The Peacers Prayer:
War Without End, Amen
by Chris Floyd
The Peace Laureate and his apologists – along
with all the well-wadded neoconmen and their strange bedfellows, the
liberal interventionists – may like to proclaim that the Iraq War is
over (and we won!), but those actually fighting the war know that – as
Cab Calloway liked to say of the stories you’re liable to read in the
Bible – it ain’t necessarily so.
"As the final convoy of the Army’s 4th
Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait
early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq.
"Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat
Team of the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of an
Advise and Assist Brigade, the Army’s designation for brigades selected
to conduct security force assistance.
"So while the “last full U.S. combat brigade”
have left Iraq, just under 50,000 soldiers from specially trained heavy,
infantry and Stryker brigades will stay, as well as two combat aviation
brigades ...
"There are seven Advise and Assist Brigades in
Iraq, as well as two additional National Guard infantry brigades “for
security,” said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Ratcliff. ...
"The Army selected brigade combat teams as the
unit upon which to build advisory brigades partly because they would be
able to retain their inherent capability to conduct offensive and
defensive operations, according to the Army’s security force assistance
field manual, which came out in May 2009. This way, the brigade can
shift the bulk of its operational focus from security force assistance
to combat operations if necessary."
That is to say, they can do what combat troops throughout history have
always been able to do: ride herd on a conquered people when they're
down (or "provide security force assistance," in our demure modern
parlance), and lash out with heavy power when the natives get restless.
Or to put it another way, what we have in Iraq now is 50,000+ combat
troops doing what combat troops do. And forty tons of lipstick won't
obscure the swinish nature of this continuing war crime.
In any case, the Peacer's war leader in the aggression-ravaged
country says that we can always more amounts of combat troops back into
Iraq to join the combat troops still there in the highly unlikely event
that the "security forces" of the local client government should --
perish the thought -- prove to be inadequate to the task of making the
country safe for Halliburton and Shell. As Jason Ditz reports (see original for links):
Though the Obama Administration’s
claims that the war in Iraq is “over” is a myth to begin with, top US
Commander in Iraq Gen. Ray Odierno today detailed the possibility of US
forces “returning” to Iraq in larger numbers.
Odierno insists this would “only” happen if
Iraq’s security forces suffer a complete failure in the ability to
provide security in Iraq. And while Odierno insists “we don’t see that
happening,” the reality on the ground makes this all the more plausible.
Oh and of course, we will also keep our combat troops in Iraq if the
client government we installed asks us too -- surely yet another
astronomically unlikely scenario, but hey, you never know, do you?
Odierno added that he was certain the
US would consider staying in Iraq beyond 2011 if asked by the Iraqi
government. But clearly as the situation worsens on the ground the
question of spinning the drawdown as the “end” of the war will
transition more into the question of “reinvading” Iraq ....
The hell we have made in Iraq -- "between 25 and 50 percent
unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic
of mental illness, and sprawling slums ... the killing of innocent
people ... part of daily life," as Adil Shamoo aptly puts it -- is far from over. And if our militarist elites have their way, it will never end.
To such people, one can only echo Tolstoy's damning words:
"And do not say that you do what you do
for the people: that is untrue. All the horrible things you do, you do
for yourself, for your own mercenary, vainglorious, vengeful, personal
reasons, so that you can live a bit longer in that state of corruption
in which you live, and which seems to you a blessing."
* Quotation taken from William Nickell's remarkable new book, The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910.
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