CE Week #8: “Troops know Iraq’s reality”
Robert Scheer
Creator’s Syndicate
October 19, 2007
When will we listen to the troops? I’m not talking about soldiers used as props for a George W. Bush photo-op, telling reporters what Washington wants to hear. The military is disciplined and thus accustomed, from Gen. David Petraeus on down, to toeing the official line. But the Iraq war has also produced brilliant messages of dissent from the ranks that should cause us to stop in our tracks and reconsider what we have wrought. First, a group of sergeants came forward, and on Tuesday it was the captains’ turn to speak out.
In “The War as We Saw It,” an eloquent op-ed article published in the New York Times in August, seven Army sergeants summarized the futility of their 15 months fighting in Iraq: “To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.” After penning that cri de coeur, two of the soldiers died in Iraq, and a third was severely wounded.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post printed, “The Real Iraq We Knew,” by 12 Army captains, all of whom served in Iraq, which begins: “Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.
“As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we’ve seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it’s like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it’s time to get out.”
How come those brave veterans know it’s time to get out, but leading Democrats, who voted for the war to be authorized, are still pussyfooting about quickly removing the troops from this ever-deepening quagmire? They’re jockeying for political advantage, knowing that drawing out the war hurts the Republicans.
It is a deeply cynical ploy that works only because, with our all-volunteer military, most Americans don’t have to face the choice of sacrificing themselves or their loved ones in a futile and losing war.
Yes, it costs the taxpayers, but so do the “Halo 3″ video games Americans are purchasing in record numbers, and for most, Iraq is a make-believe war. Even the cost seems unreal, as Bush is the first president in U.S. history to cut taxes in a time of war, with the result that more than a trillion dollars in long-term obligations will not come due while his administration has to foot the bills.
If there were a military draft, people would be in the streets demanding an end to this carnage, which now threatens to go on for decades. That is precisely why the neoconservative ideologues who got us into this mess built their fantasies on a volunteer force, supplemented by hundreds of thousands of contractors (including 50,000 mercenary troops like those from Blackwater) and the purchase of largely irrelevant but highly profitable high-tech weaponry – although they forgot about simple armor for the troops.
The most fraudulent neocon claim was that pro-Western, even pro-Israel, Iraqis, such as their favorite, the now totally discredited Ahmed Chalabi, would police the country as surrogates for the United States, and that Iraqi oil sales would pay for it all.
The 12 captains, who worked with the local Iraqi residents, are very clear as to the forlorn outcome of that plan. “And, indeed, many of us witnessed the exploitation of U.S. tax dollars by Iraqi officials and military officers. Sabotage and graft have had a particularly deleterious impact on Iraq’s oil industry, which still fails to produce the revenue that Pentagon war planners hoped would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction,” they wrote.
As for that other ongoing illusion – that we are turning over power to Iraqi forces we have trained – the captains write: “Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we’re gone.”
Building an empire on the cheap and by proxy doesn’t work. If you want one, and of course most of us shouldn’t because only a few fat cats benefit from such imperial adventures, you need a vast conscript army. As the captains put it: “There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately.” Enough said.
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I love these articles that tell you the truth. Coming from the soldiers in Iraq, I know that this is the truth. They know better than anyone what is going on in Iraq. They also are not the fake ones who come on television and say all the positive things and act like there is not a war even going on. The soldiers in this article flat out say to get out of Iraq. Nobody wants to reinstate the draft because our country would then be the country in shambles. Having a non-voluntary military would be the only way to succeed in Iraq. What we are doing now is just hurting us and them. Evacuating is the only way to accomplish anything. Although it is not what Bush initially wanted to do, it is the best for our country. It is horrible that the Democrats are so selfish to think that by dragging on the war the Republicans will be hurt. This is a time where you can not carry out a war and kill many people just to benefit your parties cause. The soldiers want out and that is what we should. We can still have a military presence but not at all like what we have now.
“When will we listen to the troops?” is a good question indeed; it is evident that the situation in Iraq is bad when even the soldiers are distressed by the futility of their fighting. The war has gone on for five long years now- and with morale low, numbers low, and supplies low, the chance of something good resulting from of this conflict is low. The military experts agree: “as Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we’ve seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it’s like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it’s time to get out.” I like the point the author of this article makes about the general public not wanting our troops out of Iraq badly enough. If the draft was reinstated, the public would go crazy. It appears that people don’t feel directly effected enough by this war to really do anything about it. But the same idea goes for the President and the rest of his cronies; I don’t see Bush’s twins in Iraq. If they were would his strong Iraqi policy still be? The Democrats need to step up too though. They took the House in the last elections and responded with all these grand ideas about getting us out of Iraq…but have they done anything? No. Basically, everyone just needs work together to get our troops out of Iraq ASAP.
It’s so interesting to read an article that focuses on the perspective coming from those actually serving in Iraq, rather than those who believe the war is going well. This was just an interesting article in general. It made me think about how we really have done a ton to change what we wanted to five years ago, and aren’t doing much to improve those things today. The story about the 12 soldiers is interesting in the sense that it shows we are losing men non-stop. 3 of those men have brought home, either in a coffin, or critically injured. It’s sad to see our people being put on the line almost pointlessly because others want them there. They volunteered for the job, yes. But they sure didn’t sign up to have their lives contained by a war that isn’t entirely necessary. It personally makes me mad to see that Bush and the rest of our higher politicians won’t change anything in Iraq concerning how many men we have there.
II think what I’m most upset, or should I say mad about is just that. Our government is not willing to make the changes necessary to bring home our families, to end a war the should’ve been taken care of four years ago, when this war was still young. Instead, we’ve made the choice to engage in this full war, and within that choice made it so we will stay in that country for many years to follow.