"US Can Leave [Iraq] Any Time They
Want"
Frank A. Jones
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excerpt; click on book.
What Have We Done To Our
Children?
by
Frank A. Jones
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____________
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Frank A. Jones,
PhD
Last week, the White House released its interim report on milestones in the war on Iraq, and that report showed that progress in Iraq is weak at best and dire in reality. The tact the Bush administration has taken the last year or so is to blame the victim [Iraq] for its faux pars and incompetence and not itself--a standard American tactic. They say that when the Iraqi government gets its act together then the US can leave.
Well, the Iraqi government challenged that "for US public consumption" statement last week. So enraged was Iraq by the White House's negative interim report and the constant drumbeat of "When the Iraqi government steps up to the plate" statements, that the Prime Minister (a puppet of the US) openly stated that the US could leave any time it wants to leave and that the Iraqis can take care of their own affairs.
One of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's aides said that the US was embarrassing the Iraqi government by US violating human rights and treating Iraq as if it were some US experiment. Of that he is certainly correct.
Contrary to this administration's assertions about Iraq not being able to defend itself without the US military, Iraq's Prime Minister al-Maliki said that his Iraqi army and police could fill the void left by US forces. But this administration does not plan to leave Iraq; it only talks about leaving under some contingencies they do not foresee. So al-Maliki gave the US its outing; set the conditions for leaving and US saving face to this Vietnam-like defeat. But President Bush was so confident of victory in this war that he declared victory even before the war was begun on the Iraqi side. This escape route for the US given by Nouri al-Maliki is an outing the Iraqis know the US will not take, and one the US may be sorry it do not take later on.
Under the Bush administration, plans are for the US military to be in Iraq a long time. There are large military and Air force bases being built that would be used as a permanent US military outpost. So the only way the US is going to leave Iraq is to have the Iraqis win a decisive victory and push US forces out--the way Vietnam was ended.
The idea of the invincibility of US military power has been a intoxicant for other presidents, but it is more wishful thinking than anything else. Any people willing to die to remove an occupying force from its shores can inflict an unacceptable cost on a military to the point that makes that military unacceptable to remain. That is the definition of defeat of an occupying power.
The Iraqis live in Iraq and will live there; the US is an occupying force that could well have its military broken in this conflict--an idea that some military men are now arguing. And with the arrogant and egregious behavior of the US government around the world, we are making more enemies than we can fight with a broken military. Inflicting more casualties than is militarily expedient to gain a victory causes an imperialistic power to rethink its desire to colonize a country. That is all the Iraqis need to do; that is a big all, but the US is virtually standing alone in this immoral and illegal war!
Furthermore, the Bush
administration and its mighty old men of war with somebody else's children
crowd,
may have already rekindled another Cold War--Russia has just backed out of
an arms treaty and complained greatly of the US's plans to build a missile
defense shield virtually around it and on its boarders, which the
Russians naturally see as a threat to their security.
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When George Bush first came into office, I wrote that one president could not seriously harm this nation within one term; I had great confidence that Bush (an embarrassment of a president) would not secure a second term, regardless of how he secured his first term. I admit that I was wrong about both of these ideas. Having secured a second term, he has done decades of harm to this country and to the world. It will take many decades to reverse this administration's blight on the world, to regain whatever positive prestige we had in the world, to pay the enormous debt Bush and company have irresponsibly piled upon Americans and their children.
Not only has this administration possibly broken the military with a needless Iraqi war--a prudent leader must know when and what battles to fight--but he may have piled so much debt upon the American people that they may have to spend years working their way from under it, even though it is not now clear to the nation the great harm he has really done.
Tragically, this nation has not been vigilant in selecting and monitoring its governmental leaders; instead it has fallen under the spell of the Republican spin machine that may be the most lethal propaganda machine since the Third Reich. And that spin machine has set up a system that will repress not only others abroad, but its will eventually oppress its own citizens at home, and spin that reality into the paternalism of protecting the homeland from enemies far and near. But the reality is that our own government may be the only actual enemy both far and near.
Iraqi's Prime Minister has challenged this administration's assertions that "when the Iraqi government is able to take care of its own defense need...and when they ask us to go, we will go." He has now shown us the dishonesty and emptiness of assertions made by the Bush administration. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said, "The US can leave any time it wants to." But don't expect the president to start drawing down troops soon!
Frank A. Jones
7/16/07
