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.
