Why the U.S. must withdraw from Iraq

[reprehensor]

Why the U.S. must withdraw from Iraq

Vietnam proved that offensive occupations are doomed. In his arrogance, Bush is repeating the same blunder.

By Peter Dale Scott

Oct. 28, 2004 "Salon.com" -- In 1991, after the Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush proclaimed, "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula." But the specter he and the Pentagon had feared for over a decade, of a devastating shrinkage of U.S. influence following a military withdrawal, had always been a phantom.

That "specter," of defeat in Vietnam, proved in time to be as harmless as a Halloween ghost. Asia did not tip as predicted toward the Communist camp after America withdrew; Asia tipped decisively the other way. And it did so precisely because America's troops stopped fighting where they did not belong, leaving space for other Americans to come in and do more constructive forms of business.

We face a different specter today: the sibling specter of escalation and imperial overstretch. The true Vietnam syndrome is our country's proven pathological history of involvement in unnecessary and unwinnable wars.

These sibling Vietnam specters, one of withdrawal and one of escalation, haunt different sectors of our bitterly divided country. The first haunts those who fear America might lose control of the world. They are haunted also by memories of domestic antiwar opposition, as in Oliver North's revealing complaint to Congress that the Vietnam War was lost, not in Asia, but in the streets of this country. (This complaint recently surfaced in ugly partisan form when the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, enraged at Sen. John Kerry's opposition to the war in Vietnam, smeared his honorable service there.)

The second Vietnam specter haunts those who fear America is becoming trapped again by delusional dreams of domination. The immediate danger in Iraq, unfortunately, is not that we will pull out our troops and come home. On the contrary, it is that we will commit more and more troops, incur greater and greater casualties on all sides, and quite possibly expand the war beyond Iraq's frontiers, before we finally reach the relatively happy and simple outcome of withdrawal.

Last April U.S. Marines attacked the city of Fallujah with tanks and helicopter gunships, in reprisal for the killing of four American contract workers. According to Iraqi doctors, at least 600 people were killed, mostly civilians. This was more than the total number of civilians killed by the Iraqi insurgents in the previous year. As John Pilger noted, the slaughter could be compared to the S.S. killing of 600 French civilians in the village of Oradour, in revenge for the kidnapping of a German officer.

Such brutal acts are the inevitable consequence of sustained offensive occupation in a foreign land, where troops at war are not welcomed. The assaults are not easily forgotten. Given any publicity, they are far less likely to cow opponents than to mobilize them. This is why, for almost 50 years, offensive occupations have led to defeat, not victory, for the invader.

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[TwentyFive]

1. Imperialism ALWAYS fails --- but....

there are always some cronies that cash in for billions in the meantime. Think Halliburton, oil companies, Saudis, etc.....these people are big winners.

Everybody else? Big losers, and for generations too. It sucks!

[SariesNightly]

2. The futility of occupation..

..is a lesson well learned by the British Empire and others of its ilk.

That's also why the January sham-lections MUST go on, the face of occupation must be replaced by the face of stoogeocracy as soon as possible.

After that, the troops can stay on in all the spanking new military quaters to act as bullet stoppers between the Arab world and Israel, while the carpetbaggers liberate American oil in the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

[Stargleamer]

3. You may have quoted too much here...

to make the mods happy, you may have to pick and choose.

[Name removed]

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