Once again, the Bush Administration has lied to its citizens. In this case, the lie has to do with getting out of Iraq. Along with the lying, abject confusion about how to deal with the Iraqi insurgency reigns in Washington, Baghdad and all other Army Command posts in between.
In this cursory examination, it is my intention to deal with perhaps only two instances where the Administration and the American military have lied to all of us.
After all the lies about weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s), the Administration offered some subsequent lies to justify the war in Iraq. It was to bring democracy to Iraq. Soon it was claimed that after democracy caught on in Iraq, all the other kingdoms and dictators in the Mideast would fall like dominoes. There would be no need to conquer Syria and Iran, which Bush called evil, because they would be at the bottom of the Middle Eastern stack of dominoes. This would be a precursor to the return of the ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to those two benighted countries.
The domino theory has long since been forgotten by the Bush Administration and the military movers and shakers in Washington. In its place we now have an ambitious program to train Iraqis to kill other Iraqis and assorted Arabs. At some mystical point, the Americans will pronounce the Iraqis a superior fighting force. At that point, we will be liberated from the Enduring Freedom campaign in Iraq. When our military says the Iraqis are ready to die to keep the deadly unpleasantness OVER THERE AND NOT OVER HERE, the American military will say that the Iraqis can STAND UP and our forces can STAND DOWN and presumably come home.
Does any rational person believe this tripe? Maybe Chaney and Bush or Rumsfeld may believe that garbage, but they are not rational men. They are nothing more than evil ideologues.
You may recall my essay about an Arab Army being an oxymoron. Please remember, that GI’s such as myself reached this conclusion as far back as 1943 in North Africa where we called them “hollow armies.” In the 60 some years since that time, Arab armies think that swinging their arms up to shoulder level during close order drill makes them an effective fighting force. They are still a hollow army and no amount of American training will cause them to be anything but an oxymoron.
Now look at this. We are schooling the Iraqis in American military ways. We have taught them how to kick down a door and terrorize the inhabitants of the house without a front door. Yet the Iraqis have not been issued the armament that our forces carry. They don’t have trucks or tanks. Few of them have bulletproof vests. Obviously, they have not been given helicopters or other machines of war. Yet somehow, they are supposed to kill other Arabs and keep the war over there.
An Iraqi general interviewed by Reuters last week pointed out that until the Iraqi Army is given the tools of war, they will never be a fighting force. Until we give them all the tools of war, the insurgents will prevail. Knowing this, it is absolutely likely that the Iraqis will not enter a fight they know they will lose. Under these circumstances, desertion will become a major problem particularly when the insurgents threaten to kill the families of the Iraqi soldiers.
The basic fact is that training Iraqi soldiers is a deadly joke. American military officials will not equip the Iraqis with the powerful weapons we use because it is quite likely that those weapons will be used against us or be used in a sectarian civil war.
Training the Iraqis so we can Stand Down as They Stand Up is a myth of major proportions. Call it what you will, but it becomes clear that we will be in Iraq in great numbers for years to come. And our soldiers will continue to die for Bush’s blunder.
At this moment, the American military is building four enormous bases in Iraq. Each one is designed to house at least 18,000 troops. The soldiers will be stationed there so that when the alleged Iraqi Army has a problem, the American troops will go to rescue them. Construction of these bases is an open secret in Washington, but there has been no official recognition of it by the Bush Administration.
Arithmetic tells us that four permanent bases housing 18,000 soldiers each means that we will have at least 72,000 soldiers in ready combat positions. A question appears in order here. If we have at least 72,000 troops in permanent bases throughout Iraq, what does this say about our confidence in the Iraqi Army to carry the fight to the insurgents? That is point one.
Point two has to do with our standing down. The generals in Washington now concede that we will have 100,000 troops in Iraq for the next several years. Presumably, the 100,000 figure embraces the troops in the four permanent bases. The Army is having trouble finding new recruits which means that our soldiers will do four of five or eight tours of duty in Iraq. Now may it be asked, does it sound like our standing down while the oxymoron army stands up? Not really.
While all this is happening in Iraq, it must be borne in mind that
Osama Bin Laden has not been apprehended. Our troops are in Iraq which leaves the 50 states of the U.S. largely undefended. What would our peerless leaders do if Osama elected to do another 9/11 while our troops are otherwise engaged?
The world is not a peaceful place. While our army is in a morass in Iraq, what should we do if North Korea decides to nuke Japan or South Korea? What should be our posture if China tries to invade Taiwan? Our Army is on the other side of the globe and can do not much at all. Our bike riding president might be tempted to loose our nuclear arsenal against such incursions because our Army is otherwise engaged.
Further, if our army was unengaged in Iraq, it could be used to help in the Darfur region of Sudan or in the Robert Magabe onslaught against his own people in Zimbabwe. But again, our hands are tied. What would we do if Russia acted up? Perhaps we could send John Bolton to Moscow to scare them with his mustache.
Finally, we come to a question that every American ought to be asking. We know that our government and our military have lied to us. There is one more question having to do with our training Iraqis to keep the fighting over there rather than over here.
Does any rational person, American or otherwise, believe that after we have trained the Iraqi Army to keep the war over there, that the Iraqis
will stay loyal to a foreign, Christian government, namely American, for any period of time? Does any rational person believe that the Iraqis will give their long term allegiance to us and not to their own self interests?
The answer is obvious. As we retreat to the U.S. or to our Halliburton constructed bases in Iraq, the Iraqis will pursue their own self interests. In all history, there has never been a case of this sort where an Islamic Arab country will be asked to defend the interests of a Christian country 5,000 miles away. It just won’t happen – now or ever.
And so you see when the Bush Administration says it is only a matter of time before all is peaceful and happy in Iraq, they are lying to you. And the insurgency being in its final throes – that is just one more enormous lie.
E. E. CARR
August 28, 2005
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Yep, pretty much. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27838034