Twelve More Years

[Nbadan]

Excellent article today By Pepe Escobar of Asia Times (http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF28Ak05.html) regarding the current state in the WH over the growing Iraqi quagmire...


If only those "axis of evil" fellas were a little more ... cooperative.

In Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance insists on being on a roll, thus disturbing the Pentagon's plans of quietly building its 14 military bases. In Iran, the new game has not even started, but Tehran and Washington are already at each other's throats. Only one day after his victory, Iranian president-elect Mahmud Ahmadinejad said at his first press conference in Tehran, "Iran is on a path of progress and elevation, and does not really need the United States on this path." A few hours later, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was snarling on Fox News, "I don't know much about this fellow ... But he is no friend of democracy."

Double standards rule. Imagine the fury in the US if, for instance, an Iranian government official in 2000 said, "I don't know much about this cowboy Bush. But he stole the American elections."

Karl Marx may be rolling (with laughter) in his Highgate, north London grave. Talking about classic class struggle: in Iran, a left-wing, working-class hero (Ahmadinejad) has beaten a super-bourgeois, millionaire mullah (Rafsanjani). In Iraq, the local, deposed, militarized Sunni Arab bourgeoisie is fighting a national liberation movement against an imperialist occupation. According to one of the current running jokes in the vast Iranian blogosphere, Ahmadinejad is already doomed because Bush will never be able to pronounce his name. On a more serious note, as much as for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the election result is a "humiliation" to America. Yet a much harsher humiliation is being inflicted by a few thousand Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq, bogging down the self-described mightiest army in the history of the world.

No wonder Rumsfeld is in a foul mood.

Wait for 2017

Fresh from being invited last week by Senator Ted Kennedy to graciously step down, Rumsfeld is back on his usual attack-dog mode - but now with a downbeat twist. In May, Vice President Dick Cheney said the "insurgency was in its last throes". Now - without even appealing to semantic contortionism of the "unknown unknowns" kind - Rumsfeld in fact has clarified to American and world public opinion that the "throes" will go on until 2017. He said, "We're not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, seven, eight, 10, 12 years."

So Rumsfeld is in fact admitting what many people already knew: the Lebanonization of Iraq. With the added element of Vietnamization/Iraqification: when Rumsfeld said "the Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency", he actually meant former Mukhabarat pals of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi at the Interior Ministry, plus the militia inferno at the core of the ministry (the so-called "Rumsfeld's boys"), ganging up to fight the resistance. Sunni Arab intelligence plus Shi'ite and Kurd militias fighting Sunni Arabs. In other words: civil war. Iraqification as the way to civil war was more than evident when Rumsfeld said, "We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."

Rumsfeld also said that the Pentagon is "talking with insurgent leaders": "Well, the first thing I would say about the meetings is they go on all the time." What this actually means is that the Sunni Arab "Rumsfeld's boys" exchange information with the Sunni Arab guerrillas and play a double game, looking for the best deal. It's not dissimilar to the mujahideen in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001 bagging cases full of dollars from the Americans with one hand and passing sensitive information to the Taliban with the other. The resistance has infiltrated each and every government and official body in Iraq, Interior Ministry included. If the Pentagon throws around a lot of money-stuffed cases, it might reach some degree of success.

Rumsfeld took pains to remind and alert American public opinion that the Pentagon does not talk to terrorists, so there's no conversation with cipher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - maybe for the simple reason that the Pentagon doesn't have a clue where he is (or, cynics would add, because Zarqawi is dead). It gets curiouser. Only hours after Rumsfeld did the Sunday talk show round in the US, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers and Ansar al-Sunnah denied that they were talking with anybody. Al-Qaeda said these were "lies", they would never talk to "crusaders, Jews and the enemies of Allah". "Axis of evil" observers will be fascinated by the symmetry: the Pentagon does not talk to terrorists in Iraq as much as it does not talk to the new, weapons of mass destruction-pursuer president of Iran, and vice-versa.

General John Abizaid, the US Centcom commander, was more precise than Rumsfeld when he said that the Pentagon was "looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to". "Right people" can only mean people such as the Association of Muslim Scholars. Anyway, all the Sunni Arab "right people", even if they were willing to talk, would press on the Americans their number one condition: the end of the occupation itself.

This blockbuster is a dud

Whoever is talking to whichever evildoers, it all boils down to a massive, desperate public-relations campaign in Washington. The Bush administration must imperatively convince American public opinion that it will "win " in Iraq as a nagging Titanic feeling starts to fill the air. When confronted with a non sequitur, the White House and the Pentagon have always been able to change the script of the Iraqi movie. No weapons of mass destruction? No problem: let's go with "democracy and freedom to the Arab world". Terrorism? Let's fight it with "free elections". Oops, we didn't want these Iran-friendly Shi'ites in power. No problem, let's support them and use them to build an Iraqi army to fight the Sunnis on our behalf.

Now growing numbers of Americans seem to have had enough of all the plot twists - and would rather switch to a Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise vehicle where the bad guys always lose and the good guy always gets the girl. People around the world are always bemused by the fact that American society is a strictly winner-takes-all universe. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld may end up being branded as losers - the ultimate insult (or "unknown unknowns", in Rumsfeld doublespeak). Rumsfeld has finally admitted that the Iraq war is unwinnable. No amount of Washington spin can have it packaged and sold to the American people - again.

[GopherSA]

These take time, Dan.

Don't forget about the still-there "quagmire" (not the word I'd use) in the Balkans. Remember Kosovo? The place that Clinton said we'd be out of in a year or two? There are still US military members serving in Kosovo...nearly six years after we were "supposed" (again, not the word I'd use) to be out of there.

[mookie2001]

yeah kosovo was different in the two most important ways

lives
money

[GopherSA]

It's a much smaller place. But my point wasn't about cost in lives or cash - it's about the fact that we're still there.


The Democrats are okay with the use of the military when one of their own guys is doing it. Liberals seek the defeat of the military. I think they're happy. I think liberals get excited when the military doesn't work because they have a general pacifist view of everything. They think the use of the American military is always unjust, uncalled for, unwise and unfair, being that we're the only superpower, and any time we take it on the chin I think they're happy because it allows them to say, "See? This doesn't work. The military option doesn't work; it's not what we ought to be trying. We need to using negotiations, treaties, have dialogue," and all this rotgut. But, yeah, you won't have any reference to the Balkan quagmire you won't have any reference to it at all because there's no political gain for Democrats in that. This is pure politics that's happening here with Iraq, and the war on terror and nothing else.

[mookie2001]

our being there is not costing lives everyday or spreading the military paper thin

[GopherSA]

The Balkans quagmire

(From 2001:)

Remember when the United States sent troops to the Balkans to help "keep the peace"?

They were supposed to stay for a year.

That was six years ago. Today, about 9,000 U.S. troops remain on patrol with ever-expanding duties, no clear mission and no timetable for their withdrawal.

That's the trouble with so-called "peace-keeping missions." We should never forget that – especially now as the U.S. moves toward a similar option in an even hotter region of the world, the Middle East.

During his campaign for the presidency, George W. Bush told us he generally opposed such open-ended military engagements. He promised to tell NATO that keeping the peace in Europe was the business of Europeans, not Americans.

In debate with Al Gore last October, Bush said, "I hope that they put the troops on the ground so that we can withdraw our troops and focus our military on fighting and winning war."

Of course, that's what the American people wanted to hear back then. Now Bush is obviously telling the European elite what they want to hear.

In June, NATO decided to send up to 5,000 troops to Macedonia, and the Bush administration quickly signed up for its first military action – one with no U.S. vital interests at stake, one unsupported by constitutional provisions and one contrary to the president's previous policy positions.

In May, Bush signed unconstitutional executive orders declaring "national emergencies" to deal with the "extraordinary threat to national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States" posed by events in the Balkans. No one from the administration has bothered to explain to the American people how anything happening in the Balkans could possibly amount to an extraordinary threat to our national security.

All this bears a stunning resemblance to Clinton administration policies.

During his first visit to Kosovo in July, Bush told American troops: "America's contribution is essential."

Nobody bothered to ask why. Bush didn't bother to offer much of an explanation.

U.S. forces first went to Bosnia-Herzegovina as Yugoslavia crumbled. Though the battles among Muslims, Serbs and Croats began in 1991, during the Bush I administration, George W's father uncharacteristically decided not to intervene. That decision was reversed by Bill Clinton.

In 1995, 20,000 U.S. troops were among the 60,000 NATO-led "peacekeepers" in Bosnia. Now, 3,550 Americans remain there – with no end in sight.

The U.S. later sent 5,332 troops to Kosovo. They remain – with no end in sight.

Another 500 American troops are in Macedonia, and we are talking about putting more there – deepening our engagement in the region.

"NATO's commitment to the peace of this region is enduring," said Bush last month, "but the stationing of our force here should not be indefinite."

Yet, indefinite it is.

This is the New World Order, and there's apparently no stopping it – as long as Americans continue to support the "Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dumber" policies of the Democans and Republicrats.

No matter what they tell you during the political campaigns, you can count on business as usual when the election is over.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, no doubt one of the central architects of the current Balkans policy, once said, "The lessons I absorbed in Panama confirmed all my convictions over the preceding 20 years, since the days of doubt over Vietnam. Have a clear political objective and stick to it. Use all the force necessary and do not apologize for going in big if that is what it takes. Decisive force ends wars quickly and in the long run saves lives."

We can argue about the rightness or wrongness of such statements and about what the U.S. did in Panama. But one thing is not arguable: That famed Powell Doctrine does not apply in the Balkans. It is not being followed in the Middle East, either. We are following, instead, the failed Vietnam model – illustrating, once again, there is simply no rhyme or reason to U.S. foreign policies, no connection between words and deeds, no link to reality, constitutional safeguards, national interest or common sense.

And, worse yet, there is no organized opposition to these Pax Americana plans.

[GopherSA]

So...consider that we're still in Kosovo, years later...having spent billions on the operation -- and having lost actual lives in the process.

Consider as well that we - the United States - also went through a tough period early in our existence. We've only been in Iraq a few years. It takes time to get the groundwork put together for a solid, peaceful and democratic organization. We formed our nation in 1776, but still had enough problems to engage in a civil war within 100 years of founding the nation.

But look where we are now.

Consider that WWII took six years to win (1939-1945) and it took several years to reconstruct both Germany and Japan after the war.

But look where we are now.

I wonder if we'd ever have won the Revolution, the Civil War or WWII had we had the left-wing motormouths we have today.

[gophergeorge]

Love that Gopher!!!

[Nbadan]

The Iraq war has already taken longer than WW2 and instead of moving forward we seem to be moving backwards if not stagnating. Sure there are still troops in the Balkans, it is in the U.S. best interest to keep those troops there and they are not under constant guerilla warfare, plus we have the support of the U.N. and NATO countries, neither of which supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Two years later, we have 135,000 troops in Iraq. That hardly compares to the 9,000 or so troops we still have in the Balkans. Especially, given that going in the administration talking heads we saying this war would be a cake walk and our troops would be welcomed as liberators by many. Now they are saying that this war could take up to 12 years and cost American taxpayers billions of reconstruction dollars. It's time that you pro-war posters admitted that we were lied to in just about every aspect of this war, and now we are being lied to about when and how this war will eventually end.

[Vashner]

Still does not matter.. with Howard Dean at the helm the next 12 years are a shoe in for the RNC.... Because if you keep talking that smack that "I hate republicans' etc no centrist is going to get the votes they need from the right. I.E. Hillary.

[Nbadan]

Still does not matter.. with Howard Dean at the helm the next 12 years are a shoe in for the RNC.... Because if you keep talking that smack that "I hate republicans' etc no centrist is going to get the votes they need from the right. I.E. Hillary.

Howard Dean is doing exactly what Progressives want him to do. He has neither apologized nor taken back his remarks about Republicans and this administration. You may not like it, but millions of people feel that there is finally a dissenting voice to this administrations failed policies both in Iraq and domestically. If Democrats just constantly agreed with the administration they would be nothing but Republican-lites (i.e. Hillary), and who wants that?