[Peace-discuss] [Fwd: FW: General Treachery]

Thu Oct 22 10:00:09 CDT 2009

I didn't recognize this immediately as coming from antiwar.com...

The interesting thing to the readers of this list might be that those who
were forwarding this around before it got to me were Christian 
Conservatives,
who are oft characterized as being supplicants to the warmongerings of the
Sarah Palin-Newt Gingrich crowd.

On 10/22/2009 8:28 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	FW: General Treachery
> Date: 	Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:55:47 -0500
> From: 	Sandie C <sandiec99 at hotmail.com>
> To: 	Shelli Dawdy <stubbornfacts1776 at gmail.com>
> CC: 	Ryan Underwood <runderwo at mail.win.org>, E Wayne Johnson 
> <ewj at pigs.ag>, RJHarris2010 Campaign <rjharris2010 at hotmail.com>
> References: 	<3881-2200910422102725442 at earthlink.net>
>
>
> a fascinating article on the war!/sc
> **
> ** <http://www.scrosnoe.com>** <http://www.scrosnoe.com>** 
> <http://www.scrosnoe.com>** <http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>** 
> <http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>** <http://scrosnoe.blogspot.com>*Sandra 
> Crosnoe
> www.scrosnoe.com <http://www.scrosnoe.com>
> **918.440.6876 cell*
> <http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=782693689#/group.php?gid=30507833644>
> <http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=782693689#/group.php?gid=30507833644%20>
>
> From: aacoddington at earthlink.netTo: ladyaxiom at yahoo.com; 
> WinBlows at lavabit.com; chooks at ncez.net; gm.shoemaker at gmail.com; 
> markowsley at compuserve.com; mstar at charter.net; sandiec99 at hotmail.com
>
> CC: toby.coddington at us.army.mil
> Subject: General Treachery
> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:27:25 -0400
>
>
> General Treachery
>
> by Jeff Huber <http://original.antiwar.com/author/huber/>, October 22, 
> 2009
>
> <http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/10/21/general-treachery/emailpopup/> 
>
> The long war generals are still trying to shoehorn President Obama 
> into going along with their agenda, and they’re not being a bit subtle 
> about it.
>
> Gen. Ray Odierno, U.S. commander in Iraq, says he may not be able to 
> meet President Barack Obama’s promise to withdraw troops from that 
> country. In an Oct. 20 article from right-wing media maven Rupert 
> Murdoch’s /Times/ of London 
> <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6881581.ece>, 
> Odierno notes that things aren’t going so well in Iraq: increased 
> violence levels, bickering in parliament, a "bloody campaign" brewing 
> in the months ahead from al-Qaeda and other militant groups, a 
> possible postponement of elections, Anbar province getting out of 
> control again.  Tut, tut.  It sounds like the surge wasn’t so 
> successful after all.
>
> Odierno, who is part of the long war 
> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/hayden> cabal that includes 
> Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs chairman 
> Adm. Mike Mullen, is on record 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021301648_pf.html> 
> as wanting to keep 30,000 or more troops in Iraq until 2014 or 2015.
>
> Elsewhere we have Gen. Stanley McChrystal, another long warrior 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Afghanistan-t.html>, 
> attempting to get 40,000 or more troops into Afghanistan for a 
> nation-birthing campaign that could last 20 years or more.
>
> Professor Andrew Bacevich 
> <http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/21/795433/-Night-Owls,-Early-Birds-and-Expats-Open-Thread>, 
> a retired Army officer, notes in the November issue of /Harper//’s/ 
> that Odierno thinks the insurgency in Iraq may drag on for another 
> five, ten, or fifteen years.  "Events may well show that Odierno is an 
> optimist," Bacevich writes.
>
> Violence may be down, Bacevich notes, "but evidence of the promised 
> political reconciliation that the surge was intended to produce 
> remains elusive. America’s Mesopotamian misadventure continues."
>
> Bacevich says Iraq is "bizarrely trumpeted in some quarters as a 
> ’success’ and even more bizarrely seen as offering a template for how 
> to turn Afghanistan around."
>
> That trumpeting has been the result of propaganda operations on the 
> part of the Pentagon and its military-industrial allies.  The 
> military’s ability to manipulate the media is firmly established at 
> this point.  The right-wing press and broadcast outlets have always 
> been military friendly, but now the mainstream media has become little 
> more than a steno pool that repeats military public affairs press 
> releases verbatim.
>
> Bacevich, fortunately, is as brutally honest about Afghanistan as he 
> is about Iraq.  He calls Afghanistan "The war we can’t win," and says, 
> "Fixing Afghanistan is not only unnecessary, it’s also likely to prove 
> impossible. Not for nothing has the place acquired the nickname 
> Graveyard of Empires."  Lamentably, voices like Bacevich’s are hard to 
> come by.  (Even sorrier is that his /Harper’s/ article is behind a 
> subscription firewall.)
>
> Much of what we see in the media these days deifies our generals.  
> Thomas E. Ricks is notorious for his hagiographies of Odierno and 
> Petraeus.  The recent hoopla over Stanley McChrystal has been 
> disgraceful, most notably the /60 Minutes/ puff piece and an October 
> 18 /New York Times Magazine/ profile by Dexter Filkins. As Yale 
> professor of literature David Bromwich 
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/war-fever-at-the-emtimese_b_327159.html> 
> notes, the /Times/ seems to have gone gaga over McChrystal and his 
> campaign to pile drive the president into going puppy dog for his 
> general’s wishes.  "The conclusion draws itself," Bromwich says. "The/ 
> New York Times/ wants a large escalation in Afghanistan."
>
> The most frightening moment in the Filkins article comes at the end, 
> where McChrystal promises an Afghan governor, "We’ll stay as long as 
> we have to until our Afghan partners are completely secure, even if 
> that means years." Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mullen have 
> made similar remarks for the record.
>
> Who are they to be making promises like that?
>
> Our "partners" Iraq and Afghanistan are crooks and liars.  Odierno 
> admits that Iraq’s parliament is a zoo and we’ve seen over the past 
> few months what a hobo Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai is. Even Gates 
> admits the corruption in Afghanistan will continue 
> <http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-21-voa4.cfm> regardless of the 
> election results.
>
> Yet the information blitz continues.  Bad Taliban. Everyone in the 
> military is mad at Obama.  We were on the verge of winning in Vietnam 
> when the bad news media and Congress pulled the rug out from under us, 
> don’t do it again. Must.  Stay.  Course.
>
> We’re witnessing an open revolt by our top military officers against a 
> sitting president and the citizens who elected him.  Our press, the 
> fourth pillar of our democracy that is supposed to guard against such 
> treachery, is aiding it.  We’ve seen this sort of thing happen before, 
> not very long ago, when the /New York Times/ helped Dick Cheney sell 
> us the invasion of Iraq by publishing its story on the Nigergate hoax 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-responses-iraqis-us-says-hussein-intensifies-quest-for-bomb-parts.html> 
> that cited anonymous "officials" more than 20 times.
>
> In a /Voice of America/ 
> <http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-20-voa13.cfm> article 
> published the same day (Oct. 20) that Odierno said he may not be able 
> to withdraw troops on schedule, Obama assured Iraq’s Prime Minister 
> Nuri al-Maliki that we /will/ withdraw our troops on schedule.  
> Al-Maliki prances back and forth like a dancer in search of a friendly 
> lap — he wants us out of his country one minute but he’s willing to 
> renegotiate <http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-10-20-voa13.cfm> the 
> Status of Forces Agreement the next.
>
> Who’s going to win this battle?
> aacoddington at earthlink.net <mailto:aacoddington at earthlink.net>
> EarthLink Revolves Around You.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>    

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20091022/8ba87984/attachment.html