Some more thoughts about issues of the day that seem very much like those of yesteryear (2013, that is).
Iraq revised (again). After an absolutely awful year of conflict, fueled by the ongoing civil war on its northern border in Syria, Iraq has been back in the news this past couple of weeks – more specifically, the Iraq war and the battle of Fallujah. There has been the predictable discussion of, was the battle (actually, two battles) worth it, have the sacrifices our troops made been in vain, should we have left a residual force in place? In the process, though, the picture that emerges of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is, frankly, hard to recognize.
Just one example: when network regular General Barry McCaffery was on MSNBC this weekend weighing in on the capture of Fallujah and Ramadi by al Qaeda linked elements, he opined that, if Saddam Hussein hadn’t been removed by the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, he would have had a nuclear arsenal by now. The lie that wouldn’t die, right? Somehow, no matter how thoroughly it is debunked and disproven, it always rises to live again. Does anyone wish American troops were still in Iraq? Does anyone still think that invasion was a good idea? Let’s see a show of hands.
Gates. Note to Obama: this is what you get when you retain a Republican cabinet member and give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Robert Gates was appointed to oversee the last two years of the W. Bush administration, since the first six had so seriously driven the American empire off the rails. He was billed as a steady hand on the tiller, and I think Obama bought that as well. Gates reportedly criticizes Biden for being wrong on every foreign policy issue for decades – this, of course, coming from the man who, as deputy director of the CIA in 1984, wanted to initiate a bombing campaign in support of his agency’s terrorist Contra army in Nicaragua. He was close to the Iran Contra operation, though managed to escape prosecution (like his boss and good friend, George H.W. Bush). So … people who live in glass houses.
As it happened, Biden took a pass on voting to confirm Gates as Defense Secretary in 2006 (he didn’t vote). Probably the start of a beautiful friendship. As faithful stewards of the empire, you’d think they’d be nicer to one another.
More next week. luv u,
jp
World War II, flattening its dissidents, outlasting its main rivals … until we managed to elect a man so incompetent he could, to borrow a phrase, destroy the empire merely by strolling through it. I’m sure to the nation’s imperial board of trustees, George W. seemed a relatively safe bet, particularly with such seemingly reliable minders as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld keeping an eye on the store. That miscalculation is proving very costly. Just as our attack on Vietnam bled us dry (to say nothing of what it did to the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians), this past decade of war – coupled with an amazingly irresponsible policy of deep war-time tax cuts – has helped to hobble our economy, perhaps beyond recovery.
will pay a heavy price. Admiral Mullens went so far as to say that Wikileaks may already have blood on their hands. Mullens and his colleagues would know something about that, of course, as the documents apparently demonstrate. I suspect, in cases such as these, that most if not all of what is secret is merely a secret from us (i.e. the American people); that military operations of the kind deployed in Afghanistan are very porous in the sense of who is working for whom. Sure, it would be better not to put people needlessly in harm’s way. But that’s what the Afghan war is all about, from what I can see.