" what's recalled is kited intelligence, Saddam Hussein's nonexistent
nuclear arsenal, dumb and even dumber decisions, a bloody civil war,
dead Americans, crony corporations, a trillion or more taxpayer
dollars flushed down the toilet… "
On Nov 13, 9:53 pm, Keith In Tampa <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Geesh, what a total misrepresentation of contemporary history and partisan
> hogwash.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 7:38 PM, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
>
> > *The GOP's Dream World of Empire
> > *Posted by Christopher Manion <c...@manionmusic.com> on November 13, 2011
> > 02:11 PM
>
> > Revisited and embraced by the debating dwarfs, rejected by Ron Paul, and
> > recounted<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/an-all-american-nightmare/>(for those who need a refresher course) by Tom Engelhardt.
>
> > xxx
>
> > *An All-American Nightmare
> > **From TomDispatch: This is what defeat looks like
> > *By Tom Engelhardt | November 8, 2011
>
> > How about a moment of silence for the passing of the American Dream?
> > M.R.I.C. (May it rest in carnage.)
>
> > No, I'm not talking about the old dream of opportunity that involved
> > homeownership, a better job than your parents had, a decent pension, and
> > all the rest of the package that's so yesterday, so underwater, so OWS. I'm
> > talking about a far more recent dream, a truly audacious one that's
> > similarly gone with the wind.
>
> > I'm talking about George W. Bush's American Dream. If people here remember
> > the invasion of Iraq -- and most Americans would undoubtedly prefer to
> > forget it -- what's recalled is kited intelligence, Saddam Hussein's
> > nonexistent nuclear arsenal, dumb and even dumber decisions, a bloody civil
> > war, dead Americans, crony corporations, a trillion or more taxpayer
> > dollars flushed down the toilet… well, you know the story. What few care to
> > remember was that original dream call it The Dream -- and boy, was it a
> > beaut!
>
> > *An American Dream
>
> > *It went something like this: Back in early 2003, the top officials of
> > the Bush administration had no doubt that Saddam Hussein's Iraq, drained by
> > years of war, no-fly zones, and sanctions, would be a pushover; that the
> > U.S. military, which they idolized and romanticized, would waltz to
> > Baghdad. (The word one of their supporters used in the *Washington Post*for the onrushing invasion was a "cakewalk.") Nor did they doubt that those
> > troops would be greeted as liberators, even saviors, by throngs of adoring,
> > previously suppressed Shiites strewing flowers* *in their path. (No
> > kidding, no exaggeration.)
>
> > How easy it would be then to install a "democratic" government in Baghdad
> > -- which meant their autocratic candidate Ahmad Chalabi -- set up four or
> > five strategically situated military mega-bases, exceedingly well-armed
> > American small towns already on the drawing boards before the invasion
> > began, and so dominate the oil heartlands of the planet in ways even the
> > Brits, at the height of their empire, wouldn't have dreamed possible. (Yes,
> > the neocons were then bragging that we would outdo the Roman and British
> > empires rolled into one!)
>
> > As there would be no real resistance, the American invasion force could
> > begin withdrawing as early as the fall of 2003, leaving perhaps 30,000 to
> > 40,000 troops, the U.S. Air Force, and various spooks and private
> > contractors behind to garrison a grateful country ad infinitum (on what was
> > then called "the South Korean model"). Iraq's state-run economy would be
> > privatized and its oil resources thrown open to giant global energy
> > companies, especially American ones, which would rebuild the industry and
> > begin pumping millions of barrels of that country's vast reserves, thus
> > undermining the OPEC cartel's control over the oil market.
>
> > And mind you, it would hardly cost a cent. Well, at its unlikely worst,
> > maybe $100 billion to $200 billion, but as Iraq, in the phrase* *of
> > then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "floats on a sea of oil,"
> > most of it could undoubtedly be covered, in the end, by the Iraqis
> > themselves.
>
> > Now, doesn't going down memory lane just take your breath away? And yet,
> > Iraq was a bare beginning for Bush's dreamers, who clearly felt like so
> > many proverbial kids in a candy shop (even if they acted like bulls in a
> > china shop). Syria, caught in a strategic pincer between Israel and
> > American Iraq, would naturally bow down; the Iranians, caught similarly
> > between American Iraq and American Afghanistan, would go down big time, too
> > or simply be taken down Iraqi-style, and who would complain? (As the
> > neocon quip of the moment went: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men
> > want to go to Tehran.")
>
> > And that wasn't all. Bush's top officials had been fervent Cold Warriors
> > in the days before the U.S. became "the sole superpower," and they saw the
> > new Russia stepping into those old Soviet boots. Having taken down the
> > Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, they were already building a network
> > of bases there, too. (Let a thousand Korean models bloom!) Next on the
> > agenda would be rolling the Russians right out of their "near abroad," the
> > former Soviet Socialist Republics, now independent states, of Central Asia.
>
> > What glory! Thanks to the unparalleled power of the U.S. military,
> > Washington would control the Greater Middle East from the Mediterranean to
> > the Chinese border and would be beholden to no one when victory came. Great
> > powers, phooey! They were talking about a *Pax Americana* on which the
> > sun could never set. Meanwhile, there were so many other handy perks: the
> > White House would be loosed* *from its constitutional bounds via a
> > "unitary executive" and, success breeding success, a *Pax Republicana*would be established in the U.S. for eons to come (with the Democratic or
> > as they said sneeringly, the "Democrat" Party playing the role of Iran
> > and going down in a similar fashion).
>
> > *An American Nightmare
>
> > *When you wake up in a cold sweat, your heart pounding, from a dream
> > that's turned truly sour, sometimes it's worth trying to remember it before
> > it evaporates, leaving only a feeling of devastation behind.
>
> > So hold Bush's American Dream in your head for a few moments longer and
> > consider the devastation that followed. Of Iraq, that multi-trillion-dollar
> > war, what's left? An American expeditionary force, still 30,000-odd troops
> > who were supposed to hunker down there forever, are instead packing their
> > gear and heading "over the horizon." Those giant American towns with
> > their massive PXs, fast-food restaurants, gift shops, fire stations, and
> > everything else are soon to be ghost towns, likely as not looted and
> > stripped by Iraqis.
>
> > Multi-billions of taxpayer dollars were, of course, sunk into those
> > American ziggurats. Now, assumedly, they are goners except for the monster
> > embassy-cum-citadel the Bush administration built in Baghdad for
> > three-quarters of a billion dollars. It's to house part of a 17,000-person
> > State Department "mission" to Iraq, including 5,000 armed mercenaries, all
> > of whom are assumedly there to ensure that American folly is not utterly
> > absent from that country even after "withdrawal."
>
> > Put any spin you want on that withdrawal, but this still represents a
> > defeat of the first order, humiliation on a scale and in a time frame that
> > would have been unimaginable in the invasion year of 2003. After all, the
> > U.S. military was ejected from Iraq by… well, whom exactly?
>
> > Then, of course, there's Afghanistan, where the ultimate, inevitable
> > departure has yet to happen, where another trillion-dollar war is still
> > going strong as if there were no holes in American pockets. The U.S. is
> > still taking casualties, still building up its massive base structure,
> > still training an Afghan security force of perhaps 400,000 men in a county
> > too poor to pay for a tenth of that (which means it's ours to fund forever
> > and a day).
>
> > Washington still has its stimulus program in Kabul. Its diplomats and
> > military officials shuttle in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in search
> > of "reconciliation" with the Taliban, even as CIA drones pound the enemy
> > across the Afghan border and anyone else in the vicinity. As once upon a
> > time in Iraq, the military and the Pentagon still talk about progress being
> > made, even while Washington's unease grows about a war that everyone is now
> > officially willing to call "unwinnable."
>
> > In fact, it's remarkable how consistently things that are officially going
> > so well are actuallygoing so badly. Just the other day, for instance,
> > despite the fact that the U.S. is training up a storm, Major General Peter
> > Fuller, running the training program for Afghan forces, was dismissed by
> > war commander General John Allen for dissing Afghan President Hamid Karzai
> > and his generals. He called them "isolated from reality."
>
> > Isolated from reality? Here's the U.S. record on the subject: it's costing
> > Washington (and so the American taxpayer) $11.6 billion this year alone to
> > train those security forces and yet, after years of such training, "not a
> > single Afghan army battalion can operate without assistance from U.S. or
> > allied units."
>
> > You don't have to be a seer to know that this, too, represents a form of
> > defeat, even if the enemy, as in Iraq, is an underwhelming set of ragtag
> > minority insurgencies. Still, it's more or less a given that any American
> > dreams for Afghanistan, like Britain's and Russia's before it, will be
> > buried someday in the rubble of a devastated but resistant land, no matter
> > what resources Washington choses to continue to squander on the task.
>
> > This, simply put, is part of a larger landscape of imperial defeat.
>
> > *Cold Sweats at Dawn
>
> > *Yes, we've lost in Iraq and yes, we're losing in Afghanistan, but if you
> > want a little geopolitical turn of the screw that captures the *zeitgeist
> > *of the moment, check out one of the first statements of Almazbek
> > Atambayev after his recent election as president of Kyrgyzstan, a country
> > you've probably never spent a second thinking about.
>
> > Keep in mind
>
> ...
>
> read more »
>
> MoonbatsConverging.jpg
> 142KViewDownload
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