[Peace-discuss] The Last War and the Next One

[C. G. Estabrook]

An excellent article as far as it goes.  (Did you notice that one of the four 
sources cited is the paleo-conservative website, Antiwar.com?)  But why does it 
ignore the goal of US policy in the Middle East?  It seems to imply that the 
only motive for the atrocities the US is visiting on the region is "madness": 
"...as in Vietnam, so four decades later, we are observing a full-scale descent 
into madness ... endless war, eternal war, and it’s the path to madness..."

The present Middle East wars, like the Vietnam war, are not irrational; they're 
vicious, and that's different.  In both Vietnam and Iraq, the US meant to 
demonstrate that US control of the world economy was not to be questioned, and 
those who did so would be destroyed (as independent Vietnam was). In Iraq and 
the Middle East, the stakes are even higher: the US insists on controlling "the 
world's greatest material prize" (as the Eisenhower administration put it) -- 
Middle East energy resources -- because it gives us control over our economic 
rivals, Europe and Northeast Asia.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's 
National Security Adviser, pointed out in the journal National Interest what he 
took to be an obvious and long-standing fact: that America's control over the 
Middle East "gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European 
and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region."

(The fact that Engelhardt has not quite freed himself from perennial US 
propaganda is illustrated by his reference to "the Fulda Gap, a German plain, 
[where] the U.S. military once expected to meet Soviet forces invading Europe in 
full-scale battle."  As was casually admitted after the fall of the USSR, the US 
military never expected "to meet Soviet forces invading Europe in full-scale 
battle" -- that was propaganda to keep the US public scared and US clients in 
line.  Both the US and the [economically much smaller] USSR carefully observed 
the Churchill-Stalin division of Europe from October 1944 for almost two 
generations -- until the Soviet Union became so weak that the Bush I and Clinton 
administrations broke their promises and moved NATO into Eastern Europe.) --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> An extract from a long and useful analysis of our wars by Tom 
> Engelhardt.  --mkb
> 
> http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/05/8714/
> 
> …Here’s how military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover put it recently:
> 
>     “‘The sole burden of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the 
> militants who care nothing for the Iraqi people…’ He said the militiamen 
> purposely attack from buildings and alleyways in densely populated 
> areas, hoping to protect themselves by hiding among civilians. ‘What 
> does that say about the enemy?… He is heartless and evil.’”
> 
> Mind you, this comes from the representative of a military that now 
> claims to grasp the true nature of counterinsurgency warfare (and so of 
> a guerrilla war); and you’re talking about a militia largely from Sadr 
> City, fighting “a war of survival” for its own families, its own people, 
> against foreign soldiers who have hopped continents to attack them. The 
> Sadrist militiamen are defending their homes and, of course, with 
> Predator drones and American helicopters constantly over their 
> neighborhoods, it’s quite obvious what would happen to them if they 
> “came out and fought” like typical good-hearted types. They would simply 
> be blown away. (Out of curiosity, what descriptive adjectives would Lt. 
> Col. Stover use to capture the style of fighting of the Predator pilots 
> who “fly” their drones from an air base outside of Las Vegas?)
> 
> By the way, the last time such street fighting was seen, in the first 
> six months of 2007, the U.S. military was clearing insurgents 
> (”al-Qaeda”) out of Sunni neighborhoods of the capital, which were then 
> being further cleansed by Shiite militias (including the Sadrists).
> 
> So, to sum up, let me see if I have this straight: The Bush 
> administration liberated Iraq in order to send U.S. troops against a 
> ragtag militia that has nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam Hussein’s 
> former government (and many of whose members were, in fact, oppressed by 
> it, as were its leaders) in the name of another group of Iraqis, who 
> have long been backed by Iran, and… uh…
> 
> Hmmm, let’s try that again… or, like the Bush administration, let’s not 
> and pretend we did.
> 
> In the meantime, the U.S. military has tried to partially “seal off” 
> Sadr City and, in the neighborhoods that they have partially occupied 
> with their attendant Iraqi troops, they are building the usual vast, 
> concrete walls, cordoning off the area. This is being done, so American 
> spokespeople say, to keep the Sadrist militia fighters out and to clear 
> the way for government hearts-and-minds “reconstruction” projects that 
> everyone knows are unlikely to happen.
> 
> Soon enough, if the previous pattern in Sunni neighborhoods is applied, 
> they and/or their Iraqi cohorts will start going door to door doing 
> weapons searches. As a result, the American and Iraqi prisons now 
> supposedly being substantially emptied — part of a program of “national 
> reconciliation” — of many of the tens of thousands of Sunni prisoners 
> swept up in raids in Sunni neighborhoods, are likely to be refilled with 
> Shiite prisoners swept up in a similar way. Call it grim irony — or call 
> it a meaningless nightmare from which no one can awaken. Just don’t 
> claim it makes much sense.
> 
> As in Vietnam, so four decades later, we are observing a full-scale 
> descent into madness and, undoubtedly, into atrocity. At least in 2003, 
> American troops were heading for Baghdad. They thought they had a goal, 
> a city to take. Now, they are heading for nowhere, for the heart of a 
> slum city which they cannot hold in a guerrilla war where the taking of 
> territory and the occupying of neighborhoods is essentially beside the 
> point. They are heading for oblivion, while trying to win hearts and 
> minds by shooting missiles into homes and enclosing people in giant 
> walls which break families and communities apart, while destroying 
> livelihoods.
> 
> Oh, and while we’re at it, welcome to “the next war,” the war in the 
> slum cities of the planet.…
> 
> 
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