[Peace-discuss] The US Legacy in Iraq

[C. G. Estabrook]

  It's /Patrick/ Cockburn, Mort, not Alexander - and there's no Western reporter 
closer to Iraq than Patrick C.

I'm actually doubtful about Alexander's reading of the situation, viz.:

=========
The American right tried to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by claiming 
that "the surge" -- a pr ploy by General David Petraeus to mask US withdrawal -- 
was a military success, rather than the Sunni abandoning "national resistance" 
and throwing in their lot with the Americans. The left -- or the substantial 
slice of it hewing to the Milne/Ali line -- snatches defeat from the jaws of a 
victory over America's plans for Iraq by proclaiming that America has  
successfully established  what Milne calls  "a new form of outsourced 
semi-colonial regime to maintain its grip on the country and region." Iraq is in 
ruins -- always the default consequence of American imperial endeavors.  The 
left should report this, but also  hammer home the message that in terms of its 
proclaimed objectives the US onslaught on Iraq was a strategic and military 
disaster. That's the lesson to bring home.
==========

The US war aims were to establish military bases in the heart of the world's 
greatest energy-producing region and gain effective control over the country 
with the world's second-largest oil reserves.  (The country with the largest, 
Saudi Arabia, is already a US "ally.")

The Bush-Obama assault on Iraq seems to have achieved those aims.  America does 
seem to have established  "a new form of outsourced semi-colonial regime to 
maintain its grip on the country and region."  --CGE


On 8/31/10 11:10 AM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Cockburn blithely mentions that the Americans are leaving Iraq, as if their remaining  influence will be inconsequential. I doubt this:
> Maliki is an Iraqi Quisling to U.S. power.
> Otherwise, the article is interesting and possibly correct, but I'd be more convinced if someone closer to Iraq than Cockburn summarize and analyze the situation there.   --mkb
>
> On Aug 31, 2010, at 10:34 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick08312010.html
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