Sy Hersh: "The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing"

[madfloridian]

This is from an interview with Spiegel Online and Seymour Hersh. It sppears to be today.

SPIEGEL ONLINE :So what are the lessons of the Surge ?

Hersh : The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he’s talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He’s not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You’re going to have a Kurdistan. You’re going to have a Sunni area that we’re going to have to support forever. And you’re going to have the Shiites in the South.

I was stunned to hear Bill Clinton in his interview with Charlie Rose say that 5 million in Iraq had been ethnically cleansed or moved from place to place.

It appears to be secret only to the American people who do not have the media they deserve. This is in part a result of the invasion and the resulting chaos. That invasion was done in our name without our permission.

Hersh's interview with Spiegel Online.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran ?

Hersh : You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You’d think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can’t possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : Even after Iraq ? Aren’t there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East ?

Hersh : Oh no. We’re going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can’t have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I’d actually be relieved because I’d know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he’s doing God’s work.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : So what are the options in Iraq ?

Hersh : There are two very clear options : Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.

Hersh further says this is far worse than Vietnam....he wonders how we repair damages done to entire cultures.

SPIEGEL ONLINE : If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did ?

Hersh : Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures ? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.

The very fact that many of us were surprised at the huge number of 5 million mentioned by Bill Clinton shows that we have been let down by our party, our country, and our media. Most of us suspected such was going on. Since the invasion was done in our name without our permission, since victory was declared on an aircraft carrier by Bush in a flight suit....we should have heard this before now. Suspecting is not enough.

Presenting it casually is not enough. Hersh was right. If we continue to be there then we know that the ethnic cleansing is being accepted by our leaders. Harsh but true.

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[bunnies]

2. How is this not a crime by Bush.

I just dont frigging get it.

[madfloridian]

3. If we continue to keep our troops there

then the blame is with us as well. I blame Bush by far the most, but we won back Congress to at least try to do something.

[bunnies]

10. Youre right.

And if it continues into a Dem presidency... we own it. The whole thing makes me sick.

[DeanDem10]

4. I think the Clinton numbers break down as follows.

There are about 1 million Iraqis dead from the war.
There are about 2 million internal refugees.
There are about 2 million refugees who've expatriated, many of whom are living in regugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

[Botany]

6. You forgot

8 Million Iraqis who are lacking needed food, water, power, and medical care.

This from a country of 26 million.

[madfloridian]

16. That is only what we know about.

We know so little about what they are going through there.

Civilians fleeing Baghdad to Najaf....lacking food, water, supplies.

We have done this. We have caused a humanitarian crisis on an unbelievable scale.

We declared citizens of Fallujah enemy combatants if they remained in their homes. A military spokesman said there was a similar plan for Sadr City, Baghdad....if needed. We have become a nation that invades a country that was no danger. We have had the utter unbelievable nerve to declare citizens enemy combatants for remaining in their homes.

A lot of serious stuff we don't hear about anymore.

"I'm fleeing my home today and won't take anything with me. I cannot see my children dying. We need protection and we cannot get it in Sadr City any more. US troops are invading our houses, shooting at our doors and killing innocent people and I don't want my loved ones to be the next victims," said Mamun Ali, 45.

"They made it clear during their raid on 30 June that they were going to return to finish the militants and surely dozens of innocent Iraqis are going to die just for remaining in their homes," Ali said. "We are going to Najaf today with the hope of finding a camp for the displaced to stay in and save our lives."

I read recently that Najaf is not taking any more displaced persons.

[NoFederales]

5. 5 Million? Words cannot express...and yet our Season of Happiness

and Consumerism flourishes, our zeal for entertainment is unabated, our hope for political leadership is so misplaced... 'Tis Not My Season.

NoFederales

[madfloridian]

7. Today the media is quoting General Odierno about how good things are in Iraq.

Iraq Violence Lowest Since Year of Invasion, U.S. Says

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the man responsible for the ground campaign in Iraq, said that the first six months of 2007 were probably the most violent period since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The past six months, however, have seen some of the lowest levels of violence since the conflict began, Odierno said, attributing the change to an increase in both American troops and better-trained Iraqi forces.

"I feel we are back in '03 and early '04. Frankly I was here then, and the environment is about the same in terms of security in my opinion," he said. "What is different from then is that the Iraqi security forces are significantly more mature."

I remembered some things about that name.

What wasn't widely understood at the time, or even now outside the military, is that the overcrowding at the prison... resulted directly from tactical decisions... most notably the 4th ID's Gen. Odierno. In the fall of 2003 they were stuffing Abu Ghraib with thousands of detainees, the majority of them bystanders caught up in the sweeps.

When Fast, the top Army intelligence officer in Iraq, questioned the 4th ID's indiscriminate approach, she was told by its intelligence officer that Odierno didn't care...

Brig. Gen. Karpinski, the reserve MP officer overseeing detentions across Iraq (said)..."The 82nd's interrogators did it right. They'd inveterview twenty-five and send three to me. Odierno's guys would grab twenty-five, and send twenty-five, or fifty, by including a bunch from his holding pen..."

More on Odierno from Daily Kos:

For Odierno is well-known to the Sunnis of Iraq (Diyala, like Anbar where Odierno gained his notoriety, is overwhelmingly Sunni). As is the fact that the Iraqi 'security forces' on the operation were primarily Shi'ite.

And so when the surprise operation started, entire villages emptied themselves of all adult males over the age of 16, and hid in the canals spread throughout the region.

But of course the very act of hiding equalled guilt in the eyes of the new commander, and so the next day the air strikes began...
http://www.dailykos.com/hotlist/add/2007/1/20/134224/664/displaystory//

They began air strikes because of course if the males ran they were guilty. Sad.

HAMOUD, IRAQ — Bombers, fighter jets and attack helicopters unleashed a thundering attack today as U.S. and Iraqi troops closed in on a web of irrigation canals east of Baghdad where they thought Sunni Arab insurgents were massing.

The predawn strikes shook the ground and sent fireballs and thick smoke into the sky.

[madfloridian]

9. Forgot the link to the 2nd quote.

Odierno caused many bystanders to be in Abu Graib

[slipslidingaway]

8. 5 million Iraqi orphans, anti-corruption board reveals

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2476336#2477189

I gave this thread an "R" the other night, but never went back to post my comment about the numbers.

The number seems high and it does not square with the low number of civilian casualties listed by IBC, not that I believe the IBC number.

It is more in line with the extrapolated Lancet number of over 1 million excess deaths.

Whatever the number is we know it is high :(


"SPIEGEL ONLINE : If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did ?

Hersh : Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades."

[madfloridian]

11. All those concrete walls are not shown on our media either.

The surge's success, walls, and ethnic cleansing...from TAPPED.

In fact there are no pictures here of them.

What the graphic does not show, and the article does not mention, are the concrete walls which have been erected between new Sunni and Shia neighborhoods throughout Baghdad. David Axe reported in April on the walling off of Adhamiyah:

"Not everyone was thrilled by the Adhamiyah barrier. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation," a Sunni shop owner told The New York Times.
Noting such objections, Kilcullen stresses that the walls are temporary. He compares them to tourniquets. "It's something you do when patient is bleeding to death. But you don't leave it there forever or it causes damage."

Eight months later, these tourniquets have been applied throughout Baghdad, essentially making permanent the ethnic cleansing of the last few years, and ensuring that resentments will continue to stymie Iraqi political reconciliation for the foreseeable future. I'd offer that the tourniquet is also an excellent metaphor for the surge itself: It's helped, in some respects, to stop the bleeding, but it's made it impossible to save the leg."

Some days I can not believe what we did there. It just boggles my mind. And none of our Democratic politicians appear to be very stunned at any of it. :shrug:

[readmoreoften]

12. Ready to fight another stupid war in two decades???

I'd give it two months, two years at most. These folks arean't giving up on owning the ME.

[Quixote1818]

13. Big KICK and R. nt

[Quixote1818]

14. Lets get this the 500 recomend votes it deserves! nt

[bunnies]

15. I think someones going to have to say something bad

about Clinton or Obama for that to happen. Unfortunately.

[madfloridian]

17. Peace by partitioning....a video of the high walls we are building

http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=692&thisview=item

And more of the plans of those like al-Sadr. Interesting. Concludes this is our worst nightmare, a true nationalistic indigenous movement.

Also here is an article about the ethnic cleansing.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article548945.ece

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.

Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: " They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later I went back to try to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin.

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.

In Baquba, with a population of 350,000, gunmen last week ordered people off a bus, separated the men from the women and shot dead 11 of them. Not far away police found the mutilated body of a kidnapped six-year-old boy for whom a ransom had already been paid.

The sectarian warfare in Baghdad is sparsely reported but the provinces around the capital are now so dangerous for reporters that they seldom, if ever, go there, except as embeds with US troops. Two months ago in Mosul, I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala who said Sunni and Shia were slaughtering each other in his home province. "Whoever is in a minority runs," he said. "If forces are more equal they fight it out."