Chris Floyd: "We have met our responsibility!" No, Mister President, we have not.

[seafan]

"Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page."

---Barack Obama, August 31, 2010, in an Address to the Nation on the End of Combat Operations in Iraq

Chris Floyd:

September 1, 2010

"We have met our responsibility!" No, Mister President, we have not. Not until many Americans of high degree stand in the dock for war crimes. Not until the United States pays hundreds of billions of dollars in unrestricted reparations to the people of Iraq for the rape of their country and the mass murder of their people. Not until the United States opens its borders to accept all those who have been and will be driven from Iraq by the savage ruin we have inflicted upon them, or in flight from the vicious thugs and sectarians we have loosed -- and empowered -- in the land. Not until you, Mister President, go down on your knees, in sackcloth and ashes, and proclaim a National of Day of Shame to be marked each year by lamentations, reparations and confessions of blood guilt for our crime against humanity in Iraq.

Then and only then, Mister President, can you say that America has begun -- in even the most limited, pathetic way -- to "meet its responsibility" for what it has done to Iraq. And unless you do this, Mister President -- and you never will -- you are just a lying, bloodsoaked apologist, accomplice and perpetrator of monstrous evil, like your predecessor and his minions -- many of whom, of course, are now your minions.

I really don't have anything else to say about this sickening spectacle -- which is being compounded in Britain, where I live, by the sight today of Tony Blair's murder-tainted mug plastered on the front of the main newspapers, as he makes the rounds pushing his new book, doling out "exclusive interviews" full of crocodile tears for the soldiers he had murdered in the war crime he committed and the "great suffering" of the Iraqi people which, goodness gracious, he never foresaw and feels, gosh, really bad about. All this laced with venomous comments about his former colleagues -- those who, like Gordon Brown, sold their souls to advance Blair's vision of aggressive war abroad and corporate rapine at home -- along with, of course, earnest protestations of his God-directed good intentions, and his unwavering belief that killing a million innocent human beings in Iraq was "the right thing to do." Pol Pot could not have been more blindly self-righteous than this wretched moral cretin.

I will say again what I have said here many, many times before: What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?

Words might fail me, but wise man William Blum has a few that put the "end of combat operations in Iraq" in their proper perspective. Let's give him the last word here (the ellipses are in the original text):

No American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.

"....I’m mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home. Here, too, it’s time to turn the page. This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush. It’s well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset. Yet no one can doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security. As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it."

---Barack Obama, August 31, 2010, in an Address to the Nation on the End of Combat Operations in Iraq

And with that shameful blessing of legitimacy bestowed by the new American president on his predecessor, George W. Bush, the perpetrator of murderous brutality committed in the pre-emptive invasion of an unarmed country, 200 years of American foreign policy careened down the drain.




This administration is close to being finished.

[Hawkowl]

1. Well said

I suppose, theoretically speaking, there IS a difference between Bush and Obama.

[fascisthunter]

2. cuts right through the bs

and that does suck... I used to make excuses for politicians too, but when I really visualize the pain and anguish innocents have had to sacrifice their precious lives for, politics is just a pathetic illusion for weak men and women with very little consciences.

[G_j]

3. great piece, he zoned in on the lines I also find utterly despicable,

there are plain lies in this speech

[AndyA]

4. Obama is as guilty as Bush if he allows this to stand.

At the very least, an investigation into how the "flawed intelligence" allowed such a horrid mistake to occur. But no, we must move forward.

We were promised transparency. We were promised accountability. We were promised change we could believe in. So far, most of us are still waiting for those promises to be kept.

[Tutankhamun]

5. If our job is done why do we still have more than 150,000 soldiers and mercenaries

there indefinitely. This is just more BS to convince us that we're not still dumping trillions of dollars into a failed war of aggression in a failed state. Let's not call 50,000 soldiers and more than 70,000 Blackwater (or is it Xe Services now) thugs "mission accomplished."

[TheWatcher]

6. This will of course sink to the Bottom, because we have become The United States Of Stockholm

America The Cowed.

Land Of Go-Along, Home Of Cowardice.

Land Of Denial, Home Of Spin.

But Chris speaks the Truth, and he speaks for the many of us that still know the difference between Representative Government and Rule Of Law, as opposed to Perception Management, and Political Apologism and Kabuki Theater.

If we allow the War Criminals to go Unpunished, MARK MY WORDS, we may muddle on, we may manage to tread water and successfully pull off the illusion of a functioning Republic, but for all intents and purposes WE ARE FINISHED AS A COUNTRY.

At least the country that our Forefathers envisioned, and that blood and treasure was spilt for, and much sacrifice was made in order to secure even a foothold of that vision and concept.

Let all the Go-Along Sheep and Cowed, Submissive, Sniveling Denialists call it Hyperbole, Conspiracy, or whatever they wish.

It doesn't change reality.

And SHAME ON THEM for going along, defending, and facilitating the lie.

[seafan]

7. "Because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense"

"And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense." ----Barack Obama, August 31, 2010, in an Address to the Nation on the End of Combat Operations in Iraq

....

For all his talk about turning our attention homeward, Obama reveals his obsession with the imperial adventure in Afghanistan, where "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on offense." Once again there is the expectation that the occupied will embrace the occupiers and that the deployment of massive military power "will disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda," as if that is any longer relevant to our deep involvement in a treacherous civil war in which we have no reliable partners.

Al Qaeda was never present in Iraq before we invaded, and according to Obama's own national security adviser, there are fewer than a hundred members of the group left in Afghanistan, unable to coordinate any actions. Obama deserves credit for extracting this country from a war in Iraq that he inherited, but it is mind-numbing that in his nation-building efforts in Afghanistan he is now repeating the same errors that were made in Iraq. ----Robert Scheer in The Nation, September 1, 2010

Chris Floyd:

06 July 2010

William Dalrymple is one of the knowledgeable and experienced observers of Central Asia and India in the West. His insights are always valuable, and usually prescient, especially on the greatly variegated complexities -- social, economic, cultural, political, historical -- of the volatile region, where the American imperial impulse is now coming to grief in arrogance and ignorance ... as so many others have done before it.

In a New Statesman article rich with historical detail and direct reportage from the frontlines of "Af-Pak" front of the bipartisan Terror War, Dalrymple brings fresh confirmation of what everyone but the moronic masters of war along the Potomac knows: the war in Afghanistan is lost, and all the vaunted "surges" of the drone-firing Peace Laureate and his various COIN-operated commanders are only prolonging the pointless agony -- and building up a tsunami of horrific blowback.

.....

William Dalrymple

22 June 2010

.....

After the jirga was over, one of the tribal elders came over and we chatted for a while over a glass of green tea. "Last month," he said, "some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, 'Why do you hate us?' I replied, 'Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time.'"

What did he say to that? “He turned to his friend and said, 'If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?' In truth, all the Americans here know that their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this."

During lunch, as my hosts casually pointed out the various places in the village where the British had been massacred in 1842, I asked them if they saw any parallels between that war and the present situation. "It is exactly the same," said Anwar Khan Jegdalek. "Both times the foreigners have come for their own interests, not for ours. They say, 'We are your friends, we want democracy, we want to help.' But they are lying."

“Whoever comes to Afghanistan, even now, they will face the fate of Burnes, Macnaghten and Dr Brydon," said Mohammad Khan, our host in the village and the owner of the orchard where we were sitting. The names of the fighters of 1842, long forgotten in their home country, were still known here.

“Since the British went, we've had the Russians," said an old man to my right. "We saw them off, too, but not before they bombed many of the houses in the village." He pointed at a ridge of ruined mud-brick houses.

“We are the roof of the world," said Mohammad Khan. "From here, you can control and watch everywhere."

“Afghanistan is like the crossroads for every nation that comes to power," agreed Anwar Khan Jegdalek. "But we do not have the strength to control our own destiny - our fate is always determined by our neighbours. Next, it will be China. This is the last days of the Americans."

Instead, we were told last night that George W. Bush is a patriot.