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SDR
millennium club
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 1712
Location: San Francisco
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 Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 9:29 pm Post subject: No exit plan |
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San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 2007
WHY THERE WAS NO EXIT PLAN
By Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg
"There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for l0, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq."
Former President Jimmy Carter, Feb 3, 2006
For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.
There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, "One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave."
The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called "national security." In order to secure favorable access to Iraq's vast reserves oflight crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.
A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq's oil to western powers for 30 years. There is major opposition to the proposed law within Iraq, especially among the country's five trade union federations that represent hundreds of thousands of oil workers. The United States is working hard to surmount this opposition by appealing directly to the al-Maliki government in Iraq.
The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as vice president Cheney's energy task force) that was comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task force -- the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of "executive privilege" -- recommended that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern countries "to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment." As Antonio Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International wrote last month in the New York Times, "One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve."
The people of the United States have indicated, in the national election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer support the Bush administration's war. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that top administration officials, including the vice president, "cherry-picked" and distorted intelligence in order to sell a "pre-emptive" war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into "black-ops" programs being run out of Cheney's office (a stunning redux of Iran-Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the patience and credulity of the American people.
Another betrayal is the "contracting out" of "war-related activities" to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's previous employer, calls itself an "energy services company" but has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies realized that "OIL" might not be the best handle for this venture). Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction at the national embarrassment known as "Gitmo," and most recently, from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, nc.
Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for some (or it wouldn't go on).
The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world's nations combined, continues skyward, even without all the "supplementals" passed regularly by Congress to fight the "war on terror."
The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it's not possible to be both.
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Lewis Seiler is president of Voice of the Environment. Dan Hamburg, a former U.S. representative, is executive director. |
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Ed Ziomek
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 498
Location: Stamford, Connecticut
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| Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:04 pm Post subject: No exit plan. No victory plan, and no money either! |
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SDR...wonderful article.
But let us think one more thousandth time, about the amazing strength and courage of our troops, who are serving their 3rd, 4th tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then having their tours extended ANOTHER 3 months.
Breaking point? Snapping point!
We don't have an exit plan, and we presented to our troops 47 victory plans, many of which they accomplished, with contradictory results on the strategic, political, public relations side....
Victory Plan Benchmarks...
Defeat the Bathists/Iraqi Army/Republican Guard. Mission Accomplished, but insurgency grew among the "losers".
End of Saddam. Mission accomplished. Found them, tried them, Hung them, killed them, fine.
Regime Change. Mission accomplished, but was replaced with weak, fractured, secular leaning shell of a government; Bad Government replaced with Civil War.
Find/Remove WMDs. Mission accomplished (couldn't find them now, fine)...but with rise of Iranian -Shiia nuclear threat
Freedom and Democracy offerred... Mission accomplished, they still kill each other, WITH an elected President/Prime Minister, up to 300,000-500,000 now dead
Established a Constitution in Iraq, Mission accomplished, but might be worthless politically
Change the Middle East... Oh yes, change has occurred, diminishing America's prestige in the world.
So there has been no exit plan, no finite victory plan that we stuck to, over a time span longer than World War 2, and America is now asked to have patience!?
America has run out of "patience time", on all sides of the political fence.
I think this surge business will only slow down America's exit, long enough for Bush and crew to wash their hands of the "complete failure" stigma.
from the Wall Stree Journal...Iraq's Child Survival Rate falls to Global Low
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117859459453795495.html?mod=hpp_us_at_glance_health
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Ed Ziomek |
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