Editor’s
There Was Never an Intention to Win -by Michael
Gaddy
Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international
relations at Boston University and author of The New
American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War,
has penned an opinion piece at the LA Times in which he
claims the military is no longer trying to "win" the war
in Iraq.
While most astute in the majority of his observations,
it is my belief the professor has assumed a vital fact
not in evidence: hand puppet Bush and the ventriloquist
Neocons did not intend this to be a war where victory
would be "won," certainly not in the true military
sense.
This war was, from the very get-go, designed to be a war
of occupation and not a war for any other purpose. The
constantly changing "goals," like the rabbit running
ahead of the greyhounds, is proof positive. It was not
deposing Saddam, eliminating the threat of Weapons of
Mass Destruction, or implementing democracy: the true
goal was establishing a permanent U.S.
military presence in Iraq.
Had any of the aforementioned casus belli been the real
purpose of this war, our troops would have been brought
home when the stated goals were reached.
If Bush or these Neocons had a simple cursory knowledge
of history, they would know that wars of occupation
always develop into a quagmire.
The Neocon establishment knew a war without real
objectives would be a hard sell to the American
populace. The Vietnam War, though over 40 years old, was
still a painful memory in the minds of millions. A war
of occupation where the soldiers are nothing but targets
for a people tired of their presence is a no win
situation.
A nation soon tires of the casualties and no sign of
victory. That is why the Neocons spoke so passionately
in their 2000 document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses:
Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century."
While the vision of American empire, as perceived by
many who populate the Bush Administration, received
little attention during the 2000 election and was
largely dismissed as the work of hard-liners, the PNAC
report itself admitted the process of accomplishing this
transformation was "likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl
Harbor".
If one pays attention to any corrupt regime they will
see that occasionally one of the members will throw out
nuggets of truth so when the balloon goes up on their
fraud they can point to this revelation of truth. These
nuggets of truth help maintain a semblance of
credibility.
This was probably the strategy recently employed by
Larry Diamond, former senior advisor to L. Paul Bremer,
U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq when he
addressed the UCLA International Institute on February
3rd of this year; or could it be Diamond, who is writing
a book titled, Squandered Victory is beginning his book
tour early?
In his presentation, Diamond spoke of the players in
Iraq's new political lineup, strategies for defusing the
insurgency, and some of the serious mistakes the U.S.
has made, and continues to make.
While first speaking as a supporter of the Neocon/Bush
program, Diamond stated, "First of all, let me say that
this election on Sunday, from everything I have read and
heard, was a profoundly moving and historic experience;
for Iraq, for the Middle East, and potentially for the
world."
This he later counters with a truth nugget, "…it was a
very superficial election and in some ways a very unfair
election. There were more than one hundred parties in
lists. Most of them had no money, no access to the
media, and no ability, obviously, in the state the
country was in, to campaign."
Diamond offers another nugget of truth concerning those
we now know to be the winners of the election. "The
United Iraqi Alliance has enormous funding because it
has gotten plenty of it from Iran. It has strong
organization because there are thousands of Iranian
intelligence agents all over the Shiite south helping it
to organize."
Is this why we have killed so many Iraqis and what so
many of our soldiers have died and been maimed for: an
Iranian satellite? Diamond continues in his assessment
of the election and its winners, "it would stand to
logic that Shiites were not 60 percent of the electorate
but 65 percent or 68 percent, close to 70 percent. And
if the United Iraqi Alliance wins 70 percent of the
Shiite vote and Shiites were 70 percent of the voting
public, then they could win an absolute majority, more
or less."
Diamond confirms what many at Antiwar.com had predicted
would happen if the U.S. invaded Iraq. "Iraq has become,
after the war, what it was not before the war, a haven
for Al Qaeda and other international terrorists, a
magnet for the sort of international jihadist movement
that was pouring into Afghanistan before September 11.
And they are spread all over, they are organizing many
of the car bombings, and so on."
Diamond cites the problems he saw with the conduct of
the war by the Bush administration. "I think an
opportunity was lost over a year because of the
stubbornness of the United States, its decisions in
terms of dissolving the Iraqi army early on, instituting
such a sweeping policy of de-Baathification, which
jettisoned from public employment not only many
high-ranking government officials but many skilled
bureaucrats, technicians, engineers, and tens of
thousands of schoolteachers, to the point that some
schools in northern central Iraq were simply emptied of
teachers for a period of time before the policy was
finally rolled back…"
Diamond tells what is feeding the insurgency and why
this quagmire will not end until the U.S. withdraws:
something the Neocons will not allow to happen until the
morons in this country wake up and pressure the
administration.
Unfortunately for those serving in the armed forces,
this wake up will not occur without an increasing body
count of American soldiers. "…there is something that
could help now on the part of the United States which
tragically is not going to happen…
One of the things that is necessary to wind down the
insurgency and create a much more hopeful, enabling
environment for the development of democracy and even
political stability in Iraq is for Iraqis, and
particularly those Iraqis who are involved with or
sympathizing with the insurgency, to become convinced
that we really are going to leave.
That the American military occupation of Iraq is going
to end and that they are going to get their country
back. I urged the administration to declare when I left
Iraq in April of 2004, that we have no permanent
military designs on Iraq and we will not seek permanent
military bases in Iraq. This one statement would do an
enormous amount to undermine the suspicion that we have
permanent imperial intentions in Iraq.
We aren't going to do that. And the reason we're not
going to do that is because we are building permanent
military basis in Iraq." (emphasis added) Here a man on
the inside confirms Bush intends for our soldiers to
have a permanent presence in Iraq. How many lives and
how many trillions will this cost?
Diamond shoots holes in the BS story given by Bush and
the Neocons: we want Iraqis to be in charge of their own
country. "…the repeated insistence on the part of the
United States that Iraq write into its interim
constitution a provision that would enable a treaty, for
example, a treaty granting permanent military bases, to
be approved by the lowest possible threshold imaginable.
Initially our position was, signed by the prime minister
should be good enough. Then when the Iraqis, one of whom
was a lawyer trained in the United States who has taught
law in the United States and understands our
constitutional system well, said, "Well, you have
two-thirds vote of the Senate to ratify your treaties.
That sounds like a reasonable threshold," there got to
be an interesting pushing and shoving match between the
Iraqis and the United States. They said two-thirds, we
said simple majority. It went back and forth down to the
final night of the writing of the Iraqi interim
constitution. And guess which vote was enshrined into
the Iraqi constitution? Simple majority."
Then he provides a simple solution for the entire
fiasco. "If we were to say that we will not seek
permanent military bases in Iraq, and if we were to
establish at least some target date for permanent
military withdrawal, based on conditions in the country,
the winding down of the insurgency, it could change the
climate in the country."
Perhaps Diamond was simply promoting his new book, while
in some ways paying homage to the Bush regime.
Regardless, he revealed what is the truth of the
matter: this war was designed to be a war of occupation
and permanent military bases and all the run-up to the
war and the reasons de jour given by the Neocons and the
Bush administration were all lies.
Lies that have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands,
maimed many for life, made Americans much more at risk
to terrorism, and lined the pockets of the
military/industrial/congressional complex! How much
longer will the eyes of the American people be blinded
by the lies?
Michael Gaddy, an Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and
Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American
Southwest.
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