[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] De-escalate, investigate, troops out now!

[C. G. Estabrook]

It's definitely an advance over his earlier position(s) and an 
indication that the pressure on him from elections, demonstrations, and 
constituents' demands is having an effect.  And a great reason to 
increase the pressure on him and others for a real end to the war.

OTOH, as usual with Obama, what you see is not what you get.

	[1] He's not proposing an American withdrawal but (as his bill says) a 
"de-escalation."  It proposes the removal of *combat brigades*. 
Garrison troops for the four main bases on oil lines and the 
billion-dollar embassy in Baghdad -- particularly in units of less than 
brigade size (ca. 3,000)-- would not be covered. Neither would our army 
of some 100,000 mercenaries, the US Ambassador's Praetorian Guard, as 
Jeremy Scahill calls them.

	[2] The arbitrary date of 3/31/08 is comfortably far off.  If the US 
were to announce that it's actually leaving and negotiate a cease-fire 
to facilitate withdrawal, that could be accomplished much faster.  But 
it will be easy to say, more that a year from now, that conditions have 
changed, and this date disappears like the snows of yesteryear.  An 
attack on Iran (which Obama proposed in 2004), of course, would make all 
earlier statements inoperative...

The WP article notes the bill's huge loopholes.  It points out that 
Obama's bill "would leave a limited number of troops in place [As if we 
have an unlimited number there now?] to conduct counterterrorism 
activities [What are they doing now?] and train Iraqi forces [That's 
Petraeus' mantra, isn't it?]. And the withdrawal could be temporarily 
suspended [Ah, "temporarily"...] if the Iraqi government meets a series 
of benchmarks laid out by the Bush administration [That's the current 
policy!]."

I frankly think that, with very few exceptions, all mainline US 
politicians know that the US has to continue to control Iraqi oil ("We 
cannot leave Iraq" --H. Kissinger), and that means some continuous 
American presence in Iraq.  What they're doing now is trying to find 
what modality of that presence can be sold to an increasingly anti-war 
public.  Obama -- who we know has had no moral objection to the war but 
only a prudential one ("It's stupid") -- has just got his snake-oil to 
the market first.  --CGE


Stuart Levy wrote:
> ...
> Hey, what do you all think of Obama's recent announcement that he's
> actually calling for a pullout of combat troops from Iraq,
> with specific completion date (of early next year), in line with the
> ISG's proposal?  Commentary, and link to Obama's announcement at
> 
>     http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0201-25.htm
> 
> If (cynically) he's doing this because that's the way the
> political winds are blowing, then I say more power to him.
> If the people of this country have better sense than most of
> their representatives, then why complain if the representatives
> simply start listening to the population?
> 
>    Stuart