[LANMaster]

Dear American soldier in Iraq


Dear American Soldier in Iraq:

I am writing to you simply as a fellow American.

In just about every way, I am quite typical. I am a married man with three children, believe in God and love my country. I differ, however, from many Americans in a couple of ways. First, my vocation -- radio talk show host and columnist -- makes me a professional communicator. So I might be able to say things that most other Americans feel but could not communicate quite as clearly. Second, and more important, I suspect that more than some Americans, though hardly more than President Bush and his administration, I am keenly aware of the fragility of civilization, of the monumental evil you are fighting, and of the historic mission of America.

For these reasons, I am writing to you. Though you may already know everything I am about to say, I need to say it for those of you who, after seeing fellow soldiers blown up or severely injured, may sometimes wonder whether these sacrifices are worth it.

So, first, let me set the record straight. Not since World War II have the stakes been this great. This is a war for the future of civilization every bit as much as the war against German Nazism and Japanese Fascism was. If we had lost that war, the world would have devolved into barbarism.

If we lose this one, the same will happen.

It was a war for civilization then; the war against Islamic Fascism is such a war today.

Of course, there are hundreds of millions of fine people among the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. But that is, unfortunately, as irrelevant to understanding today's war as the fact that there were millions of fine Germans living in Hitler's Germany was to understanding World War II.

It is not the fine Muslims who rule most Muslim countries, some of which are among the cruelest on earth. It is not the fine Muslims who dominate the Islamic schools around the world that teach that it is right to subjugate women and to slit Christians' and Jews' throats. It is not the fine Muslims who wish to impose a violent, hate-filled religion on others. It is not the fine Muslims who burned 13 churches in Nigeria just last week.

And sadly, most of the fine Muslims, including those in America, rarely condemn their civilization-threatening co-religionists.

Iraq is the battleground for civilization. That is why our enemies are throwing everything they can at you. If you help create the first free and tolerant Arab country in the heart of Islam, they are doomed. If we fail in Iraq, we are doomed. Our enemies know this. We need to know this.

Second, don't be discouraged by America's relative aloneness in the world. The world is not, by and large, a good place. And the United Nations, which reflects the world, reflects that fact. That is why Libya, a police state that ordered the mass murder known as the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is not only on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, it is the head of the commission. And Syria, which is worse than Libya, judges us on the Security Council.

As for Europe, Britain and a few other Western states aside, the folks who gave us Auschwitz and Communism and who now bankroll Iran and North Korea hardly have a claim to moral superiority. Americans like you died for their errors. They never died for ours. And they err again. Instead of learning to fight evil, they have only learned that fighting is evil.

Third, we Americans are relatively alone because from our founding we have believed that we have a mission to better the world. And for this we are hated. We are not hated for our power; we are hated for our values and our sense of chosenness -- just as the never powerful Jews have long been hated for their values and their chosenness.

In sum, you are carrying the great burden of history on your shoulders every day you serve in Iraq. That some of your fellow citizens do not understand this only means that the war for civilization is taking place as much here at home as it is in Iraq.

We pray for you not only because you are our sons and daughters risking your lives, but because if God is good, and if we humans can discern between good and evil, you are doing God's work. It is as clear as that. No American war has ever been clearer.


Link

[Faithful one]

LANMASTER!!

Thank you for saying nice post! People forget Sept 11 so quickly and people forget that This mess with terrorists was happening with Clinton as well What did he do about it? It takes more that 9 months or so for the terrorists to make a plan as extensive as the one that killed 3000 plus people in a short time! I say lets quit the blaming of a man that I personally think is doing a great job and supporting our mean nd women! He is doing his job that he gave an oath to..Protecting America and he is doing everything in his power to protect .

I am a wife of a military man who is on his 4th trip over in two years and I FULLY support what our President is doing. I am SO proud of my husband and all the other military overseas..protecting us while we eat a nice hot meal and sleep in a nice comfy bed, opem presents by a warm fireplace in our cosey homes while they live in MUCH Different conditions! Lets not be so negative or casts stones..Let us support FREEDOM and that what our President is trying to protect!

There IS good going on , we have spoken to someone in the 4th infranty we have also spokent o people in Afghanistan..lets do not forget those guys and gals either!

THANK YOU ALL MILITARY FOR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE SACRiFICES YOU HAVE MADE OR ARE MAKING! MAY GOD CONTINUE to BE WITH YOU!!! This wife is Behind you and will continue to pray for y'all!!!
Faithful One

[pyritechips]

Iraq is the battleground for civilization.

Perpetuation of the Grand Lie. Bush's moral war against terrorism is a sham! How many times must it be said that Iraq has nothing to do with Sept 11 attacks and a so called world network of terrorism? Hussien was nothing more than a tin pot dictator murdering his own people. He took on Iran and failed. His only victory was in tiny Kuwait and that was short lived. The only terrorists that exist in Iraq are the ones sucked into the power vacuum, post-war.

Bush picked on Iraq because it was an easy target, embargoed into poverty, which Bush had the balls to blame on Hussein's brutality, when in fact, pre-sanctioned Iraq had one of the highest standards of living east of Europe.

As for Europe, Britain and a few other Western states aside, the folks who gave us Auschwitz and Communism and who now bankroll Iran and North Korea hardly have a claim to moral superiority.

It's best not to evoke "moral superiority" unless wanting to receive criticism. It is America's cozy bed fellow Saudi Arabia (coincedently the world's largest oil producer?) that is a prime financier of terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda and Bin Ladin. And how many brutal fascist regimes around the world did America prop up in its obsessive drive to counter communism? Don't tell me of moral superiority or I will give a litany of brutal and terrorist regimes supported by your Great Republic.

Instead of learning to fight evil, they have only learned that fighting is evil.

I have heard the word "evil" so often it has lost its meaning. Why not cut the bull and just say "opposing ideology". Every time I hear the word "evil" the more I am convinced that America, through Bush, is waging a Holy War.

we are hated for our values and our sense of chosenness

No, you are hated for chosing for other people how to live. You think you can "democratize" other people. Hog wash! How naieve. You think the American way is the only way. History has, and will, prove you wrong. I said in another thread and I will say it here: Not long after America leaves Iraq there will be a coup, an attempt to oust the puppet regime installed by the Americans; the artificial "democracy" will fail and be replaced, possibly by a "Theocracy". I also fear civil war there as different factions vie for power, a la Lebanon and Afghanistan. A culture, society, will seek, and find, its own balance, despite what any other nation may have in store for it.

but because if God is good, and if we humans can discern between good and evil, you are doing God's work

This only strengthens the perception that this is a Holy War. Lay off the religious rhetoric and I, among many others, may give more credence to the whole affair.

No American war has ever been clearer.

You mean as clear as Viet Nam?

No, I believe this unneccessary conflict will parallel Viet Nam in the history books. The greatest tragedy here is that so many Americans and Iraqis will have died, and suffered horrendous injuries, for nothing. I see outraged threads decrying the allegedly "brutal" and "cowardly" attack of two American soldiers but I never see anyone utter a single word of sympathy when an Iraqi family is blown into hamburger by some trigger happy American. After all they are only "Sand ******s", right? Bush jumped on the situation and immediately called them "thugs". Bremer immediately parroted Bush and called them thugs. Is this to be the new media "buzz word" of the month? Just another hypocritical attempt to dehumanize an enemy that Bush and his corrupt administration doesn't even understand. Dehumanizing the enemy makes it easier to kill other people, like those childern in the attached picture.

I watched a program called "Deadline: Iraq". It was the uncensored stories and videos of the journalists that covered the war. They told their stories and showed all the stuff that was cut out of stories to "pretty up" "sanitize" and "glorify" the noble American war effort. What I saw sickened me. I guarantee you what I saw was never shown on American TV, simply because it wasn't allowed.

This is what cluster bombs and so called "smart weapons" can to to a defenseless population:



Not a damn thing will be accomplished here.

[pyritechips]

P.S.

If you wish to read the article "Deadline: Iraq" you can here: http://www.cbc.ca/deadlineiraq/index.html

[pyritechips]

As much as I dislike cut and paste posting, I cannot supply a link to the following editorial, as it is not available online. Take the article as you will but my favourite line is the last one. The article is by Eric Margolis of the Calgary Sun and is titled:

Time to cut and run
Bush should get U.S. out of Iraq while the gettin' is good

NEW YORK-

President George Bush should heed the wise old New York garment district maxim: "First loss, best loss." Translated from New Yorkese, this means when you get into a bad deal, bail out fast. The longer you stay in and refuse to face reality, the more you will end up losing. That, alas, is just what Bush is doing in Iraq. Better he had gone to the garment district for hard advice instead of the regal photo op in London thrown for him by Queen Elizabeth and her dysfunctional family.

In spite of the royal welcome in a nation that increasingly resembles a giant theme park for American tourists, many Britons were appalled by the visit. They greeted Bush and his preposterously bloated entourage, worthy of Kublai Khan, with about as much warmth as they did the Spanish Armada. Tony Blair, Bush's de facto foreign minister, salaamed and scraped with unctuous zeal before the visiting Emperor of the West. But at least the Queen summoned up enough pride to refuse White House demands that heavily armed U.S. agents be granted full legal immunity to shoot down threatening Britons.

Back to losing.

President Bush's crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq have turned into bloody, expensive messes. These neo-colonial misadventures may soon cost $2 billion US weekly, plus the deaths and wounding of growing numbers of Americans, allies dragooned into service in Iraq and Iraqi civilians. The so-called political process in both nations is a farce. Their U.S.-installed regimes are widely viewed as Quislings. In Kabul, the U.S. at least has an amiable figurehead, Hamid Karzai. No suitable Iraqi yes-man has yet been found. But the White House, seeing its pre-election popularity dropping fast, is desperately seeking some way out of the Iraqi hornet's nest into which it so foolishly stuck its thick head.

Bush just announced - shades of Richard Nixon - that the Iraq war would be "Iraqized." A facade of political power will be handed over to an Iraqi government. But U.S. troops will stay on for years for "security." What happens if the "independent" Iraqi regime tells U.S. forces to leave? A speedy regime change, no doubt.The Pentagon plans to build three major bases in Iraq from which to police the central Mid-east and guard America's new imperial oil lifeline from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan, to the West.

Anyone who remembers Vietnam, which Iraq increasingly recalls, knows "Iraqization" won't work. Meanwhile, Iraq's Shia majority remains quiet only because it fears Saddam Hussein may return. Ironically, if the u.s. hunts down and murders Saddam, the Shia will rise up and demand an Islamic republic - just what the White House seeks to avoid. Any free vote in Iraq will produce the same result.

Maybe that's why Saddam has not yet been found. So take Bush's calls for Arab democracy with much salt.The only truly free vote held in the Arab world - most of which is controlled by the U.S. - brought to power in Algeria a moderate Islamic government. It was promptly overthrown by the army, with backing from the U.S. and France. But Bush dares not withdraw American troops from Iraq so long as the elusive Saddam stays alive. Imagine a triumphant Saddam mooning Bush from "liberated" Baghdad. The Democrats would make falafel of the president. Neo-conservatives insist the U.S. can't withdraw because of loss of face and prestige. Retreat will encourage terrorism, claim these sofa samurais.

Nonsense.

America shrugged off retreat from Vietnam and Indochina. All good generals know when to fall back, and - unlike the neo-cons who engineered these stupid wars - always leave open a line of retreat. No one cared about Afghanistan when the Soviets killed 1.5 million of its people, nor about Iraq when it lost 500,000 soldiers fighting Iran, or 500,000 children due to the punitive U.S. blockade. Why care now? "We just can't cut and run," said Bush in London, trying to sound Churchillian.

Why not?

The best way to get the U.S. out of this quagmire is to follow France's sage advice. Bring in a UN-run government as a fig leaf, declare victory, and pull all u.s. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, chaos will ensue. But Iraq and Afghanistan are in chaos now, and terrorism, as we saw in Istanbul last Thursday, still rages. Get out now before the U.S. gets sucked ever deeper by "mission creep" into a decade-long morass in Mesopotamia. There's still time.

Yes, Saddam or his lieutenants and Arab radicals will crow, but Israel survived similar crowing when it wisely ended its disastrous colonial adventure in Lebanon. Immediate retreat saves $100 billion-plus. Iraq and Afghanistan are not worth the lives of one more American or Canadian soldier, nor more wear on overstretched U.S. forces. Withdrawal will damp down raging anti-Americanism around the globe.

Time to end the megalomania, paranoia and crazy biblical geopolitics that drove the U.S. into these profitless conflicts.

Mr. President, be a real mensch and a true patriot by admitting you were wrong, and just get out.

P.S. It's cheaper to buy oil than to conquer it.

[eggplant43]

(November 26, 2003 -- 04:15 PM EDT)
Through Washington's Iraq debate of 2002, the recurring line from the Iraq-hawks and the right was the claim that the bureaucrats at the State Department were doing everything they could to keep democracy from coming to Iraq. It was ridiculous at the time. And looking back at it now it produces mainly confusion as you try to figure out whether to laugh or to cry and end up doing both.

(Actually, a bit more specificity is probably in order. It was one part valid, six parts ridiculousness, and three parts utter bad faith.)

Here's a choice clip from a piece Lawrence Kaplan wrote this March in The New Republic ("Federal Reserve: The State Department's anti-democracy plan for Iraq.")

What's more, the State Department has designated an outspoken foe of the Iraqi democracy movement from the Clinton years, NEA's Thomas Warrick, as its chief "vetter" of Iraqi officials. At a gathering of Iraqi democrats in December, Warrick, along with the CIA's Ben Miller, stood in the doorway of the meeting and literally tried to block leading pro-democracy dissidents from entering. INC representative Entifadh Qanbar, who was himself prevented from getting through the door, recounts, "Warrick said, 'You can't get in, and I'll have the guards help you out.'"
As a reader who reminded me of this passage aptly said, the INC's main probelm with the folks at the State Department and their Future of Iraq Project was that it stood in the way of their ability to take over Iraq in the wake of the American invasion -- a prize they were presumably entitled to on the basis of good media and think-tank contacts in Washington.

My God did Chalabi's crew play this town like a fiddle ...

-- Josh Marshall
Copyright 2003 Joshua Micah Mars

[eggplant43]

Attacks on G.I.'s in Mosul Rise as Good Will Fades

By DEXTER FILKINS

MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 26 — Since the Americans came to town seven months ago, the firefighters in this northern Iraqi city have gotten new trucks and new uniforms, American training and salaries 10 times larger than they used to be.

But when word came Sunday afternoon that two American soldiers had been shot in the head and killed a block away, the men of Ras al Jada fire station ran to the site and looked on with glee as a crowd of locals dragged the Americans from their car and tore off their watches and jackets and boots.

"I was happy, everyone was happy," Waadallah Muhammad, one of the firefighters, said as he stood in front of the firehouse. "The Americans, yes, they do good things, but only to enhance their reputation. They are occupiers. We want them to leave."

It was not supposed to be this way in Mosul, an ethnically diverse city of two million people and the economic and cultural center of northern Iraq.

As places like Ramadi and Falluja and Tikrit burned and their residents rebelled against the American occupation this summer, Mosul stayed calm, the one city with a Sunni Arab majority where most people still seemed to regard the Americans as their friends. A vigorous and far-reaching effort by the 101st Airborne Division to rebuild the city's roads, schools and public buildings seemed to cement an unusually warm bond.

That appears to be changing very fast. The money the American occupiers once doled out freely has dried up, and other reconstruction aid has yet to arrive. Attacks on Americans, which have killed more than 25 in the Mosul area this month, have highlighted what local Iraqis say is a rapidly deteriorating relationship.

While Iraqi leaders once saluted American soldiers as their partners in building a new country, many now say their complaints go unheard. Moderate Iraqis cooperating with the Americans say the young men of Mosul are increasingly heeding the calls of militant clerics. With three prominent Iraqi civil servants killed in recent weeks, the Iraqis say, they are paying a steadily higher price for their cooperation.

It is not too late, residents say, to rebuild trust, but few Iraqis express much hope. Since the attacks against Americans increased, commanders have sent more troops into the city and detained dozens of suspected militants. The result appears to be a descending spiral, in which the crackdown is draining away much of the good will that remains.

"I want the Americans to succeed, and I want every American soldier to go home safely," said Raad Khairy al-Barhawi, a city councilman and a Sunni Arab. "But the Americans have completely misunderstood the situation. I am trying to help the Americans, and I am getting death threats. I am stuck in the middle."

The situation in Mosul, once so promising, now seems the object of drastically differing perceptions.

American commanders say the situation is still very much in their control, and they insist that they still have the overwhelming support of the people. They say the attacks on their men, while serious, are the work of perhaps a few hundred malcontents, most of them members of Saddam Hussein's old government.

"I reject the idea that things have gone bad here," said Col. Joe Anderson, who commands about 5,000 men in the heart of the city. "Most of the Iraqis are glad we are here, and they are cooperating with us."

Indeed, the progress in Mosul, even with the recent spate of attacks, still strikes a visitor from Baghdad as remarkable. The sidewalks are jammed with shoppers. The telephone, electricity and water networks are in good working order, thanks in large part to $33 million in projects carried out by American soldiers since April. A 28-member city council brings together the city's remarkable mix of Arabs, Christians, Kurds, Shabaks and Yazidhis.

The current attacks in and around Mosul, which number from 6 to 10 a day, are the work of a small number of bitter-enders, the Americans said. Colonel Anderson said the Americans had identified three cells here of about 100 fighters each, a small number given the city's size. Other officers said many of the attacks had been staged by Iraqis who had come from Baghdad and other parts of the so-called Sunni triangle, the region north and west of the capital that is generating most of the violence.

In assaults last week, American troops zeroed in on what they described as a "rat line" of houses and sympathizers stretching south toward Baghdad, a line that assisted militants in traveling north to Mosul. The Americans detained 89 suspected guerrillas in those raids, and more than 100 in others across the city. Among those recently seized, they say, are three members of Al Qaeda and two of another militant Islamic group, Ansar al-Islam.

"What I think is that this is a case of people coming from the outside trying to spoil a good thing," Maj. Trey Cate said.

But many local Iraqis say the Americans' problems run deeper and broader. Expectations that the Americans would rapidly generate prosperity in Mosul have been met with disappointment, and vast numbers of Iraqis still find themselves unemployed. The pool of money the American military used here to employ hundreds of Iraqis for local projects has dried up, and the large sums recently approved by Congress for reconstruction have yet to arrive.

A network of former members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party, stretching from the universities to government offices, openly flout the Americans' edicts and, some Iraqis say, quietly support the resistance.

"I would say that the number of people who are opposed to the Americans here numbers in the thousands, the tens of thousands," said Hunien Kadu, a professor of economics at Mosul University and a city council member. "There are deans and assistant deans who were high-ranking members of the Baath Party. There are Baathists all through the government. The Americans can't continue to let these people operate."

Many Iraqis complained that the recent American crackdown had pushed potential supporters away. Mr. Barhawi, for instance, cited a local cleric detained on suspicion of encouraging attacks against the Americans in his weekly sermons. He said American troops had handcuffed, hooded and slapped the cleric. Word of that, he said, was helping to alienate many Iraqis here who were still more or less receptive to the American enterprise.

The cleric, Abdul Satar al-Jawiri, was released after a search of his home turned up nothing, Mr. Barhawi said. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne said Wednesday that he could not confirm the incident.

"I am not defending the cleric, but he was humiliated in public," Mr. Barhawi said. "Do you realize what he is going to say in his sermons now?"

[eggplant43]

December 03, 2003 -- 12:06 AM EDT)

According to the Washington Post, US civilian and military authorities in Iraq have agreed to create an Iraqi paramilitary force numbering just under 1,000 men, composed of equal contributions from the militias of the five largest political parties in the country.

I hesitate to criticize this decision too readily because I can see the very difficult range of options we're dealing with. And I can see advantages of pursuing such a course: namely, having a corps of trained Iraqis to help put down the insurgents who are killing our soldiers and preventing any progress toward stabilization and democratization.

I'm convinced that the choice to disband the Iraqi Army was a bad idea, about which we should have known better. This, on the other hand, may be a bad decision that we must take because all the other options are worse.

But with all those qualifications put out on the table, I have to tell you that just instinctively this strikes me as a very bad idea.

As Ghazi Yawar, an independent member of the Council tells the Post: "This is a very big blunder. We should be dissolving militias, not finding ways to legitimize them. This sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people."

The reasons for not doing this are almost endless -- not least of which is the fact that these militias aren't exactly pure as the driven snow operations, and they are based in most cases on rival political factions that would probably be fighting each other if we weren't still there with a hundred and fifty thousands of our guys and gals. (Add to this the fact that the leaders of several of these parties are reaching for almost any expedient to perpetuate their power into the post-occupation period -- and this looks like an awfully good way to do it.)

At a deeper level, however, the issue here is one of power and the direction in which it is flowing.

The idea behind a successful occupation, reconstruction and democratization process -- whether it be in Japan or Germany or Kosovo or Bosnia -- is that you control not only the power of overwhelming force but the more granular and immediate forms of power we associate with police authority and basic civil administration.

It is only with that sort of control that you can hope to manage the sort of social and political reconfigurations -- always matters of the greatest difficulty -- that can ensure a more democratic and stable future for the country in question.

(Call this imperialism, or any other catch phrase, but if it's done competently and under the appropriate auspices I have no problem with it.)

But what is quite evidently happening here is that we don't have that sort of power. So we're having to go to other sources of force, authority and patronage to find it.

Only the groups we're going to -- in most cases factions based either on hucksters, or charismatic leaders or ethnic or sectarian loyalties -- are the ones whose power we're trying to curb or who themselves embody tendencies in the society which we are trying to reform. In such a state of affairs it becomes very difficult to see whether we're coopting them or they're coopting us.

When I first started reporting on Iraq almost two years ago I had a long conversation with a well-known Iraqi emigre who told me that thirty years of what he called Saddam's "excessive dictatorship" had so ground down all the elements of civil society and public life in Iraq that the only associations that remained were the most elemental ones -- those of ethnicity and sect, the hardiest weeds, which were the only ones that could withstand the scorched earth policy which was Saddam's rule. The truly national institutions and the other rudiments of civic life had simply been destroyed.

Ideally, a period of occupation or international administration can create a period of breathing space where such national and cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian institutions could emerge and provide a counterweight to these more destabilizing, centrifugal forces.

But instead of our mastering them, they appear to be mastering us.

As is happening on so many fronts the initiative is slipping from our hands, even though we try to portray the process as the product of our own policy and decision-making.

-- Josh Marshall
Copyright 2003 Joshua Micah Marshall


It seems to me that this represents a short term solution to allow our withdrawal from Iraq with honor just in time for the next election cycle, while courting disaster for the Iraqi citizens, longterm. The price of no initial exit strategy will be pain and suffering that could have been avoided, or at least limited.

[ComputerFix]

Yes, McCain is a Republican. He is also a Vietnam vet and former POW (lest we worry over his experience speaking about Vietnam).

I also post it because, to quote Stoner "he is one Republican he can trust". He is not the first one I have heard say that, and so I thought that maybe McCain's thoughts could be read with an open mind.

(besides the fact that if I had my way, he would be addressed as President McCain, not Senator McCain. )

OUR EXIT STRATEGY IN IRAQ IS VICTORY ~ SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN
For Immediate Release
Wednesday, Nov 05, 2003

“For thirty years, Vietnam has been a lens through which all American foreign policy is viewed. El Salvador, we were told in the 1980s, would become a new Vietnam, as we debated whether it was acceptable to deploy more than 55 U.S. combat advisors to help a democratizing ally battle a communist insurgency. Our stunning victory in the First Gulf War, many said, exorcized the demons of Vietnam. America and our coalition allies won decisively and ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. But it was only a partial victory because it did not alter the underlying regional instability caused by Saddam Hussein’s continuing rule. And it did not end the hold of the Vietnam syndrome over our national consciousness.

“Some of my colleagues invoked the specter of Vietnam as an argument to stay out of the Balkans in the 1990s, lest we be drawn into a mountain quagmire among allegedly ancient ethnic feuds. An exit strategy became more important than a victory strategy in the eyes of many, as if the most important goal were to minimize U.S. exposure rather than maximize the protection of U.S. interests and the promotion of American values.

“Many opponents of the war in Iraq, and even some supporters, worry that the deserts of Iraq hold the same quicksand as the jungles of Southeast Asia. When our Secretary of Defense says that it is up to the Iraqi people to defeat the Baathists and terrorists, we send a message that America’s exit from Iraq is ultimately more important than the achievement of American goals in Iraq. We send a signal to every Iraqi – ally, neutral and adversary – that the United States is more interested in leaving than we are in winning.

“Iraq is not Vietnam. But if we are to avoid a debate over who “lost” Iraq, as we debated who lost Vietnam a generation ago, we must act urgently to transform our early military success into lasting political victory. The United States can and must win in Iraq. Iraq’s democratic future, American credibility, and American security require it. An exit strategy is more than a date certain. It’s more than a timetable for building an Iraqi army. It must be a victory strategy that recognizes U.S. vital interests at stake in Iraq and the good our nation can do when we are committed to serving the cause of freedom in a violent, dangerous place that can, in the end, only be made less threatening and more stable by the success of our political ideals.

“The American people understand the need to build a new Iraq from the ashes of Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime. Americans can be proud of the role every American in Iraq is playing to put that country on a course in which freedom and decency, rather than terror and fear, guide daily life. Our citizens are understandably upset by the daily death toll in Iraq. We must explain to the American people what our soldiers are dying for in Iraq, why their sacrifice matters, why we must win, and how we will win – not how quickly we can get out and leave the Iraqis to their fate.

“Iraq is not Vietnam. There is no popular, anti-colonial insurgency in Iraq. There are killers who prospered under the tyranny of Saddam and seek its restoration. Unlike in Vietnam, the Iraqi Baathists and terrorists who oppose us are not guerrilla fish swimming in a friendly sea of the people. Our opponents, who number only in the thousands in a country of 23 million, are despised by the vast majority of Iraqis. The vast majority of Iraqis share our goal of defeating the remnants of Saddam’s regime and their terrorist allies.

“Unlike in Vietnam, the Iraqi insurgents do not enjoy the kind of sanctuary North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos provided. They do not have a superpower patron that sponsors, supplies and sustains them beyond the reach of our power for geopolitical reasons. These murderers cannot carry the banner of Iraqi nationalism, as did Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam for decades. Their return to power offers the Iraqi people the promise not of self-rule but of mortal danger, not of a better future but of a return to a hated and fearful past. Iraq is not Vietnam because our ally is not a corrupt government unwilling to defend itself, but a newly-freed people that desperately want to build a new future. Most fundamentally, Iraq is not Vietnam because the United States and the Iraqi people share the same goal of building a free, prosperous, and secure Iraq.

“Our defeat in Vietnam nonetheless holds cautionary lessons. We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal. Tet in 1968 was a massive battlefield defeat for the North but a strategic defeat for the United States – because the American press and the American public saw our leaders talk about a light at the end of the tunnel that did not exist. We can win the war in Iraq, but not if we lose popular support in the United States.

“The United States will fail in Iraq if our adversaries believe they can outlast us. If our troop deployment schedules are more important than our staying power, we embolden our enemies and make it harder for our friends to take risks on our behalf. When the United States announces a schedule for training and deploying Iraqi security officers, then announces the acceleration of that schedule, then accelerates it again, it sends a signal of desperation, not certitude. When in the course of days we increase by thousands our estimate of the numbers of Iraqis trained, it sounds like somebody is cooking the books. When we do this as our forces are coming under increasing attack, we suggest to friends and allies alike that our ultimate goal in Iraq is leaving as soon as possible – not meeting our strategic objective of building a free and democratic country in the heart of the Arab world.

“Friends and adversaries across the Middle East are watching us closely to gauge our will to win. Let’s be honest: many of them do not want us to succeed. I don’t think the Baathists in Syria, the mullahs in Tehran or Arab despots from Riyadh to Tripoli are cheering for the United States. The expectation that we may leave Iraq before we have achieved our security and political objectives will cripple our ability to achieve them at all.

“Politics at home has handicapped our progress. Only a few leading Democrats have demonstrated the kind of bipartisanship Bob Dole showed when, only two months before the 1996 New Hampshire primary, he supported President Clinton’s decision to commit American forces to Bosnia despite the political risks he faced in doing so. Today, some Democrats who supported the war in Iraq oppose spending the money required to win the peace. Others blindly criticize the Administration without proposing an alternative policy that preserves American interests. With the exception of Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, who are committed to victory in Iraq, it is unclear what the other Democratic presidential candidates would do differently to ensure an American victory – or how they would handle the consequences of the early American withdrawal some advocate. Governor Dean has expressed ambiguity about the justness of our cause in Iraq. I hope he will learn that partisan anger is no substitute for moral clarity.

“I was heartened to hear the President say that we cannot cut and run in Iraq. To sustain the credibility necessary for victory over the long term, the Administration needs to strive at all times to ensure that its assessment of the course of events in Iraq is candid and reflects the situation on the ground as best it can see it. Administration officials must be careful not to adjust our military posture in Iraq for political reasons. The only legitimate reason to adjust our posture is to improve our ability to accomplish our mission or respond to our successes in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.
“There can be little political or economic progress in Iraq until the United States creates a stable and secure environment there. Prematurely placing the burden of security on Iraqis is not the answer. Hastily trained Iraqi security forces cannot be expected to accomplish what U.S. forces have not yet succeeded in doing: defeating the Baathists and international terrorists inside Iraq. It is irresponsible to suggest that it is up to Iraqis to win this war. In doing so, we shirk the responsibility that we willingly incurred when we assumed the burden of liberating and transforming their country, for their sake and our own. If the U.S. military, the world’s best fighting force, cannot defeat the Iraqi insurgents, how do we expect Iraqi militiamen with only weeks of training to do any better?

“President Bush speaks frequently of the need to take the offensive in the war on terror, but in Iraq we too often appear to be playing defense. The simple truth is that we do not have sufficient forces in Iraq to meet our military objectives. I said this in August, after I returned from visiting Iraq, and before the security situation deteriorated further. It is even more obviously true today.

“It was clear during the summer that we did not have sufficient forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations within the Sunni triangle, secure necessary facilities, guard the borders to prevent foreign jihadists from flooding across, or respond to an upsurge in violence if it occurred. In early September, the U.S. commanding officer in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, admitted that his forces could not handle any new eruption of conflict in Iraq. “If a militia or an internal conflict of some nature were to erupt,” he said, “... that would be a challenge out there that I do not have sufficient forces for.”

“Since then, attacks on American forces have doubled, to over 30 a day, and their increasing sophistication has made them more lethal. American military commanders have acknowledged that the Iraqi resistance shows signs of being centrally planned and coordinated. Yet the number of American forces in Iraq has not increased. Given the large support tail required of such a force, it is estimated that the number of American troops on patrol in Iraq at any given time is under 30,000. This is an insufficient number of troops to even play defense, much less take the fight to our enemy and create the conditions for the lasting peace that will enable Iraqis to assume full political authority and Americans to go home.
“Our overall troop level in Iraq does not reflect a careful assessment of what it takes to achieve victory. It reflects the number of American forces who were in Iraq when the war ended -- minus the Marines who were sent home. Simply put, there does not appear to be a strategy behind our current force levels in Iraq other than to preserve the illusion that we have sufficient forces in place to meet our objectives. It makes even less sense to defend a troop ceiling that has been in place since April as American forces and our Iraqi allies come under increasingly savage attack.

“U.S. military forces have sealed off the town of Tikrit. This is a welcome step. It is a hotbed of resistance. It would make sense to pursue the same strategy in Ramadi, Fallujah, and other Baathist strongholds within the Sunni Triangle. But we do not have the forces in place to do that. To win in Iraq, we should increase the number of forces in-country, including Marines and Special Forces, to conduct offensive operations. I believe we must deploy at least another full division, giving us the necessary manpower to conduct a focused counterinsurgency campaign across the Sunni Triangle that seals off enemy operating areas, conducts search and destroy missions, and holds territory. Such a strategy would be the kind of new mission General Sanchez agreed would require additional forces. It is a mystery to me why they are not forthcoming. We cannot achieve our political goals as long as a strategic region of Iraq is in a state of fundamental insecurity. The transformation that matters is in Iraq and the Middle East, not in some abstract conception of military reform.

“Security is the precondition for everything else we want to accomplish in Iraq. We will not get good intelligence until we provide a level of public safety and a commitment to stay that encourages Iraqis to cast their lot with us, rather than wait to see whether we or the Baathists prevail. Local Iraqis need to have enough confidence in our strength and staying power to collaborate with us. Absent improved security, acts of sabotage will hold back economic progress. Without better security, political progress will be difficult because the Iraqi people will not trust an Iraqi political authority that cannot protect them. By all means increase the number of Iraqis involved in security – as the Administration is suggesting we will do by standing up an Iraqi paramilitary force drawn from the security forces of the former regime and the militias of Iraqi political parties. But given the time it will take to train and deploy sufficient numbers of Iraqi forces and the competence required to root out a hardened foe, for the foreseeable future, Iraqi forces aren’t a substitute for adequate levels of American troops.

“Our adversaries in Iraq seek not merely our military withdrawal but the defeat of our enterprise to construct a new and democratic Iraq. What threatens them most are not American forces but the prospect of a progressive, popularly elected Iraqi government that rejects everything the Baathists stand for and holds them accountable for their crimes. More American forces and a commitment to keep them in Iraq as long as it takes are required to defeat our adversaries, so that Iraqi democracy is not stillborn. As we learned in Vietnam, if we do not defeat them before we leave, our enemies will continue to fight until any government we help establish is destroyed.

“While Iraqification will not solve our immediate security problems, I believe we must move more quickly to transfer meaningful political authority to Iraqi leaders. The Coalition Provisional Authority continues to make a fundamental mistake in the way it interacts with the Iraqi people. The CPA seems to think that all wisdom is made in America, and that the Iraqi people were defeated, not liberated. For all the comparisons of post-war Iraq to Germany and Japan in 1945, the examples of Italy and France, liberated countries whose people were largely on our side, may be more instructive. The United States is treated as an occupying force in Iraq partly because we are not treating Iraqis as a liberated people.

“Sometimes, Ambassador Bremer’s office appears as inclined to criticize the Iraqi Governing Council as to work in partnership with it. It is astonishing to many friends of Iraq that the United States created the Governing Council but has not worked sufficiently to help it succeed. Too often, the Governing Council finds itself on the receiving end of orders from the CPA, rather than working in partnership with the CPA to improve daily life in Iraq. The United States will not succeed in Iraq if the Governing Council fails.

“The Turkish troop deployment highlighted the gulf between the CPA and Iraqi leadership. A historic vote in the Turkish parliament, despite the opposition of Turkish public opinion, committed our ally to deploy 10,000 troops to Iraq in response to a long-standing American request. When Ambassador Bremer announced the Turkish deployment to the Governing Council, they proceeded to voice their strong opposition to it, resulting in a formal vote by the Council and an American request to Turkey to stand down its forces. Effective diplomacy in Ankara worked but was not matched in Baghdad. This embarrassing sequence of events was yet another reminder of the CPA’s self-imposed distance from the Iraqi leadership.

“Ultimately, Iraqis should decide how to form a constitutional commission and when to hold national elections. The Iraqification of Iraqi politics should be accelerated, even as American military forces continue to play the central role in hunting down Iraqi insurgents. We are aggressively training Iraqis to perform security functions. We should be equally aggressive in training and advising political parties, transferring more authority to Iraqi leaders, and establishing a framework and timeline for a political transition. It is our responsibility to help create the security in which Iraqi politics can flourish. We can leave it to the Iraqis to decide what kind of tax code they should have.

“Iraq’s transformation into a progressive Arab state could set the region that produced Saddam, the Taliban, and al Qaeda on a new course in which democratic expression and economic prosperity, rather than a radicalizing mix of humiliation, poverty, and repression, create a new modernity in the Muslim world that does not define itself in ways that threaten its people or other nations. Failure to make the necessary political commitment to secure and build the new Iraq could endanger American leadership in the world, put American security at risk, empower our enemies, and condemn Iraqis to renewed tyranny. It would be the most serious American defeat on the global stage since Vietnam.

“The United States can and must win in Iraq. Doing so will require the Administration to remain committed to a policy of transformational change in Iraq. It will require a renewed American commitment to the principles of Iraqi freedom and Middle East transformation the President articulated earlier this year. It will require the President’s deep involvement in his Administration’s decision-making in Iraq. As Lincoln and Truman demonstrated, American presidents cannot always leave decisions on matters of supreme national interest to their subordinates. It will require a commitment to do what is necessary militarily, to deploy as many
American forces for as long as it takes, to ignore the political calendar, and to trust Iraqis with a greater degree of authority to manage their own affairs.

“Let there be no doubt: victory can be our only exit strategy. We are winning in Iraq – but we sow the seeds of our own failure by contemplating Winning will take time. But as in other great strategic and moral struggles of our age, Americans have demonstrated the will to prevail when they understand what is at stake, for them and for the world. If we succeed in Iraq, a new generation of Americans will take pride in their country’s sacrifice, and American credibility in the world will be as enhanced as it was harmed by our defeat in Southeast Asia. Our success in Iraq will change the way the Middle East is governed and deter a host of threats that will prey on our weakness if we fail.

“We must succeed in Iraq because every bad actor in the Middle East – Baathist killers, terror’s sponsors in Iran and Syria, terror’s financiers in Saudi Arabia, terror’s radical Shiite and Wahabi inciters, the terrorists of Al Qaeda, Ansar al Islam, Hamas, and Hezbollah - has a stake in our failure. They know Iraq’s transformation would be a grave and perhaps fatal setback to them. Iraq must be important to us because it is so important to our enemies. That’s why they are opposing us so fiercely, and why we must win.”

[columbo]

CF,

I respect McCain for his courage while a POW, but I could not keep a straight face after reading

El Salvador, we were told in the 1980s, would become a new Vietnam, as we debated whether it was acceptable to deploy more than 55 U.S. combat advisors to help a democratizing ally battle a communist insurgency.

[Bolding mine]

I won't de-rail this thread by going off on a tangent about how inaccurate this description of American motives in El Salvodar is, but felt that it should be noted.

Other than that, I agree with McCain that it is inaccurate to draw these definitive parallels between Vietnam and the war in Iraq. Those who do so seem to rely far too heavily on generalizations, while ignoring any evidence that might appear contradictory to the point they're attempting to make.

Columbo

[ComputerFix]

...and I think that more on task is McCain's insistance that "leaving" isn't the end all, nor is it how we know we will have succeeded (as many seem to think).

[eggplant43]

Some days ago I cited a discussion between Bernard Kalb, and Neil Sheehen (both know a lot about Viet Nam) who said the combination od American arrogance (Americam Might, American Right), and American ignorance were repeating themselves in Iraq. I couldn't agree more.

I grant you that many of the parallels may not be synchronous, but from a general viewpoint, as stated above, they certainly parallel for me.

Although I respect John McCain a great deal, and would certainly consider voting for him seriously, I can't agree with him in what he says in the article.

[columbo]

Eggy,

That's why I used the word "definitive". I'm not sure that any positive service is performed by speaking in generalizations about possible parallels that may exist between the two conflicts.

I believe that examining similarities in terms of policy and even the overall tone (in terms of foreign relations) set by this administration (compared to others), would provide much greater insights into the risks involved in continuing to support Bush et al.

At the moment, references to "arrogance" and "ignorance" seem to have fallen into the category of "terms that have become so overused as to lose effectiveness" in my opinion. Having become the standard jargon of your run-of-the-mill student "coffee-shop" protestor, they cannot be credibly cited by those who would seriously oppose the Bush administration (or call for others to oppose it).

In my opinion, an effective opposition to the Bush administration's policies and actions must speak in concrete terms, citing specific incidences and reactions. I doubt that the American public will ever really be swayed by talk of "American arrogance" or other generalizations.

I know that you are far more knowledgeable about Vietnam and Iraq than I am, so this is just my personal take on the matter.

I apologize for going off-track. I just wanted to provide with a better explanation as to my earlier opinions.

Columbo

[eggplant43]

I understand entirely what you are saying, it makes perfect sense, as it is based upon logic. I think anything said here that furthers the conversation between all of us is of use. Your post certainly does that

[Wino]

Mr. Monbiot makes valid points and debuncts the morality of the Iraq War. NeoCons can't handle the truth! Bold & Italic by Wino.

The moral myth

Superpowers act out of self-interest, not morality, and the US in Iraq is no different

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 25, 2003
The Guardian

It is no use telling the hawks that bombing a country in which al-Qaida was not operating was unlikely to rid the world of al-Qaida. It is no use arguing that had the billions spent on the war with Iraq been used instead for intelligence and security, atrocities such as last week's attacks in Istanbul may have been prevented. As soon as one argument for the invasion and occupation of Iraq collapses, they switch to another. Over the past month, almost all the warriors - Bush, Blair and the belligerents in both the conservative and the liberal press - have fallen back on the last line of defence, the argument we know as "the moral case for war".

Challenged in the Commons by Scottish Nationalist MP Pete Wishart last Wednesday over those devilishly uncooperative weapons of mass destruction, for example, Tony Blair dodged the question. "What everyone should realise is that if people like the honourable gentleman had had their way, Saddam Hussein, his sons and his henchmen would still be terrorising people in Iraq. I find it quite extraordinary that he thinks that that would be a preferable state of affairs."

I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.

But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn't mean that it is motivated by the moral case.

Writing in the Observer recently, David Aaronovitch argued in favour of US intervention, while suggesting that it could be improved by means of some policy changes. "Sure, I want them to change. I want more consistency. I want Bush to stop tolerating the nastystans of Central Asia, to tell Ariel where to get off, to treat allies with more respect, to dump the hubristic neo-cons..." So say we all. But the White House is not a branch of Amnesty International. When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan's, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon's and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent.

It is hard to see why we should expect anything else. All empires work according to the rules of practical advantage, rather than those of kindness and moral decency. In Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Rubashov, the fallen hero of the revolution, condemns himself for "having followed sentimental impulses, and in so doing to have been led into contradiction with historical necessity. I have lent my ear to the laments of the sacrificed, and thus became deaf to the arguments which proved the necessity to sacrifice them." "Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance and atonement", his interrogator reminds him, "are for us repellent debauchery".

Koestler, of course, was describing a different superpower, but these considerations have always held true. During the cold war, the two empires supported whichever indigenous leaders advanced their interests. They helped them to seize and retain power by massacring their own people, then flung them into conflicts in which millions were killed. One of the reasons why the US triumphed was that it possessed the resources to pursue that strategy with more consistency than the Soviet Union could. Today the necessity for mass murder has diminished. But those who imagine that the strategic calculus has somehow been overturned are deceiving themselves.

There were plenty of hard-headed reasons for the United States to go to war with Iraq. As Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, has admitted, the occupation of that country permits the US to retain its presence in the Middle East while removing "almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia". The presence of "crusader forces on the holy land" was, he revealed, becoming ever less sustainable. (Their removal, of course, was Osama bin Laden's first demand: whoever said that terrorism does not work?) Retaining troops in the Middle East permits the US to continue to exercise control over its oil supplies, and thus to hold China, its new economic and political rival, to ransom. The bombing of Iraq was used by Bush to show that his war on terror had not lost momentum. And power, as anyone who possesses it appreciates, is something you use or lose. Unless you flex your muscles, they wither away.

We can't say which of these motives was dominant, but we can say that they are realistic reasons for war. The same cannot be said of a concern for the human rights of foreigners. This is merely the cover under which one has to act in a nominal democracy.

But in debating the war, those of us who opposed it find ourselves drawn into this fairytale. We are obliged to argue about the relative moral merits of leaving Saddam in place or deposing him, while we know, though we are seldom brave enough to say it, that the moral issue is a distraction. The genius of the hawks has been to oblige us to accept a fiction as the reference point for debate.

Of course, it is possible for empires to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and upon this possibility the hawks may hang their last best hopes of justification. But the wrong reasons, consistently applied, lead at the global level to the wrong results. Let us argue about the moral case for war by all means; but let us do so in the knowledge that it had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

· Monbiot.com

Now what?
"We're the dog that caught the car. Now what do we do with it?"
— Lt. Col. Dave Pere, senior Marine operations officer, quoted in 'A Time of Our Choosing: America's War in Iraq,' by Todd Purdum