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Debate Club: Did the US Withdraw from Iraq Too Soon?
Far from being "too soon," the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq came more than eight years too late--and still, the war isn't over. This war should never have been launched, so it can't be ended soon enough.
The war was based on lies--remember the "weapons of mass destruction" that weren't there, the "links to 9/11" that never happened, the "mobile weapons laboratories" that didn't exist? Withdrawing troops now, after eight years of occupation, doesn't mean the U.S. achieved victory. It was a defeat for the U.S. and a disaster for the people of Iraq. A terrible dictator (who had been armed, paid, and backed by the U.S., we should not forget) was indeed overthrown. But Iraqis faced years without security, basic services, electricity--let alone democracy, human rights, or independence.
The U.S. war, following more than a decade of devastating U.S.-imposed economic sanctions, ravaged the infrastructure and social fabric of Iraq, leaving behind a broken country ruled by a corrupt sectarian government. For eight years, with up to 182,600 U.S. and allied troops occupying the country at any one time, Iraq was one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and remains so today. That would still be the case if we had pulled out years ago, or if we waited another one, two, or 25 years.
Of course, it's important that U.S. troops and Pentagon-paid contractors have been withdrawn. Indeed it's a huge victory for the U.S. and global anti-war movements who made it imperative for President Obama to enforce the U.S.-Iraq agreement requiring just that. But the U.S. war is not over. U.S. troops have left Iraq, but thousands are streaming into Kuwait and onto Navy ships cruising just "over the horizon." Maybe just a few hundred uniformed U.S. troops will be left in Iraq, but 15,000 or more State Department-paid mercenaries are pouring in, doing the same things--guarding the biggest-in-the-world U.S. embassy, training Iraqis to use the weapons we're still flooding the country with, "special operations"--that continue the instability. The contractors include some of the same armed men whose Pentagon-paid violence led to such outrage in the past. Americans may have forgotten, but Iraqis certainly remember.
It's already too late, but the whole U.S. war in Iraq, not only the presence of uniformed troops, needs to end completely. That includes ending the related wars--in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the drone wars in Yemen and Somalia and beyond, the threatened wars against Iran. Only then can we really claim we've "withdrawn from Iraq."
This post originally appeared on the U.S. News and World Report's "Debate Club." Vote for this and other posts by clicking here.
47 Comments so far
Show AllStonewall jackson reportedly said something to the effect that if war were not so horrible and bloody, we would come to love it too much. I think he was on a horse above a far flung battle raging BELOW him. There are career officers in our armies today who love the idea of war and far too many men of industry with means to supply this love.
Officers love war because it's necessary for their promotion to the higher ranks. The solution is to revert to a draft.
No, a thousand times no.
I'm sick of the supposedly call from liberals to reinstate the draft as a way to keep us from going to war.
That's crazy talk.
It didn't stop us from the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea or Vietnam.
An anti-war agenda should be about ending war, not requiring my sons to have to fight the elite's wars anyway despite how hard I worked in raising them to educate them and keep them free from the war mongering propaganda that makes young men and women think it's their duty to kill or be killed for empire's sake.
I don't want my sons drafted. Instead of suggesting that, we should work to educate and free all young men and women so they won't be recruited by the war machine.
But you don't counter injustice with another injustice.
I think this is all about some misplaced nostalgia about anti-Vietnam protests where young people were aghast at being drafted and burned their draft cards. This misplaced nostalgia thinks if we just had a draft now the same thing would happen.
But the reason that happened was that a draft to fight empire's wars was unjust. It would be unjust now.
That doesn't mean our current system of propaganda and bribing to recruit "volunteers" is just either. By why replace one unjust system with a more unjust one?
The only draft I'd consider is the drafting of every Congressperson who votes for war and every administration person who leads us to war. They can go to the front lines and be replaced at home by others who opposed the war and will work to end it as quickly as possible.
Late last year 70 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. They stated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost $2.3 trillion with another $800 billion needed to pay for many years of disability payments to severely wounded vets. They estimated that $1.8 trillion could be saved over ten years if we pull out of both countries. They were ignored. To keep from having to start up the draft for those wars, hundreds of billions, perhaps up to one trillion, of that $2.3 trillion was spent to hire hundreds of thousands of contractors in the US and overseas. Everything from cooks, truck drivers, translators, electricians, plumbers, et cet. The only member of Congress who proposed re-starting the draft was a black Congressman who was wounded during the Korean War. A lot of the rich people in Congress also realized that their kids and grandkids could be drafted because the rules were changed so the draft couldn't be escaped by being in college or the University.
"The solution is to revert to a draft."
fuck that.
Actually, that was Robert E Lee, watching the slaughter of Union troops at the batte of Fredericksburg. He was talking to Longstreet, I believe. Stonewall Jackson probably would have dug it, 'cause he thought he was doing God's work. Lee had no such illusions.
The world is preparing itself for a Time when the US is no longer the only Supper Power. People all over the world no they can't count on the US for anything.Many of the poorer nation are establishing their own Free Trade agreements with each other.The US rapidly becoming Redundant.
"Many of the poorer nation are establishing their own Free Trade agreements with each other.The US rapidly becoming Redundant."
That is only tolerated for so long. And then it is dealt with like Libya's attempt to form an African Union and bank. Wars are imagined and declared by the ruling financial powers. The US may indeed someday become redundant, but that will only happen when the global financial movers and shakers feel it save to openly declare their governance over us all instead of hiding in the shadows and manipulating their puppets invisibly and securely with immunity.
Your troops await you my lord in Kuwait.
Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes if the sanctions-related deaths of a half million Iraqi children were worth it, famously replied, "We think the price is worth it." America's leaders are not amoral, they're immoral. Americans have been ruled by the Bush and Clinton family since 1980.
"Robert Callaghan"
As deviously perverted as the Bushes and Clintons are, they are not the rulers of any nation. They are the proud tools of the global country club.
The real ruler is a mindset which worships greed and indifference to the suffering of those with less money.
This mindset is widespread and has no allegiance to any physical location or being, but RELIGIOUSLY seeks the accumulation of monetary riches and the reduction of earthly regulations, laws, constitutions which hinder that accumulation.
Patriotism is one of its cleverest manipulations and deceits.
The biggest perversity of all of this is that the vast majority of people keep reinforcing the corruption because they cannot see their complicity.
To listen to any corporate politician as if they are any different than any other corporate politician is a reinforcement of our own shackles.
Yes, 500,000 dead Iraqis from pre attack sanctions, 500,000 -1,000,000 dead Iraqis resulting from the USA invasions. This is the USA, this is the USA taxpayer, who murders at least a Million people from greed and ignorance and loses not a wink of sleep over it. Are USA government supporting citizens human? Does any government that refuses to prosecute their own that murder a Million people deserve anything else but regime change? Are you in any way supporting the USA's worldwide on going blood lust and greed? If so you share in the Million plus Murders.
This is pretty hard for Americans to understand that if you pay taxes then one half of that money goes to feed the murdering of the humans who would like to live differently than our greed and power consuming culture. Taxpayers have then the blood of millions of Iraqis on their hands and no trip to church during the week absolves one of murder. I suppose the getting and spending takes their small minds off their guilt.
Robert C -
Few post-SOTU address pundits have commented upon it, but don't you recall a mention tucked away in there calling for the fall of the Assad regime in Syria? I thought that was a pretty remarkable thing to stir into a presidential speech before a joint session of Congress, the setting of which reminds me more and more of the Politburo.
Maybe that's why Hillary Clinton looked so stressed out last evening. Maybe she has an inkling where those troops repositioning in Kuwait and bobbing around in the Persian Gulf are most likely to go next - on a humanitarian mission to maintain stability and foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, of course.
Bill from Saginaw
I've heard it said that sometimes pulling out early can avoid unwanted pregnancy.
Robert Callaghan accurately notes that "America's leaders are not amoral, they're immoral." Ms. Bennis also brings out in her article that "The war [in Iraq] was based on lies..." Unfortunately all this seems to matter not a whit to our political leaders as such people as Barack Obama, when he was campaigning for president in 2008, told CNN correspondent Candy Crowley, apparently with a straight face, that the United States had no reason to apologize for any of its foreign policy actions that it has ever committed against any nation. The irony here is that another of our amoral and immoral political leaders, Mitt Romney, has accused Obama with much indignation of supposedly apologizing for what the United States has done in the Middle East.
Apologizing is something that is anathema to our political leaders as they understand that the rule of American Exceptionalism must always prevail as it should always be other countries that need to apologize for their actions and to admit that they are wrong instead of the pure and noble United States acknowledging that it has caused so much unnecessary grief and misery to so many people around the world.
As Noam Chomsky has pointed out in the title of one of his books, What We Say Goes.
You see, we cannot apologize, to anyone for anything, because to apologize would require some sense of humility or even just modesty, but we have none. In short, it's asking the impossible.
When did the US withdraw from Iraq. How many thousands of US soldiers actually remain? How many thousands of mercenaries remain? The US withdrew from Iraq? News to me. OH, and does "withdrawing from Iraq" mean simply moving a few tens of thousands of troops next door to Kuwait? And now Iraq is descending into anarchy. How long do you think it will take to move those soldiers back into Iraq from Kuwait?
Thank you! This "withdrawal" is a farce. It'd be like claiming that the US "withdrew" from Vietnam in '73, which doesn't much explain the scene there in '75 which could easily be repeated in Iraq (and that's fine by me - every time the US military gets kicked out of a country a bell rings and a baby unicorn gets an erection).
Not to mention the continued contol of Iraqi airspace and Iraqi waters (such as they are) and intelligence units and what I imagine is still a presence in Iraqi Kurdistan... I find it very hard to believe we don't maintain "boots on the ground" there.
i agree with the article in the main except fr the part about the us leaving
here is a list of the permanent bases that are and will be manned by us personell - they call them the "enduring presence"
1. Al Qayyarah air base
2. Camp Marez
3. [ name unknown ]
4. Camp Renegade
5. Camp Speicher
6. Balad air base
7. Al Asad air base
8. Camp Taji
9. Taqaddum air base
10. Green Zone
11. Camp Falcon
12. Camp Victory
13. Patrol base Shocker
14. Talil air base
personnel required to man these bases - 40,000
private contractors in iraq at this moment - 70,000
here are some numbers for our global deployment
"There are 6000 military bases and/ or military warehouses located in the U.S. (See Wikipedia, February 2007).
Total Military Personnel is of the order of 1,4 million of which 1,168,195 are in the U.S and US overseas territories.
Taking figures from the same source, there are 325,000 US military personnel in foreign countries:
800 in Africa,
97,000 in Asia (excluding the Middle East and Central Asia),
40,258 in South Korea,
40,045 in Japan,
491 at the Diego Garcia Base in the Indian Ocean,
100 in the Philippines, 196 in Singapore,
113 in Thailand,
200 in Australia,
and 16,601 Afloat.
In Europe, there are 116,000 US military personnel including 75,603 who are stationed in Germany.
In Central Asia about 1,000 are stationed at the Ganci (Manas) Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and 38 are located at Kritsanisi, in Georgia, with a mission to train Georgian soldiers.
In the Middle East (excludng the Iraq war theater) there are 6,000 US military personnel, 3,432 of whom are in Qatar and 1,496 in Bahrain.
In the Western Hemisphere, excluding the U.S. and US territories, there are 700 military personnel in Guantanamo, 413 in Honduras and 147 in Canada."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564
and we are not there to help anyone but our corporations
""The establishment of U.S. military bases should not of course be seen simply in terms of direct military ends. They are always used to promote the economic and political objectives of U.S. capitalism. For example, U.S. corporations and the U.S. government have been eager for some time to build a secure corridor for US.-controlled oil and natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. This region -has more than 6 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and almost 40 percent of its gas reserves. The war in Afghanistan and the creation of U.S. military Bases in Central Asia are viewed as a key opportunity to make such pipelines a reality."
http://stopusa.be/campaigns/texte.php?section=FABN&langue=3&id=24157
"The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined "the State of the World" by focussing on so-called "level of threats" which might negatively influence or undermine US interests.
Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualised the greatest fraud in US history, namely "the Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the "free market" has unfolded.
Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to:
1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets,
2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564
we are ready to kill any sonofabitch who stands in the way of our stealing whatever they got - oil, resources whatever
Excellent information, and a good plug for globalresearch.ca. Chossudovksy's a smart guy. And like an atheist who can quote the Bible, there's nothing that annoys a flag hag more than an anti-war, anti-imperialist lefty who knows more about foreign policy and the military than they do. :-)
Enduring Pretence
You nailed it, Bud. If we don't kill you, we will install a dictatorship that will. There is no way Rome could have been more corrupt than US.
Rome was honest that it was an Empire and that it was all about ruling the world.
We're more like the French Empire in the late 1790s, thinking we're all about freedom and equality while we are as ruthless as the Romans. France finally gave up the delusion and accepted an Emperor after only a few years. We've been deluding ourselves since the early 1600s.
Lib, I've been belatedly plodding through a history of the French Revolution, trying to finally connect the handful of chipped, scuffed, and fuzzy dots of information on the topic littering the corners of my soggy mind.
Most of what I'm fitfully reading is draining right back out again, but I'm amazed to learn a lot about exactly what you assert. I knew that the Revolution somehow backed or blundered into Empire, but I had no idea that from the beginning, the revolutionary ideals and philosophy monstrously metastasized into what was seen as righteous and therapeutic imperial warmongering.
Yep.
Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
--Rudyard Kipling
this TERRIBLE DICTATOR,as ms bennis called, was a bed rock for 8 years stand to stem off the iranian revolutionary onslaught agianst the gulf states including kuwait, without which the gulf on both shores would have been an iranian lake. and what was his reward? hanging. and the aftermath, look at the fomented uprisings by the shiats in bahrain, the saudi arabia and most of all in iraq, all of which reportedly inspired by iran. this illustrates the stupidity of the american policy makers at the highest levels when they listen to the israeli neocons diktat rather than the US vital interest.
Saddam Husseins death sentence came when he shifted the sale of Oil to the Euro and other Currencies from the Dollar.
The United States of America would have attacked Iraq for this reason no matter the stand of Israel.
The United States of America fears the collapse of its dollar as the wolrds reserve currency more then they fear Shiites or non existing weapons of mass destruction.
bush/shamey started planning an attack on Iraq from day one. Check out his former National Security Adviser Clarke's Book.
Iraq attacked Iran, but you seem to be completely ignorant of that fact. The US helped supply Iraq with chemical weapons in that war, and helped them target Iranian troops with chemical weapons in violation of international law.
The "iranian revolutionary onslaught", when Iranian students took over the US Embassy, and took hostages was blow back from the US having overthrown Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah, who was a brutal dictator that served US and British oil interests in the region. Do you know who Mohammad Mossadegh was? I didn't think so.
And who gave the Iranians plans for a nuclear power plant, under the brutal Shah? The US, that's who.
So take your history re-write and shelve it.
Also, do you personally know any Persians? The ones, who will suffer from your rabid war mongering anti-Iranian, position?
khumaini was a refugee in iraq when the shah was in power. iraq and iran reached a raprochmant, according to which khumaini was asked to leave iraq. he went to france and ever since to the last days of his life he held grudges against saddam. so, when the shah was deposed and khumaini came back to iran as a tetular leader, he started border skirmishes with iraq and, in fact, iranian forces occupied several iraqi enclaves.iraq, the saudis and kuwait and, yes the US, encouraged saddam to stand up to khumaini. they supported him with several billion dollars loans(gifts) and the US helped wih satellite imges of the movements of iranian forces. saddam, for 8 years from 1980 to 1988, managed to hold the iranian suicide waved at bay with estimated 1 million iraqi casualties.
Wrong! Khomeini went to France to meet with other Iranians prior to his planned return to Iran. He went to seek their support and to request assistance in spreading his message throughout Iran... via cassette tapes actually... the era of the internet had not been born and many people in Iran still could not read.
I knew some of the people with whom he went to meet. Also, Iraq attacked Iran because they were being guided by advisers from the US and Europe who had hoped to attack Iran when the hostages were taken. The attack via Iraq was entering through the backdoor so to speak. There are also some things that may point to the taking of the hostages as another false flag act (planned with the assistance of the hostages themselves and possibly others working on the inside for the Americans, such as Yazdi and Gobsadegh)... not the least of which were some of the statements from the hostages.
The reason there was no attack by the US directly could be because I acted very quickly to interrupt the march to war. Do you recall the convening of the Hague Court at Iran's request? That was brought about by the efforts of just one Iranian man who I begged to attempt it. He did, and subsequently left his studies at Berkeley where he was a PH.D candidate to work in Iran's office of foreign affairs.
War must be so terrible or we shall love it too much. General W.T. Sherman
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. ~Napoleon Hill
Issac Asimov
Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent.
A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. ~German Proverb
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. ~Jeanette Rankin
By the way, the Iraq war ended in 2003. It has been an occupation since - the author even says so
-- For eight years, with up to 182,600 U.S. and allied troops occupying the country --
TPTB would prefer that the word occupation is not used - I suggest that we stop buying into their meme.
The author refers to an occupation, but then ignores her own words and allows the 'War' term to predominate.
Further, I say again that the invasion was unnecessary by America's own words, the sorta-declaration of war, Public Law 107-243. The war goals were moot.
Of course, nobody, not even Progressives, seem to care about what is written - and the discussions inevitably revolve around what people say.
Which is just another way of dividing us.
the ease with which warfare is instigated has grown out of the extent to which life is cheap and meaningless. to be manipulated or eliminated as desired.
prerequisite for entry in to top echelons of power: psychopathy at the very least.
Thanks CD for posting this article. Thanks Phyllis. Good work!
1. It takes time to set up the appearance of 'free trade' instead of 'theft' for the oil fields in Iraq.
2. It's much easier to Steal Money in the fog of war than to do it at home under an even somewhat open budget.
3. We should have broken the country into 3 different countries - smaller countries cause less problems on the world stage (usually)
The part of State of Union 2012 I hated most was the "band of brothers" conclusion where Hillary and Barack and Bob Gates (who was George Bush's secretary of defense as Barack pointed out) put aside all partisan differences and sat together watching reality TV. The cuddly feeling they then experienced does not seem good enough bedrock for a new religion.
First, was it ever proved that Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 ? Perhaps somebody else just for the sake of experiment now could make that claim. We want to see if such a person will then get assassinated just so we can confirm for sure the kind of country we're living in now.
Politicians ultimately are about show and symbolism, not rationality. Our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has been symbolism, not rationality. True rationality would have entailed more respect for both the Iraqi facts and the Afghan lessons of history-- areas where Hillary and Barack, those professional students, failed.
And just what part of "Change We Can Believe In" was keeping the murderous Mr. Gates as Pentagon chief in the first place?
it was not a premature withdrawal.
but was a premature ejaculation:
❋MISSION ACCOMPLIFIED!❋
The only withdrawal I know of was a modicum or ostensible number of troops from an announcement from the very hard to believe u.s. of corporation's government. And with an u.s. embassy, biggest in the world,(Nazis always said and lived by 'bigger is better and stronger') that is still protected by numerous government paid security agents from private contractors to remaining troops tucked away in some corner of that monstrosity and in medmedude's list of permanent military bases remaining in Iraq, as mentioned, we are far from withdrawn.
But then consideration has to be given to all those ostensible u.s. companies in Iraq stealing the natural resources and you have there a coterie of security forces be they private psychopaths or part of the remaining military protecting the u.s.'s "invested interests". The u.s. is far from being withdrawn. As a matter of fact, the people in all their ideologies that were cobbled together to create Iraq decades ago, is in reality the 51 state... no make that the 52 state of the u.s. just behind izrael.
Obama said, "For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq."
Obama is a liar.
RP4-PRZ
Phyllis Bennis is a brilliant woman . Her knowledge about Iraq should have been respected by the government when deceitful Bush planned to invade Iraq . Congress should of brought her and other Middle East scholars to testify the truth before congress Instead they accepted Bush's lies for going to war. I don't understand how Bush- Cheney got away with it. The U.S. should not stay in Iraq because they have done nothing to help the Iraqi people. Troops opened the borders up and people from other countries in the area flooded in, terrorist and all, and civil war broke out just as the Iraqi people predicted. This is why Iraqis did not overthrow Saddam and this is why it is a war crime to overthrow a foreign leader. The people in their country know what is best for their nation.
If we had exited Iraq two days after we started it would have been two days too late. NO we DID NOT leave Iraq too soon. Screw anyone who thinks we did.
Our presidential war criminals, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, have only seceded in destroying themselves and their own country. Our wars are terribly expensive oil hogs that cost us far more than we can ever get back in plunder. We are much closer to economic collapse now and still denial rages from our leaders. No exit.
A correspondent wrote, "France finally gave up the delusion and accepted an Emperor after only a few years". France gave up its usual delusion because France copped a flogging from we Brits during a very lengthy period from the 1790s to 1815, apart from the flogging Napoleon copped in 1812 from the Russians. We did try to straighten out you Yankees back in 1812, but once again we quit whilst the going was good and probably because France was suffering yet another delusion of grandeur and needed sorting. Sorry, world, we tried to fix the US of A twice, but failed in our bounden duty. Blame it on the French! No wonder you Yankees call chips "French Fries"........