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Success in Iraq? Try Listening to the Troops
President Bush spent Labor Day weekend in Iraq trying to drum up support for his latest war funding effort -- a $50 billion demand to Congress, which would bring the total outlay on the war in Iraq to about $200 billion this year (or almost $4 billion a week).
Speaking in Iraq's volatile Anbar province, Bush said America is now seeing "success" in Iraq and that he will only "draw down" his surge "if the kind of success we're now seeing continues."
Success in Iraq?
I spent parts of three years reporting in Iraq and have been reporting on the stories of American veterans since my return. Most of the troops I speak to believe the war is already lost.
Take Specialist Patrick Resta. The South Carolina served a year in Baqouba, near the Iranian border. Two days before he left Iraq he asked one of his buddies to a take a photo of him with a group of Iraqi children.
"I wasn't looking at what the children were doing along side of me and he hands the camera back to me and I see that I'm surrounded by children who are between eight- and 10-years-old. One of them is holding up a Hitler salute and on the other side of me one of the children is holding up a local newspaper with the Abu Ghraib torture photos on the front cover," Resta told me.
"So that was the impression that I left Iraq with -- that we had radicalized a whole generation of Iraqis to hate this country and hate Americans."
Or consider the example of Specialist Joshua Casteel, who arrived as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib after the prisoner abuse scandal broke and found almost all the detainees were innocent.
"I was constantly being asked, tell me about freedom, about democracy, why am I being held here, I want answers," Casteel told me. "And the detainees were the ones wanting answers. But that was our job. We were supposed to be finding answers to our questions."
(Casteel's observations are backed up by the International Red Cross, which monitors prisoners in U.S. custody, estimates 70 to 90 percent of those arrested were plucked off the street by mistake).
With experiences like these it's no wonder that an overwhelming number of American soldiers and Marines want the war to end. In February 2006, pollster John Zogby conducted a survey of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq. Seventy-two percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."
After more than four years of war, most American soldiers know the same things about Iraq that the American people do: that the invasion of Iraq was based on lies, that there was no link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks and that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
"That was my first slap in the face and everybody already knew there were no weapons," Lance Corporal Jeff Key told me, explaining how he came to oppose the war after serving in Iraq. "That was not news that got in to us. By the time it was there -- they'll spill anything to these young people in the military. The last thing that Bush Co. and his crowd wants is for the truth to get out of Iraq or Iraq or into Iraq. That's why they're stopping military people from blogging and that's why they don't want soldiers in Iraq to know that there are Iraq war veterans here in this country that are speaking out against this war."
I'm sure these veterans would love to share their stories with President Bush -- to give him a piece of their mind. In the meantime, I've posted them, along with other true, first-person accounts of the war, on-line at warcomeshome.org. Perhaps members of Congress will take a listen, and decide that funding the war in Iraq isn't such a smart idea anymore.
Aaron Glantz is an award-winning journalist who reported from Iraq over the first three years of the war, and is the author of the best-selling book, How America Lost Iraq.
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In the last few weeks the Brits have lost 13 soldiers dead in Iraq not much eh? Based on the numbers they have now in Iraq against the US forces of 170,000 that is the same as losing 447 US troops in the same period. So what is all this for? A politicians ego trip, a hive off of millions of dollars for their friends? Sure the troops have a legitimate gripe it's time that they spoke up and said enough is enough. Or... tell these scumbags in Washington and London to get over to Baghdad and lead from there. If that happened this so called war would be over in a week.
Could that be one of the reasons they lengthened the stays in Iraq, so the soldiers wouldn't come home and find out the truth as soon?
It saddens me that you consider the soldiers of which you speak to have a perspective that is comprehensive. They are very young, inexperienced, and do not receive training on strategic assessment and planning.
They are foot soldiers, who have a microscopic perspective of the situation.
Likewise, there are those who speak from a much loftier perspective. Their perspective is macroscopic and reflect general assessments after a few days in country, yet without engaging the native population in other than photo opportunities. Their perspective is no more accurate and as naive and myopic as that of the foot soldier. One without the other offers poor assessment of the truth, and together they offer a generalized assessment at best. Without a combination of macro and micro perspectives, any assessment and analysis cannot be authoritative. Let's get qualified people (who know how to assess qualitative information quantitatively) simultaneously to view the perspectives, one perspective at a time. When that occurs, a scholarly and meaningful assessment can occur. I haven't seen that done yet.
Doc, did you read Thomas E. Rook's book "FIASCO." It sure sounds like you have. If you haven't then give it a read. You'll see that your analysis is absolutely spot on, absolutely spot on.
Long time ago I read "It Can't Happen Here". I remember thinking I hoped it wouldn't be in my lifetime. It's already happened for an awfully lot of people. And it was so easy. Malicious idiots, naive idiots, sociopath advisors in government roles. Any of this sound familiar?
It's perverse beyond imagining, but history may show that insurgents in Iraq inadvertently end up being "freedom-fighters" for democracy in the US by breaking the spell Dubya and the neo-cons were holding over our country.
If that Freedom destroyer Reagan had kept with the alternative energy policies made by Carter we may be well on our way to getting off oil. Instead Reagan as one of his first acts had the solar panels ripped from the White House.
Regan will be remembered as the one who began the downward slide of American into a stupid, superstitious, country that has no Freedom ,justice or scientific intelligence.
His idolization shows how many Americans believe what they are told and do not check out what actually happened.
Very astute observation drblack. Very astute indeed. Keep at it.
The other sad part about this war is that is being waged on BORROWED MONEY, much of which is borrowed from a so-called "enemy" of the US, China. Meanwhile our trade deficit with them continues to explode.
And all of the mumbo-jumbo about "threats" from countries like Iran, N Korea, etc. is just that, mumbo-jumbo meant to scare the voters and keep the faithful in line. The Bush neo-cons need a boogey man to keep to scare Americans into tolerating the massive funding of "defense" programs, such as new bombers we dont need, "missile defense" systems that dont work and wars we dont need to fight. If a member of Congress has the integrity or even the curiosity to question this, they are labeled as "unpatriotic" and "not supporting our troops" by the same liars that got us into Iraq in the first place.
The propaganda has already started by this administration and their supporters to cherry pick and modify facts on the current situation in Iraq to try and mislead enough voters to win the next election. And if you look closely to what is happening in Congress and what these people are saying, they are also doing everything they can to make the current Congress (ie Democrats) look ineffectual and only interested about partisan politics. While I am certainly not a fan of the current leadership and am certainly not satisfied with their inaction, especially on Iraq, I resent the attempts by the right wing neocons to again steal another election.
The saddest part about this is the most precious resource this contry has, its patriots, who put their lives on the line for this country continue being abused by the same people who claim they are the only ones who support them in the first place.
Question - is this a joke or real ( tried googling info with no luck so suppose its sarcasm but already feel reading the daily news is like reading the Onion )-opines wrote "The plan calls for giving every new enlistee 10 shares of Exxon stock and 10 shares in Halliburton stock.
They would get an additional 5 shares in each for every year spent in Iraq.
The proponents of this plan point out that it worked for Congressional members (although in their case it was 1,000 shares of each).
I'd just like to point out on that photo- that child is NOT giving a "Hitler salute". He looks like he wants out of the photo and the kid beside him is holding him back.
And how does anyone know what that newspaper says? You can't see it.
I'm sorry, this is anti-war propaganda. It's no better than what the republicans are dishing out in favor of the war.
Thanx for your observation Anne. Keep at it. This stuff needs to be balanced.
My understanding of the original blog is that the serviceman is being quoted explaining what happened during the photo. Obviously the photo as shown on the web-site is not of good enough quality to read the print on the newspaper the child is holding up. It is probably not in English, even if one could make out the writing. As for the child giving a "seig heil," it looks like a hitler salute to me.
One is always free to assume the writer of the blog is lying, but given a history of recent events, I am more inclined to believe it might be true, as described.
Like the Beatle song-- "He's a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land, making all his no where plan for nobody." After all the Bush family admires Hitler. Grandaddy's supported him and sold bonds for him. The current King (opps) President Bush said it would be a great job if it were a dictatorship and he was the dictator. Well he got his wish, now maybe he should also discover what happens to dictators in the end --- Et To Brutis---
There is ONE TRUE WAY to stop the war- simple really!
Just have the Dems pass a bill that says that each of our American Troops will be paid the same amount of equivalent salary that the Bush Blackwater mercenary thugs get paid by the $$$billions that BUSH/CHENEY stole from our treasury to keep their OIL PROFITS FLOWING....
That should call the war to an abrupt halt- The Reprostituted Party would be less several 'old angry white elitist tyrants' from all the heart attacks that would happen....
Hey, what can we say, "BUSHIT HAPPENS!"
This war was a lost cause the first day of "Shock and Awe." The American press sold the American people on a war founded in lies, backed by the rich and guided by the most incompetent and corrupt administration in US history; a formula for disaster. Now it's time to stop the bleeding. The Democratic Congress should avoid trying to manage a new military strategy there and rather, concentrate all of their legislative energies on creating new programs to underwrite the financial cost of this vicious Cheney/bush war. Namely, they should put forth bills in the House and Senate to create an Iraq War Tax to be imposed exclusively on America's richest people. The bill to the rich should begin from March 2003 and extend until this stupid war is over. That one act will do more than any singular action to hasten the resolution of this foreign policy fiasco.
Veterans can't protest after their term of service.
A couple of Marines took all the USMC insignia off their dress uniforms. They put their then unoffcial uniforms on and headed to a protest.
They were arrested for protesting in a military uniform.
All the guys and gals who buy faux military garb from Old Navy and the Gap should be very careful. If it looks like a military uniform, off to jail you go.
Gotta love freedom and democracy. I'm still waiting for Bush to bring freedom and democracy to the United States. Hey, that sounds like a $1,000,000,000 no-bid contract for KBR.
Wow. How conVEEEEEEENient.
Can you provide documentation for that please?
If what you say is true, then why is it not being reported by the main-stream media?
The American people, and the people of the world, do not for the most part read the HuffPost.
When what you are saying, Mr. Glantz, is reported in the MSM, it has a much better chance of affecting public opinion, and then of affecting voting patterns.
Thank you -- these soldiers are the ones who should be addressing Congress . . . our Congressmen have failed them just as they have failed the American people and the Iraqi people by showing no backbone when confronted by the heinous lies and corruption of the bush administration . . .
It will take 60 votes in the Senate to force Bush to end his war.
The current make up of the Senate:
49 Democrats
49 Republicans
2 Independents
One of the Independents is Lieberman, who always sides with Bush on the war.
So, although the Democrats have a very slim majority, they do not have the 60 votes they need to force the commander-in-chief to end his obsession with his war.
60 votes might force the removal of U.S. forces from the war, but it will not end the war. Neither did the decision of the President start the war. The war existed already. The U.S. just stopped ignoring it. Whether our participation was timely or effective is debatable, but ignoring the existing war of ideologies was not an option. A change of executive branch will not change it.
Having lived in the Middle East, I knew the seconds that I heard the troops were kicking in doors of peoples homes at 3am that we were creating 1 or 2 generations of people who would hate and fight the US.
Invading Iraq has done more to increase the terror in the world than almost anything else Bush could have done.
Every day I am amazed at how this was allowed to happen, and how it has been allowed to continue.
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Posted September 6, 2007 | 03:35 PM (EST)