Phony End of Combat Mission. How can any honest person say that "the American combat mission in Iraq has ended", when 49,700 U.S. troops remain there that can be called upon to assist in the local government's combat operations? Saying the combat mission has ended doesn't make it so. Vice President Biden said on the PBS NewsHour today that General Odierno has said that the U.S. has, as a practical matter, not played a combat role for months. So what has changed as of August 31st? Nothing. If no U.S. troops are in Iraq, and no U.S. airstrikes are called in from Kuwait or other areas, THEN we can honestly say the combat mission has ended. But under current conditions, Obama's statement is a LIE.
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The United States never had any right to invade Iraq. Iraq never attacked us, never had Weapons of Mass Destruction, and never had any plans to attack us, nor the wherewithal to execute any such nonexistent plans. The U.S. invasion was a massive crime against humanity that the Obama Administration will do nothing to prosecute. Quite the contrary, Obama continues the illegal occupation, which continues to exacerbate internal conflicts and continues to make Iraq a target of Al-Qaeda terrorists. Obama continues to protect Bush Administration criminals from arrest and prosecution by an international tribunal to punish its war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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No one knows how many Iraqis have died due to TWO wars to destroy Iraq and a decade of literally-killing sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the criminals in the U.S. Government. Madeleine Albright, the detestable Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, conceded that those sanctions might have killed over a HALF MILLION Iraqis, mainly children and old people. No one knows how many Iraqis died in the "Gulf War" or Gulf War II, cynically and monstrously called "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and no one in power, in the U.S. or Iraq, wants anyone to know. You'd think the enemies of Saddam within Iraq would be glad to trumpet how many Iraqis died due to his invasion of Kuwait, but, curiously, they have not done so. Perhaps that is because they are now in bed with the enemy who killed all those Iraqis. As for the second attack upon Iraq, there really is no one within Iraq to blame, except as to saying that Saddam should have thrown open all parts of the country to UN inspections. But WMD were a pretext, not the real reason for the attack, which was to destroy Israel's only credible enemy in the region. So intent was the Bush Administration to destroy Iraq that SOME pretext would have been found, no matter UN inspections.
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To count the dead is to indict the present Iraqi regime as collaborators with the two-headed devil (the U.S. and its colonial overlord, Israel). The present Iraqi powers that be (but for how long?) do not care to indict themselves for the crimes of the United States at the order of Israel.
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Someone, however, has got to do the math, data-mine news reports and statistics gathered by Iraqi local and national governments, and give us as good a count as is humanly possible, so Americans can stop thinking themselves blameless victims, veritable human angels, unfairly set upon by evil Moslems, and instead see the truth about the vicious, Radical Zionist mass murder that they have been willing to commit only because they have been taught for decades that any violence "in defense of Israel" is morally straight.
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We have to learn to distinguish between "just" wars and unjust, and admit our dishonor when we launch, prolong, and make excuses for unjust wars. There are few things that will render war, an obscene act, "just". Retaliating against a genuinely unprovoked attack is one. Intervening to stop mass murder or systematic oppression is another. There are very few others.
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The Iraq war must be ENDED, not prolonged. We have done a dreadful job of teaching democratic values to Iraqis, which should have been a major thrust all along. We didn't even insist on an American-style, stable government, but permitted Iraq to adopt a British-style parliamentary form that has left it with NO democratic government, months after the last election. That was inexcusably stupid. It proceeded from the hatred of the United States that, bizarrely, controls the minds of many of the people at the top of this society. U.S.-style government isn't superior, no. BRITISH-style government is better, according to those loons. And now we have an Iraq with no effective government, and no national unity around a respected government.
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Iraq's future depends upon the spirit of compromise and mutual accommodation that we (used to) have. Iraqis are right to worry that they might not be able to create a stable government acceptable to both major communities, Shia and Sunni, and that failures to reach agreement in parliament do not bode well for wider, social accommodations necessary to real peace. Iraqis today do not feel sovereign, and do feel controlled by outsiders. That doesn't help self-esteem, and people with low self-esteem tend not to respect other people. Without respect for self and respect for others, Iraq faces decades of governmental and social dysfunction — which is exactly why Israel ordered the U.S. to attack.
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No Two-State Solution. President Obama idiotically continues to chant the mantra of Israeli "moderates" of a "two-state solution". There cannot be a "two-state solution" in Palestine. When the problem is division, division cannot be the solution. Palestine must be reunited, in a SINGLE secular state in which NO ONE has special rights. Then, and only then, can there be peace. If there cannot be great enuf trust in the separate communities to join together as an independent country, then we can provide the security, real security, that both communities need, by admitting a SINGLE State of Palestine (by any name) to the Union as a State of the United States. Thereupon, our civil-rights laws and the First Amendment's wall of separation between 'church' and state would guarantee that no one will trample on anyone's rights. ("Church" would, here, mean "synagog", "mosque", and/or "church".) And the U.S. form of government, with fixed terms, encourages people to work together because they know that whoever is in power is going to BE in power for a long time.
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The peace of the United States is periodically disturbed by conflicts in the Middle East produced by Israeli independence. U.S. participation in those conflicts has cost us what?, a TRILLION dollars and thousands of dead, at home (9/11) and abroad. It is plainly in our interest to END all threats to OUR peace, by ending the independence of both Israel and Palestine, by bringing them into the Union as a single, indivisible, and religiously neutral State.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:30 PM