After nine years — yes nine long mostly futile years — we are still reading about these stories, military and civilian families are still mourning the loss of their loved ones and I am still wondering what in hell has all the death and destruction and havoc our military machine has wreaked on Afghanistan has accomplished:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — U.S. forces lost 22 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly to roadside bombs, since Friday, marking a bloody step-up in the insurgency as a major U.S.-led offensive seeks to capture the spiritual homeland of the Taliban movement in Kandahar.
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it’s gaining ground against the insurgents, but violence is rising across the country, including in areas that were considered relatively safe.
Every year it’s the same thing. Another offensive, another promise by the generals that we’re making gains, another bunch of innocent civilians bombed and slaughtered, another group of soldiers who died fighting with little if any progress to show for it. And it’s not as if things in Iraq are really a whole lot better now that we have reduced our presence in that country to 50,000 or so “non-combat” troops.
Iraq is as much a mess as ever despite the spin the politicians, left and right have put on the situation. It would be comical watching Democrats and Republicans fighting over who won Iraq, when the truth is that Iraq still suffers from an alarming lack of stability, a government that can deliver adequate water and electrical services to its people, sectarian conflict and regular outbreaks of violence and death:
BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) — A fresh wave of coordinated bombings swept across Iraq’s major cities on Wednesday, only one day after the United States downsized its troops below 50,000, some Iraqi experts said that after more than seven years of military occupation, violence is one of the few U.S. legacies left in Iraq.
“Now the Americans are leaving, the clearest fingerprints they left on Iraq that any Iraqi can perceive are torture, corruption and civil war,” Nuri Hadi, an Iraqi political analyst told Xinhua in a recent interview. […]
Hadi said the latest wave of deadly bombings on Wednesday in Iraq’s major cities, which left 64 people killed and more than 272 wounded, made the timing of the U.S. troops withdrawal from Iraq looks more untimely, and the Obama administration’s repeated claim of Iraqi security force can stand on their own two feet, say, more untenable.
“With the partial pullout of the U.S. troops at the end of August, the violence in Iraq is widely expected to increase,” he said.
“I think the Qaida militants have showed that they reorganized themselves, and during the past few months they proved that they have the ability to launch sporadic deadly and massive attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities,” Hadi said, adding “but I still believe the Iraqi security forces seem have the capability to fight back.”
However, Hadi said “we have to admit that a large part of the insurgent groups in Iraq are directly or indirectly linked to political parties participating in the political process, then the security will largely depend on whether those parties are willing to find peaceful means to settle their differences and their struggle on power, or they will simply rise their weapons to fight each other.”
If any lesson should have been learned from the past decade it is that war is rarely the answer to any crisis, and with respect to the 9/11 attacks it was definitely the wrong answer. And all the crocodile tears being shed over Iraq by those like Tony Blair that no one foresaw how badly things would go after the “shock and awe” was over is no excuse:
Tony Blair admits that Britain and the US failed to anticipate, after the invasion of Iraq, “the nightmare that unfolded” as al-Qaida and Iran destabilised the country after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
In an emotional chapter in his memoirs on the Iraq war, in which he admits to shedding many tears at the loss of so many lives, the former prime minister insists that military action was justified and refuses to offer an apology for joining forces with George Bush.
Blair is either a liar or he was not fit to serve as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister. Only a US President like George W. Bush could make him look half-way competent as a leader in comparison. That he refuses to admit how horrible were his actions regarding the Iraq war and offer even the barest apology for them is evidence of a man who knows he’s guilty of committing war crimes and has chosen the option of denial and continuing to spread the lies about the role he played in enabling Bush rather than tell the truth. A truth many have known for years and a truth Blair himself knew before the invasion of Iraq began:
DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 02cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents. […]
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. [Note: italics are mine]
We cannot have a do-over in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s far too late to ever repair the damage we’ve done and continue to do. However, we can start to recognize that continuing a Western military presence “over there” will never be part of an effective strategy to resolve the problems of international terrorism, regional instability, the opium and heroin trade, the increased influence of Iran’s radical government in the region as a result of destroying Saddam’s regime, or the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It won’t even get the oil wealth to flow into the coffers of Big Oil which Bush as much as admitted in 2005 was the primary reason we attacked Iraq, and which Alan Greenspan confirmed in 2007.
The sooner the Obama administration and the American people accept that we need to bring all the troops home, the better it will be for all concerned.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Wow…for the first time in 19 months my opinion of Obama actually went up!
Steve D…are the Iraqi people better off now than in 2002?
Obama admitted in a statement to soldiers at Fort Bliss, that because of the efforts of military, America is more secure…do you agree with him?
I’m not answering for Steve, but, no, we’re not more secure. It’s isn’t our soldiers fault (excepting those who engaged in torture) that we’re not more secure, and their efforts in Iraq over the last several years have generally improved things from where they were in, say, 2006. But the proper question is whether we are safer than we’d be if we had not invaded Iraq. I know of no one who doubts that we are less safe.
More people want to kill us. More people have a legitimate rationale for revenge. The region is destabilized and on the brink of a nuclear arms race, or another war-without-end to prevent one. Palestinian, Israeli, and Lebanese politics all took to a turn toward the reactionary right. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have less legitimacy. Turkey is less secular and now no longer an ally of Israel. Iran has lot any semblance of a democracy and is vastly more powerful and influential than they were. And we’re broke and our moral leadership is in tatters.
Nope. I don’t mind the president taking the high road, but I don’t think he even agrees with himself.
Don’t miss Meteor Blades’ righteous rant.
The motives for attacking Iraq by Bush and his colleagues was for getting reelected in 2004. It is treason to me to misuse the office of the Presidency for such as obvious motive. Students of history can find many examples of blatant misuse of the office for political gain that simply goes uncharged because of our indifference. Unfortunately you can buy political positions and the Supreme Court is endorsing such actions. I’ve always preached patience but I don’t see a way for the common man/woman to succeed under the current circumstances.
The motive (if you must look at partisan politics) was to put Democrats on the spot in October 2002 so as to win an off-year election. The roll-out of the war was carefully timed around the November 2002 election. By January, it was clear that the administration, having run on war, felt obligated to start one. Before action began, the administration clearly knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and had not been involved in back-channel discussions with al-Quaeda. Bush and Cheney chose to ignore this and get their war on.
It really was bad for 2004, especially considering that the stories about Abu Graib and torture of prisoners came out then. Only the complicity of the national media and shenanigans in Ohio ensured Bush’s re-election.
Our ending combat operations was a political move at three levels. First of all, it puts the Iraqis in the position of actually having to negotiate with each other to end a civil war that has been there under repression for well over 50 years.
Second, it shows that we will implement agreements made with the Iraqi government over status of forces. Obama’s policy will disappoint neo-cons in that he will not break this agreement in order to have a large footprint in Iraq.
Third, it sends a signal to the parties in Afghanistan that the US intention is not to stay there forever, while providing enough to complete the job of removing foreign fighters from Afghanistan (and Pakistan). The latter puts the lie to the GOP claim that Obama is weakening our national security.
As to whether we are more secure, it is patently clear that we are more secure under Obama’s policies and performance than we would be under GOP policies. It is also clear that the Bush administration reduced our national security on these fronts: it did not use the intelligence it had properly; it rashly went into one war and illegally (under international law) went into a second war; it undermined respect for US defense of human rights; it showed that the US was not the hyperpower it claimed to be; it financially weakened the US by cutting taxes in a time of war; it exhausted the military and stretched its capabilities to the breaking point.
I’m sick of these stories too.
I’m sick of people ‘forgetting’ that 16 American intelligence agencies gave George W. Bush an unanimous NIE appraisal in 2003 that invading Iraq would increase the threat to the U.S.
I’m sick of people saying that when the PNAC think tank said that it would elect its members to office to secure Iraqi oil and did so that suddenly it was a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ to report that…rather than a simple observation of recorded fact.You would think that the war game outlining the oil industry’s desired wish to kill off governments in the area of oil deposits so that they could better control conditions there and deny supplies to Russia and China were not geopolitical strategies.
That’s at opitslinkfest.blogspot.com Topical Index > Documents along with State Department’s later assessments – Post-Saddam Iraq : Desert Crossing.
I’m sick of people still not realizing that Valerie Plame /Wilson was ‘outed’ as coordinator of the Middle east Nuclear Threat Desk of the Brewster-Jennings C.I.A.intelligence network in the Middle East because she would not ‘play ball’ and report Iraq and Iran real threats. ‘Yellowcake’ is used to make fertilizer…and was deposited all over Iraq, so Nigerian supplies wouldn’t have been on the hot list for Saddam to service his reactor. Plus Obama is following a long line demonizing those without WMD as ‘menaces’ and fining them on that account while supplying Israel and now India with nuclear technology without worrying unduly about weapons proliferation. In other words, even the ‘Peace Prize’ winner is killing the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty by undermining its Third Pillar.
Most act as if http://www.leadingtowar.com/ had not documented the trail of lies that ignored Richard Cheney’s own 1994 explanation of why Iraq was not invaded during the Gulf War…available on YouTube.
Most act as if Bremer’s 100 Orders had not kept the experienced bureaucracy in Iraq from functioning by dissolving local military,police and government. Nor have they heard how sanctions destroyed infrastructure in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands before the Occupation.
Have you noticed Sanctions against North Korea again…after it tried to retaliate for the U.S. breaking its treaties and agreements ? Do you remember that Cuba has been under Sanctions since the 50’s ! That act is routinely condemned in the UN every year. And of course we know Iran is in the same fix that Iraq was before the axe fell.
Don’ take my word for it. CASMII has an absolute shitload of intel.It makes a wonderful counterpoint to http://www.f-16.net/news_article1833.html
But perhaps the stupidest is the usual ‘Cowboys and Indians’ framing everybody and their dog as ‘Al Qaeda’…or Taliban…or Muslim…or ‘Leftist’…while ignoring the real atrocities of civilian people killed via video controls from the air and bombed in their homes…pretty well without any control or accountability.
http://warvictims.wordpress.com/
http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/
Nor have I forgotten an old subject that ‘disappeared’ from here, Steve. WMD American style, replicating and improving upon problems happening here too.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/uranium-mining-and-depleted.html
It’s damn mysterious how diabetes is rampant and servicemen are sick at crazy rates. Mysterious. Uh-huh.