Senator McCain: One More Such 'Victory' and We're Ruined

Senator John McCain's insistent claims that the US is winning the war in Iraq thanks to his `surge' strategy is the military-political equivalent of the junk securities that Wall Street's shady financiers have been peddling around the globe.

Take a near worthless investment, repackage it up into a fancy security, get the rating agencies to laud it, and peddle it to the unwary.

That's exactly what McCain did last Friday night with the Iraq War, and did it with skill and elan. By contrast, Sen. Barack Obama should have skewered McCain over Iraq and all the lies he supported to ignite this unnecessary conflict. But Obama's criticism of the Iraq war was tepid and ineffective, leaving McCain to capture the flag of patriotism with his reheated Cold War rhetoric.

The two candidates did reasonably well in the debates, and both emerged looking presidential. But McCain seized the jingoistic high ground by using carefully selected slogans like `victory' and `free world,' and lambasting America's favorite hobbyhorses, Iran's Ahmadinejad and Russia's Putin.

McCain's claims that the US is heading toward victory in Iraq thanks to his inspired military leadership immediately recalled the epic words of Pyrrhus, King of Eprius. In 281 BC, after defeating a Roman army at Heraclea in an extremely bloody, hard-fought battle in which his forces suffered grave losses, Pyrrhus famously exclaimed, `one more such victory and we are ruined!'

The Red King of Epirus (modern Albania) might as well have been speaking of Iraq. Far from the victory described by McCain, the Roman historian Tacitus's words are appropriate: `they make a desert and call it peace.'

That is precisely what the US has so far done in Iraq, a small, devastated nation of only 25 million. After five years of war, over four thousand American GI's are dead, and 30,000 seriously wounded (some figures say 75,000), many with incurable head injuries. No one knows how many Iraqis have died, but estimates run as high as one million - and this does not include the 500,000 who died as a result of the draconian US-led embargo of Iraq and the destruction of its national water purification and sewage system by the US Air Force in 1991.

The `surge,' an addition of over 30,000 US troops to the Iraq conflict, was not the primary cause of the sharp drop in violence there over the past 12 months, as McCain claims, though it did play a supporting role.

The real reason for the drop in violence and attacks on US occupation forces lies in three other areas. First, ethnic cleansing. The US occupation quietly abetted the ethnic cleansing by Shia militias of millions of Sunni Iraqis. The US took yet another page from Israel's West Bank occupation copybook by segregating off entire neighborhoods of Iraqi cities with high, concrete walls, and conducting round-the-clock house search operations.

Today, between four and five million Iraqis are either refugees in neighboring nations or internally displaced - one of the world's largest number of refugees. Most are Sunni Muslims. The United States is wholly responsible for this human disaster.

The US has done what it vowed to oppose: the partition of Iraq into three weak parts: Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish. There are now three Iraqi de facto mini-states. Breaking up Iraq and US-approved ethnic cleansing by Shia death squads - just the type of criminal behavior the US condemned in Bosnia and Kosovo - has put the damper on the Sunni-Shia conflict. But it has left Iraq a ruined state, with the Sunni region a no-man's land, the Shia region dominated by Iran, and the Kurds under US and Israel tutelage.

Second, US occupation forces finally got smart and realized it's cheaper to buy off your foes than try to kill them all. So the US now pays 80,000 Sunni gunmen, called Awakening Councils, to fight resistance forces. Attacks by al-Qaida fanatics in Iraq against fellow Sunnis opposing US occupation drove the more moderate resistance groups into the arms of the US.

But now, the US is handing control of these Sunni gunmen, which were patterned on death squads in El Salvador, over to Shia control. The US-armed Sunni militias who sought protection against Shia government forces by siding with the Americans are now likely to become a major new problem.

Third, the firebrand Shia militia leader, Muktada al-Sadr, whose ragtag Mehdi Army used to fight US forces, has gone to ground and ordered his gunmen to stack their arms. His volte face reflects changes in internal Shia politics but also pressure from Iran which, fearing attack by the US, ordered Muktada to stop his attacks.

But less violence, at least for now, does not in any way mean victory. Polls show 75% of Iraqis want US troops to depart. Iraq remains a nation under foreign occupation. Its US-installed regime controls nothing but the Baghdad Green Zone. Real power remains in the hands of the Shia and Sunni militias, and the two Kurdish parties in their by now almost independent state. There is still no agreement on sharing oil.

The occupation is costing the US at least $10 billion per month, not counting depreciation, $67 billion replacement costs for equipment, and billions for medical care of wounded and veterans benefits. By the end of 2008, the supposed `cake walk' in Iraq will have cost US taxpayers $1 trillion, a good part of it borrowed from Japan and China, making it America's second most expensive war in history.

Half the US Army is bogged down in Iraq. This war and Afghanistan have led the US ground and air forces `to the breaking point,' in the words of senior American commanders. History shows that all occupation armies become brutalized, corrupted and demoralized.

At least 30,000 Iraqi prisoners are held by the US and routinely tortured or executed without trial. They should be considered political prisoners. Saddam Hussein's prisons held fewer inmates. The brutality of the US occupation of Iraq has enraged the Muslim world against America and, according to US intelligence agencies, has created a whole new generation of anti-American militants.

The Bush administration's torrent of lies about Iraq and ongoing occupation are seen around the globe as crude imperialism worthy of the 19th century British Raj or old Soviet Union. Sen. Obama was at least right in the debate when he noted that America's image is an important factor in national security. Today, America is hated around the globe.

Washington's current plans to continue ruling Iraq by means of a puppet government and mercenary army backed by US air power are an attempt to copy the way the British Empire ruled Iraq and exploited its oil. But once most of the US forces are withdrawn, Iraq may dissolve once again into violence and chaos, or complete its process of splintering into three mini-states, inviting intervention from its covetous neighbors. Iran has already become the dominant power in eastern Iraq, and Turkey, hungry for Iraq's oil, is watching menacingly.

I wish Obama had had riposted: "Senator McCain, one more victory like this and America is ruined. You had better think about this as you and your neocon alter ego Joe Lieberman urge confrontation against Iran, Hezbollah, Pakistan, Taliban, al-Qaida, insubordinate Arabs, Russia and China. And don't forget Venezuela and Cuba."

Comments

[sticksnstones]

After my tour of duty in the infantry in Viet Nam ended in June, '69, I realized that, in order to protect my own health and well-being, I must come to believe the sacrifices we as soldiers had made was not in vain, that the sacrifices insured that a later generation would not be called upon to fight another ill-advised, mismanaged, and criminally prolonged war such as the one we had found ourselves in.
And guess what... now we have Iraq thanks to the Bush Administration and its neo-con world view.
John McCain has guaranteed that he will carry that belligerant banner well through the first quarter of the 21st century. He is not equipped to handle the complexities of this new century.
There is, by its definition, no victory in an open-ended conflict of ideologies.
Senator McCain just doesn't get it.
I will support the man waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with him.... Obama.

[BarackMarley]

Good Call Reuters did a story last week on how the decrease in violence in Iraq is a result of ethnic cleansing not the surge

http://newsone.blackplanet.com/world/ethnic-cleansi…-iraq-violenceethnic-cleansing-not-the-surge-responsible-for-drop-in-iraq-violence/

[hhnews]

I wish Obama had had riposted: "Senator McCain, one more victory like this and America is ruined. You had better think about this as you and your neocon alter ego Joe Lieberman urge confrontation against Iran, Hezbollah, Pakistan, Taliban, al-Qaida, insubordinate Arabs, Russia and China. And don't forget Venezuela and Cuba."

ABSOLUTELY!
The focus is on the taunting idiot that my father could have eliminated instead of where is the source and how to neutralize him. Instead, "I think I will infuriate the middle east, create new legions of recruits and weaken support of the few friends we have."

[Agent420]

John McCain is not the sharpest knife in the drawer but he looks like a rocket scientist next to Palin.
Our military should be used for defense and not for adventurism. $615 billion and most Army and Navy units are undermanned. Our troops are just now getting very expensive vehicles that are armored. We have done a great disservice to our troops. Getting out and start to spend the money on things here at home that we need. Like jobs, bridge repair and other work on our infra-structure. FDR had some real good ideas that helped us get back on our feet by helping the little guy.

Obama/Biden 08

[arthur2008]

John McCain is a leader?

Here is the roll call vote on the bailout from his state and Sarah Palin’s:

ALASKA
Republicans ” Young, N.
ARIZONA
Democrats ” Giffords, N; Grijalva, N; Mitchell, N; Pastor, N.
Republicans ” Flake, N; Franks, N; Renzi, N; Shadegg, N.

[Indieguy]

The surge worked tactically (reducing violence) and so far has failed strategically (Sunni and Shia political reconciliation). WWII was won in less time than the Iraq debacle. You've got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them, it's called cutting your loses. It's past the time to bring our men and women in uniform home.

[tuttlemsm]

"The two candidates did reasonably well in the debates, and both emerged looking presidential."

Only if by this you mean that there are two kinds of presidents--- the crazy, erratic, reckless kind that get us involved in unwinnable, pointless foreign entanglements like George W. Bush, and the calm, cool, collected kind who keeps steady in a crisis and steers a nation through the storm like FDR--- then, yes, both looked presidential.

[hhnews]

very well stated. and too ironically accurate.