Re: The consequences of invasion (fwd)

Saddam's sons are dead. His days are numbered. If Bush can be
deposed for his deceit perhaps a new administration can enlist
broad UN support for stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

But I don't think the US war machine is going to calm the fires of
conflict but fuel them instead. What the "neocons" want, of course.
This arrogance will more likely encourage nuclear proliferation
as a deterrence to US hegemony.
A great problem is that Americans may go along with any extreme
to ensure the materialistic privilege they have usurped from the
beginning of their history.

We are not in a rational time. (present company excluded of course)
What the third world nations of this earth need is positive reinforcement
not occupation. But when our most powerful leaders are corrupt
instead of statesmen and greed and manipulation rule the day
I wonder if subjugation and reactionary wars of revolution will ever
be overcome as a way of political interaction on the large scale. And
then there's this "end times" business. And Hubbert's Peak. And
overpopulation. And the extinction of biological diversity.
And climate change. And AIDS. Have I left out something?

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I endure this depression, this ominous feeling that no matter what
we do politically the struggle to maintain their status quo by
Americans and world wide resistance to this will lead to a
fulfillment of predictions of global catastrophe. I've gotten
to point where I'm spending my fortune feeding wild
animals.

Is there any hopeful note?

-T




At 2:27 PM -0400 07/22/2003, Boris Stremlin wrote:
> Hardhitting editorial from AsiaTimes, and it is particularly germane to
> what has been discussed here of late.  Iraq has become a trap for the US,
> because turning tail is not an option (especially for the neocons).  As a
> result, the likelihood of future war increases, precisely because of the
> weakness of the US position.  What are the alternatives?  What has been
> discussed by no one as yet, as far as I know, is the likelihood of a UN
> resolution which will replace US troops with international peacekeepers,
> and further, the likelihood that such an outcome will be successful in
> stabilizing the situation.  Perhaps if Iraqis are granted self-government
> now, and peacekeepers are introduced into sensitive and border areas, the
> mess precipitated by Bush can be contained and gradually cleaned up.
> Failing that, I don't see much of a future for a UN-administered
> operation, either.
>
> --
> Boris Stremlin
> bstremli@binghamton.edu
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 00:01:35 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Boris Stremlin <bstremlin@yahoo.com>
> To: bstremli@binghamton.edu
> Subject: The consequences of invasion
>
> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG22Ak05.html
>
> Jul 22, 2003
>
> Middle East
> COMMENTARY
> The consequences of invasion
> Asia Times Online
>
> Even given that there may have been considerable
> justification for removing Saddam Hussein from power
> in Iraq because he was a notorious despot and a
> vicious murderer, it is probably time to step back and
> attempt to take a clear look at the strategic
> implications of what America has got itself into with
> its invasion of Iraq.
>
> Pro and anti-Bush partisans in the United States are
> making it increasingly hard to break through the
> static. But it is imperative that before it is too
> late, American policymakers, both in the
> administration and the Congress, put aside their
> partisan squabbling to examine the possibility that
> the US is trapped as it was trapped in Vietnam 30
> years ago, or as the Russians are today in Chechnya.
>
> If the US and its only effective ally, the United
> Kingdom, are indeed trapped, the strategic
> implications are even worse than they were in
> Indochina. Vietnam was surrounded by stable client
> states that were going to survive in America's orbit
> whether Vietnam fell or not. That is not true in the
> Middle East.
>
> It doesn't matter at this point whether 16 words in
> the president's State of the Union speech in January
> referring to Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from
> Niger were false or not. It doesn't matter if the
> premises enunciated by the president and his handlers
> for getting into Iraq were right or wrong, or if the
> public was deceived. The cold fact is that 150,000
> troops are there now. Even if Bush's war turns to
> folly and the voters defenestrate him a year and a
> half hence along with his handlers, Secretary of
> Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick
> Cheney, the next administration, Democrat or
> Republican, is going to have to decide what to do.
> There are no options, easy or otherwise.
>
> The geopolitical reality and the unpalatable fact is
> that the Bush administration has put the US into a
> desperate position where it cannot get out of Iraq
> without a victory, no matter how bloody or how long it
> takes. It has to find Saddam and his sons and either
> kill them or capture them. It cannot, as Senator
> Richard Russell of Georgia advocated during Vietnam,
> declare victory and get out. Departure, from the
> standpoint of global stability, is unthinkable. The
> American people would have to pay for that in blood
> and treasure.
>
> That is because unlike Vietnam, Iraq is at the heart
> of the most volatile region in the world today.
> Israel, an American client state, is completely
> surrounded by countries that would destroy it if given
> the opportunity - and a precipitous American departure
> from Iraq would do nothing but encourage Israel's
> enemies. Worse, without the military and economic
> might of the US to prop them up, the Middle East is
> rife with unstable governments likely to fall with the
> enthusiastic assistance of al-Qaeda and its Messianic
> leader, Osama bin Laden.
>
> Whether we like it or not, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait,
> Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia
> possess 45 percent of the world's oil reserves. Iraq
> and Iran control probably another 20 percent. For
> Japan, the US and the eurozone, access to those
> petroleum reserves is vital. Without it, their
> economies would come to a stop. This was clearly a war
> begun for ideology and not for oil. But an American
> departure from the Middle East would make it all about
> oil. The protesters who say it is all about oil today
> would find to their tears that they are depressingly
> right.
>
> In a country where every convoy is prey to a grenade
> rolled under a truck, a land mine, a mortar round, a
> B40 rocket or a sniper's bullet, and every guard post
> is vulnerable, it appears that casualties cannot be
> minimized. They will probably increase, especially if
> nervous, angry GIs begin to retaliate against the
> population at large, as they did too often in Vietnam,
> with tragic consequences.
>
> The trap that closed in Vietnam led to a 25-year
> period during which America's military was essentially
> traumatized about going to war. The Vietnam debacle
> led to the imminently sensible Powell Doctrine, named
> for Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State. Under
> this, war is only to be undertaken as a last resort,
> only when there is a clear risk to America's national
> security, and to be delivered with overwhelming force.
> Finally, and most important, a clear exit strategy is
> essential.
>
> Powell began to formulate his doctrine as a platoon
> commander in Vietnam, and he refined it all the way up
> the ranks until he became the chairman of the US Joint
> Chiefs of Staff. He applied it in the 1991 Gulf War,
> and again in Kosovo, where he was extremely reluctant
> to involve the US. But tragically he appears to have
> either repudiated the doctrine or he was overruled by
> Cheney and Rumsfeld, who clearly did not think they
> needed an exit strategy from Iraq, despite the
> cautious advice of their generals.
>
> They were wrong.
>
> If the US military were to pull out at this point,
> leaving Saddam alive, he would probably be back in
> power in Iraq in a matter of weeks and the jubilant
> citizens of Iraq who welcomed the fall of his statue
> would be slaughtered. The survival of an unknown
> number of America's other client states - Bahrain,
> Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan -
> could no longer be guaranteed. They would be under
> threat not only from Iraq but the jihadis led by bin
> Laden. Israel would have to be heavily fortified or
> evacuated to North Dakota.
>
> Contrary to belief in much of the world today, the US
> did not cut and run in Vietnam. The US lost 57,000
> dead from combat and noncombat causes in Vietnam, with
> another 153,303 wounded. From the time the first
> regular troops arrived aboard the jeep carrier USNS
> Core in 1961, US troops fought there for 11 years.
>
> In the end, they did it without the backing of the
> American public, which long since had soured on a war
> seemingly without a long-range or even immediate
> strategic goal and without the prospect of victory in
> sight. The American military ultimately was corrupted
> and demoralized by the war, which led to the most
> traumatized generation since America's Civil War.
>
> The parallels between Vietnam are real enough. But the
> parallels between Iraq and the Russian experience in
> Chechnya are even more disturbing, where destruction
> has been so total that the state, the economy and even
> Chechnya's population are virtually moribund,
> exhausted, corrupted and bathed in blood. Both the
> Chechen rebels, propped up by international jihadis,
> and the Russians themselves are locked in a death grip
> that apparently cannot be broken. If the war on the
> ground in Iraq starts to look like this, the Americans
> are in for serious trouble.
>
> It remains a question when and if the American public
> will again get fed up with the casualties among its
> fighting men and women. For seven and a half years,
> during its most intense involvement in Vietnam, the
> Americans averaged 528 combat troops killed per month.
> That is about 17 per day.
>
> So the policy question that Democrats, Republicans,
> anti-war and pro-war activists and ordinary voters
> have to ask is this: Before this becomes a quagmire,
> what is the US going to do? Because abandonment is
> unthinkable from a Western geopolitical standpoint, it
> is probably best for the Bush administration to
> swallow its considerable pride and ask for help from
> as wide a spectrum as possible of the United Nations,
> which has considerable experience in nation building
> and peacekeeping, however ineptly it does it. That
> will be a hard thing for Rumsfeld, Cheney and Paul
> Wolfowitz to do.
>
> Already President George W Bush's popularity is
> falling. After just three months, 40 percent of the
> American people think there was not sufficient
> justification to go to war. What will happen if, as
> the American military says, it takes four to six years
> to pacify the country?
>
> Today, the coalition forces are averaging roughly one
> GI killed per day. Sixteen to go.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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