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

Thu Oct 22 10:51:32 CDT 2009

And this important article was written by Jeff Huber, a retired US Navy officer, 
whose stuff I've frequently posted to this list.  --CGE

E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 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.