Iraq: Uncle Sam’s unfinished war

to make an arrested landing in a fixed-wing aircraft on an aircraft carrier when he landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard a Lockheed S-3 Viking, dubbed Navy One. The carrier had just returned from combat operations in the Persian Gulf.
Bush, resplendent in a flight suit, posed for photographs with pilots and members of the ship’s crew before giving a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq “War” albeit Invasion. Far above him was the warship’s banner stating “Mission Accomplished.” While Bush’s statement did coincide with an end to the conventional phase of the war, Bush’s assertion – and the sign itself – became controversial after guerrilla warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi resistance that persists to this day. The vast majority of casualties, both military and civilian, have occurred since the speech
Well this week, Bush’s successor, Barack Hussein Obama, used the imminent withdrawal of all but a handful of US troops from Iraq to promote his bid for re-election. Obama’s strategists are conducting a propaganda operation aimed at simultaneously identifying him with the military and pushing the claim that the pullout is a fulfilment of his 2008 campaign promises.
Obama used the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the White House Monday to proclaim, “After nearly nine years, our war in Iraq ends this month.” Recent polls have shown that three out of four Americans support the complete withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq. At the same time, they indicate that two-thirds of the population believes the war was not worth fighting, given its terrible costs.
Nearly 4 500 American soldiers and Marines were killed in the nearly nine years of war, while tens of thousands returned home severely wounded and many more suffered psychological and emotional trauma that will last a lifetime. According to conservative estimates, the war’s costs will amount to over US$3,5 trillion, a vast expenditure that is being paid for through unending cutbacks in public sector jobs and social programs upon which millions depend.
For Iraqis, the costs were far steeper, with an estimated one million lives lost and many millions more wounded or displaced. The Iraq invasion will forever be associated with horrific crimes such as the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad, the siege of Fallujah and the mass torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib, deeds that horrified and repulsed people all over the world, including in the US itself.
In packaging the Iraqi troop withdrawal that is supposed to be completed by the end of this month as an end to war and fulfilment of his campaign promises, Obama is merely recycling the illusions he peddled in 2008.
Then he pledged that his administration would represent a clean break with the criminal policies of the preceding Bush administration. Nearly four years later, the US military is at war in more countries than under Bush, Guantanamo and its military trials, along with torture, continue, and the police-state measures imposed in the wake of September 11, 2001 have been substantially expanded.
As for the withdrawal from Iraq, it was not Obama’s intention, but rather the result of the failure to negotiate a deal with the Maliki government to allow up to 20 000 US troops to remain in the country. The sticking point was Washington’s demand for blanket immunity for American forces from Iraqi prosecution. After all of the killing and brutality of the last nine years, such a guarantee was vehemently opposed by the Iraqi people.
It would be more appropriate to describe the current withdrawal as a repositioning of US forces for a continuation and expansion of war throughout the region.
In Iraq, uniformed troops are being replaced by a new army in civilian clothes.
A massive, fortress-like American embassy in Baghdad has been erected in a walled compound of 104 acres – larger than the Vatican – with two similar facilities having been opened as consulates in the southern oil centre of Basra and the Kurdish capital of Arbil in the north.
Operating out of these American fortresses will be up to 17 000 personnel. They will include 5 500 armed military contractors.
The CIA will maintain its largest station anywhere in the world, and, according to reports, commandos of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command will covertly continue their presence, out of uniform. The plans led Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (Democrat of Massachusetts), a close Obama ally, to question whether the US was “replacing a military presence with a private mercenary presence.”
As troops are pulled out of Iraq, deployments are being beefed up in the surrounding region, above all just across the border in Kuwait, where some 25 000 US military personnel are currently stationed and negotiations are underway to augment their numbers.
Tens of thousands more soldiers are deployed in the Persian Gulf and the other monarchical Gulf states – Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia – which comprise the bastion of Middle East reaction known as the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). Washington is attempting to turn the GCC into an extension of NATO as the US and its Western allies steadily escalate military threats against Iran.
The ongoing global eruption of American militarism has found fitting expression in a tour being conducted by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in which unannounced stops are being added on virtually a daily basis.