What's so humane about sticking around and killing again and again?

[oldwizard]

"Declare Victory and Leave
By Helen Thomas
The Boston Channel

Friday 03 December 2004

Administration claims killing leads to peace.
Back in the days of the Vietnam quagmire, the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon insisted that they couldn't remove our troops from Southeast Asia because there would be chaos, anarchy and a blood bath.

The result: Johnson and Nixon - who did not want to go down in history as having lost a war - stayed the course and kept us in the killing fields.

In the end, more than 58,000 Americans gave their lives, as did hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. It was a painful, cruel lesson.

The same rationale is being invoked by a U.S. officialdom that insists we have to stay in Iraq to fight the resistance there. Even those opposed to the war now say we can't leave because a catastrophe would ensue if we were to depart.

Well, the slaughter in Iraq continues apace anyway. Our occupation only compounds the horror of it all.

We ferociously destroyed ancient Fallujah to clear it of the Iraqi resistance, as if there were a geographic center for the insurgency that knows no map coordinates.

Casualty figures continue to rise, but the administration that committed the United States to this senseless folly is content to let others pay the price. More than 1,200 Americans have died, thousands more have been wounded. Thousands of Iraqis - fighters and civilians - have been killed.

Now comes word that some 400,000 Iraqi children are undernourished and suffering stunting physical and mental problems. The Washington Post recently published a story about GIs in Iraq studying their college courses on their laptops in tents. I wonder if the children in Fallujah or Mosul or Ramadi go to school these days?

It's beyond the courage of the American leadership to admit it was wrong to invade a country under false pretenses and to stay there by force. But at some point, the U.S. leadership may have to 'fess up. This may come when, as veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges put it, "The reality of war is so revolting and horrifying that if we did see war it would be hard for us to wage it."

At a recent White House briefing, I asked press secretary Scott McClellan, "Why are we killing people in Iraq? What is the reason we are there, killing people?"

His answer: "The reason we are there is the same reason the international community is, is united in helping Iraq - the international community is helping Iraq move forward on a free and peaceful and democratic future."

"There are terrorists and other Saddam loyalists who continue to seek to derail that transition to democracy, but they will not prevail," he added. "And we are there to partner with the Iraqi people as they work to realize a better future, one that stands in stark contrast to the past of Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime."

McClellan did the best he could to create a facade of international support, which doesn't exist in the real world, for the U.S. occupation.

The United States did not invade Iraq out of some great humanitarian compassion to protect the Iraqi people, nor did the administration defend the invasion on those grounds early on. (Remember how Iraq was an imminent threat with weapons of mass destruction targeted to destroy us?) Nor did the Iraqis ask for us to save them from Saddam.

Sorry, McClellan can't rewrite history with his pitch that the international community is behind the United States in Iraq. The major European allies - except for Britain - have shied away from this misadventure. Ukraine's parliament voted 257-0 this week to pull the country's 1,600 troops out of Iraq. The vote was non-binding but symbolic of the reality that the Bush administration tries to ignore when it describes the "coalition" that occupies Iraq.

An election may be held in Iraq next month, with a predictable outcome. We will have saved Iraq for the Shiites, the country's majority Muslim sect that has been playing it cool.

To those who warn that it would be inhumane and wrong to leave Iraq soon, I ask: What's so humane about sticking around and killing again and again?"

Glenn Strange




[This message has been edited by oldwizard (edited 12-07-2004).]

[BillVoiers]

Which reminds me, I don't think I've seen any recent figures on the total number Iraqi civilians we have had to kill in order to save them from Saddam.

[Another Texan]

The ultimate liberation, the one that frees them from their earthly existence.

[PMilam]

Depends on who's line you read...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=iraq+civilian+casualties%C2%A0&btnG=Search

[outsider2002]

Isn't this a war crime? Why doesn't anyone get charged with this? It is time for a Nurnberg trial, I believe!
......................
US Eliminates Those Who Dare to Count the Dead

By Naomi Klein

December 5, 2004

The Guardian, December 3, 2004



David T. Johnson,

Acting Ambassador,

US Embassy, London

Dear Mr. Johnson, On November 26, your press counselor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: “In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone — doctors, clerics, journalists — who dares to count the bodies.” Of particular concern was the word “eliminating”.

The letter suggested that my charge was “baseless” and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide “evidence of this extremely grave accusation”. It is quite rare for US Embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Fallujah in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on April 11 that “Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Fallujah general hospital”. 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Fallujah, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April’s siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. ... Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Fallujah — but this time the attack included a new tactic: Eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.

The first major operation by US Marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Fallujah General Hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that “the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties”, noting that “this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents’ most potent weapons”. The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers “stole the mobile phones” at the hospital — preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr. Sami Al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Fallujah General Hospital “had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical center” before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: To eliminate many of Fallujah’s doctors from the war zone. As Dr. Jumaili told the Independent on Nov. 14: “There is not a single surgeon in Fallujah.” When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: On entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the Al-Zaharawi hospital.

The images from last month’s siege on Fallujah came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April’s siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Fallujah, but on Nov. 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi’s detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. “We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job,” the IFJ stated.

It’s not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed Al-Jazeera’s Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, killing José Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso’s family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine Hotel and that they committed a war crime....

“We don’t do body counts,” said Gen. Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: What happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies — the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr. Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

[RWhite]

By the way, in today's USA Today, Rumsfeld (remember, the greatest SecDef ever) is quoted as saying he hopes American troops are out of Iraq by the end of the second Bush term (2009). Funny, he didn't say that during the campaign.

[outsider2002]

Originally posted by RWhite:
By the way, in today's USA Today, Rumsfeld (remember, the greatest SecDef ever) is quoted as saying he hopes American troops are out of Iraq by the end of the second Bush term (2009). Funny, he didn't say that during the campaign.

Yup! Here is a blog site from yesterday that mentions the same about the Brits...:

http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/

Monday, December 06, 2004
Troops to Stay in Iraq Until Late 2008
Various American talking heads have been speculating recently about the chances of being able to pull the troops out of Iraq after the January 2005 election but the U.S. military and the Bush administration have been notably evasive about their plans. Now the answer to the speculation comes - not from U.S. generals but British ones.

According to The Scotsman newspaper, senior military sources in the British Army have said they have been told that the entire British contingent will be staying for 2 years with around 7,000 soldiers, a brigade-sized force, staying until late 2008. They had hoped to be able to get the majority of troops out by the end of this year, with a complete withdrawal by late 2006.

The planned extension in deployment has been prompted by the continuing Iraqi insurgency and the inability of local security forces to control the country without US and British troops. Training the Iraqis is taking longer than expected and forcing the UK and the US to keep their troops in the country. The coalition soldiers will therefore stay not only for January's election, but for a series of elections in 2005 culminating in full government elections planned for December 2005. Whether their continued presence will provide a provocation to insurgents to disrupt these further election plans remains to be seen.

The demand for troops in Iraq means the MoD may not be able to meet its commitment to provide troops to the NATO garrison in Afghanistan. NATO has asked the UK to increase its force by more than 2,000 to tackle to heroin trade outside the capital, Kabul.One senior army officer said:

"When the requirement to keep troops in Iraq until 2008 filtered back to the army, everybody started wondering how we were going to do this."

Now, the British Army must face the fact that it is overextended already, while the Defence Secretary is pressing ahead with plans to cut four infantry battalions and disband the army’s Scottish regiments.

You can bet your bottom euro (or dollar if you want a cheaper bet) that if the British Army will be in Iraq until 2008, there is no realistic chance of getting U.S. troops out any sooner than that - and it will probably be later. President Bush will preside over a full four year term with an Iraq War in progress, come what may.

[OuterRing]

I do not know why I am writing this as it falls on deaf ears...but there is a cost to be free and there is a cost to war...

America is not perfect...but we are the best damn thing going on this planet..

Not to sound cold or hard...but we have taken a country in battle with the least amount of dead Amercan soldiers of any battle in our history...

The debate over the war at this point is useless...support the troops to win no matter what has to be done.

OR

[2100]

"America is not perfect...but we are the best damn thing going on this planet."

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

[Renny]

If the primary objective is to prevent American casualties, why don't we just kill them all with the BIG BOMB?

[gayle]

I'll bet that there are many progressive countries on this world that would disagree with the US being the "best damn thing going on this planet". It's this sort of arrogance that makes it necessary for Americans to pin fake Canada badges to their luggage when travelling the world. You're not the best....not even close...we here in the west have a lot to learn about being the "best".

[RWhite]

Actually, OuterRing, I agree with you on this country and support of our troops. However, I will not agree to support the chickenhawk who is in charge of my country and who put the troops in harm's way with questionable justification. I do not equate patriotism and support of our military personnel with support for Bush and his policies.

[Lucinda]

George W. Bush Takes Familiar, Fatal Step In Iraq
Commentary by Egbert F. Bhatty
December 6, 2004

http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_10574.shtml

On Thursday the Pentagon announced that it was increasing troop strength
in Iraq by 12,000.

And, with that announcement, President George W. Bush took that familiar,
fatal step - escalation.

Bush is not a student of history - or, for that matter, of anything much
else - having been awarded a gentleman's "C" at Yale. But, if he were, he
would know that Hitler threw more troops into the Eastern Front to no
avail, the Soviets threw more troops into Afghanistan to no avail, and
President Lyndon B. Johnson, also, did the same, with similar results.

During his 1964 election campaign Johnson made the usual noises about
keeping the world safe from Communism, just as Bush, exactly 40 years
later, made noises about keeping the world safe from "terrorism."

However, within months of winning the election, Johnson launched Operation
Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing of North Vietnam. President Bush
behaved no differently. Within days of Democratic Presidential Candidate
Senator John Kerry very quickly conceding the election, Bush ordered
Operation Phantom Fury -- to retake Fallujah, which had been abandoned by
the Marines on orders from the White House in April.

From here on the course in Iraq is predictable.

Soon after Operation Rolling Thunder got under way, and proved
ineffective, as, indeed, Bush's new assault on Fallujah is proving to be,
President Johnson ordered more troops into Vietnam.

On Thursday [November 4] we saw Bush take that same fatal step.

By November 1965 Johnson had 175,000 troops in Vietnam. With the
additional troops ordered into battle Bush will have 150,000 troops in
Iraq.

But, escalation once started does not stop. Hubris - the desire to go
down in history as a war hero -- causes Presidents, despite their honeyed
words of care and compassion, to throw more and more bodies recklessly
into the battle.

By 1966 Johnson had 275,000 US troops in Vietnam. By the end of his term
in 1968 the number had escalated to 535,000.

It's going to be no different for President Bush.

The Islamic insurgents in Iraq are every bit as courageous and every bit
as clever as the Viet Cong. And, just as Johnson could not stop the flow
of the Viet Cong from the North into the South, President Bush has had no
success - via negotiations [an anathema to this President] or by the most
intense and sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam - to stem the crimson
Islamic tide.

As in Vietnam, American blood continues to flow in Iraq at the hands of
this rag tag band of rug merchants with antiquated weapons. A total of
135 Americans were killed in November, equaling the largest number of
deaths in any single month - namely, April, when, curiously enough, the
Marines were trying to take -- Fallujah!

Hitler had his Guernica; Bush has his Fallujah -- a city almost flattened
by relentless bombing, as was Guernica, from the air, but, in addition,
laid waste by the unimpeded rampage of our Main Battle Tanks.

Despite all this, and after almost a month of operations, as well as an
assist from the British Black Watch Regiment, US troops are still not in
total control of Fallujah. Like the Viet Cong, the Islamic insurgents
have proved to be a determined enemy.

A handful of them routed a 5,000-strong US-trained police force in Mosul.

And, this not your local weather forecast, but, it's raining in Baghdad,
as CBS Radio News so aptly put it. Raining mortar shells, that is, in the
heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the US Embassy and the interim
Iraqi government.

In addition, Baghdad is firebombed every day by Improvised Explosive
Devices [IEDs] and suicide attacks, and rattled by incessant gunfire.

And, beyond Baghdad, oil pipelines are whacked regularly, setting up a
constant cycle of tear and repair that personifies the instability
gripping the Capital and the country.

Despite the rosy, and politically correct, reports issued by the military
every day, the fact is that the situation in Iraq is getting worse, not
better. Hence President Bush's escalation of US troop strength in Iraq.

The soothing noises about this escalation being temporary is a tune we
have heard before. In 1964 Johnson told the voters much the same thing,
"We don't want to get tied down to a land war in Asia."

History has proved Johnson wrong. And, since Bush doesn't know too much
about history he is, sadly, doomed to repeat it.

[Lucinda]

i.e. It is not difficult to predict the future if you study the past.

America in general tends to forget the 'great empires' of the past - how they were formed, grew, became depraved, and then died or were destroyed.

Few citizens see the possiblity here - that is hubris and malaise at it's most dangerous.

[Another Texan]

Same old tune with new lyrics.
http://www.countryjoe.com/iraq_fixins.htm

[C-mo]

Even though Bush may not have learned a history lesson from Vietnam, I suspect most Americans did.

Bush won't escalate the number of troops in Iraq to 575K with an all volunteer army, and he can't to do it with a draft.

Given lessons learned in Vietnam, it would be impossible to institute a draft for the illegitimate Iraq war. Who would send their kids to die in Bush's illegitamate war? I don't suspect many Americans would send their kids to die in Iraq via draft. What would Bush do if the majority of American kids refused to serve? Jail them all? That is not very likely.

I'm not sacrificing my kids for Bush's crusade.

Perhaps the only good thing that came out of the Vietnam war is that Americans will never again blindly obey our President, and allow thousands of our children to be drafted and die for no good reason.

[outsider2002]

Originally posted by C-mo:
Even though Bush may not have learned a history lesson from Vietnam, I suspect most Americans did.

Bush won't escalate the number of troops in Iraq to 575K with an all volunteer army, and he can't to do it with a draft.

Given lessons learned in Vietnam, it would be impossible to institute a draft for the illegitimate Iraq war. Who would send their kids to die in Bush's illegitamate war? I don't suspect many Americans would send their kids to die in Iraq via draft. What would Bush do if the majority of American kids refused to serve? Jail them all? That is not very likely.

I'm not sacrificing my kids for Bush's crusade.

Perhaps the only good thing that came out of the Vietnam war is that Americans will never again blindly obey our President, and allow thousands of our children to be drafted and die for no good reason.

OH YEAH???? So, what are all those soldiers over there doing in Iraq? Many of them do believe that we are there in full right, and they obey blindly and die willingly, because they do believe in the 'cause'...!@#$%^!@#$%^

[Kim Yonkee]

OR, it doesn't fall on deaf ears. I do listen. I do try to understand. But it seems like the issues we're talking about here are pretty complicated. Even the military personnel we support seem to be divided on these issues.

An example? Here is a current poll on ArmyTimes.com:

<blockquote>Q: In a couple of recent cases, service members faced scrutiny for expressing less than total support for the war in Iraq. A soldier says he stripped of an R&R rotation and had to change wedding plans, after writing a critical opinion piece that appeared in The Washington Post. And several Marines may be in trouble for their appearance in Michael Moore’s controversial film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Is such treatment fair? </blockquote>

<ul> Yes. We’re at war. We must present a united front: 48.93 %
No. The service members in question were exercising basic rights of free speech and free association: 48.61 %
[/list]

If the people who are on the front lines of this war are so equally divided in their views, how could it possibly be un- patriotic for us to have the same questions here at home?

If 100% of us say, "We must support the war, no matter what ..." what happens to the 48% of the service members who do NOT agree with this position? Don't they deserve our advocacy as well?

[b lake lady]

A few days ago, my baby son told me he had taken the intial tests to join the Army. I don't know what kind of reaction he expected from me, but it was swift and left no room for discussion. His name isn't Jesus and I'm not Mary. I'm not willing to sacrifice my child for this farce in Iraq. My brother went to Viet Nam. We were a military family...........my father expected him to do his "duty," as he did in WWII and his dad did in WWI and back to the civil war. Nobody ever thought about protesting......not til my generation said ........"wait....... stop children.....what's that sound.....there's a man with a gun over there.........." I was in Haight-Ashbury handing out flowers while my brother was dodging schrapnel from a helocopter somewhere above Pleiku (doing his duty to protect America.) His body came back in January of 1967. He was 18 years old.

[This message has been edited by b lake lady (edited 12-13-2004).]

[Becky Davis]

I understand completely. I feel the same way.

[Becky Davis]

I know that so many died in the horrible earthquakes and tsunamis this past week. But I wonder if the death toll in this war has reached one hundred thousand yet? I suspect if all of the injured and maimed were added into the mix, we would have a hundred thousand easily.
I wish people of the world would get as upset over this fighting and killing caused by man as they are over the tragics deaths caused by nature.
The people caught in the crossfires are just as innocent.
Our focus is off of the war presently, but we must remember we have people dying daily in Iraq.

[b lake lady]

AMEN, Becky

[BillVoiers]

Amen, Amen, Amen!!!

[montelinn]

As for the soldiers in the military speaking to the press, michael moore, or writing articles for the press while on active duty. Those in the military have to get permission before any of the above are undertaken. The military is basically a dictatorship, defending democracy. Soldiers do not have the freedom to express their views in a public forum without repercussions.