you are responsible for killing nonetheless - and even if you don't know that, or are unwilling to acknowledge it, others do know and will draw the logical conclusions.
What does this mean in practice? Consider just a typical collection of some of the small reports on air strikes in Iraq that have slipped into our world, barely noticed, in recent days:
Six U.S.-allied Sunni fighters from the "Awakening" movement were reportedly killed in strikes by an AH-64 Apache helicopter on two checkpoints in the city of Samarra on March 22. ("The U.S. military denied the checkpoint it attacked ... was manned by friendly members of the so-called awakening councils and said those killed were behaving suspiciously in an area recently struck by a roadside bomb ... It ... said the incident was under investigation ... AP Television News footage of the aftermath showed awakening council members loading bodies into a pickup.")
Fifteen people in a single family were reportedly killed by U.S. helicopters in the city of Baquba in northern Iraq on March 23rd. ("The US military forces were not available to comment on the reports ...")
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, five civilians, including a judge, Munaf Mehdi, were reportedly killed and ten wounded from strikes by "fixed-wing aircraft" in a "battle with suspected al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants" on March 26. ("Preliminary assessment," according to the U.S. military, "indicates that despite coalition forces' efforts to protect them, several civilians were injured or killed during the ensuing gunbattle.")
According to the Iraqi police, a U.S. plane strafed a house in the southern city of Basra, killing eight civilians, including two women and a child on March 29th.
According to Iraqi police sources, five people, including four policemen were killed and three wounded when U.S. helicopters struck the city of Hilla in southern Iraq. According to another report, two police cars were also destroyed and an ambulance fired upon.
A U.S. F/A-18 carried out a "precision strike" against a house in Basra, reportedly killing at least three civilians, two men and an elderly woman, while burying a father, mother, and young boy in the rubble on April 3rd. ("'Coalition forces are unaware of any civilians killed in the strike but are currently looking into the matter,' the military said ... Associated Press Television News showed cranes and rescue workers searching for survivors in the concrete rubble from the two-story house that was leveled in the Shiite militia stronghold of Qibla.")
In most of these cases, the facts remain in dispute (if anyone, other than the U.S. military, even cares to dispute them); the numbers of dead may, in the end, prove inaccurate; and the equivalent of he says/she says is unlikely to be settled because, most of the time, no reporter will follow up or investigate. Such cases generally follow a pattern: The U.S. military issues a brief battle description in which so many militants/insurgents/terrorists have been taken out from the air; local officials or witnesses claim that the dead were, in part or whole, ordinary citizens; the U.S. military offers a denial that civilians were killed; if the story doesn't die, the military announces that an investigation is underway, which no one generally ever hears about again. Only on rare occasions, in our world, do such incidents actually rise to the level of real news that anyone attends to.
There may be an Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website and an Iraq Body Count website, but there is no Afghan version of the same, nor is there a global body count (www.gbc.com) to consult on such War on Terror civilian deaths from the air. Usually, when such events recur, there aren't even names to put with the dead bodies and the reports themselves drop almost instantaneously beneath the waves (of news) without ever really catching our attention. Even if you believe that ours is the only world that really matters, that we are the only people whose lives have real value, that doesn't mean such deaths won't matter to you in the long run.
After all, what we don't know, or don't care to know, others care greatly about. Who forgets when a loved one is suddenly killed in such a manner? Even if we aren't counting bodies in the air-war subsection of the President's Global War on Terror, others are. Those whom we think of, if at all, as "collateral damage" know just what's happened to them and to their neighbors. And they have undoubtedly drawn the obvious conclusions.
Our "Strike Weapons" and Theirs
Here's the sorry reality: Such occurrences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the "arc" of territory that the Bush administration has, in a mere few years, helped set aflame are the norm. Our "mistakes," that is, are legion and, in the process of making them, our planes, drones, and helicopters have killed villagers by the score, attacked a convoy of friendly Afghan "elders," and blown away wedding parties. For us, "incidents" like these pass by in an instant, but not for those who are on the receiving end.
The attacks of 9/11 are usually not placed in such a context. We consider ourselves special, even unique, for having experienced them. But think of them another way: One day, out of the blue, death arrives from the air. It arrives in a moment of ultimate terror. It kills innocent civilians who were simply living their lives.
This happened to us once in a manner so spectacular, so devastating as to make global headlines. But small-scale versions of this happen regularly to people in that "arc of instability" - and, if there were to be a global body count organization for such events, it would long ago have toted up a death toll that reached past that of September 11, 2001.
Let's remember that, after 9/11, Americans, from the President on down, spent months, if not years in mourning, performing rites of remembrance, and swearing revenge against those who had done this to us. Do we not imagine that others, even when the spotlight isn't on them, react similarly? Do we not think that they, too, are capable of swearing revenge and acting accordingly?
The above list of incidents covers just a couple of weeks in one embattled country - and just the moments that made it into minor news reports that I happened to stumble across. But if you read reports from Iraq carefully these days, few describing U.S. military operations in that country seem to lack at least a sentence or two on air operations - on what is really a little noticed "air surge" over that country's cities and especially the heavily populated slum "suburb" of eastern Baghdad, Sadr City (once known as Saddam City) largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. With perhaps two and a half million inhabitants, if it were a separate city, it would be the country's second largest.
Here, for instance, are a few lines from a recent Los Angeles Times piece by Tina Susman on escalating fighting in Baghdad: "American helicopters fired at least four Hellfire missiles and an Air Force jet dropped a bomb on a suspected militia target ... A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Stover, rejected Iraqi allegations that U.S. airstrikes and gunfire have killed mainly civilians. 'There might be some civilians that are getting caught, but for the most part, we're killing the bad guys.' 'We're very precise,' he said, adding that many airstrikes had been called off when it was not possible to get a 'clean hit' that would avoid hitting noncombatants." Or this from Sameer N. Yacoub of the Associated Press: "The U.S. military said one of its drones launched a Hellfire missile during the night at two gunmen shooting at government forces in a different part of Sadr City." Or this: "Three US airstrikes in northeastern Baghdad have killed 12 suspected gunmen and wounded 15 civilians, Iraqi police and US military say."
Each of these came out while this piece was being written, as did this: According to the AP, air strikes in a remote province of Afghanistan aimed at a warlord allied with the Taliban may have killed numerous civilians. ("Other provincial leaders said many civilians were killed in the hours-long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal ... U.S. officials and the Afghan Defense Ministry have denied that any civilians were killed.")
Whatever happened in these latest air attacks, the deaths of civilians are not some sideline result of the War on Terror; they lie at its heart. If your care is safety - a subject brought up repeatedly by Senators who wanted to know from U.S. commander General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker this week whether the surge had made "us" safer - then, the answer is: This does not make you safer.
And yet, don't expect this counterproductive way of war to end any time soon. After all, the Air Force already has underway its "2018 bomber," due for delivery the same year that, according to the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubic, the Iraqi army will theoretically be able to guard the country's frontiers effectively. And don't forget the 2018 bomber's successor, "a true 'next generation' long-range strike weapon" that "may be a traditional bomber or an exotic 'system of systems,' with features such as hypersonic speed." Maybe by then, the Iraqis will actually be successfully defending their borders.
Until then, think of the U.S. air war for terror as a Catch 2,200 - every application of force from the air resulting in the creation of a counterforce on the ground, another kind of "strike weapon" for the future, while those collateral bodies pile ever higher. Perhaps, by 2018 or 2035, worldbodycount.com will be operative.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, "The End of Victory Culture" (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Note: The invaluable website Antiwar.com was especially invaluable this time around when it came to tracking news accounts of recent US air attacks. Please note, though, that the dates given in the piece for the attacks are approximate. All I had were the datelines on news stories, which may not reflect the actual day of each attack.
Thursday 10 April 2008
Let's start with a few simple propositions.
First, the farther away you are from the ground, the clearer things are likely to look, the more god-like you are likely to feel, the less human those you attack are likely to be to you. How much more so, of course, if you, the "pilot," are actually sitting at a consol at an air base near Las Vegas, identifying a "suspect" thousands of miles away via video monitor, "following" that suspect into a house, and then letting loose a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone cruising somewhere over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the tribal areas of Pakistan.
Second, however "precise" your weaponry, however "surgical" your strike, however impressive the grainy snuff-film images you can put on television, war from the air is, and will remain, a most imprecise and destructive form of battle.
Third, in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy. The farther away you are from a target, the more likely it is that you will have to guess who or what it is, based on spotty, difficult to interpret or bad information, not to speak of outright misinformation; whatever the theoretical accuracy of your weaponry, you are far more likely to miscalculate, make mistakes, mistarget, or target the misbegotten from the air.
Fourth, if you are conducting war this way and you are doing so in heavily populated urban neighborhoods, as is now the case almost every day in Iraq, then civilians will predictably die "by mistake" almost every day: the child who happens to be on the street but just beyond camera range; the "terrorist suspect" or insurgent who looks, at a distance, like he's planting a roadside bomb, but is just scavenging; the neighbors who happen to be sitting down to dinner in the apartment or house next to the one you decide to hit.
Fifth, since World War II, air power has been the American way of war.
Sixth, since November 2001, the Bush administration has increasingly relied on air power in its Global War on Terror to "take out" the enemy, which has meant regular air strikes in cities and villages, and the no less regular, if largely unrecorded, deaths of civilians.
Seventh, in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq (as well as in the tribal areas along the Pakistani border), the use of air power has been "surging." You can essentially no longer read an account of a skirmish or battle in one of Iraq's cities in which air power is not called in. This means (see propositions 1-4) a war of constant "mistakes," and of regularly mentioned "investigations" into the deaths of "militants" and "insurgents" who, on the ground, seem to morph into children, women, and elderly men being pulled from the rubble.
Eighth, force creates counterforce. The application of force, especially from the air, is a reliable engine for the creation of enemies. It is a force multiplier (and not just for U.S. forces either). Every time an air strike is called in anywhere on the planet, anyone who orders it should automatically assume that left in its wake will be grieving, angry husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, relatives, friends - people vowing revenge, a pool of potential candidates filled with the anger of genuine injustice. From the point of view of your actual enemies, you can't bomb, missile, and strafe often enough, because when you do so, you are more or less guaranteed to create their newest recruits.
Ninth, U.S. air power has, in the last six and a half years, been an effective force in a war for terror, not against it.
Who's Counting?
What does this mean in practice? It means something simple and relentless; it means dead people you might not have chosen to kill, but that you are responsible for killing nonetheless - and even if you don't know that, or are unwilling to acknowledge it, others do know and will draw the logical conclusions.
What does this mean in practice? Consider just a typical collection of some of the small reports on air strikes in Iraq that have slipped into our world, barely noticed, in recent days:
Six U.S.-allied Sunni fighters from the "Awakening" movement were reportedly killed in strikes by an AH-64 Apache helicopter on two checkpoints in the city of Samarra on March 22. ("The U.S. military denied the checkpoint it attacked ... was manned by friendly members of the so-called awakening councils and said those killed were behaving suspiciously in an area recently struck by a roadside bomb ... It ... said the incident was under investigation ... AP Television News footage of the aftermath showed awakening council members loading bodies into a pickup.")
Fifteen people in a single family were reportedly killed by U.S. helicopters in the city of Baquba in northern Iraq on March 23rd. ("The US military forces were not available to comment on the reports ...")
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, five civilians, including a judge, Munaf Mehdi, were reportedly killed and ten wounded from strikes by "fixed-wing aircraft" in a "battle with suspected al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants" on March 26. ("Preliminary assessment," according to the U.S. military, "indicates that despite coalition forces' efforts to protect them, several civilians were injured or killed during the ensuing gunbattle.")
According to the Iraqi police, a U.S. plane strafed a house in the southern city of Basra, killing eight civilians, including two women and a child on March 29th.
According to Iraqi police sources, five people, including four policemen were killed and three wounded when U.S. helicopters struck the city of Hilla in southern Iraq. According to another report, two police cars were also destroyed and an ambulance fired upon.
A U.S. F/A-18 carried out a "precision strike" against a house in Basra, reportedly killing at least three civilians, two men and an elderly woman, while burying a father, mother, and young boy in the rubble on April 3rd. ("'Coalition forces are unaware of any civilians killed in the strike but are currently looking into the matter,' the military said ... Associated Press Television News showed cranes and rescue workers searching for survivors in the concrete rubble from the two-story house that was leveled in the Shiite militia stronghold of Qibla.")
In most of these cases, the facts remain in dispute (if anyone, other than the U.S. military, even cares to dispute them); the numbers of dead may, in the end, prove inaccurate; and the equivalent of he says/she says is unlikely to be settled because, most of the time, no reporter will follow up or investigate. Such cases generally follow a pattern: The U.S. military issues a brief battle description in which so many militants/insurgents/terrorists have been taken out from the air; local officials or witnesses claim that the dead were, in part or whole, ordinary citizens; the U.S. military offers a denial that civilians were killed; if the story doesn't die, the military announces that an investigation is underway, which no one generally ever hears about again. Only on rare occasions, in our world, do such incidents actually rise to the level of real news that anyone attends to.
There may be an Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website and an Iraq Body Count website, but there is no Afghan version of the same, nor is there a global body count (www.gbc.com) to consult on such War on Terror civilian deaths from the air. Usually, when such events recur, there aren't even names to put with the dead bodies and the reports themselves drop almost instantaneously beneath the waves (of news) without ever really catching our attention. Even if you believe that ours is the only world that really matters, that we are the only people whose lives have real value, that doesn't mean such deaths won't matter to you in the long run.
After all, what we don't know, or don't care to know, others care greatly about. Who forgets when a loved one is suddenly killed in such a manner? Even if we aren't counting bodies in the air-war subsection of the President's Global War on Terror, others are. Those whom we think of, if at all, as "collateral damage" know just what's happened to them and to their neighbors. And they have undoubtedly drawn the obvious conclusions.
Our "Strike Weapons" and Theirs
Here's the sorry reality: Such occurrences in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the "arc" of territory that the Bush administration has, in a mere few years, helped set aflame are the norm. Our "mistakes," that is, are legion and, in the process of making them, our planes, drones, and helicopters have killed villagers by the score, attacked a convoy of friendly Afghan "elders," and blown away wedding parties. For us, "incidents" like these pass by in an instant, but not for those who are on the receiving end.
The attacks of 9/11 are usually not placed in such a context. We consider ourselves special, even unique, for having experienced them. But think of them another way: One day, out of the blue, death arrives from the air. It arrives in a moment of ultimate terror. It kills innocent civilians who were simply living their lives.
This happened to us once in a manner so spectacular, so devastating as to make global headlines. But small-scale versions of this happen regularly to people in that "arc of instability" - and, if there were to be a global body count organization for such events, it would long ago have toted up a death toll that reached past that of September 11, 2001.
Let's remember that, after 9/11, Americans, from the President on down, spent months, if not years in mourning, performing rites of remembrance, and swearing revenge against those who had done this to us. Do we not imagine that others, even when the spotlight isn't on them, react similarly? Do we not think that they, too, are capable of swearing revenge and acting accordingly?
The above list of incidents covers just a couple of weeks in one embattled country - and just the moments that made it into minor news reports that I happened to stumble across. But if you read reports from Iraq carefully these days, few describing U.S. military operations in that country seem to lack at least a sentence or two on air operations - on what is really a little noticed "air surge" over that country's cities and especially the heavily populated slum "suburb" of eastern Baghdad, Sadr City (once known as Saddam City) largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. With perhaps two and a half million inhabitants, if it were a separate city, it would be the country's second largest.
Here, for instance, are a few lines from a recent Los Angeles Times piece by Tina Susman on escalating fighting in Baghdad: "American helicopters fired at least four Hellfire missiles and an Air Force jet dropped a bomb on a suspected militia target ... A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Stover, rejected Iraqi allegations that U.S. airstrikes and gunfire have killed mainly civilians. 'There might be some civilians that are getting caught, but for the most part, we're killing the bad guys.' 'We're very precise,' he said, adding that many airstrikes had been called off when it was not possible to get a 'clean hit' that would avoid hitting noncombatants." Or this from Sameer N. Yacoub of the Associated Press: "The U.S. military said one of its drones launched a Hellfire missile during the night at two gunmen shooting at government forces in a different part of Sadr City." Or this: "Three US airstrikes in northeastern Baghdad have killed 12 suspected gunmen and wounded 15 civilians, Iraqi police and US military say."
Each of these came out while this piece was being written, as did this: According to the AP, air strikes in a remote province of Afghanistan aimed at a warlord allied with the Taliban may have killed numerous civilians. ("Other provincial leaders said many civilians were killed in the hours-long clash, which included airstrikes in the remote villages of Shok and Kendal ... U.S. officials and the Afghan Defense Ministry have denied that any civilians were killed.")
Whatever happened in these latest air attacks, the deaths of civilians are not some sideline result of the War on Terror; they lie at its heart. If your care is safety - a subject brought up repeatedly by Senators who wanted to know from U.S. commander General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker this week whether the surge had made "us" safer - then, the answer is: This does not make you safer.
And yet, don't expect this counterproductive way of war to end any time soon. After all, the Air Force already has underway its "2018 bomber," due for delivery the same year that, according to the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubic, the Iraqi army will theoretically be able to guard the country's frontiers effectively. And don't forget the 2018 bomber's successor, "a true 'next generation' long-range strike weapon" that "may be a traditional bomber or an exotic 'system of systems,' with features such as hypersonic speed." Maybe by then, the Iraqis will actually be successfully defending their borders.
Until then, think of the U.S. air war for terror as a Catch 2,200 - every application of force from the air resulting in the creation of a counterforce on the ground, another kind of "strike weapon" for the future, while those collateral bodies pile ever higher. Perhaps, by 2018 or 2035, worldbodycount.com will be operative.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, "The End of Victory Culture" (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Note: The invaluable website Antiwar.com was especially invaluable this time around when it came to tracking news accounts of recent US air attacks. Please note, though, that the dates given in the piece for the attacks are approximate. All I had were the datelines on news stories, which may not reflect the actual day of each attack.
As Petraeus Testifies: How Press Helped Bring Him the 'Surge'
In the five years since the war started, the single greatest mistake made by the media was hardly raising a single voice of protest against the 2007 escalation in Iraq -- until it was much too late.
By Greg Mitchell
(April 08, 2008) -- With Gen. David Petraeus testifying before Congress today, it is worth pointing out that the media, just as in the run-up to the war, is complicit in the current "surge" debacle. Back in early January 2007, I labeled the press "surge protectors," calling the media's performance in the days before President Bush announced the surge their single greatest failing since the war began.
More than a year later, with the "surge" at best a mixed success, and few troops brought home so far, that judgment appears even more accurate.
For two months before the president announced the surge, I had been warning that Bush was bent on sending more troops to Iraq, but pundits and editorialists didn't seem very alarmed about the prospect, even though it promised to be one of the true (not fake) "turning points" in the war -- perhaps #1 at that. If the war didn't belong to the press and pundits before, it sure did after that (as I outline in my new book on Iraq and the media).
You recall that when the Iraq Study Group issued its report many predicted it would give Bush a chance to grab onto this bi-partisan life raft and start to disengage from Iraq. But Bush promptly pushed it away and said he would come up with his own plan. The handwriting was on the wall for weeks but the media -- maybe distracted by the Christmas season -- failed to take it seriously. Polls showed that the public opposed sending more troops.
As this critical turning point in the Iraq war neared, the editorial pages of the largest U.S. newspapers were surprisingly -- even appallingly -- silent on President Bush's likely decision to send thousands of more troops to the country. It followed a long pattern, however, of opinion writers and TV talking heads strongly criticizing the conduct of the war -- without advocating a major change in direction.
Newspapers, in their editorials, chose to retreat to the sidelines, even as some hawkish conservative columnists, such as Oliver North and David Brooks, came out against the idea. Then there were the new revelations that the troops we already had in Iraq were not properly equipped or protected. That would seem to set the stage for editorials taking a strong stand. But very few -- hardly any -- editorials said much of anything about the well-publicized "surge" idea, pro OR con. Didn't they see this coming? It was like sleepwalking into the abyss.
In the weeks leading up to the Bush announcement, the editorial page of the New York Times said almost nothing about this likely plan, beyond noting the "bleak realities" in Iraq. Other papers often critical of the war, such as the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and USA Today -- among others -- also were silent. Oddly, all of them had hailed the recent Iraq Study Group report, which opposed an escalation.
The Washington Post, hawkish in the past, did not even rouse itself to say anything until the last minute: when it ran a major op-ed by Sen. John McCain, titled "The Case for More Troops."
This failure of will came even after liberal bloggers led the way, as a call went forth: Henceforth ye shall purge the "surge" from your vocabularies and laptops and replace it with "escalation" -- with all its echoes of Vietnam and, incidentally, accuracy regarding the situation. Almost no one took them up on their demand. Of course, escalation was the correct term -- who ever heard of a "surge" of any sort that would last more than a year?
An editorial in Baltimore's Sun a few days before the announcement should have served as a template for others in the media. Here is its key passage: "A generation ago this would have been called an 'escalation,' and the problem with escalations, as President Lyndon B. Johnson learned, is that when they don't furnish the promised results the pressure to follow with further escalations is just about inescapable."
But the best The New York Times could do, before the announcement, was an editorial expressing skepticism -- but declaring that Bush deserved "one last opportunity" to get Iraq right. One had to wonder: Why? After Bush made his speech, the Times and many others in the media thundered that Bush had not made the case for the plan.
But by then it was, tragically, too late.
Greg Mitchell's new book is "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits --and the President -- Failed on Iraq." It includes a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joseph L. Galloway.
By Greg Mitchell
(April 08, 2008) -- With Gen. David Petraeus testifying before Congress today, it is worth pointing out that the media, just as in the run-up to the war, is complicit in the current "surge" debacle. Back in early January 2007, I labeled the press "surge protectors," calling the media's performance in the days before President Bush announced the surge their single greatest failing since the war began.
More than a year later, with the "surge" at best a mixed success, and few troops brought home so far, that judgment appears even more accurate.
For two months before the president announced the surge, I had been warning that Bush was bent on sending more troops to Iraq, but pundits and editorialists didn't seem very alarmed about the prospect, even though it promised to be one of the true (not fake) "turning points" in the war -- perhaps #1 at that. If the war didn't belong to the press and pundits before, it sure did after that (as I outline in my new book on Iraq and the media).
You recall that when the Iraq Study Group issued its report many predicted it would give Bush a chance to grab onto this bi-partisan life raft and start to disengage from Iraq. But Bush promptly pushed it away and said he would come up with his own plan. The handwriting was on the wall for weeks but the media -- maybe distracted by the Christmas season -- failed to take it seriously. Polls showed that the public opposed sending more troops.
As this critical turning point in the Iraq war neared, the editorial pages of the largest U.S. newspapers were surprisingly -- even appallingly -- silent on President Bush's likely decision to send thousands of more troops to the country. It followed a long pattern, however, of opinion writers and TV talking heads strongly criticizing the conduct of the war -- without advocating a major change in direction.
Newspapers, in their editorials, chose to retreat to the sidelines, even as some hawkish conservative columnists, such as Oliver North and David Brooks, came out against the idea. Then there were the new revelations that the troops we already had in Iraq were not properly equipped or protected. That would seem to set the stage for editorials taking a strong stand. But very few -- hardly any -- editorials said much of anything about the well-publicized "surge" idea, pro OR con. Didn't they see this coming? It was like sleepwalking into the abyss.
In the weeks leading up to the Bush announcement, the editorial page of the New York Times said almost nothing about this likely plan, beyond noting the "bleak realities" in Iraq. Other papers often critical of the war, such as the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and USA Today -- among others -- also were silent. Oddly, all of them had hailed the recent Iraq Study Group report, which opposed an escalation.
The Washington Post, hawkish in the past, did not even rouse itself to say anything until the last minute: when it ran a major op-ed by Sen. John McCain, titled "The Case for More Troops."
This failure of will came even after liberal bloggers led the way, as a call went forth: Henceforth ye shall purge the "surge" from your vocabularies and laptops and replace it with "escalation" -- with all its echoes of Vietnam and, incidentally, accuracy regarding the situation. Almost no one took them up on their demand. Of course, escalation was the correct term -- who ever heard of a "surge" of any sort that would last more than a year?
An editorial in Baltimore's Sun a few days before the announcement should have served as a template for others in the media. Here is its key passage: "A generation ago this would have been called an 'escalation,' and the problem with escalations, as President Lyndon B. Johnson learned, is that when they don't furnish the promised results the pressure to follow with further escalations is just about inescapable."
But the best The New York Times could do, before the announcement, was an editorial expressing skepticism -- but declaring that Bush deserved "one last opportunity" to get Iraq right. One had to wonder: Why? After Bush made his speech, the Times and many others in the media thundered that Bush had not made the case for the plan.
But by then it was, tragically, too late.
Greg Mitchell's new book is "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits --and the President -- Failed on Iraq." It includes a preface by Bruce Springsteen and a foreword by Joseph L. Galloway.
The General and a bush league war
by Robert A. Kezelis
I usually keep one of the two cable news stations on in the background of my office, mostly to see if our armageddon-starting, rapture-based invasion of Iran has begun.
Yesterday, General Petraeus hogged the cable news stations with a marathon performance so substance free, so spin-fully delectable, so light on adverse facts that several national beverage companies were seen lurking about, trying to capture his ability to remove the slightest hint of caloric impact on the customer.
It was not only a crock 'o Petraeus show. Senators Dodd, Biden, Obama, and even a republican or two managed to ask some tough questions. Even the simplest yes/no question was just another opportunity for the General to give a long-winded, non-answer answer, hogging the limited time given to the senators. All we learned (with all news to the contrary being diced, sliced, saute'd and broiled into nothingness) was that THE SURGE IS A SUCCESS. Yes, it may be a fragile success. There may be reversals (like all of March and all of April).
So to cut to the quick, you can stop reading here. Just to repeat the Big Message, THE SURGE IS A SUCKCESS.
After some tough questions, he did admit a slight uptick in violence in Basra,and even hinted at a complete lack of political gain, although he spun that as a natural result of great gains on a broad measure of goals. He even went so far to claim that we have reached 6-7 out of 10, on meeting all of our goals, which presumably would permit us to leave that poor, destitute, destroyed, sorry land. (even those minor admissions seemed to take a team of dentists, armed with a 6 story monster crane, using stainless steel chains super-glued to a reluctant bicuspid, and twin diesel engines pulling at pesky tooth to extract even that much)
What is fascinating is how he managed to avoid his original statements concerning the "surge" many, many months ago, its intent, its temporary nature, and the intent to secure political results, and replace it with his willingness (?) to draw down troops until July, leaving MORE TROOPS THAN BEFORE THE BLOODY SURGE!
Yippee! After July, with our army already broken, 1/3 of our troops suffering from mental stress and illness, we will only leave 140,000 troops in harms way, smack dab in the middle of a bloody, nasty civil war in which we have only temporary allies, and only as long as we look the other way when they disobey, and so long as we continue with massive bribes.
I did feel the shock and the awe. The General uses his tongue better than a central Illinois truck stop hooker. (no offense to truck stop hookers. Their profession is even older than the General's and I almost regret the unfortunate comparison) He spins words better, with more talent and delicacy, than most politicians, including most of the past and present presidential candidates. He managed to take more time, use more fillers, and say less than any uniformed person ever testifying before congress. Watching old pros like Biden, Hatch, Dodd and others grit their teeth, yet remain polite was almost refreshing.
If this general represents the new Army, god forbid we fight a real war. With a chestful of medals so shiny and colorful that he made ex-Soviet Generals feel jealous, he appeared every inch the Modern Military Man. A New Age Leader. Form meet substance. Guess which won?
It was not that Petraeus was totally lacking in substance. He is too cool a political cat for that. It was the incredible way he mixed metaphors, meta-twos, and more, including the slightest bit of fact, then managing to take it away with truly superb allegorical, grammatically correct, and ever so balanced non-content, perhaps, anti-content, that was the story.
Of course, given this administration's utter lack of even a passing acquaintance with truth and veracity,
it is fitting that their military face is represented by a polished pol like General Petreaus. He is, in every sense of the word, a Bush man first, a politician second, and perhaps, between one-armed push-ups and TV appearances, a general.
So it was a completely wasted day. Most of the other senatwhores pretended to ask hard questions, and he did not even pretend to give hard answers. Still, this very performance tells us something. The fact that he spent more than 6 hours on the hill, most of it televised, tells us just how bad the reality in Iraq is. Otherwise, they would not be spending the time to cover it up, to bore us with platitudes, or to spin it into something it is not - namely a success.
I suspect that this last ditch effort will backfire. Three years ago, the MSM would be cheerleaders, racing against other outlets to show their pride and excitement at what fine leadership we have in Iraq. Today, that no longer works. In fact, I suspect that this performance will only cause more curiosity about the truth in Iraq. We will see more family loss stories. We will see mental injury follow-ups. We will revisit the torture issues, the Blackwater rapes and murders, and more. Maybe, just maybe, this smooth, fact-free performance will ignite America's attention to back where it belong
I usually keep one of the two cable news stations on in the background of my office, mostly to see if our armageddon-starting, rapture-based invasion of Iran has begun.
Yesterday, General Petraeus hogged the cable news stations with a marathon performance so substance free, so spin-fully delectable, so light on adverse facts that several national beverage companies were seen lurking about, trying to capture his ability to remove the slightest hint of caloric impact on the customer.
It was not only a crock 'o Petraeus show. Senators Dodd, Biden, Obama, and even a republican or two managed to ask some tough questions. Even the simplest yes/no question was just another opportunity for the General to give a long-winded, non-answer answer, hogging the limited time given to the senators. All we learned (with all news to the contrary being diced, sliced, saute'd and broiled into nothingness) was that THE SURGE IS A SUCCESS. Yes, it may be a fragile success. There may be reversals (like all of March and all of April).
So to cut to the quick, you can stop reading here. Just to repeat the Big Message, THE SURGE IS A SUCKCESS.
After some tough questions, he did admit a slight uptick in violence in Basra,and even hinted at a complete lack of political gain, although he spun that as a natural result of great gains on a broad measure of goals. He even went so far to claim that we have reached 6-7 out of 10, on meeting all of our goals, which presumably would permit us to leave that poor, destitute, destroyed, sorry land. (even those minor admissions seemed to take a team of dentists, armed with a 6 story monster crane, using stainless steel chains super-glued to a reluctant bicuspid, and twin diesel engines pulling at pesky tooth to extract even that much)
What is fascinating is how he managed to avoid his original statements concerning the "surge" many, many months ago, its intent, its temporary nature, and the intent to secure political results, and replace it with his willingness (?) to draw down troops until July, leaving MORE TROOPS THAN BEFORE THE BLOODY SURGE!
Yippee! After July, with our army already broken, 1/3 of our troops suffering from mental stress and illness, we will only leave 140,000 troops in harms way, smack dab in the middle of a bloody, nasty civil war in which we have only temporary allies, and only as long as we look the other way when they disobey, and so long as we continue with massive bribes.
I did feel the shock and the awe. The General uses his tongue better than a central Illinois truck stop hooker. (no offense to truck stop hookers. Their profession is even older than the General's and I almost regret the unfortunate comparison) He spins words better, with more talent and delicacy, than most politicians, including most of the past and present presidential candidates. He managed to take more time, use more fillers, and say less than any uniformed person ever testifying before congress. Watching old pros like Biden, Hatch, Dodd and others grit their teeth, yet remain polite was almost refreshing.
If this general represents the new Army, god forbid we fight a real war. With a chestful of medals so shiny and colorful that he made ex-Soviet Generals feel jealous, he appeared every inch the Modern Military Man. A New Age Leader. Form meet substance. Guess which won?
It was not that Petraeus was totally lacking in substance. He is too cool a political cat for that. It was the incredible way he mixed metaphors, meta-twos, and more, including the slightest bit of fact, then managing to take it away with truly superb allegorical, grammatically correct, and ever so balanced non-content, perhaps, anti-content, that was the story.
Of course, given this administration's utter lack of even a passing acquaintance with truth and veracity,
it is fitting that their military face is represented by a polished pol like General Petreaus. He is, in every sense of the word, a Bush man first, a politician second, and perhaps, between one-armed push-ups and TV appearances, a general.
So it was a completely wasted day. Most of the other senatwhores pretended to ask hard questions, and he did not even pretend to give hard answers. Still, this very performance tells us something. The fact that he spent more than 6 hours on the hill, most of it televised, tells us just how bad the reality in Iraq is. Otherwise, they would not be spending the time to cover it up, to bore us with platitudes, or to spin it into something it is not - namely a success.
I suspect that this last ditch effort will backfire. Three years ago, the MSM would be cheerleaders, racing against other outlets to show their pride and excitement at what fine leadership we have in Iraq. Today, that no longer works. In fact, I suspect that this performance will only cause more curiosity about the truth in Iraq. We will see more family loss stories. We will see mental injury follow-ups. We will revisit the torture issues, the Blackwater rapes and murders, and more. Maybe, just maybe, this smooth, fact-free performance will ignite America's attention to back where it belong
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
It’s Time to Challenge Gen. Petraeus
by Tom Andrews
Dear Members of the House Armed Services Committee,
As a former member of your Committee, I urge you to pursue some of the troubling questions that were left unanswered by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker during today’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The most serious is whether the surge of U.S. forces is making things worse, not better in Iraq both militarily and politically. In addition, can we afford to continue to fund sectarian combatants who have not shown the slightest inclination to compromise and reconcile?
It is crucial that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker be challenged on these crucial points and that you use the opportunity of your hearing to separate myth from reality in Iraq.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker continue to portray the Maliki government as combating lawlessness in an effort to unite Iraq under the rule of law. I urge you to make clear that this is a dangerous departure from reality. In fact, Iraq is more bitterly divided now than before the surge began. This is because Mr. Maliki functions as a sectarian combatant seeking to use the leverage of his power - and US military backing - to weaken and defeat his sectarian rivals. This was on graphic display in the recent failed attempt of Prime Minister Maliki to defeat his Shiite competitors in Basra after dragging U.S. forces into the conflict.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have cited as evidence of success the reduction in violence that has resulted from enlisting Sunni combatants who once killed American troops to fight Al Qaeda. It is important to point out the obvious fact that there is great danger in paying people not to shoot at us. We are funding former Sunni enemy combatants who are now demanding more money, distributed more quickly, or they will defect and go back to shooting Americans. Do they not see a danger in buying the allegiance of those who once attacked and killed our troops, particularly when they remain bitter enemies of their sectarian rivals?
It is crucial that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker be confronted with the question: Can we afford to continue to fuel the fire of sectarian division by funding sectarian enemies who have shown no signs of seeking, let alone finding, common ground and reconciliation?
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker repeatedly pointed in their testimony today to the reduction in violence and casualties since the surge began. This reduction can be seen only in comparison to the extreme level of violence in 2005 and ignores the most recent developments on the ground in Iraq. According to U.S. military statistics, suicide bombings and Iraq casualties have spiked in the last few months. Iraqi deaths rose from 568 in December to more than 1,082 in March. U.S. troop deaths escalated from 23 in December to 38 in March, eclipsing the tragic milestone of 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Do General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker consider this progress?
General Petraeus is recommending that we continue to keep buying time in Iraq. He called for the maintenance of troop levels greater than when the surge began during what he described as a 45 day “evaluation” period followed by the “commencement” of an indefinite “period of assessment”. In short, let’s keep kicking the can down the road. This needs to be challenged. Why? And to what end? Curiously, this time period coincides exactly with U.S. elections. If experts are correct that the current course is making things worse, not better in Iraq, then the time we are buying could actually be fueling the violence and bloodshed that will follow the election of the next U.S. president and Congress. Can we afford to take this horrible risk, particularly given the enormous price being paid by the deterioration of US military readiness?
Today’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee failed to fully expose or explore the serious and dangerous consequences of maintaining our current course in Iraq. I urge you to pursue these consequences through tough but fair questions of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. There is too much at stake to do anything less.
Sincerely,
Tom Andrews, former Congressman and House Armed Services Committee member
* * *
Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.
Dear Members of the House Armed Services Committee,
As a former member of your Committee, I urge you to pursue some of the troubling questions that were left unanswered by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker during today’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The most serious is whether the surge of U.S. forces is making things worse, not better in Iraq both militarily and politically. In addition, can we afford to continue to fund sectarian combatants who have not shown the slightest inclination to compromise and reconcile?
It is crucial that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker be challenged on these crucial points and that you use the opportunity of your hearing to separate myth from reality in Iraq.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker continue to portray the Maliki government as combating lawlessness in an effort to unite Iraq under the rule of law. I urge you to make clear that this is a dangerous departure from reality. In fact, Iraq is more bitterly divided now than before the surge began. This is because Mr. Maliki functions as a sectarian combatant seeking to use the leverage of his power - and US military backing - to weaken and defeat his sectarian rivals. This was on graphic display in the recent failed attempt of Prime Minister Maliki to defeat his Shiite competitors in Basra after dragging U.S. forces into the conflict.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have cited as evidence of success the reduction in violence that has resulted from enlisting Sunni combatants who once killed American troops to fight Al Qaeda. It is important to point out the obvious fact that there is great danger in paying people not to shoot at us. We are funding former Sunni enemy combatants who are now demanding more money, distributed more quickly, or they will defect and go back to shooting Americans. Do they not see a danger in buying the allegiance of those who once attacked and killed our troops, particularly when they remain bitter enemies of their sectarian rivals?
It is crucial that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker be confronted with the question: Can we afford to continue to fuel the fire of sectarian division by funding sectarian enemies who have shown no signs of seeking, let alone finding, common ground and reconciliation?
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker repeatedly pointed in their testimony today to the reduction in violence and casualties since the surge began. This reduction can be seen only in comparison to the extreme level of violence in 2005 and ignores the most recent developments on the ground in Iraq. According to U.S. military statistics, suicide bombings and Iraq casualties have spiked in the last few months. Iraqi deaths rose from 568 in December to more than 1,082 in March. U.S. troop deaths escalated from 23 in December to 38 in March, eclipsing the tragic milestone of 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Do General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker consider this progress?
General Petraeus is recommending that we continue to keep buying time in Iraq. He called for the maintenance of troop levels greater than when the surge began during what he described as a 45 day “evaluation” period followed by the “commencement” of an indefinite “period of assessment”. In short, let’s keep kicking the can down the road. This needs to be challenged. Why? And to what end? Curiously, this time period coincides exactly with U.S. elections. If experts are correct that the current course is making things worse, not better in Iraq, then the time we are buying could actually be fueling the violence and bloodshed that will follow the election of the next U.S. president and Congress. Can we afford to take this horrible risk, particularly given the enormous price being paid by the deterioration of US military readiness?
Today’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee failed to fully expose or explore the serious and dangerous consequences of maintaining our current course in Iraq. I urge you to pursue these consequences through tough but fair questions of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. There is too much at stake to do anything less.
Sincerely,
Tom Andrews, former Congressman and House Armed Services Committee member
* * *
Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Don't Betray Us, General: Admit That Iraq Keeps Getting Worse, And That The Surge Failed
By Tom Engelhardt, TheNation.com
Posted on April 8, 2008, Printed on April 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81572/
They came, they saw, they deserted.
That, in short form, is the story of the recent Iraqi government "offensive" in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines on stories out of Iraq ("Can Iraq's Soldiers Fight?") now tell a grim tale and the information in them is worse yet. Stephen Farrell and James Glanz of the New York Times estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, or more than 4% of the force sent into Basra, "abandoned their posts" during the fighting, including "dozens of officers" and "at least two senior field commanders."
Other pieces offer even more devastating numbers. For instance, Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londoo of the Washington Post suggest that 30% of government troops had "abandoned the fight before a cease-fire was reached." Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times offers 50% as an estimate for police desertions in the midst of battle in Baghdad's vast Sadr City slum, a stronghold of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
In other words, after years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, US military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). Think irony. "From what we understand," goes the lame American explanation, "the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon."
This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad's ever redder, ever more dangerous "Green Zone," here are a few realities to keep in mind as he testifies before Congress:
1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, "less violent" Iraq the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox of city states, proliferating militias armed to the teeth, competing regions armed to the teeth, and competing religious factions armed to the teeth. Worse yet, under Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. has been the great proliferator. It has armed and funded close to 100,000 Sunnis organized into militias reportedly intent on someday destroying "the Iranians" (i.e. the Maliki government). It has also supported Shiite militias (aka the Iraqi army). In Basra, it took sides in a churning Shiite civil war. As Nir Rosen summed matters up in a typically brilliant piece in the Nation, Baghdad today is but a set of "fiefdoms run by warlords and militiamen," a pattern the rest of the country emulates. "The Bush administration," he adds, "and the U.S. military have stopped talking of Iraq as a grand project of nation-building, and the U.S. media have dutifully done the same." Meanwhile, in the little noticed north, an Arab/Kurdish civil war over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and possibly Mosul as well, is brewing. This, reports Pepe Escobar of Asia Times, could be explosive. Think nightmare.
2. The Bush administration has no learning curve. Its top officials are unable to absorb the realities of Iraq (or the region) and so, like the generals of World War I, simply send their soldiers surging "over the top" again and again, with minor changes in tactics, to the same dismal end. Time.com's Tony Karon, at his Rootless Cosmopolitan blog, caught this phenomenon strikingly, writing that Maliki's failed offensive "shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the 'war on terror.'"
3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme, for which payment will someday come due. To buy time for its war at home, the Bush administration put out IOUs in Iraq to be paid in future chaos and violence. It now hopes to slip out of office before these fully come due.
4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way. U.S. air reinforcements, sent into Iraq over the last year, are increasingly being brought to bear. There will be hell to pay for this, too, in the future.
5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass (and, at this late date, it won't be pretty); yet such a proposal isn't even on the table in Washington. In fact, as McClatchy's Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef report, disaster in Basra has "silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon."
Since April 2003, each administration misstep in Iraq has only led to worse missteps. Unfortunately, little of this will be apparent in this week's shadowboxing among Washington's "best and brightest," who will again plunge into a "debate" filled with coded words, peppered with absurd fantasies, and rife with American symbolism that only an expert like professor of religion Ira Chernus is likely to decipher. "It's time," he writes, while considering the upcoming Petraeus testimony, "to insist that war should be seen not through the lens of myth and symbol, but as the brutal, self-defeating reality it is."
Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.
© 2008 TheNation.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/81572/
Posted on April 8, 2008, Printed on April 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81572/
They came, they saw, they deserted.
That, in short form, is the story of the recent Iraqi government "offensive" in Basra (and Baghdad). It took a few days, but the headlines on stories out of Iraq ("Can Iraq's Soldiers Fight?") now tell a grim tale and the information in them is worse yet. Stephen Farrell and James Glanz of the New York Times estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, or more than 4% of the force sent into Basra, "abandoned their posts" during the fighting, including "dozens of officers" and "at least two senior field commanders."
Other pieces offer even more devastating numbers. For instance, Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londoo of the Washington Post suggest that 30% of government troops had "abandoned the fight before a cease-fire was reached." Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times offers 50% as an estimate for police desertions in the midst of battle in Baghdad's vast Sadr City slum, a stronghold of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
In other words, after years of intensive training by American advisors and an investment of $22 billion dollars, US military spokesmen are once again left trying to put the best face on a strategic disaster (from which they were rescued thanks to negotiations between Muqtada al-Sadr and advisors to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, brokered in Iran by General Qassem Suleimani, a man on the U.S. Treasury Department's terrorist watch list). Think irony. "From what we understand," goes the lame American explanation, "the bulk of these [deserters] were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon."
This week, with surge commander General David Petraeus back from Baghdad's ever redder, ever more dangerous "Green Zone," here are a few realities to keep in mind as he testifies before Congress:
1. The situation in Iraq is getting worse: Don't believe anyone who says otherwise. The surge-ified, "less violent" Iraq the general has presided over so confidently is, in fact, a chaotic, violent tinderbox of city states, proliferating militias armed to the teeth, competing regions armed to the teeth, and competing religious factions armed to the teeth. Worse yet, under Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the U.S. has been the great proliferator. It has armed and funded close to 100,000 Sunnis organized into militias reportedly intent on someday destroying "the Iranians" (i.e. the Maliki government). It has also supported Shiite militias (aka the Iraqi army). In Basra, it took sides in a churning Shiite civil war. As Nir Rosen summed matters up in a typically brilliant piece in the Nation, Baghdad today is but a set of "fiefdoms run by warlords and militiamen," a pattern the rest of the country emulates. "The Bush administration," he adds, "and the U.S. military have stopped talking of Iraq as a grand project of nation-building, and the U.S. media have dutifully done the same." Meanwhile, in the little noticed north, an Arab/Kurdish civil war over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and possibly Mosul as well, is brewing. This, reports Pepe Escobar of Asia Times, could be explosive. Think nightmare.
2. The Bush administration has no learning curve. Its top officials are unable to absorb the realities of Iraq (or the region) and so, like the generals of World War I, simply send their soldiers surging "over the top" again and again, with minor changes in tactics, to the same dismal end. Time.com's Tony Karon, at his Rootless Cosmopolitan blog, caught this phenomenon strikingly, writing that Maliki's failed offensive "shared the fate of pretty much every similar initiative by the Bush Administration and its allies and proxies since the onset of the 'war on terror.'"
3. The "success" of the surge was always an expensive illusion, essentially a Ponzi scheme, for which payment will someday come due. To buy time for its war at home, the Bush administration put out IOUs in Iraq to be paid in future chaos and violence. It now hopes to slip out of office before these fully come due.
4. A second hidden surge, not likely to be discussed in the hearings this week, is now under way. U.S. air reinforcements, sent into Iraq over the last year, are increasingly being brought to bear. There will be hell to pay for this, too, in the future.
5. A reasonably undertaken but speedy total withdrawal from Iraq is the only way out of this morass (and, at this late date, it won't be pretty); yet such a proposal isn't even on the table in Washington. In fact, as McClatchy's Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef report, disaster in Basra has "silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon."
Since April 2003, each administration misstep in Iraq has only led to worse missteps. Unfortunately, little of this will be apparent in this week's shadowboxing among Washington's "best and brightest," who will again plunge into a "debate" filled with coded words, peppered with absurd fantasies, and rife with American symbolism that only an expert like professor of religion Ira Chernus is likely to decipher. "It's time," he writes, while considering the upcoming Petraeus testimony, "to insist that war should be seen not through the lens of myth and symbol, but as the brutal, self-defeating reality it is."
Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.
© 2008 TheNation.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/81572/
Remember: They Are Liars
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 08 April 2008
No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, "enough to kill several million people," according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of several mobile biological weapons labs.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was operating an "advanced" nuclear weapons program.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq had been seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa for use in this "advanced" nuclear weapons program.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons."
They lied.
They claimed America needed to invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq in order to remove this menace from our world. "It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country," went the White House line, "to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
They lied.
"Simply stated," said Dick Cheney in August of 2002, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Liar.
"Right now," said George W. Bush in September of 2002, "Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of nuclear weapons."
Liar.
"We know for a fact," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in January of 2003, "that there are weapons there."
Liar.
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction," said Colin Powell in February of 2003, "is determined to make more."
Liar.
"We know where they are," said Donald Rumsfeld in March of 2003. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, south, west and north somewhat."
Liar.
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about," said Paul Wolfowitz in March of 2003. "Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."
Liar.
"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were," said Condoleezza Rice in June of 2003, "where they were stored."
Liar.
"I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country," said Gen. Tommy Franks in April of 2003. "Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, 'Oh, well, there's actually another site,' and we'll find it there, I'm not sure."
Wrong.
"Before the war," said Gen. Michael Hagee in May of 2003, "there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found."
Wrong.
"Given time," said Gen. Richard Myers in May of 2003, "given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction."
Wrong.
"Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do," said Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton in May of 2003, "because I think there's a lot of information out there."
Wrong.
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to give testimony before the Senate regarding the current state of affairs in that battle-savaged country. He is a political general, one of many America has seen and heard over the last five years, one who would leap nude from the Capitol dome before telling the real truth about matters in Iraq ... or who would speak using words fed to him by liars, and thus be wrong.
Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.
They lie.
Period.
End of file.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Tuesday 08 April 2008
No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, "enough to kill several million people," according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was in possession of several mobile biological weapons labs.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq was operating an "advanced" nuclear weapons program.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq had been seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa for use in this "advanced" nuclear weapons program.
They lied.
They claimed Iraq attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons."
They lied.
They claimed America needed to invade, overthrow and occupy Iraq in order to remove this menace from our world. "It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country," went the White House line, "to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
They lied.
"Simply stated," said Dick Cheney in August of 2002, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Liar.
"Right now," said George W. Bush in September of 2002, "Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of nuclear weapons."
Liar.
"We know for a fact," said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer in January of 2003, "that there are weapons there."
Liar.
"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction," said Colin Powell in February of 2003, "is determined to make more."
Liar.
"We know where they are," said Donald Rumsfeld in March of 2003. "They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, south, west and north somewhat."
Liar.
"The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about," said Paul Wolfowitz in March of 2003. "Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator."
Liar.
"No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were," said Condoleezza Rice in June of 2003, "where they were stored."
Liar.
"I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country," said Gen. Tommy Franks in April of 2003. "Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, 'Oh, well, there's actually another site,' and we'll find it there, I'm not sure."
Wrong.
"Before the war," said Gen. Michael Hagee in May of 2003, "there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found."
Wrong.
"Given time," said Gen. Richard Myers in May of 2003, "given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction."
Wrong.
"Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do," said Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton in May of 2003, "because I think there's a lot of information out there."
Wrong.
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to give testimony before the Senate regarding the current state of affairs in that battle-savaged country. He is a political general, one of many America has seen and heard over the last five years, one who would leap nude from the Capitol dome before telling the real truth about matters in Iraq ... or who would speak using words fed to him by liars, and thus be wrong.
Remember: they lie. They all lie, from the top man down to the bottom. If their lips are moving, a lie is unfolding. If they say water is wet, get into the shower to make sure.
They lie.
Period.
End of file.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.
Monday, April 7, 2008
McCain and Petraeus Remain Gung Ho
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 07 April 2008
John McCain is no warmonger, he tells us. More than most, he knows the agony of war in a deeply personal way. Why, then, does he persist in portraying Iraq, Afghanistan and the "Global War on Terror" as primarily military problems? Does he truly believe America and its allies could win all three if only we keep a stout heart and properly apply our superior force?
American voters may well find out this week when General David Petraeus testifies before two senate panels on "progress in Iraq." As the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, McCain will stand front and center, supporting General Petraeus in selling a continuing American occupation. McCain's bid to become president rests heavily on how American voters come to view the occupation in November, and on the way they answer a number of largely unvoiced questions about how well McCain would defend the country against a host of widely misunderstood foreign threats.
For all his undoubted courage and long years of experience, has McCain learned to think beyond military definitions of progress, success, victory and defeat? Can he now see the world in larger, more realistic terms, as a long line of American war heroes from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower learned to do? In other words, does John McCain display the broader judgment a president needs to have?
We should ask the same questions of the two Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom will be among the senators grilling Petraeus. But McCain presents an extreme case of a military mindset Americans need to confront. A top gun Navy flier and the son and grandson of four-star admirals, McCain learned too well to think the way a warrior must think: Fight to win. Never give in. Never turn tail. Or, as he says of Iraq, "We're in it, now we must win it."
These are sentiments many of us can understand and even admire in certain situations. But what do they bring us in Iraq, where even the CIA says the ongoing war helps al-Qaeda and their allies recruit increasing numbers of militants and sympathizers throughout the Islamic world?
McCain warns withdrawing our military forces would only embolden al-Qaeda. It would, but their hubris would be short-lived. Leave it to the Sunni tribesmen General Petraeus now pays to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Months before America escalated its troop levels, these Sunnis had turned against the mostly foreign jihadis. Days after American troops leave, the tribesmen would find it relatively easy to isolate and destroy these other unwelcome guests.
McCain worries that withdrawing our military forces would weaken America's ability to get other countries to do what Washington wants. On this, he is half-right, depending on exactly what Washington wants. Military bases for American troops and favorable oil contracts for American and allied corporations would become more difficult to impose. But if Washington could ever learn to reduce its reliance on the global projection of military force, most Americans would find the world a far more welcoming place. Just look at all the business American firms now do in Vietnam and China.
Vietnam is key to McCain's thinking. Much to his credit, he has made his personal peace with the Vietnamese. But, in his military mind, he still thinks America could have and should have won our ill-advised adventure in Southeast Asia. How much further would he have escalated that incredibly bloody war had he been president? Who knows? But, given the widespread opposition to the war among Americans at the time, he would have had to destroy any pretense of constitutional rights on the home front. And for what? As most scholars now agree, no conceivable escalation would have defeated Vietnam's long-standing fight for independence from foreign rule, whether against the Chinese, the French or us.
As we will hear this week, General Petraeus understands the importance of political and ideological forces far better than does McCain. Petraeus has even publicly scolded Iraqi politicians for not working harder to reconcile their differences. Still, he will not give up the counterproductive military fight. Like McCain, the Princeton-educated general stands steadfast in his refusal to see the obvious. No matter how cleverly we apply our overwhelming force, foreign occupation breeds its own opposition in Iraq just as it did in Vietnam.
This is a lesson the gung-ho military mind cannot seem to grasp, which is why Americans would do well to look elsewhere for a president.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 07 April 2008
John McCain is no warmonger, he tells us. More than most, he knows the agony of war in a deeply personal way. Why, then, does he persist in portraying Iraq, Afghanistan and the "Global War on Terror" as primarily military problems? Does he truly believe America and its allies could win all three if only we keep a stout heart and properly apply our superior force?
American voters may well find out this week when General David Petraeus testifies before two senate panels on "progress in Iraq." As the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, McCain will stand front and center, supporting General Petraeus in selling a continuing American occupation. McCain's bid to become president rests heavily on how American voters come to view the occupation in November, and on the way they answer a number of largely unvoiced questions about how well McCain would defend the country against a host of widely misunderstood foreign threats.
For all his undoubted courage and long years of experience, has McCain learned to think beyond military definitions of progress, success, victory and defeat? Can he now see the world in larger, more realistic terms, as a long line of American war heroes from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower learned to do? In other words, does John McCain display the broader judgment a president needs to have?
We should ask the same questions of the two Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom will be among the senators grilling Petraeus. But McCain presents an extreme case of a military mindset Americans need to confront. A top gun Navy flier and the son and grandson of four-star admirals, McCain learned too well to think the way a warrior must think: Fight to win. Never give in. Never turn tail. Or, as he says of Iraq, "We're in it, now we must win it."
These are sentiments many of us can understand and even admire in certain situations. But what do they bring us in Iraq, where even the CIA says the ongoing war helps al-Qaeda and their allies recruit increasing numbers of militants and sympathizers throughout the Islamic world?
McCain warns withdrawing our military forces would only embolden al-Qaeda. It would, but their hubris would be short-lived. Leave it to the Sunni tribesmen General Petraeus now pays to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Months before America escalated its troop levels, these Sunnis had turned against the mostly foreign jihadis. Days after American troops leave, the tribesmen would find it relatively easy to isolate and destroy these other unwelcome guests.
McCain worries that withdrawing our military forces would weaken America's ability to get other countries to do what Washington wants. On this, he is half-right, depending on exactly what Washington wants. Military bases for American troops and favorable oil contracts for American and allied corporations would become more difficult to impose. But if Washington could ever learn to reduce its reliance on the global projection of military force, most Americans would find the world a far more welcoming place. Just look at all the business American firms now do in Vietnam and China.
Vietnam is key to McCain's thinking. Much to his credit, he has made his personal peace with the Vietnamese. But, in his military mind, he still thinks America could have and should have won our ill-advised adventure in Southeast Asia. How much further would he have escalated that incredibly bloody war had he been president? Who knows? But, given the widespread opposition to the war among Americans at the time, he would have had to destroy any pretense of constitutional rights on the home front. And for what? As most scholars now agree, no conceivable escalation would have defeated Vietnam's long-standing fight for independence from foreign rule, whether against the Chinese, the French or us.
As we will hear this week, General Petraeus understands the importance of political and ideological forces far better than does McCain. Petraeus has even publicly scolded Iraqi politicians for not working harder to reconcile their differences. Still, he will not give up the counterproductive military fight. Like McCain, the Princeton-educated general stands steadfast in his refusal to see the obvious. No matter how cleverly we apply our overwhelming force, foreign occupation breeds its own opposition in Iraq just as it did in Vietnam.
This is a lesson the gung-ho military mind cannot seem to grasp, which is why Americans would do well to look elsewhere for a president.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
General Entrap-Us or General Entrapped?
By Ira Chernus
It was supposed to be a "cakewalk." General Petraeus would come to Congress, armed with his favorite charts showing that the "surge" had dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. He would earn universal acclaim for his plan to "pause" troop reductions from July until after the election in November -- the same plan that John McCain counts on to help him win that election.
When it comes to Iraq, though, the Bush administration's cakewalks never seem to turn out as planned. The renewed violence of these last weeks in Iraq, and the prospect of more to come, gives war critics ample ammunition for a counterattack. The Democrats, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, may find it irresistible to assault the general, and the President, with every argument they can muster in the hearings this week. However, a recent report suggests they may resist that impulse and treat the impact of the surge as an irrelevant issue.
Let's hope that report is right, because a debate focused on military success or failure is a trap, with Petraeus's testimony as the bait. After all, no debate in Congress will really be about the level of violence in Iraq. "Has the surge worked?" is just a symbolic way of asking: "Would you rather believe that America is a winner or a loser?" And in any battle over patriotic symbolism, the Republicans always seem to have the bigger guns.
So the Democrats would be smart to refuse the bait and insist that this is not an old-fashioned World War II- style conflict, where force can produce a clear-cut winner. Then they could refocus the debate on two crucial truths: We have no right to be in Iraq; the sooner we get out, the sooner we can begin to heal the terrible damage the war has done to us here at home.
Decoding the Battle over Iraq
It should have been obvious all along that the Republicans do not mean it literally when they claim that reducing violence in Iraq is their highest priority. It's not likely that too many of them care a whole lot about the killing and maiming of Iraqis. So when they speak so urgently about lower levels of violence, it's a coded way of saying something else; in fact, a lot of things.
For starters, "reduced violence" is a way to conjure up an image of American "success" in a war in which no real success (forget about "victory") is possible. The level of violence is the only concrete yardstick the administration has come up with to gauge the success of the surge-- no small matter when a successful surge has become the prime symbol of achievement for U.S. troops and so for the President's (and John McCain's) war policies. Because the Bush administration still hopes to sell its failing war to the public by turning it into a gripping story of winners and losers, "violence" has been its currency, its coin of the realm.
Since that story took hold, supporters of Bush's Iraq policy have insisted that violence there really has been subsiding, hence that his surge strategy has worked. When Democrats and other war critics rejected that claim, they sparked a battle over who has the right, and the proper criteria, to evaluate the surge and its post-surge effects. So violence-lowering success in Iraq also became a symbolic measure of the President's political success here at home.
In fact, the home front is key -- as it has been for years. George W. Bush came into office as the hero of the right, not because he had sworn to defeat terrorism (that didn't start until September 11, 2001), but because he had sworn to defeat 1960s-style liberalism and "secular humanism." For conservatives the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and the political and cultural wars at home have all been symbols of the same long-term struggle against trends they see undermining the fabric of American society.
By choosing John McCain to lead their troops in presidential battle, Republicans have voted with their feet. In effect, they have decided to make all their cherished battles hinge on the battle over Iraq policy and the surge.
When McCain talks about Iraq, his words always point up the symbolic nature of the battle there. He offers no reasonable idea of who we are fighting or why. In fact, on the occasions when he brings the matter up, he seems remarkably confused about the actual cast of characters in that country. As a result, he can offer no sensible outline of what "victory" in Iraq might mean.
Since McCain's talk about the war is really a code, it makes perfect sense to feature that Bush-era bogeyman, al-Qaeda, as our main enemy in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, after all, is "the terrorists," and we are always fighting "the terrorists." It makes no less sense, in his symbolic universe, to insist that al-Qaeda terrorists are being trained in Iran, a country whose leadership is deeply hostile to that organization. All enemies are interchangeable, because all are merely symbols of a vaguely defined sense of uncontrolled evil, which is said to threaten America's security and moral virtue at home and abroad.
George W. Bush was supposed to defeat that evil. He has obviously failed. Now, conservatives pin their hopes on a new champion whose mantra is: "no surrender."
American "Stability"
In addition to "reduced violence," the "surge," and "no surrender," the Republicans wield another symbol of America as a righteous winner: the goal of achieving "stability" in Iraq. It may be the most seductive image of all, because it exerts a strong appeal across the political spectrum.
Five years ago, when American forces quickly dismantled Iraqi society, liberal as well as conservative pundits announced that it was up to our forces to restore "stability" -- as if the Iraqis themselves had wrought the chaos from which we were to rescue them. Though the American military did most of the destabilizing in Iraq, this historical fact was set aside in favor of the hoary myth that America is invariably a force for good, uniquely dedicated and qualified to bring order out of chaos around the world.
War -- righteous, courageous, and ultimately victorious -- has always been a central theme in the American myth of stability. Pollsters still take that myth for granted, and reinforce it, when they ask pointed questions like: "How would you say things are going for the U.S. in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq?" or "Should the U.S. maintain its current troop level in Iraq to help secure peace and stability, or reduce its number of troops?"
Vietnam dealt this mythology a near-fatal blow. Nearly four decades later, at a time when conservatives, moderates, and even many liberals worry about all sorts of forces that seem to threaten the nation's cohesion and moral fiber, reviving a cherished national myth holds broad appeal across the political spectrum. Millions debate the question of military success because they want to know whether they should, or can, still believe that America is the champion of order and stability in a dangerously unstable world. Asking "Did the surge work?" is a symbolic way of asking not only "Can America be a winner?" but "Can the stories of the America we once knew and loved still work?"
When the charismatic general, known to colleagues as "King David" Petraeus, comes before the cameras with his charts and statistics to "prove" that violence levels are lower, and so that the surge has worked, he will once again dangle the sweet smell of success before Congress. As soon as the pundits and the public get a whiff of that bait, it's not just conservatives who will be sorely tempted to swallow it, regardless of what they know is happening in Iraq. If Petraeus can offer anything that might look like plausible evidence of "progress toward stability," or even the possibility of progress, the whole web of patriotic myth and symbolism will automatically kick in and the usual spell will be woven.
If Democrats and war critics go on the counterattack against the surge success story, they will keep that mythic drama on center stage in the theater of political battle. No matter how logically persuasive their arguments may be, they will ensnare themselves in the general's -- and so the President's -- trap, because they will make America and its cherished myths look like losers. And that may very well end up making the Democrats losers.
Just check the latest polls on the presidential race. McCain is basing his campaign on unstinting support for Bush's war and his economic policies, both of which are resounding failures, especially among moderate and independent voters. Yet he is running roughly even with both Clinton and Obama, and some polls even show him ahead.
How could this be? The polls show that most voters do indeed oppose the war and think that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet they also reveal that more Americans trust McCain than either Clinton or Obama to make the right choices on Iraq (and on national security in general). McCain scores particularly well on these issues among independents.
As the mainstream media touted "reduced violence" in Iraq in the second half of 2007 and early 2008, the level of support for McCain's "no surrender" policy rose steadily. McCain's campaign survives, and thrives, only by ignoring reality and relying on its mastery of a language of American identity centered on the symbolism of an American "good war." Any debate about military success in Iraq, however contentious, keeps his strong suit in the spotlight.
Escaping the General and the Trap
Yes, the Democrats might win by making military success or failure in Iraq the central issue of the coming election -- if Iraqi violence continues to rise. But that violence would have to go on rising until Election Day (or the McCain-boosting "success" image would once again kick in). It's a big gamble that depends on factors utterly beyond their control and it threatens to leave them trapped in a narrow corner.
Of course, General Petraeus has trapped himself in a corner too -- and Bush and McCain are there with him. They must also wait for events largely beyond their control to unfold, helplessly bobbing like corks on the tides of Iraqi violence.
The Democrats, however, can turn General Entrap-Us into General Entrapped by refusing to treat the issue of military success or failure as the central question of the moment. The fact is: the competing sides in Iraq have always been ill-defined and constantly shifting. Once the Sunni insurgency started there in 2003, no one has ever been able to say what an American victory might really mean. It's no small truth that "success," in an Iraq where even General Petraeus can't imagine "victory," might well prove more damaging than any failure.
Wise Democrats would heed the words of media critic Norman Solomon: "Arguments over whether U.S. forces can prevail in Iraq bypass a truth that no amount of media spin can change: The U.S. war effort in Iraq has always been illegitimate and fundamentally wrong." The longer we stay in Iraq, the longer we perpetuate the wrongs we have done, regardless of whether we achieve military success by anyone's measure.
We are uninvited intruders in Iraq. We invaded the country on false pretenses. It's long past time for us to admit that truth and leave. The longer we stay, the longer we tell the world that invasion and occupation are okay with us, and the longer we leave America's moral reputation around the world in tatters. When our troops leave, we will set an example for countries that have occupied, or might be tempted to occupy, other lands. And we can begin to heal from our moral bankruptcy, not to mention our impending financial one.
If Democrats take that approach, they will shift the terms of the debate. Then they can speak truths about the war that the American people might be prepared to understand. They can pose hard questions -- and not ones of military strategy either -- that the administration simply cannot answer. That would push war supporters deeper into their self-made trap whose tripwire is the irrelevance of their quest for military success.
But neither Democratic candidate for president is likely to take such an approach. Both argue that the U.S. should remove some substantial number of troops from Iraq (though not all), and cut back military expenditures in Iraq, so that we can spend more and fight more on other fronts. Their arguments are all about the most "effective" ways to protect what are always termed "American interests" around the world. Some dare call it empire, though in any presidential campaign that word will be politely avoided.
Criticism of the U.S. military is politely avoided, too. The candidates compete with each other to see who can offer the most fulsome praise of "our troops," while heaping all the blame on the feeble Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
As long as the Democrats are committed to sustaining a neoliberal imperial project, they have to try as hard as the Republicans to revive the myth of American troops as a force for global stability. The bipartisan guardians of empire need that myth to mask their economic and political goals -- if only to keep the public paying the exorbitant bills.
The Democrats have already demonstrated that they value a myth of American stability even above winning the presidency. Think Florida in the weeks following Election Day 2000. In the months preceding Election Day 2008, they may very well make the same choice again, and that would be tragic.
With the polls showing that many Americans may consider voting for the war-makers even while opposing the war itself, this year's election offers a rare opportunity to confront the difference between symbol and reality. It's time to insist that war should be seen not through the lens of myth and symbol, but as the brutal, self-defeating reality it is.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.
Copyright 2008 Ira Chernus
It was supposed to be a "cakewalk." General Petraeus would come to Congress, armed with his favorite charts showing that the "surge" had dramatically reduced violence in Iraq. He would earn universal acclaim for his plan to "pause" troop reductions from July until after the election in November -- the same plan that John McCain counts on to help him win that election.
When it comes to Iraq, though, the Bush administration's cakewalks never seem to turn out as planned. The renewed violence of these last weeks in Iraq, and the prospect of more to come, gives war critics ample ammunition for a counterattack. The Democrats, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, may find it irresistible to assault the general, and the President, with every argument they can muster in the hearings this week. However, a recent report suggests they may resist that impulse and treat the impact of the surge as an irrelevant issue.
Let's hope that report is right, because a debate focused on military success or failure is a trap, with Petraeus's testimony as the bait. After all, no debate in Congress will really be about the level of violence in Iraq. "Has the surge worked?" is just a symbolic way of asking: "Would you rather believe that America is a winner or a loser?" And in any battle over patriotic symbolism, the Republicans always seem to have the bigger guns.
So the Democrats would be smart to refuse the bait and insist that this is not an old-fashioned World War II- style conflict, where force can produce a clear-cut winner. Then they could refocus the debate on two crucial truths: We have no right to be in Iraq; the sooner we get out, the sooner we can begin to heal the terrible damage the war has done to us here at home.
Decoding the Battle over Iraq
It should have been obvious all along that the Republicans do not mean it literally when they claim that reducing violence in Iraq is their highest priority. It's not likely that too many of them care a whole lot about the killing and maiming of Iraqis. So when they speak so urgently about lower levels of violence, it's a coded way of saying something else; in fact, a lot of things.
For starters, "reduced violence" is a way to conjure up an image of American "success" in a war in which no real success (forget about "victory") is possible. The level of violence is the only concrete yardstick the administration has come up with to gauge the success of the surge-- no small matter when a successful surge has become the prime symbol of achievement for U.S. troops and so for the President's (and John McCain's) war policies. Because the Bush administration still hopes to sell its failing war to the public by turning it into a gripping story of winners and losers, "violence" has been its currency, its coin of the realm.
Since that story took hold, supporters of Bush's Iraq policy have insisted that violence there really has been subsiding, hence that his surge strategy has worked. When Democrats and other war critics rejected that claim, they sparked a battle over who has the right, and the proper criteria, to evaluate the surge and its post-surge effects. So violence-lowering success in Iraq also became a symbolic measure of the President's political success here at home.
In fact, the home front is key -- as it has been for years. George W. Bush came into office as the hero of the right, not because he had sworn to defeat terrorism (that didn't start until September 11, 2001), but because he had sworn to defeat 1960s-style liberalism and "secular humanism." For conservatives the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and the political and cultural wars at home have all been symbols of the same long-term struggle against trends they see undermining the fabric of American society.
By choosing John McCain to lead their troops in presidential battle, Republicans have voted with their feet. In effect, they have decided to make all their cherished battles hinge on the battle over Iraq policy and the surge.
When McCain talks about Iraq, his words always point up the symbolic nature of the battle there. He offers no reasonable idea of who we are fighting or why. In fact, on the occasions when he brings the matter up, he seems remarkably confused about the actual cast of characters in that country. As a result, he can offer no sensible outline of what "victory" in Iraq might mean.
Since McCain's talk about the war is really a code, it makes perfect sense to feature that Bush-era bogeyman, al-Qaeda, as our main enemy in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, after all, is "the terrorists," and we are always fighting "the terrorists." It makes no less sense, in his symbolic universe, to insist that al-Qaeda terrorists are being trained in Iran, a country whose leadership is deeply hostile to that organization. All enemies are interchangeable, because all are merely symbols of a vaguely defined sense of uncontrolled evil, which is said to threaten America's security and moral virtue at home and abroad.
George W. Bush was supposed to defeat that evil. He has obviously failed. Now, conservatives pin their hopes on a new champion whose mantra is: "no surrender."
American "Stability"
In addition to "reduced violence," the "surge," and "no surrender," the Republicans wield another symbol of America as a righteous winner: the goal of achieving "stability" in Iraq. It may be the most seductive image of all, because it exerts a strong appeal across the political spectrum.
Five years ago, when American forces quickly dismantled Iraqi society, liberal as well as conservative pundits announced that it was up to our forces to restore "stability" -- as if the Iraqis themselves had wrought the chaos from which we were to rescue them. Though the American military did most of the destabilizing in Iraq, this historical fact was set aside in favor of the hoary myth that America is invariably a force for good, uniquely dedicated and qualified to bring order out of chaos around the world.
War -- righteous, courageous, and ultimately victorious -- has always been a central theme in the American myth of stability. Pollsters still take that myth for granted, and reinforce it, when they ask pointed questions like: "How would you say things are going for the U.S. in its efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq?" or "Should the U.S. maintain its current troop level in Iraq to help secure peace and stability, or reduce its number of troops?"
Vietnam dealt this mythology a near-fatal blow. Nearly four decades later, at a time when conservatives, moderates, and even many liberals worry about all sorts of forces that seem to threaten the nation's cohesion and moral fiber, reviving a cherished national myth holds broad appeal across the political spectrum. Millions debate the question of military success because they want to know whether they should, or can, still believe that America is the champion of order and stability in a dangerously unstable world. Asking "Did the surge work?" is a symbolic way of asking not only "Can America be a winner?" but "Can the stories of the America we once knew and loved still work?"
When the charismatic general, known to colleagues as "King David" Petraeus, comes before the cameras with his charts and statistics to "prove" that violence levels are lower, and so that the surge has worked, he will once again dangle the sweet smell of success before Congress. As soon as the pundits and the public get a whiff of that bait, it's not just conservatives who will be sorely tempted to swallow it, regardless of what they know is happening in Iraq. If Petraeus can offer anything that might look like plausible evidence of "progress toward stability," or even the possibility of progress, the whole web of patriotic myth and symbolism will automatically kick in and the usual spell will be woven.
If Democrats and war critics go on the counterattack against the surge success story, they will keep that mythic drama on center stage in the theater of political battle. No matter how logically persuasive their arguments may be, they will ensnare themselves in the general's -- and so the President's -- trap, because they will make America and its cherished myths look like losers. And that may very well end up making the Democrats losers.
Just check the latest polls on the presidential race. McCain is basing his campaign on unstinting support for Bush's war and his economic policies, both of which are resounding failures, especially among moderate and independent voters. Yet he is running roughly even with both Clinton and Obama, and some polls even show him ahead.
How could this be? The polls show that most voters do indeed oppose the war and think that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet they also reveal that more Americans trust McCain than either Clinton or Obama to make the right choices on Iraq (and on national security in general). McCain scores particularly well on these issues among independents.
As the mainstream media touted "reduced violence" in Iraq in the second half of 2007 and early 2008, the level of support for McCain's "no surrender" policy rose steadily. McCain's campaign survives, and thrives, only by ignoring reality and relying on its mastery of a language of American identity centered on the symbolism of an American "good war." Any debate about military success in Iraq, however contentious, keeps his strong suit in the spotlight.
Escaping the General and the Trap
Yes, the Democrats might win by making military success or failure in Iraq the central issue of the coming election -- if Iraqi violence continues to rise. But that violence would have to go on rising until Election Day (or the McCain-boosting "success" image would once again kick in). It's a big gamble that depends on factors utterly beyond their control and it threatens to leave them trapped in a narrow corner.
Of course, General Petraeus has trapped himself in a corner too -- and Bush and McCain are there with him. They must also wait for events largely beyond their control to unfold, helplessly bobbing like corks on the tides of Iraqi violence.
The Democrats, however, can turn General Entrap-Us into General Entrapped by refusing to treat the issue of military success or failure as the central question of the moment. The fact is: the competing sides in Iraq have always been ill-defined and constantly shifting. Once the Sunni insurgency started there in 2003, no one has ever been able to say what an American victory might really mean. It's no small truth that "success," in an Iraq where even General Petraeus can't imagine "victory," might well prove more damaging than any failure.
Wise Democrats would heed the words of media critic Norman Solomon: "Arguments over whether U.S. forces can prevail in Iraq bypass a truth that no amount of media spin can change: The U.S. war effort in Iraq has always been illegitimate and fundamentally wrong." The longer we stay in Iraq, the longer we perpetuate the wrongs we have done, regardless of whether we achieve military success by anyone's measure.
We are uninvited intruders in Iraq. We invaded the country on false pretenses. It's long past time for us to admit that truth and leave. The longer we stay, the longer we tell the world that invasion and occupation are okay with us, and the longer we leave America's moral reputation around the world in tatters. When our troops leave, we will set an example for countries that have occupied, or might be tempted to occupy, other lands. And we can begin to heal from our moral bankruptcy, not to mention our impending financial one.
If Democrats take that approach, they will shift the terms of the debate. Then they can speak truths about the war that the American people might be prepared to understand. They can pose hard questions -- and not ones of military strategy either -- that the administration simply cannot answer. That would push war supporters deeper into their self-made trap whose tripwire is the irrelevance of their quest for military success.
But neither Democratic candidate for president is likely to take such an approach. Both argue that the U.S. should remove some substantial number of troops from Iraq (though not all), and cut back military expenditures in Iraq, so that we can spend more and fight more on other fronts. Their arguments are all about the most "effective" ways to protect what are always termed "American interests" around the world. Some dare call it empire, though in any presidential campaign that word will be politely avoided.
Criticism of the U.S. military is politely avoided, too. The candidates compete with each other to see who can offer the most fulsome praise of "our troops," while heaping all the blame on the feeble Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
As long as the Democrats are committed to sustaining a neoliberal imperial project, they have to try as hard as the Republicans to revive the myth of American troops as a force for global stability. The bipartisan guardians of empire need that myth to mask their economic and political goals -- if only to keep the public paying the exorbitant bills.
The Democrats have already demonstrated that they value a myth of American stability even above winning the presidency. Think Florida in the weeks following Election Day 2000. In the months preceding Election Day 2008, they may very well make the same choice again, and that would be tragic.
With the polls showing that many Americans may consider voting for the war-makers even while opposing the war itself, this year's election offers a rare opportunity to confront the difference between symbol and reality. It's time to insist that war should be seen not through the lens of myth and symbol, but as the brutal, self-defeating reality it is.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.
Copyright 2008 Ira Chernus
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