How To End The War
George W. Bush is a natural born
liar. He lied us into a war, and now he is lying to keep
us there. In his October 6 self-congratulatory speech at
that neoconservative shrine, the National Endowment for
Democracy, the President of the United States
said: "Today there are more than 80 Iraqi army
battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our
forces."
Eighty Iraqi battalions makes it
sound like the US is just lending Iraq a helping hand. I
wonder what Congress and the US commanders in Iraq
thought when they heard there were 80 Iraqi battalions
that American troops are helping to fight insurgents?
Just a few days prior to Bush`s speech, Generals
Casey and Abizaid told Congress that, as a matter of
fact, there was only
one Iraqi battalion able to undertake operations
against insurgents.
I wonder, also, who noticed the
great contradiction in Bush`s speech. On the one hand,
he claims steady progress toward freedom and democracy
in Iraq. On the other hand, he seeks the American
public`s support for open-ended war.
In her Princeton speech, Condi Rice
made it
clear that Iraq is just the beginning: "We have
set out to help the people of the Middle East transform
their societies. Now is not the time to falter or fade."
On October 5 Vice President Cheney
let us know how long this commitment was to last:
"Like other great duties in history, it will require
decades of patient effort."
Who`s going to pay for these
decades of war to which the Bush administration is
committing Americans? Already the US is spending $7
billion a month on war in Iraq alone. The nonpartisan
Congressional Research Service says that if the Iraq war
goes on another five years, it will cost at least
$570 billion by 2010.
Bush`s war has already doubled the
price of gasoline and home heating.
Americans are being laid off right
and left as corporations outsource their jobs to China,
India, and Eastern Europe.
With US forces bogged down in
Afghanistan (invaded October 7, 2001) and Iraq (invaded
March 20, 2003), Bush is plotting regime change in Syria
and conspiring to set up Iran for attack.
Is there a single person in the
Office of Management and Budget, the US Treasury, the
Congressional Budget Office, or the Federal Reserve who
thinks the US, already drowning in red ink, has the
resources to fight wars for decades?
And where will the troops come
from? The US cannot replace the losses in Iraq. We know
about the 2,000 American troops killed, but we do not
hear about the large number of wounded. UPI
correspondent Martin Sieff reported on October 7 that US
wounded jumped from 16.3 per day at the end of September
to 28.5 per day at the beginning of October. Multiply
that daily rate by 30 days and you get 855 wounded per
month. Approximately half of these are wounded too
seriously to return to combat.
Has anyone in the administration
pointed out to Bush, Cheney and Condi Rice what decades
of casualties at these rates mean?
Insurgents are killing Iraqi
security personnel who are collaborating with the US
occupation at the rate of two or three hundred per
month. The wounded numbers are much higher.
Last month suicide bombers killed
481 Iraqis and wounded 1,074.
Has anyone in the administration
put these numbers in a decades long context?
Apparently not. Once these numbers
are put on paper, not even Bush administration speech
writers can continue to pen rhetorical justifications
for war and more war.
The neoconservative Bush
administration prides itself on not being "reality
based." Facts get in the way of the administration`s
illusions and delusions. Bush`s "80 Iraqi battalions"
are like Hitler`s secret weapons. They don`t exist.
Iraqis cannot afford to collaborate
with the hated Americans or with the puppet government
that the US has put in place. Out of desperation, some
do, but their heart is not in it. Few Iraqis are willing
to die fighting for the United States and Likudian
Israel.
When the 2nd Iraq Battalion
graduated from US training camp on January 6, 2004,
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and US commander in Iraq,
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, expressed
"high expectations" that
Iraqi troops, in the general`s words, "would help us
bring security and stability back to the country."
Three months later when the 2nd
Battalion was brought up to support the US invasion of
Fallujah, the battalion refused to fight and returned to
its post.
"We did not sign up to fight Iraqis," said
the troops.
Readers write in frustration:
"Tell us what we can do." On the surface it doesn`t
look like Bush can be stopped from trashing our country.
The congressional mid-term
elections are a year away. Moreover, the Democrats have
failed as an opposition party and are compromised by
their support for the war. Bush has three more years in
which to mire America in wider war. If Bush succeeds in
starting wars throughout the Middle East, his successor
will be stuck with them.
Congressional Democrats and
Republicans alike have made it clear that they are going
to ignore demonstrations and public opinion. The print
and TV media have made it clear that there will be no
reporting that will hold the Bush administration
accountable for its deceit and delusion.
There still is a way to bring
reality to the Bush administration. The public has the
Internet. Is the antiwar movement well enough organized
to collect via the Internet signatures on petitions for
impeachment, perhaps one petition for each state?
Millions of signatures would embarrass Bush before the
world and embarrass our elected Representatives for
their failure to act.
If no one in Congress acted on the
petitions, all the rhetoric about war for democracy
would fall flat. It would be obvious that there is no
democracy in America.
If the cloak of democracy is
stripped away, Bush`s "wars for democracy" begin
to look like the foreign adventures of a megalomaniac.
Remove Bush`s rhetorical cover, and tolerance at home
and abroad for Bush`s war would evaporate. If Bush
persisted, he would become a pariah.
Americans may feel that they cannot
undercut a president at war, in which case Americans
will become an embattled people consumed by decades of
conflict. Americans can boot out Bush or pay dearly in
blood and money.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M.
Stratton of
here
for Peter Brimelow`s
Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the
recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
