[Peace-discuss] Act III of a Tragedy in many parts…
Morton K. Brussel
brussel4 at insightbb.com
Sat Dec 23 12:54:26 CST 2006
It has been said before, but needs repeating:
…All of the reasons being offered for why the United States cannot
withdraw troops from Iraq are false. The reality is, the troops are
staying in Iraq for much different reasons than the ones being touted
by political elites and a still subservient establishment press.
They are staying to save face for a U.S. political elite that cares
nothing for the lives of Iraqis or U.S. soldiers; to pursue the
futile goal of turning Iraq into a reliable client state
strategically located near the major energy resources and shipping
routes of the Middle East, home to two-thirds of world oil reserves,
and Western and Central Asia; to serve as a base for the projection
of U.S. military power in the region, particularly in the growing
conflict between the United States and Iran; and to maintain the
legitimacy of U.S. imperialism, which needs the pretext of a global
war on terror to justify further military intervention, expanded
military budgets, concentration of executive power, and restrictions
on civil liberties. The U.S. military did not invade and occupy Iraq
to spread democracy, check the spread of weapons of mass destruction,
rebuild the country, or stop civil war.
In fact, the troops remain in Iraq today to deny self-determination
and genuine democracy to the Iraqi people…
The following is a comprehensive analysis of the present situation.
It is from:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-12/21arnove.cfm
ZNet Commentary
The U.S. occupation of Iraq: Act III of a tragedy in many parts
December 21, 2006
By Anthony Arnove
Anthony Arnove is the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, just
published in an updated paperback edition, with a foreword by Howard
Zinn, in the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
(http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805082727).
He is on the editorial boards of Haymarket Books and International
Socialist Review. This article appears in the January-February issue
of the ISR (http://www.isreview.org)
THE TRAGEDY unleashed by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq
defies description. According to the most recent findings of the
Lancet medical journal, the number of "excess deaths" in Iraq since
the U.S. invasion is more than 650,000. "Iraq is the fastest-growing
refugee crisis in the world," according to Refugee International:
nearly two million Iraqis have fled the country entirely, while at
least another 500,000 are internally displaced.
Basic foods and necessities are beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis
because of massive inflation. "A gallon of gasoline cost as little as
4 cents in November. Now, after the International Monetary Fund
pushed the Oil Ministry to cut its subsidies, the official price is
about 67 cents," the New York Times notes. "The spike has come as a
shock to Iraqis, who make only about $150 a month on average-if they
have jobs," an important proviso, since unemployment is roughly 60-70
percent nationally.
October 2006 proved to be the bloodiest month of the entire
occupation, with more than six thousand civilians killed in Iraq,
most in Baghdad, where thousands of additional U.S. troops have been
sent since August with the claim they would restore order and
stability in the city, but instead only sparked more violence.
United Nations special investigator Manfred Nowak notes that torture
"is totally out of hand" in Iraq. "The situation is so bad many
people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam
Hussein." The number of U.S soldiers dead is now more than 2,900,
with more than 21,000 wounded, many severely.
The underlying trend is clear: each day the occupation continues,
life gets worse for most Iraqis. Rather than stemming civil war or
sectarian conflict, the occupation is spurring it. Rather than being
a source of stability, the occupation is the major source of
instability and chaos.
All of the reasons being offered for why the United States cannot
withdraw troops from Iraq are false. The reality is, the troops are
staying in Iraq for much different reasons than the ones being touted
by political elites and a still subservient establishment press.
They are staying to save face for a U.S. political elite that cares
nothing for the lives of Iraqis or U.S. soldiers; to pursue the
futile goal of turning Iraq into a reliable client state
strategically located near the major energy resources and shipping
routes of the Middle East, home to two-thirds of world oil reserves,
and Western and Central Asia; to serve as a base for the projection
of U.S. military power in the region, particularly in the growing
conflict between the United States and Iran; and to maintain the
legitimacy of U.S. imperialism, which needs the pretext of a global
war on terror to justify further military intervention, expanded
military budgets, concentration of executive power, and restrictions
on civil liberties. The U.S. military did not invade and occupy Iraq
to spread democracy, check the spread of weapons of mass destruction,
rebuild the country, or stop civil war.
In fact, the troops remain in Iraq today to deny self-determination
and genuine democracy to the Iraqi people, who have made it
abundantly clear, whether they are Shiite or Sunni, that they want
U.S. troops to leave Iraq immediately; feel less safe as a result of
the occupation; think the occupation is spurring not suppressing
sectarian strife; and support armed attacks on occupying troops and
Iraqi security forces, who are seen not as independent but as
collaborating with the occupation.
It is not only the Iraqi people who oppose the occupation of their
country and want to see the troops leave. A clear majority of people
in the United States have expressed the same sentiment in major
opinion polls and in the mid-term Congressional elections, which
swing both houses of Congress and the majority of state governorships
to the Democrats, in a clear vote against the imperial arrogance of
Bush's "stay the course" approach to the disaster in Iraq.
The public did not vote for more money for the Pentagon (as incoming
Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada immediately promised,
announcing a plan to give $75 billion more to the Pentagon), for more
"oversight" of the war (the main Democratic Party buzzword these
days), or for more troops (as Texas Democrat Representative Silvestre
Reyes, the incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has
demanded), but to begin bringing the troops home. A clear majority
of active-duty U.S. troops want the same thing, as a much-ignored
Zogby International poll found in early 2005, with 72 percent saying
they wanted to be out of Iraq by the end of 2006.
But Bush's response to the groundswell of opposition to the war,
which has led not only to his setbacks in the midterm elections but
to even further erosion in his already abysmal approval ratings (with
approval of his handling of the war reaching a new low of 27
percent), is to insist that the sun still revolves around the earth.
"Absolutely, we're winning," Bush told reporters. "I know there's a
lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's
going to be some kind of graceful exit from Iraq," Bush said. "This
business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it
whatsoever," he added. "We're going to stay in Iraq to get the job
done."
In a similar vein, Vice President Cheney said, "I know what the
President thinks. I know what I think. And we're not looking for an
exist strategy. We're looking for victory." After the midterm
elections Bush was forced to jettison his deeply unpopular defense
secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, but nominated in his place someone who is
unlikely to oversee any fundamental shift in U.S. strategy. Robert
Gates, an old CIA hand, is a dedicated Cold Warrior who advocated,
among other enlightened policies, the bombing of the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua for daring to challenge the corrupt order of death squad
dictatorships in Latin America. Bush also dropped UN ambassador John
Bolton, a man who embodies everything that the world hates about U.S.
foreign policy today.
Perhaps most significantly, though, in the face of the failures in
Iraq, Congress resorted to the old strategy of bringing in the "wise
men" to repackage a failing war, convening the Iraq Study Group
(ISG), with Bush family fixer James Baker III, former Indiana
representative Lee Hamilton, and other foreign policy establishment
figures with little or no knowledge of Iraq. The commission was never
going to advocate any radical reversal of U.S. policy in Iraq, but
even so, Bush has hedged his bets from the outset, setting up two
different internal military review committees to make suggestions to
the White House about the next steps in Iraq (much as he had overseen
a separate intelligence operation to create the evidence that would
be used to sell the invasion in the first place).
Indeed, when the report's findings were made public on December 6,
Bush immediately distanced himself from its highly limited
recommendations. As the New York Sun noted, "Barely 24 hours old, the
bipartisan report has been placed on a high shelf to gather dust, its
principle function having been to take the heat off the president for
a time while allowing him to gather his resolve to press on" with the
same course as before. Bush immediately rejected the report's call
to negotiate with Iran and Syria, the Wall Street Journal reported:
"A senior administration official said the White House doesn't feel
bound by the report and is unlikely to implement many of its
recommendations, especially regarding calls for diplomatic outreach
to U.S. foes Syria and Iran." In addition, "The White House has
rejected mounting calls for a course correction in Iraq, insisting it
would maintain the current number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq
indefinitely."
But even if the Bush administration sought to immediately implement
every recommendation of the Iraq Study Group report, it would only be
a recipe for more death, displacement, and despair. The ISG report
explicitly rejects setting any deadline or timetable for withdrawal,
asserts the need for a "considerable military presence in the region,
with our still significant force in Iraq and with our powerful air,
ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well
as an increased presence in Afghanistan" for years to come, and
basically repackages the Bush Doctrine of "as the Iraqis stand up, we
will stand down," that is "Iraqization" of the conflict, much as
"Vietnamization" was presented as the solution in Vietnam.
It is worth briefly reviewing the various options now being
considered by the Bush administration, none of which offers any real
alternative:
Sending in more troops in the short term
The idea that sending in more troops would provide stability and
improve the situation in Iraq ignores the fact that the U.S. is the
main source of violence and instability. More troops breed both more
opposition and more sectarian violence. Observes Michael Schwartz,
"Instead of entering a violent city and restoring order, [U.S.
forces] enter a relatively peaceful city and create violence. The
accurate portrait of this situation
is that the most hostile anti-American cities like Tal Afar and
Ramadi have generally been reasonably peaceful when U.S. troops are
not there." Even the ISG notes that Operation Together Forward II,
which redeployed thousands of U.S. troops to Baghdad in August 2006,
achieved the opposite of its stated goal: "Violence in Baghdad-
already at high levels-jumped more than 43 percent between the summer
and October 2006." Schwartz also explains the way in which the
higher presence of U.S. combat troops exacerbates sectarian violence:
American patrols in Shia neighborhoods immobilize the local defenses
and make the community vulnerable to jihadist attack; while American
invasions of Sunni communities are even more damaging. They not only
immobilize the local defense forces, but almost always involve the
introduction of Iraqi Army units, made up mainly of Shia soldiers
(since the army being stood up by the Americans is largely a Shia
one). What results is violence in the form of battles between a Shia
military (as well as militia-infiltrated Shia police forces) and
Sunni resistance fighters defending their communities.
These attacks generate immense bitterness among Sunni, who see them
as part of a Shia attempt to use the American military to conquer and
pacify Sunni cities. The result is a wealth of new jihadists anxious
to retaliate by sacrificing their lives in terrorist or death-squad-
style attacks on Shia communities-which, in their turn, energize the
Shia death squads in an escalating cycle of brutalizing violence.
The U.S, in addition, cannot add more troops without straining an
already badly overtaxed military and relying on greater use of
backdoor draft measures that are provoking more opposition at home
and within the military to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,
another failing occupation.
We'll stand down as they stand up
The idea that training Iraqi troops can be improved, a major
recommendation of the ISG report, suggests that there's a technical
solution that the U.S. faces in Iraq. But the root of resistance to
U.S occupation is political. As long as the U.S. remains an occupying
power, the police and military will continue to be seen as
collaborators and illegitimate. Resistance groups in Iraq, meanwhile,
face no such training problems, and are carrying out increasingly
sophisticated operations, including direct military battles with U.S.
troops, because their fighters are politically motivated and have a
defined goal that has widespread support.
Engage Iran and Syria
The idea behind this strategy, another major thrust of the ISG
report, is that the root of resistance to U.S. occupation in Iraq is
foreign, rather than indigenous-much as we were told that the popular
resistance of the Vietnamese to U.S. state terrorism was directed by
Moscow and Beijing.
In this delusional worldview, Iran and Syria, and groups such as al-
Qaeda and Hezbollah, are the sources of violence in Iraq. This
baseless theory then leads to the equally baseless idea that the U.S.
will somehow stabilize Iraq through talks with two governments it is
committed to overthrowing. As the Financial Times observes, there is
little reason to think Bush "would be willing to follow advice that
contradicts his deeply held belief that the U.S. should not talk to
Iran and Syria" because doing so would "reward bad behavior."
Bush has repeatedly said that a precondition for talking to Iran is a
suspension of the country's legal nuclear enrichment program,
something that Iran has no reason to agree to in advance of
negotiations. At any rate, even if talks do take place, Iran and
Syria are not the masters of events in Iraq, which are driven by the
internal politics and the dynamics of the U.S. occupation.
Gradual withdrawal
Proposals for gradual withdrawal with no timetable are a recipe for
pursuing an infinitely receding horizon. The idea behind gradual
withdrawal was put accurately, if cynically, by Donald Rumsfeld in a
secret leaked memo, written November 6, just a few days before his
resignation: "Recast the U.S. military mission and U.S. goals (how we
talk about them)-go minimalist." In other words, change the rhetoric
while lowering expectations, but pursue the same goals. "Announce
that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so
on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move
to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.'"
Redeployment
A frequent buzzword in discussions of the occupation of Iraq today,
especially among Democrats, is redeployment. On November 14, 2006,
Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat considered to be at the
extreme left end of the party's elected officials, introduced a bill
"requiring U.S. forces to redeploy from Iraq by July 1, 2007." But
the plan itself calls for keeping troops in Iraq. "My legislation
would allow for a minimal level of U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for
targeted counterterrorism activities, training of Iraqi security
forces, and the protection of U.S. infrastructure and personnel." In
other words, redeployment envisions U.S. bases, U.S. troops, and U.S.
occupation, while merely shifting some personnel to other military
bases in the region-where they can be quickly mobilized to strike
when necessary-and most likely shifting to greater reliance on air
power in Iraq and in the region to pursue U.S. imperial objectives.
Partition
One plan that the ISG did not recommend, and which Bush has also
criticized, but which remains a real possibility as the crisis in
Iraq unfolds, is partition. The deteriorating situation on the ground
has encouraged some analysts and politicians-including incoming
Democrat Joseph Biden, the powerful Senate Foreign Relations
Committee chair-to call for the breakup of Iraq into three
independent countries or three relatively autonomous territories
within a loosely federated state. Such a division of Iraq, however,
could only be accomplished by massive ethnic cleansing.
The largest urban concentration of Kurds in Iraq is not in the
northern zone that would likely make up a future Kurdish enclave or
state, but in Baghdad. Most cities described by reporters as "Sunni
strongholds" or "Shiite townships" have mixed populations with
significant minorities of Sunni, Shiite, Turkmen, Kurds, or
Assyrians. In addition, any predominantly Sunni state in central and
western Iraq that emerged from a tripartite division of the country
would be significantly impoverished compared to its oil-rich southern
and northern neighbors.
The iron fist
Another option-one with a long history in Iraq and the Middle East-
remains support for a new "iron fist." Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E.
Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's
School of Advanced International Studies, suggests that "A junta of
military modernizers might be the only hope of a country whose
democratic culture is weak, whose politicians are either corrupt or
incapable," a narrative that is gaining much more popularity in the
establishment press and among pundits and politicians seeking an
explanation for the disaster in Iraq that avoids looking at its real
roots. This is a refurbishing of an old idea-a Saddam-style regime
without Saddam-that became impossible as soon as the Bremer
administration in Iraq dismantled the army and the Baath party, the
only political and administrative basis on which such a dictatorship
could have been established.
Expansion
Despite the ISG's recommendations of direct talks with Iran and
Syria, and the caution of Robert Gates and others about the pitfalls
of pursuing Iran militarily, the threat of the U.S. expanding the war
in Iraq remains very real.
In summer 2006, Washington sponsored the disastrous and bloody
Israeli invasion of Lebanon, hoping to gain some tactical advantage
in the region and hence in Iraq. The gamble failed miserably, but
some feel another such gamble is necessary. As Seymour Hersh writes
in the New Yorker, "many in the White House and the Pentagon insist
that getting tough with Iran is the only way to salvage Iraq. 'It's a
case of "failure forward,"' a Pentagon consultant said. 'They believe
that by tipping over Iran they would recover their losses in Iraq-
like doubling your bet.'"
Whatever Bush's new plan for Iraq may be, a major clash of
expectations is likely to come about as the Democrats fail to pose
any real challenge to the war. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
stressed "bipartisanship" the moment the results were announced,
adding that impeachment of Bush was "off the table."
Pelosi and the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said they
would take off the table the greatest power the Democrats have in
Congress, the ability to cut off funds for prolonging the
occupation. As Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Nation: "It's
the role of elections in properly run western democracies to remind
people that things won't really change at all. Certainly not for the
better. You can set your watch by the speed with which the new crowd
lowers expectations and announces What is Not To Be Done."
Out now
Indeed, the one option that remains truly off the table in Iraq is
the only sensible one: complete and unconditional immediate
withdrawal, followed by reparations to the Iraqi people for the
massive harm the occupation-and before that the sanctions, the Gulf
and Iran-Iran Wars, and years of supporting the dictatorship-have
caused. According to the New York Times, "In the cacophony of
competing plans about how to deal with Iraq, one reality now appears
clear: despite the Democrats' victory
in an election viewed as a referendum on the war, the idea of rapid
American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option."
The debate today in Washington remains one largely over tactics, not
strategy or principles. In fact, the one debate over principles that
is taking place is a racist one: more and more "experts" now question
whether Bush's folly was in thinking he could bring democracy to Arab
or Muslim people, who, we are told, "have no tradition of democracy,"
are from a "sick society," a "broken society."
In a much-lauded speech, Barack Obama, the great hope of the
Democrats, couched his criticism of the Bush administration's policy
by saying there should be "No more coddling" of the Iraqi government:
the United States "is not going to hold together this country
indefinitely," he explained, adding that "we should be more modest in
our belief that we can impose democracy."
Richard Perle, former chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board
Advisory Committee, one of the main neoconservative enthusiasts of
the invasion of Iraq, in explaining why things had gone so contrary
to his glorious predictions, now says he "underestimated the
depravity" of the Iraqis. And the ISG report chides that "the Iraqi
people and their leaders have been slow to demonstrate their capacity
or will to act," and therefore the U.S. "must not make an open-ended
commitment" to them. In other words, blame the victim. As Sharon
Smith wrote on Counterpunch, "Within a few short weeks, the
Washington 'consensus' has rewritten the history of the U.S. invasion
of Iraq-as if Iraqis invited the U.S. to invade their sovereign
nation in 2003 and now have failed to live up to their end of the
bargain."
As the crisis in Iraq unfolds, we can expect these arguments to gain
even wider traction, providing more cover for the real U.S.
objectives in the Middle East.
The tragedy unfolding in Iraq is still far from over. In Act I of the
tragedy, we were told that Washington would invade Iraq, quickly
topple the dictatorship, install a stable client government, and then-
having radically changed the balance of power in the Middle East-
march on from Baghdad to confront the regimes of Iran and Syria.
With that dream in tatters, the United States commenced Act II: the
manipulation of sectarian divisions in Iraq to form a Shiite and
Kurdish coalition government that would isolate the Sunnis (though it
would seek to co-opt as much of their political leadership as
possible) and serve the intended client role, if less effectively
than Washington had hoped, allowing the U.S. to gain at least some
foothold in Iraq and claim victory. By mid-2006, the failures of this
strategy could no longer be ignored, however.
Having invaded Iraq intending to weaken Iran and Syria, to strengthen
its position and that of Israel and its Arab allies in the region,
the United States instead achieved the opposite. (Of course, all of
this ignores the many stages of the tragedy authored by the United
States before the March 2003 invasion, through its support of the
Baath Party and Saddam Hussein, its nefarious role in the Iran-Iraq
War and then the 1991 Gulf War, and the more than twelve years of
sanctions and bombing that followed.)
Acts I and II in the tragedy of the Iraq occupation have now come to
a close. But Act III has only just begun. All the signs suggest that
the endgame in Iraq is likely to be long and very bloody. Iraq and
the Middle East are so strategically important to the United States
that neither party is willing to withdraw and admit defeat; such an
outcome would be more disastrous for the United States than its
defeat in Vietnam.
But there is one factor in the Iraq tragedy that we should not
discount. The question of how long this war lasts, whether it will
expand to Iran and Syria, whether more troops will be sent to
needlessly kill and be killed for profit and power, does not only
depend on the decisions and internal conflicts of the ruling class.
It also depends on the level of public opposition in Iraq, at home,
and within the military itself. Groups like Iraq Veterans Against the
War are already playing a leading role in the struggle to end the
occupation. But we are still only at the beginning of organizing the
kind of opposition we need to affect the course of the war decisively.
The U.S. war against Vietnam was lost by 1968, if not sooner, but
continued for years after, with millions of lives lost as a
consequence. We cannot allow a repeat of that tragic history. The
Vietnam War, though, also has another lesson to teach us: that when
people speak out and organize, they can deter even the most powerful
and reckless government. The war against the people of Indochina
would certainly have lasted even longer-and might have spread even
farther-had concerted opposition at home and internationally not
forced the United States to retreat. That is a lesson we badly need
to relearn-and put into practice-today.
1. Clive Cookson, "Iraq conflict has killed 600,000 since the 2003
invasion, says Lancet," Financial Times (London), October 12, 2006.
See also Iraq Body Count, "Reported civilian deaths resulting from
the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq," September 19, 2006,
available at http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/.
2. Demetri Sevastopulo, "Pressure builds on Bush to change tack,"
Financial Times (London)), December 6, 2006.
3. Damien Cave, "Weary Iraqis face new foe: Rising prices," New
York Times, August 26, 2006.
4. Sabrina Tavernise, "Civilian death toll reaches new high in Iraq,
U.N. says," New York Times, November 23, 2006.
5. Eliane Engeler, "U.N. expert: Iraq torture bay be worse,"
Associated Press, September 21, 2006.
6. See the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count Web site at http://
www.icasualties.org/oif/.
7. Amit R. Paley, "Most Iraqis favor immediate U.S. pullout,"
Washington Post, September 27, 2006.
8. Jonathan Weisman, "Reid pledges to press Bush on Iraq policy,"
Washington Post, November 15, 2006. Michael Isikoff and Mark
Hosnbell, "Iraq: Top Dem wants more troops," Newsweek Online,
December 5, 2006.
9. Zogby International, "U.S. troops in Iraq: 72% say end war in
2006," February 28, 2006, available at http://www.zogby.com/NEWS/
ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075.
Associated Press-Ipsos cited in Caroline Daniel and Demetri
Sevastopulo, "Bush to deliver Iraq strategy by Christmas," Financial
Times (London), December 9-10, 2006.
10. Bush press conference, October 25, 2006, Washington, D.C.,
available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2006/10/20061025.html.
11. Yochi J. Dreazen and Cam Simpson, "Bush sticks to Iraq policy,
resists drawdown calls," Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2006. John
M. Broder and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Bush, in meeting on Iraq, rejects
a quick pullout," New York Times, December 1, 2006. See also Sheryl
Gay Stolberg, "In Baltics, Bush blames Qaeda for violence and
declines to call situation civil war," New York Times, November 29,
2006.
12. Cheney quoted in Seymour M. Hersh, "The next act," New Yorker,
November 27, 2006.
13. Julian E. Barnes, "Gates pushed for bombing of Sandinistas," Los
Angeles Times, November 26, 2006. Hersh notes rightly that "If the
[Bush] administration needed to make the case that Iran's weapons
program posed an imminent threat, Gates would be a better advocate
than someone who had been associated with the flawed intelligence
about Iraq." See Hersh.
14. Nicholas Wapshott, "Blair offers Bush show of support at
'difficult' hour," New York Sun, December 8-10, 2006.
15. Yochi J. Dreazen and Neil King, Jr., "Iraq report adds pressure
on Bush to start pullback," Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2006.
16. Stephen Fidler, "Training of Iraqis proves easier said than
done," Financial Times (London), December 6, 2006. James A. Baker
III, Lee H. Hamilton, et al., The Iraq Study Group Report (New York:
17. Vintage Books, 2006), ix, 2, 37, 66-67, 72, and 73.
18. Michael Schwartz, "The myth of more," TomDispatch.com, December
6, 2006.
19. Baker, Hamilton, et al.,11.
20. Schwartz.
21. Edward Luce and Guy Dinmore, "Baker report prompts fears of 'too
little, too late,'" Financial Times (London), December 1, 2006.
22. Michael R. Gordon and David S. Cloud, "Rumsfeld memo proposed
'major adjustment' in Iraq," New York Times, December 3, 2006.
23. Russ Feingold, "A way out of Iraq," TomPaine.com, November 16,
2006.
24. Eliot A. Cohen, "Plan B," Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2006.
25. Hersh. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Thomas Powers, noted a
parallel to Lyndon Johnson's situation in 1965 in Vietnam. "Johnson's
advisers put it to him straight
. The choice was clear: lose the war or expand the war, find a
formula of words to mask failure or send more troops and increase the
bet on the table. Johnson chose to expand the war." See Thomas
Powers, "The war last time," New York Times, November 20, 2006.
26. Weisman.
27. Alexander Cockburn, "Now what?" Nation, December 4, 2006.
28. David E. Sanger, "The only consensus on Iraq: Nobody's leaving
right now," New York Times, December 1, 2006.
29. For a particularly hypocritical version of this argument, see
Thomas L. Freidman, "Ten months or ten years," New York Times,
November 29, 2006.
30. Barack Obama, "A way forward in Iraq," November 20, 2006,
Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, Chicago, Illinois, available at
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/061120-a_way_forward_in_iraq/
index.html. Obama also reaffirmed the Bush Doctrine: "We must always
reserve the right to strike unilaterally at terrorists wherever they
may exist."
31. David Rose, "Neo culpa," Vanity Fair, December 2006, available
at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612.
32. Baker, Hamilton, et al., 36 and xvi.
33. Sharon Smith, "The new Washington Consensus: Blame the victims
in Iraq," Counterpunch, December 5, 2006.
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