If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran
The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the first year of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope, Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat"—and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Sanchez sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time."
More evidence that the war is lost arrived on June 4 with headlines reporting: "U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday." After five years of war, the United States controls one-third of one city, and nothing else.
A host of U.S. commanding generals have said that the Iraq war is destroying the U.S. military. A year ago, Colin Powell said that the U.S. Army is "about broken." Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush has "piecemealed our force to death." Gen. Barry McCafrey testified to the U.S. Senate that "the Army will unravel."
Col. Andy Bacevich, America's foremost writer on military affairs, documents in the current issue of The American Conservative that Bush's insane war has depleted and exhausted the U.S. Army and Marine Corps:
"Only a third of the regular Army's brigades qualify as combat-ready. In the reserve components, none meet that standard. When the last of the units reaches Baghdad as part of the president's strategy of escalation, the United States will be left without a ready-to-deploy land force reserve.
"The stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Army's lifeblood. Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The service is currently short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape. There, the shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are bailing out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus to newly promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional three years. Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer and fewer want in: ROTC scholarships go unfilled for a lack of qualified applicants."
Bush has taken every desperate measure. Enlistment ages have been pushed up from 35 to 42. The percentage of high school dropouts and the number of recruits scoring at the bottom end of tests have spiked. The U.S. military is forced to recruit among drug users and convicted criminals. Bacevich reports that wavers "issued to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent." Combat tours have been extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being deployed again and again.
There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that "some $212 billion worth has been destroyed, damaged or just plain worn out." What remains is in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Under these circumstances, "staying the course" means total defeat.
Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a "cakewalk war" that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost. But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice President Dick Cheney is spearheading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz is the plan's leading propagandist, with his numerous pleas published in The Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that Islam must be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide for the Muslim people.
The neocons think that by bombing Iran the United States will provoke Iran to arm the Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with surface-to-air missiles and unleash the militias against U.S. troops. These weapons would neutralize U.S. tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the U.S. military edge, leaving divided and isolated U.S. forces subject to being cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to "save the troops" by nuking Iran.
Five years of unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's recent military defeat in Lebanon have convinced the neocons that America and Israel cannot establish hegemony over the Middle East with conventional forces alone. The neocons have changed U.S. war doctrine, which now permits the United States to pre-emptively strike with nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are forever heard asking, "What's the use of having nuclear weapons if you can't use them?"
Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the U.S. government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail against nuclear weapons.
Many U.S. military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the failure that their delusion has wrought.
The American electorate decided last November that they must do something about the failed war and gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable. If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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This wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq are immoral by the just war standard, are unlawful by the Constitution of the United States and are and have been unwinnable because we are fighting an opponent using the tactics of fourth generation warfare with the tactics of third and sometimes even second generation warfare.
It is obvious that the use of nuclear weapons is on the table from Cheney right through the current crop of Republican candidates with one exception and among the Democratic candidates as well. I am not sure that ending the Bush administration in 2008 will diminish the threat of the use of nuclear weapons. I do believe that in all likelihood such a nuclear strike will come on Bush's watch. I am appalled to think; yet, I am fairly sure that it is true, that there will be military officers willing to fly the planes and/or fire the rockets carrying those warheads. It would be nice to be able to believe that we had officers who realized that their oath is to defend the Constitution and not to carry out immoral and unlawful orders. Would that they had the moral courage of the SS officer in charge of a Russian prison camp in Austria. A Russian friend of mine who survived the camp told me that in the early morning of the late spring of 1945, they heard a shot. They then noticed that their SS guards had melted away and soon Americans were seen coming up the road. They were liberated. My friend was later to learn that the SS officer in charge of the camp had received orders to liquidate all of the prisoners; rather than give the order and carry it out, he shot himself. Perhaps if that SS officer had come to that moral understanding earlier in his career, he and Germany would have been better off. There is also the story of the Volksarmee officer whose unit was ordered to the Berlin wall in 1989. Had he carried out that order, things at the Branderburg Gate might have been very different that night. He refused to carry out that order, however, and his unit followed his example and not the orders from the SED. Moral courage! Do we Americans, today, have men in uniform with that moral courage? One does not ask them to shoot themselves. One merely asks them to defend the Constitution and not to carry out immoral, illegal and America-damning orders.
We should all do our part to try and correct the Mistakes of the past few regimes.
"Who is Ron Paul?" should be on everyone's mind right now.
I hope that PCR is a bit overheated in this post.
It is true that Podhoretz, Muravchick, and the dreadful Caroline Glick are agitating for war with Iran, a task facilitated by the frenzied rhetoric emanating from some circles in Teheran. It is also true that a conventional attack on Iran would be a disaster and a crime, let alone an attack involving a first use of nuclear weapons.
Whether there is a conscious desire to create a Dienbienphu in Iraq to justify the use of nukes (wisely vetoed by Eisenhower in the case of Dienbienphu) is another matter.
It is scary ithat the Democrats, not least Barack Obama, are pandering to the anti-Iran agitation emanating, among other places, from AIPAC. If anything, fearful of casualties, they are more willing than Bush to use air power, and in order to show the cojones the public doubts they possess, seem to be all for intervention--just not in Iraq, which they can hang on Bush.
Darfur, anyone?
William Lind was right to call Iraq the American version of the Athenian Syracuse Expedition.
Grumpy Old Man,
Darfur is for the Democrats. That will be their war, although they'll keep the others going to. Unlike the Republicans, I foresee the Democrats calling for and getting conscription. They seem to have a knack for it.
How do you explain Bush's support for creation of two muslim countries in the heart in Europe, Bosnia and Kosovo if the neocons are that anti-muslim?
That is simple....
"There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th-century idea, and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states."
-General Wesley Clark
The false God of racial egalitarianism and forced integration trumped their fear of Islam temporarily...
This piece bears the usual hallmarks of Mr Roberts' writings on this subject: excellent dissection of the hijacking of US foreign policy by neocon Israeli loyalists; complete blindness to the part played in Iraq's continuing disaster and escalating death toll by home-grown terrorists, jihadists, and opportunist criminals; and an undermining of his otherwise solid thesis by a stultifying display of extreme Bush-Cheney hatred, unrestrained to the point of paranoia ("If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history." Really? More reviled than Mao or Stalin, with the 100 million+ innocents that that pair of materialist beasts slaughtered between them? With the greatest respect to Mr Roberts: what nonsense).
My position is that the US should never have gotten involved in Iraq for supposedly humanitarian or covertly pro-Israeli reasons (which is not to say that there were not other motives for involvement); but now that it is as deeply embroiled in that country's turmoil as it is - and given its share of the responsibility for generating that turmoil - it cannot, without a complete loss of national honour, simply cut and run as many paleocons want.
Contrary to Mr Roberts' claim, the US is perfectly capable of dealing with the terrorist insurgency through conventional means. The root of its failure to do so to date has been a lack of will to take the action necessary to victory (and wherever the will to victory is lacking military engagement of any kind is folly). If the US had the will to win a conventional war all of the following actions would have been taken in Iraq, without apology: any mosque used by terrorists to fire on American troops would have been subjected to whatever firepower was necessary to kill the terrorists, even if it meant reducing the mosque to rubble (instead US commanders have tried to ingratiate themselves with the muslim world by repeatedly announcing that their 'strategy' is, as far as they can, NOT to fire on mosques being used as operational bases by the terrorists); every Iraqi heading a private militia, like al-Sadr, and every Iraqi (especially mullahs) urging attacks on US troops would have been immediately killed; Sunni muslims would have been subject to benevolent ethnic cleansing and removed from predominantly Shia and Kurdish parts of Iraq and concentrated in Sunni Arab districts; Iraq would have been partitioned and the oil-less Sunni region would have been cut loose to rot in poverty and Koranic piety. No need for nukes at all on this scenario, which it is not too late to bring into play.
The real indictment against Bush-Cheney is that they have embarked on war only to show a lack of will for conducting it in a way that will lead to victory: kill your enemies wherever you find them.
And, in passing, the Haliburton factor that is so popular with the anti-war movement has always struck me as the only good reason for military action in Iraq, or any other part of the Middle East: ensuring the security and availability of the oil that Western economies depend on.
I'd call General Clark's attitude hubris, but that would be making a mole hill out of a mountain. Well, at least he doesn't fail to leak the truth : that the countries of Europe haven't a shred of sovereignty.
Thanks, General!
Contrary to Mr Roberts’ claim, the US is perfectly capable of dealing with the terrorist insurgency through conventional means.
Not if the insurgents are fighting a 4GW, and if conventional = 2GW.
Has Paul Craig Roberts considered running for office-maybe President-in the Constitution Party??
"And, in passing, the Haliburton factor that is so popular with the anti-war movement has always struck me as the only good reason for military action in Iraq, or any other part of the Middle East: ensuring the security and availability of the oil that Western economies depend on."
We ahve plenty of oil in ALaska, the Ca oceans, etc-too bad the GOP is going green and not 1 restrictions put into place by the Boogie Man of the 90's (Clinton) has be struck down.
Of course, if regulation s and taxes were not so crippling, maybe the next Watson or Graham Bell would emerge to give us a alternative source-then again, that would allow freedom in the peoples hands, not the Govt and their corporate allies.
"5robert m. peters
Grumpy Old Man,
Darfur is for the Democrats. That will be their war, although they’ll keep the others going to. Unlike the Republicans, I foresee the Democrats calling for and getting conscription. They seem to have a knack for it."
The Republicans tried 2x-at least-while controlling Congress/White House, one was during the 1st or 2nd 2004 presidential "debate".
The Military-industrial complex is still more GOP then Dem, though that -too-is blurring.
on 09 Jun 2007 at 1:22 pm2Spectacles
We should all do our part to try and correct the Mistakes of the past few regimes.
“Who is Ron Paul?” should be on everyone’s mind right now
_TRUE, TRUE!!
and constitution party