I'm sitting in the news room of Wbai radio this evening watching the withdrawal from Iraq of the last U.S. "Combat" troops. Several thousand Contractors, and advisers will stay.
It would seem the War is over.
The war with Iraq is over. That is the battles, and street fighting is over. I'm watching the last combat troops, these originally from Fort Lewis Washington State, being processed at the Kuwaiti border. From there they're going home to the States.
The Chaos of our misguided invasion will now go into high gear. I expect many be-headings, and stonings.
The War with the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda will now become more intense. As it happens I support 'that' particular war. We should have done this nine years ago. These are the guys that attacked us,..not Iraq.
Don't start with all the "9/11 Inside Job" static. As an official old guy I have no patients with that stuff. That's the territory of the right/left ideo-conspiracy nuts, and some passionate under 30's.
4 comments:
Well, we've meddled in Iraq under the illusion that we could i\export American style 'democracy' to a country with no cultural background for such a thing, and have succeeded in replacing an undoubtedly evil, but relatively stable nation-state with a seething civil war whose result will almost certainly be worse than it was before our intervention.
I'm afraid the end result of intervention in Afghanistan will be no better. Attempts to 'pacify' Afghanistan proved to be long, debilitating, and futile for the British, was a major reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union, and will wear us down as well. Yes, the Taliban is ugly. Yes, that outfit did harbor the Al Qaeda thugs, but the same can be said for any number of Mid-Eastern states. Are we prepared to take over and rule all of them? As for
Al Qaeda, whom we claim to be the enemy of record, they aren't even a major presence in Afghanistan any more, but center elsewhere, and have their major strength in places other than those where they center. The Afghan war is not effectively a war against them, and seems, rather, to be strengthening their international presence.
I'm glad we've (mostly) left Iraq, but we need to be done with this other Mideastern adventure, and yesterday's not soon enough.
ed
I agree that the Western powers have no business in Iraq and never had any business there - apart from oil, of course. The quicker they withdraw, the better. But they will leave behind the worst kind of civil war - a civil war fired by sectarian religious hatred.
The real source of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism for the last 40 years has been Pakistan. It was the Pakistan military and intelligence services in collusion who created the Taliban and who instigated the Taliban's take-over of Afghanistan. And the Pakistan military and intelligence services continue to give logistical support to the Taliban. It is in the dozens of training camps on Pakistan soil that suicide bombers are trained and equipped and dispatched on their lunatic missions. The motive for Pakistani support of terrorist organizations is their hatred of India and their determination to conquer Kashmir. Pakistan has been ignominiously defeated three times in wars against India and it is only by resorting to state-sponsored terrorism that they can continue the conflict. Kashmir is an issue of no vital importance to ordinary Pakistanis, but for the Pakistan ruling elite it has become the only issue and it drives Pakistan foreign policy like an obsession.
Pakistan's sponsoring of terrorist groups has been known to Western intelligence agencies for a generation, but it has been consistently denied by Western governments for political reasons. Meanwhile, the US has pumped billions of dollars into Pakistan in civilian aid and in military aid in order to bolster Pakistan's so-called fight against terrorism. Pakistan's fostering of terrorist groups has virtually torn the state of Pakistan apart - but the commitment to the support of terrorism continues, and Western powers continue the charade of regarding Pakistan as an ally and as a democratic state.
Sion, So David Cameron was correct in voicing what most of us have known for ages ?
They have some heavy rain and have no hesitation in coming bleating to the West.
Public opinion has turned against the Pakistani government, now it must face up to it's true responsibilities before it's too late.
Interesting what Sion says. It hadn't really burned itself into my consciousness that Pakistan is the primary terror instigator, though come to think of it I have heard something like that before, just not very often nor elaborated in much detail.
If the USA had plentiful cheap oil to show for its military adventure in Iraq, one could at least claim that it had achieved some rational goal, albeit not a very noble one. But we don't even have that. It's been a completely mad squandering of already dwindling wealth for the purpose of making a bad situation in a faraway land even worse. This war has accelerated the decline of the United States and because of it, as we slide ever further into penury, no one will feel sorry for us.
Post a Comment