[Peace] A flyer from Solomon

[Morton K. Brussel]

Perhaps we can print up copies of Solomon's piece for distribution at  
our AWARE tables. It hits many important points, although does not  
discuss impeachment or withholding funds for military operations. --mkb

Published on Thursday, July 26, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Media Spin on Iraq: We’re Leaving (Sort of)
by Norman Solomon
Last week, a media advisory from “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”  
announced a new series of interviews on the PBS show that will  
address “what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves.”

A few days later, Time magazine published a cover story titled “Iraq:  
What will happen when we leave.”

But it turns out, what will happen when we leave is that we won’t leave.

Urging a course of action that’s now supported by “the best strategic  
minds in both parties,” the Time story calls for “an orderly  
withdrawal of about half the 160,000 troops currently in Iraq by the  
middle of 2008.” And: “A force of 50,000 to 100,000 troops would dig  
in for a longer stay to protect America’s most vital interests…”

On Iraq policy, in Washington, the differences between Republicans  
and Democrats — and between the media’s war boosters and opponents —  
are often significant. Yet they’re apt to mask the emergence of a  
general formula that could gain wide support from the political and  
media establishment.

The formula’s details and timelines are up for grabs. But there’s not  
a single “major” candidate for president willing to call for  
withdrawal of all U.S. forces — not just “combat” troops — from Iraq,  
or willing to call for a complete halt to U.S. bombing of that country.

Those candidates know that powerful elites in this country just don’t  
want to give up the leverage of an ongoing U.S. military presence in  
Iraq, with its enormous reserves of oil and geopolitical value. It’s  
a good bet that American media and political powerhouses would fix  
the wagon of any presidential campaign that truly advocated an end to  
the U.S. war in — and on — Iraq.

The disconnect between public opinion and elite opinion has led to  
reverse perceptions of a crisis of democracy. As war continues, some  
are appalled at the absence of democracy while others are frightened  
by the potential of it. From the grassroots, the scarcity of  
democracy is transparent and outrageous. For elites, unleashed  
democracy could jeopardize the priorities of the military-industrial- 
media complex.

Converging powerful forces in Washington — eager to at least  
superficially bridge the gap between grassroots and elite priorities  
— are likely to come up with a game plan for withdrawing from Iraq  
without withdrawing from Iraq.

Scratch the surface of current media scenarios for a U.S. pullout  
from Iraq, and you’re left with little more than speculation — fueled  
by giant dollops of political manipulation. In fact, strategic leaks  
and un-attributed claims about U.S. plans for withdrawal have emerged  
periodically to release some steam from domestic antiwar pressures.

Nearly three years ago — with discontent over the war threatening to  
undermine President Bush’s prospects for a second term — the White  
House ally Robert Novak floated a rosy scenario in his nationally  
syndicated column that appeared on Sept. 20, 2004. “Inside the Bush  
administration policy-making apparatus, there is strong feeling that  
U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year,” he wrote. “This determination  
is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and  
internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not,  
here we go.”

Novak’s column went on to tell readers: “Well-placed sources in the  
administration are confident Bush’s decision will be to get out.”  
Those well-placed sources were, of course, unnamed. And for good  
measure, Novak followed up a month before the November 2004 election  
with a piece that recycled the gist of his Sept. 20 column and  
chortled: “Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my  
column.”

This is all relevant history today as news media are spinning out  
umpteen scenarios for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The game involves  
dangling illusionary references to “withdrawal” in front of the public.

But realities on the ground — and in the air — are quite different. A  
recent news dispatch from an air base in Iraq, by Charles J. Hanley  
of the Associated Press, provided a rare look at the high-tech  
escalation underway. “Away from the headlines and debate over the  
’surge’ in U.S. ground troops,” AP reported on July 14, “the Air  
Force has quietly built up its hardware inside Iraq, sharply stepped  
up bombing and laid a foundation for a sustained air campaign in  
support of American and Iraqi forces.”

In contrast to the spun speculation so popular with U.S. media  
outlets like Time and the PBS “NewsHour,” the AP article cited key  
information: “Squadrons of attack planes have been added to the in- 
country fleet. The air reconnaissance arm has almost doubled since  
last year. The powerful B1-B bomber has been recalled to action over  
Iraq.”

This kind of development fits a historic pattern — one that had  
horrific consequences during the war in Vietnam and, unless stopped,  
will persist for many years to come in Iraq.

Assessing the distant mirror of the Vietnam War, the narration of the  
new documentary “War Made Easy” (based on my book of the same name)  
spells out a classic White House maneuver: “Even when calls for  
withdrawal have eventually become too loud to ignore, officials have  
put forward strategies for ending war that have had the effect of  
prolonging it — in some cases, as with the Nixon administration’s  
strategy of Vietnamization, actually escalating war in the name of  
ending it.”

Between mid-1969 and mid-1972, American troop levels dropped sharply  
in Vietnam — while the deadly ferocity of American bombing spiked  
upward.

The presence of large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq during the next  
years is a likelihood fogged up by fanciful media stories asserting —  
without tangible evidence — that American troops will “pull out” and  
the U.S. military will “leave” Iraq. The spin routinely glides past  
such matters as the hugely militarized U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the  
numerous permanent-mode U.S. bases in Iraq, and the vast array of  
private-and-often-paramilitary contractors at work there courtesy of  
U.S. taxpayers. And there’s the rarely mentioned prize of massive oil  
reserves that top officials in Washington keep their eyes on.

The matter of U.S. bases in Iraq is a prime example of how events on  
Capitol Hill have scant effects on war machinery in the context of  
out-of-control presidential power. “The House voted overwhelmingly on  
Wednesday to bar permanent United States military bases in Iraq,” the  
New York Times reports. But the war makers in the nation’s capital  
still hold the whip that keeps lashing the dogs of war.

As the insightful analyst Phyllis Bennis points out: “The bill states  
an important principle opposing the ‘establishment’ of new bases in  
Iraq and ‘not to exercise United States control of the oil resources  
of Iraq.’ But it is limited in several ways. It prohibits only those  
bases which are acknowledged to be for the purpose of permanently  
stationing U.S. troops in Iraq; therefore any base constructed for  
temporarily stationing troops, or rotating troops, or anything less  
than an officially permanent deployment, would still be accepted.  
Further, the bill says nothing about the need to decommission the  
existing U.S. bases already built in Iraq; it only prohibits  
‘establishing’ military installations, implying only new ones would  
be prohibited.”

Despite all the talk about how members of Congress have been turning  
against the war, few are clearly advocating a genuine end to U.S.  
military intervention in Iraq. Media outlets will keep telling us  
that the U.S. government is developing serious plans to “leave” Iraq.  
But we would be foolish to believe those tall tales. The antiwar  
movement has an enormous amount of grassroots work to do — changing  
the political terrain of the United States from the bottom up —  
before the calculus of political opportunism in Washington determines  
that it would be more expedient to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq  
than to keep it going under one guise or another.
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