[NYTr] Beware the Wounded Beast: Bush Has Losr His War in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Sep 5, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09052007.html


Beware the Wounded Beast:

Bush Has Lost the Iraq War

By DAVE LINDORFF

The Iraq War has been lost.

The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops
from Basra, Iraq's second largest city, handing over the city to the
control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the "Coalition
of the Willing" is now dead. America is now going it alone.

Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by
saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though
clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000
troops for the last six months.

He acknowledged defeat too, by flying into Iraq stealthily in the dead
of night this week, landing at a remote desert outpost in western Iraq,
instead of going to Baghdad, and meeting with American military
officials, instead of with the Iraqi government. (So much for Iraq's
being a "sovereign nation"! Can you imaging a head of state of some
foreign government, together with his war secretary and his secretary
of state, flying in unannounced to some remote American state, and not
even meeting with American government officials?) Clearly the US
military could not guarantee the president's safety in Baghdad and the
Green Zone, so he had to go to a remote outpost where he was safe
behind razor wire, mines and an obscene arsenal of soldiers, tanks and
gunships.

With the British giving up on their quadrant of Iraq-a strategically
crucial location at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, where the
bulk of supplies for the US military in Iraq are offloaded, and from
which the vast majority of Iraq's dismal oil experts are
exported-American troops are stranded, and dependent upon air drops for
their secure delivery of supplies.

Reports say that the real reason Bush is talking about troops coming
home is because the military in Iraq is broken, and can no longer
sustain a commitment of 160,000 soldiers and marines in the country.

There is no choice; they have to start coming home.

As in Vietnam, where open mutiny and sullen disobedience became the
norm after 1968, in Iraq, the military is finally cracking. Seven
enlisted soldiers even dared to write an open and scathing critique of
the war in an opinion piece in the New York Times, saying that the US
was widely viewed as an occupation force in Iraq, and that Iraqis
wanted us out-the sooner the better. The organization Iraq Veterans
Against the War is growing rapidly in membership. The military has
resorted to offering potential enlistees a whopping $20,000 bonus to go
to boot camp immediately, because recruitment and reenlistment numbers
for this year are so dismally low. Junior officer resignations are at a
record high.

As military family members are pointing out, the American military is
no longer a volunteer force. In name it may appear to be, but once
stop-loss orders start routinely preventing troops from quitting the
service, it is no longer volunteer, whatever it may be called. People
are being coerced into fighting. And once you have a coerced army
loyalty goes out the window.

While there is nothing to be done about the disaster in Iraq, which
will go down in military history as one of the great defeats of all
time-the most powerful military the world has ever known beaten by a
disorganized assortment of ill-trained and ill-equipped guerrilla
fighters-this is nonetheless a dangerous moment.

Wounded animals are dangerous animals, and President Bush and his gang
of Neocon wackoes, badly wounded by defeat in Iraq, are not anxious to
slither off the political stage as losers. Hence the plans in the works
to go double or nothing with an all-out aerial assault on Iran.

Numerous reports, including most credibly one in The Times in London
(owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.), suggest that a plan has already
been laid out for a three-day massive bombardment on over 1200 targets
in Iran, which would attempt to destroy not just that country's nascent
nuclear processing capability, but also its government, communications,
and military facilities, essentially leaving the country of 70 million
a smoking ruin.

Such an attack, with no international support, no UN sanction, no
threat, imminent or otherwise, and no provocation, would be, pure and
simple, a war crime of the first order. It would also put the US at
war, not just with Iran, but also with virtually the entire Islamic
world.

The Neocon fantasy is that after such a blitzkrieg, Iranians would rise
up and overthrow their leaders-those leaders who survived-but history
has shown that in such times of national disaster, people don't turn on
their leaders, but rather rally to them, however unpopular they may
have been. This is likely to be all the more true in the case of Iran,
a country with a history going back as long as China's with a strong
sense of national identity, and a long recent history of feeling put
upon by the U.S. (America, after all, overthrew Iran's first democratic
government in the 1950 in a CIA-inspired coup which set up the regime
of the hated Shah Reza Palevi).

An Iran at war would be free to set its agents loose to attack American
targets around the world, and inside the U.S., and under the doctrine
of reciprocity, would be justified in attacking anything in America
that came under attack in Iran. If we attacked Iranian nuclear
facilities, they could attack American nuclear facilities, with all the
concomitant resulting spread of radioactive materials. If we attacked
power plants or oil refineries, they would be free to do the same. If
we attacked radio and television stations, so could they. To be sure,
Iran would have to use guerrilla tactics in its attacks, where America
would be using B-1 and B-2 bombers and ship-launched cruise missiles,
but as has been observed, a terrorist or guerrilla is just a bomber
without a fancy plane.

As I've noted before, war with Iran would mean oil prices zooming to
levels never before seen-perhaps as high as $200/barrel or 150% above
the all time record of $80/barrel set a year ago. Such prices would
bring America's and the world's economies to a screeching halt. Islamic
governments allied with the US, most notably the one in Pakistan,
already shaky, could fall to radical backers of Iran (and Pakistan has
the Bomb).

The shocking thing is that even though all the signs of a Bush attack
on Iran are there, including the build-up of an unprecedented Naval
armada, armed to the teeth, in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea,
nobody in Congress or the American media is talking about this looming
crime and imminent disaster. Most Americans are blissfully unaware,
even though people in the military are watching it all unfold in horror.

In 2002, Bush illegally diverted billions of dollars Congress
appropriated for the war in Afghanistan to a covert build-up of troops
and weapons in the Middle East for an attack on Iraq. Now the president
is asking Congress for another $50 billion for the War in Iraq, which
he will almost certainly be diverting to the attack on Iran.

The pathetic Democrats in Congress, who already handed Bush $120
billion a few months ago for continuing and escalating his epic
disaster in Iraq, are likely to grant him this new king's ransom to
finance an even worse disaster in Iran. If they do, the blood of
Iranians and Americans will be equally on all their hands.

The clock is ticking. The only thing that could prevent this Crime
Against Peace by the president would be for Congress, as one, to vote
to rescind the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Bush
has claimed authorized an unending "war on terror," and which will be
his justification for attacking Iran, and to begin impeachment
proceedings against the president and vice president for conspiring to
violate the Nuremberg Charter by attacking a nation that poses no
immediate threat.

Stopping this crime will require concerted mass action. Meanwhile,
every American should contact their representatives to demand action
(to reach your Congressional delegation, call the Capitol switchboard
at 202-225-3121).


[Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His n book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's newest book is "The Case for Impeachment", co-authored by
Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff at yahoo.com ]