Bring 'em Home Now

by **isachar** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:15 am

Cut and Run? You Bet. By Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, May/June 2006 Why America must get out of Iraq now. Withdraw immediately or stay the present course? That is the key question about the war in Iraq today. American public opinion is now decidedly against the war. From liberal New England, where citizens pass town-hall resolutions calling for withdrawal, to the conservative South and West, where more than half of “red state” citizens oppose the war, Americans want out. That sentiment is understandable. The prewar dream of a liberal Iraqi democracy friendly to the United States is no longer credible. No Iraqi leader with enough power and legitimacy to control the country will be pro-American. Still, U.S. President George W. Bush says the United States must stay the course. Why? Let’s consider his administration’s most popular arguments for not leaving Iraq. If we leave, there will be a civil war. In reality, a civil war in Iraq began just weeks after U.S. forces toppled Saddam. Any close observer could see that then; today, only the blind deny it. Even President Bush, who is normally impervious to uncomfortable facts, recently admitted that Iraq has peered into the abyss of civil war. He ought to look a little closer. Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That’s civil war. Withdrawal will encourage the terrorists. True, but that is the price we are doomed to pay. Our continued occupation of Iraq also encourages the killers—precisely because our invasion made Iraq safe for them. Our occupation also left the surviving Baathists with one choice: Surrender, or ally with al Qaeda. They chose the latter. Staying the course will not change this fact. Pulling out will most likely result in Sunni groups’ turning against al Qaeda and its sympathizers, driving them out of Iraq entirely. Before U.S. forces stand down, Iraqi security forces must stand up. The problem in Iraq is not military competency; it is political consolidation. Iraq has a large officer corps with plenty of combat experience from the Iran-Iraq war. Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite militia fights well today without U.S. advisors, as do Kurdish pesh merga units. The problem is loyalty. To whom can officers and troops afford to give their loyalty? The political camps in Iraq are still shifting. So every Iraqi soldier and officer today risks choosing the wrong side. As a result, most choose to retain as much latitude as possible to switch allegiances. All the U.S. military trainers in the world cannot remove that reality. But political consolidation will. It should by now be clear that political power can only be established via Iraqi guns and civil war, not through elections or U.S. colonialism by ventriloquism. Setting a withdrawal deadline will damage the morale of U.S. troops. Hiding behind the argument of troop morale shows no willingness to accept the responsibilities of command. The truth is, most wars would stop early if soldiers had the choice of whether or not to continue. This is certainly true in Iraq, where a withdrawal is likely to raise morale among U.S. forces. A recent Zogby poll suggests that most U.S. troops would welcome an early withdrawal deadline. But the strategic question of how to extract the United States from the Iraq disaster is not a matter to be decided by soldiers. Carl von Clausewitz spoke of two kinds of courage: first, bravery in the face of mortal danger; second, the willingness to accept personal responsibility for command decisions. The former is expected of the troops. The latter must be demanded of high-level commanders, including the president. Withdrawal would undermine U.S. credibility in the world. Were the United States a middling power, this case might hold some water. But for the world’s only superpower, it’s patently phony. A rapid reversal of our present course in Iraq would improve U.S. credibility around the world. The same argument was made against withdrawal from Vietnam. It was proved wrong then and it would be proved wrong today. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who had previously expressed disdain for the United States told me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my country.” Two facts, however painful, must be recognized, or we will remain perilously confused in Iraq. First, invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda. For Iran, it avenged a grudge against Saddam for his invasion of the country in 1980. For al Qaeda, it made it easier to kill Americans. Second, the war has paralyzed the United States in the world diplomatically and strategically. Although relations with Europe show signs of marginal improvement, the trans-Atlantic alliance still may not survive the war. Only with a rapid withdrawal from Iraq will Washington regain diplomatic and military mobility. Tied down like Gulliver in the sands of Mesopotamia, we simply cannot attract the diplomatic and military cooperation necessary to win the real battle against terror. Getting out of Iraq is the precondition for any improvement. In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them. None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw now. Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.) is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University. He was director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988.

by **yesferatu** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:36 am

largest in the world...Vatican sized....not to mention permanent military bases....can, um, people like Murtha end the attempt to get a debate going on...leaving? IF they want to start a debate that might lead somewhere, begin referring to Bush as a war criminal who must pay the consequences. Murtha and others must realize this "we should leave" is meaningless. Strike at the root. Or shut up. I know that sounds like I dislike Murtha. I don't. But come on. The only debate that can mean anything with results is saying the unspeakable truths. It is why they got rid of mouthy Wellstone before any of this.

by **professorpan** » Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:28 am

That's been the plan since day 1. <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-06-09T230406Z_01_N09199214_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-CONGRESS-FUNDING.xml">today.reuters.com/news/ne...UNDING.xml</a> Iraq war bill deletes US military base prohibition <blockquote>Quote:<hr>By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans killed a provision in an Iraq war funding bill that would have put the United States on record against the permanent basing of U.S. military facilities in that country, a lawmaker and congressional aides said on Friday. The $94.5 billion emergency spending bill, which includes $65.8 billion to continue waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to be approved by Congress next week and sent to President George W. Bush for signing into law. As originally passed by the House of Representatives, the Pentagon would have been prohibited from spending any of the funds for entering into a military basing rights agreement with Iraq. A similar amendment passed by the Senate said the Pentagon could not use the next round of war funding to "establish permanent United States military bases in Iraq, or to exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq." The Bush administration has said it does not want to place any artificial timelines on a U.S. presence in Iraq and that it wants to begin withdrawing troops when Iraqi security forces are better able to protect the country. But it has not ruled out permanent bases in Iraq.<hr></blockquote> Well, isn't that special. And Maureen Farrell nailed it squarely. Make sure to read the entire Buzzflash article. <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/06/04/far06006.html">www.buzzflash.com/farrell...06006.html</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Sadly, military families who thought "Mission Accomplished" meant troops would come home paid the ultimate price. "What are we getting into here?" one sergeant asked in June, 2003. "The war is supposed to be over, but every day we hear of another soldier getting killed. Is it worth it? Saddam isn't in power anymore. The locals want us to leave. Why are we still here?" Some answered that question before the war even began. Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution flatly said "we won't be leaving," while Josh Marshall reported that the WMD excuse was just a rationale for "getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind." That agenda, as described by Bookman and Marshall, centered on creating a permanent military presence in Iraq. "Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran," Bookman wrote in Sept. 2002, well before journalists uncovered possible plans for Tehran. Others are now sounding similar alarms. "Anyone thinking we are entering the end-game better wake up," Sen. Gary Hart recently wrote. "Our neoconservative policy makers are still willing to risk the U.S. Army in a mad Middle East imperial scheme that composed the real reason for the Iraq war in the first place." Former Pentagon insider Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski also explained that the Pentagon has long been interested in "shifting and reshaping our global military footprint" into strategically advantageous Iraq. "We've built very massive mega-bases. . . These are permanent military bases in Iraq. We've done that in other places, as well, in the Middle East. . . I think that's a big part of it, shifting our footprint. . . we've built the bases, and we're not leaving Iraq," she said on C-SPAN's Q&A. Some U.S. bases are so large, in fact, that they're being likened to small American towns. Camp Anaconda, near Balad, for example, encompasses 15 square miles, and features a miniature golf course, two swimming pools, and a first-run movie theater. The base at al-Asad also boasts a movie theater and swimming pool, as well as a Subway restaurant, a coffee shop, and a Hertz rent-a-car facility. Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, which is currently under construction, reportedly boasts 21 buildings (including a food court, swimming poll and gym) and spans 104 acres, as opposed to the customary 10. "The fortress-like compound rising beside the Tigris River here will be the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future," the Associated Press reported. Though the press seems reluctant to ask whether or not the U.S. is constructing permanent military bases in Iraq ("American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words 'permanent,' 'bases,' and 'Iraq' should never be placed in the same sentence," Tom Engelhardt explained), with hundreds of "enduring" bases worldwide, it seems only logical that the US military would be drafting similar plans for Iraq. "After every US military intervention since 1990 the Pentagon has left behind clusters of new bases in areas where it never before had a foothold," Zoltan Grossman of Evergreen State College recently explained, adding that, "The only two obstacles to a geographically contiguous US sphere of influence are Iran and Syria." And with wars in Iran and Syria reportedly unofficially underway, promises of a withdrawal ring decidedly untrue.<hr></blockquote> We've only seen the opening moves.

Bring 'em Home Now

Bring 'em Home Now

Look, after the $75 million embassy amerika built in Iraq...

Permanent bases, as in "forever"

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