Tue 13 Nov 2007
We have heard it a million times, once the surge is successful, Bush tells us he will bring the troops home, “when the job is finished.”
So why are they still there?
The Right Wing press has been suffering seizures over the lull in violence in Iraq, exclaiming how “liburls are hand-wringing” over “Bush’s success.” But why aren’t they asking the NEXT question? (they never ask the next smart question) Why did the violence slow down?
There are a multitude of answers. The first being the fact that Moqtada al-Sadr’s Madhi Army has declared a cease fire.
The recent “pact of honor” made by two of Iraq’s most influential Shiite clerics, Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim—aimed at preventing violence and helping to maintain the “Islamic and national interest” of Iraq—appears to signal a significant shift toward stability in Iraq.
The second reason violence is down is due to the fact that there is hardly anyone else left to ethnically cleanse. Much of the work of the Sunni/Shia Death Squads has been completed. The “unpure” Muslims were either executed or they have fled.
Fewer people to shoot at. Bush’s war has created a silent disaster that is rarely reported on – the existence of over 5 million refugees, half of which have fled the nation entirely. There are over 1.2 million in Syria, there are 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, 10,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in various Persian Gulf countries, according to the UNHCR.
So why are we still there? The answer is obvious, Iraq is not stable, it is far from stable and I doubt will be stable in the next decade. Why is it far from stable? Why will Bush keep troops there?
The cease fire from the Madhi Army is only for six months, it expires in January, 2008.
Refugees are returning home because they are out of money to support themselves and their families. Which means the ethnic cleansing is far from over once these “cleansed” neighborhoods begin to fill back up with the original inhabitants.
Oh yeah, they still have oil.
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November 13th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
What if China risked a major trade loss, and put together an international coalition to eradicate the world’s largest caches of WMD’s (real ones too!), in the hands of an international war criminal?
How would Canada and Mexico manage the 65 million refugees, if such a war displaced the same percentage in the USA we’ve driven out of Iraq?
How would we like seeing 9 million dead, mostly as civilian war “collateral damage”, and due to destroyed medical, potable water, and other infrastructures? That’s the same percentage of the US population which two independent epidemiology methodology studies done by US major universities show we’ve killed or caused to die in Iraq.
Between population reduction and industrial infrastructure destroyed, at least there’d be a real global benefit not present with the US invasion of Iraq. It’s likely per capita carbon emissions would go down 50-90%, in addition to that population reduction. US lifestyles would no longer be those of such greedy pigs trashing the planet.
Another comparison of war dead doesn’t work. If the percentage of Iraqis who the US invasion has killed or caused to die as a percentage of those killed on 9-11 were justified (pretty tenuous given “our friends” the House of Saud et al have far more connection than did Hussein), there aren’t enough people on Earth, never mind in the US, to kill the same multipleof US population we’ve killed of Iraqis in retribution for our actual illegal invasion of another country.
Perhaps we need a large number of dead Americans? That might be the only way some would see that there are serious adverse consequences to Bush regime war crimes. And, the majority of Americans did either support Bush, or fail to oppose him, twice, even if he didn’t actually win the popular elections either time (but came close enough for a bit of fraud to do the rest).
November 15th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
……..help us Jeezus…I’ve just begun reading “Bush On The Couch” by psychiatrist Justin Frank……and…and…and the madman is much scarier than I realized…I just hope that Walter Sobchak was right when he stated,”We are NOT FUCKED,Dude!”………….