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Obama the CinC
Lauding Obama? Me? Yes.
Not 'brilliant' – too much U.S. centric propaganda for that attribute – but a good speech and clear intentions:
Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.
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After we remove our combat brigades, our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its security forces as they take the absolute lead in securing their country.
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Through this period of transition, we will carry out further redeployments. And under the status of forces agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honour that they have earned.
I see no if's and maybe's. Good for Iraq, maybe very bad for Pakistan.
Towards the U.S. domestic realm: Well done. With that speech Obama has made himself Commander in Chief that will be respected by the U.S. forces. Not a small achievement. Some generals might revolt over this.
Past week I’ve have been reconsidering the empire’s recent history in the ME from a somewhat longer perspective than we tend to do as we react and are buffeted by each new development in the region and the announcements about that development.
I meant what I said above about James Baker’s Geritol because virtually everything that has happened in Iraq since late 2006 has been a direct result of Baker’s old school rethug special report Iraq Study Group.
The group’s findings have been implemented pretty much in toto in case anyone has forgotten here is how wiki describes them:
Although the final report was not released until December 6, 2006, media reports ahead of that date described some possible recommendations by the panel. Among them were the beginning of a phased withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq and direct US dialogue with Syria and Iran over Iraq and the Middle East. The Iraq Study Group also found that the Pentagon has under reported significantly the extent of the violence in Iraq and that officials have obtained little information regarding the source of these attacks. The group further described the situation in Afghanistan as so disastrous that they may need to divert troops from Iraq in order to help stabilize the country.
Robert Gates who was foisted upon shrub by the old school rethugs who demanded Rumsfield’s ouster,was a founding member of Bakers Iraq study group when it was convened in April 2006 then Gates was appointed as Secretary of Defence during the course of the study groups term and then made some sort of history by continuing on as Sec Def in the ‘new’ Obama administration .
I suggest that the rumours repeated in Wiki that the group had much internal dissension and that many of it’s findings were never implemented were smoke, a way to cover the reality that even as prez shrub needed daddy and his mates to bail him out.
The trade off for the Dems was of course that if they went along with the ISG’s report when they took office since in late 06 early 07 it was clear that no rethug could win a dog show much less the ultimate beauty contest of 08, the new prez would get a relatively easy ride as long as shrub wasn’t impeached or any of that nasty shit.
The two parties had truly become one apart from the diversion policies such as gay marriage, stem cell research and the rest of the values issues that pols use to distract voters with.
So if the ISG has been completely implemented that also means that despite all sorts of statements to the contrary amerika has sat down and nutted out a treaty with Iran, probably not a permanent treaty but definitely an agreement negotiated at a senior level that contains a range of specific deals.
Although we pooh-poohed the notion here in MoA at the time it seems highly likely that Iran had increased pressure on amerika by supplying Moqtada el-Sadr with a more sophisticated, more reliable and ready made shaped charge model of IED and put Mockie up to attacking amerikan troop transports at a time when logic would normally have dictated that the Shia militia’s primary enemy was the Sunni militias.
It was that substantial increase in amerikan casualties from ieds at a time when shrub was attempting to minimise contacts to prevent amerikan casualties (remember Cindy Sheehan’s star was high thru 2006) which worried the rethugs more than the million plus Iraqi dead.
That Iran deal must specifically agree to leave Palestine out of the picture, an arrangement which makes it in both parties best interests not to publicise the arrangement.
Amerika wants the agreement kept quiet to shut up the likes of Daniel Pipes and the rest of the neo-zi’s, and Iran is staying schtum because talking with amerika and not reaching any understanding on apartheid israel leaves a big chunk of Iran’s regional policy looking pretty stink.
Equally likely is the nuclear issue also having been deliberately left off the table. Doubtless, as with Palestine that putting the issue to one side is on the basis of both parties keeping everything ‘within certain limits’ ie Iran doesn’t test a nuke and amerika actively discourages israel from anything precipitate in regard to attacking Iran.
Even so, in light of all the other times when Iran has delivered for amerika only to find the arrangement never gets reciprocated, Iran has pressured various amerikan leaders, especially the new prez, into loudly promising that amerika needs to sit down and talk with Iran at some unspecified date, so that when it happens (or so the Iranian’s hope) it won’t seem too off the wall in amerika to media or to the voters.
But even after all that has happened, specifically Iran getting Moquie to pull back and persuading the shia brigades to ‘get along’ with each other leaving amerika to sort out the Sunnis with money and favours, it is highly likely that amerika considers this Iranian deal a temporary arrangement, one that will eventually become irrelevant, hopefully leaving amerika free to keep mobs of Iranians on terror watch lists and with sanctions still in place.
Enter Afghanistan. Why was Obama become so insistent as his candidature became more certain, that the Afghani conflict gets ramped right up? Odd stance for a bloke claiming to be a prince of peace. Because Iran is getting fuck all concessions anywhere else, you’d hafta think the whole afghani surge is a sop to them. Probably the issue that Iran raised when the ISG first approached them with an offer. Sure in the short term holding Afghanistan provides amerika with a certain strategic advantage, but really as was amply demonstrated during the discussions on amerika’s supply lines into the conflict zone, Afghanistan is an island in a sea of sharks for amerika. The area is no good unless at least some of the neighbours are onside. Maybe amerika is doing a favour for someone else here? A sign of good faith? The Iranians have always loathed the Taliban so getting amerika to clean them out is one of the few immediate pluses they can take in return for allowing amerika to enjoy a quieter Iraq.
Of course the Iranians are in the box seat. Whatever government is foisted on Iraqis, Iran will have more pull than the amerikans, which is prolly why amerika is trying to put Karzai on the skids, remember he has good friends in Iran too. amerika needs someone on the ground that owes more to them than he she does to Iran. When Karzai was just being mayor of Kabul which was all that the initial amerikan strategy had planned for him, he was easy to control, but Karzai is nothing if not a a bloke with big pretensions, so after 7 years of playing international statesman on amerika’s dime while stitching up deals back home with the warlords especially Iran’s friends in the Northern Alliance, Karzai has become too big for amerika to control. The amerikans are desperate to rid themselves of Karzai, so that when the amerika/Iran deal finally becomes unglued Afghanistan will be controlled by their man not Teheran’s bloke.
Maybe they will pull that off, but if they do, it won’t change much because as long as the gig goes to an Afghani, that leader is always going to come to the conclusion as Karzai did, that the only way to stay in power long term without Pushtu support, is with the support of the Iranian aligned groups in the North.
However none of this suits the empire’s long term interests.
Even though the smart money would go “OK Iran is the regional power, they are feeling generous to us at the moment because we rid them of their two biggest annoyances (Saddam and the Taliban) and set the game up for Iran’s proxies to control Iraq and Afghanistan, so we need to kiss and make up publicly”. That scene will never happen as eminently reasonable as it may seem to Parviz and co.
Firstly the zionists in amerika and apartheid israel would never allow it, because israel has been operating for decades on the assumption that they are always gonna be amerika’s best friend in the region, and a resurgent Iran surrounded by satellite ‘buffer’ states on good terms with europe and amerika, would out trump israel at any forum.
Hell the zionists may even get cornered so badly that they have to pretend to get serious about the two state ‘solution’ ploy and actually stop west bank development. To most zionists that is tantamount to surrender so they aren’t going to let amerika and Iran become new good buddies as long as they can stop it.
Secondly amerika’s old good friend Arab states, especially the gulf states whose oil is just about tapped out, would absolutely shit themselves at the thought of a resurgent Iran, because as pragmatic as the deal may initially seem, and it would initially be extremely pragmatic regarding Sunni states and Palestine the amerikans would insist on that, the elephant in the room that no one discusses, is that even Iran under the mullahs is more democratic than the gulf states or israel. As such the Iranian government is subject to public opinion and once ordinary peeps in Iran got over the heady business of buying cheap ipods or whatever it is they seem to be longing for, people would start considering issues like the fact that the shite underclass throughout the Arab world is totally oppressed, that Palestinians are still really copping the rough end of the pineapple.
Eventually those opinions would force the most pragmatic Iranian government that still needed to win elections into taking a stance on them contrary to any secret agreement with amerika. A stance that would pressure the gulf states and pressure israel into position that both blocs regard as inconceivable.
But even if the amerikan administration could ignore the intense pressure from lobbyists to keep Iran on the shit list, which it could since these issues are really just convenient excuses to conceal the ugly reality, that reality is something that cannot be tolerated. And that reality is that an independent and strong Iran such as the one that would develop in those circumstances, cannot be bludgeoned into selling off its resources cheap.
If you think about it, the ability to get energy and mineral resources from all over the world at lower prices than others pay, is about all amerika has left, and even that’s hanging by a thread.
All the manufacturing technology has gone, the financial structure is seriously weakened but amerikan business can still keep an edge because the amerikan government can still ‘lean on’ any little nigger state that gets uppity and wants a fair price for it’s products. amerika’s competitive advantage comes outta the barrel of a gun, negating that advantage by treating Iran on even terms would be suicidal. The true end of empire.
That is how I see the reality behind the conflicting statements emanating from DC at the moment and we can be happy if less humans get killed by the empire’s greed for as long as that lasts. As long as less people are being killed, and that is something I am unsure of, lots of people are still dying in Iraq every day not only because the invasion has torn apart the social fabric, there are still Iraqis actively and violently resisting the invaders. More importantly any downswing in Iraqi casualties has been accompanied by an upswing in death and injury in Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with that other horror, population displacement as entire clans flee the drones and rockets targeting their villages.
Of course greatest pause on whether peace is celebrated should be given to the reality that the relative quiet may presage a much larger loss of life when the amerikan empire and it’s preferred asslickers decides it must re-conquer Iran and it’s allies.
That will be the generalised war that others have discussed and whatever the short term result, long term it will go the way of all such invasive wars that offer little or no scope for colonisation, only occupation, that is the invaders’ loss. The end of whitefella domination of the planet.
It is always worth working towards a more peaceful way to end that domination but the combination of the BushCo strategic disaster with the collapse of whitefella economic infrastructure makes that a fucking hard row to hoe.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 28 2009 23:36 utc | 47
(cont.)
A Marxist friend of mine uses an agricultural metaphor which I find particularly apt for our current situation: International Capitalists raise up a crop of asset-bearing populations, and then when conditions ripen, they harvest the assets. We are now well into the harvest stage of the production cycle upon an unprecedented bountiful global crop. The Autumn glow — the thrill of the harvest — plays lambently in the eyes of Obama, Bernanke, and Geither. International Harvester is hard at work.
In harvesting these assets, invariably many “plants” — that is, human bearers of assets — are killed. Yet, what is the difference between being killed by missle, sharpshooter, phosporus, cancer, or “Grapes of Wrath” style deracination and slow starvation? There are many techniques to harvesting, but only one ultimate result. Yet, there is nothing particularly progressive about chasing the ambulance to crow about the deaths if one is then too busy to support and cover the resistance to the slaughter. Tepid calls for belated partial reform is like the cattle organizing for a sharper knive on their way to the gallows: they are ignorant and passive to the true nature of their death march. The Harvest itself, and its pathogenic nature, becomes hidden behind an impenetrable fact-set of debateable technicalities.
My liberal roommate mentioned the other day that she had bumped into a serviceman who had just returned from Fallujah, and who had reported to her that his entire battalion had only fired a total of 100 bullets during their six-month deployment. When I recited the Hitlerian, genocidal casualty rates suffered by Iraqis over the past twenty years of US intervention, including the Guernican treatment of Fallujah and its Orwellian bio-id gate system, and that finally the counter-insurgency had — at least temporarily — vanquished the resistance, she replied that I was just too negative and that I could not be happy that the Iraqis were now doing well. I replied that by 1891, after Wounded Knee, the Western Cavalry reported the same improvement of conditions; it did not mean a better life for the Plains Indians — it meant the death of a many thousands-year old civilization and the integral means of production, living culture, reverance for the land and worship which comprised it. Despite hundreds of posts over the past seven years on liberal blogs that the US’s tactics were not working, it appears that international capital has successfully destroyed the intricate web of the Iraqi agricultural production system and is now slowly penetrating its markets, leading to hugely divergent outcomes: Unseemly wealth and corruption for the few and vast poverty and corruption for the many. Only those suffering the deepest level of denial, and moral degradation — as Obama publicly is — could celebrate the resultant Ghost Dance of the disposessed returning to witness the destruction of their former communities, and call it progress in the “fight for freedom.” Imagine if Hitler had survived the War and said that of the Jewish survivors who were freed of the concentration camps and allowed to return to their now ethnically-cleansed neighborhoods and find strangers living in their former houses. The liberal celebration of America’s benificence in perpetrating this continuing unfolding series of war crimes sickens me. Yet, when the Lakota rise up and declare their own nation, their independence, it goes almost unnoticed and unremarked upon the world stage by those same “caring” liberals.
War is not a necessary precondition for the harvest to take place: The Soviet Union was harvested without war, leading to a precipitous fifteen year drop in life expectancy and a lost generation of sex trafficers and abductees. It doesn’t matter if Obama leads the Light Brigade to the next Iraq or not; the first devastating economic frost has hit the nations of the world hard as a fait accompli (the apportionment of blame clouded by the “leaderless” interregnum) — and the quicker the assets are harvested upwards, the better for the Masters of the Universe.
A mere handful of people and several almost unnoticed regulatory “reforms” have devastated life for over 300,000 denizens of Iceland. They are free to overthrow their government in frustration, but until they string up those responsible and default on their debts to the British bankers their situation, too, is a fait accompli, a bloodless murder, a crimeless victim. Who can actually withdraw from the global system of world trade, a financial system of debt and penury enforced upon the world by the very few? Too much is needed from abroad, modern industrialized life is absolutely dependent upon foreign inputs for its level of sustenence. So the people of Iceland will be sucked dry of their assets by International Harvester. Baring a global uprising, “there is no alternative,” as Maggie Thatcher used to delight in saying.
Obama decries the US’s reliance on foreign inputs of hydrocarbons as a threat to its “way of life,” but Iraq’s newly necessary utter dependence on US wheat is seen as a healthy example of “Free Trade.” By such double standards are the bloodless and silent weapons of trade and finance deployed against victim populations with the support of complicit liberals who staff and profit from the NGOs which enforce the legally-defined procedures of liberal intervention and liberal aid. These are the sinister and deadly gears of International Peace (a division of International Harvester) which inexorably grind the dependent to death.
Yet, the willfully ignorant, who ignore this system of bloodless vampirism as deadly as any neutron bomb, or any sustained military campaign — perfected by the Chicago Boys, of which the brilliant Obama was a professor for, and a paid promoter of, a shill in the global carnival — can continue to happily cheerlead a devastation sweeping the planet unparalleled in global scope, despite no apparent diminuition in the ability of the planet to meet the basic needs of its inhabitants. “You see,” they swoon, “Obama is moving troops out of Iraq!” Yet, the global regime, fronted by Obama, ignores people’s needs in favor of the dictates of capital and the gluttony amassed by the “amoral” (according to Soros) impersonal operators of the system, the Eichmans of the financal levers at International Harvester. And the manager who ensures the smooth progression of the heartless harvest is publicly lauded: Our new “Peace President.” Thereby, does one field lay fallow to recuperate, while across the farm another field is plowed.
There will be no World War, but, once harvested of assets, the world will enter a “lost decade,” a winter of quiescence, similar to that Japan has endured while the next crop of public assets is planted and grown. Under the unspoken rules of International Harvester, this year’s victims profitably become next year’s compost. Hooray for “Peace.” Hooray for our new “Peace President.” Orwell was right.
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 1 2009 0:08 utc | 51
When reading between the lines, Obama’s speeches, while sounding different to Bush’s, at the end express the same imperialist convictions as those of his hegemonic predecessors. It is neither his desire for peace nor his vision for a prosperous Iraq that led him to call for the withdrawal of troops, but drastic financial restraints and the certain knowledge that Iraq is a lost cause, militarily and in terms of Iraqi hearts and minds. Let’s look at some other passages in that speech:
We have also taken into account the simple reality that America can no longer afford to see Iraq in isolation from other priorities
That’s right, his administration can’t afford to keep dishing out billions for the Iraq fiasco to continue indefinitely, there are bigger fish to fry. A trillion dollars in six years is a lot of cash, 12 zeros in it, about $3000 per US citizen. But now the fountain has run dry – you’d think. And yet, Obama will ask Congress for 200 Billion to splurge on fighting the war in Afghanistan over the next 18 months.
Under tough circumstances, the men and women of the United States military have served with honour, and succeeded beyond any expectation.
Obama talks of success and how the troops performed beyond expectations. My arse. The troops killed monstrous numbers of innocent people while mindlessly executing orders from egomaniacs bend on world domination. What success indeed, leaving behind, apart from a million graves, a country that is now controlled by a horde of corrupt and spineless clowns owing their political existence largely to the goodwill of their US and Iranian masters. Iraq is not a nation at peace as Obama wants us to believe it is, far from it. Its infrastructure is in many parts still in much worse condition than what it was pre invasion, as Annie linked to above militias are re-emerging, IED’s and enemy fire killing Iraqi police, soldiers and innocent bystanders almost daily. The nation is predictably fractured and I fear will be a victim of bloody infighting for years to come. If in Obama’s opinion this tragic outcome is due to US troops performing beyond expectations, then I’d be curios to know what he thinks the expectations were.
Obama announcing the withdrawal of all US forces must indeed by feeling like good news for the people in occupied Iraq, but as B wrote, for the people of Pakistan this development might spell doom.
we face the challenge of refocusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan; […] and these are challenges that we will meet.
I feel sorry for the people living in those nations, the US military focusing on you is shorthand for there will be plenty of bombing raids and jack boots through the door at 3 am.
You and your families have done your duty – now a grateful nation must do ours. That is why I am increasing the number of soldiers and marines, so that we lessen the burden on those who are serving.
Great, the president who fancies himself as a man of peace reckons what the US needs is more soldiers. The world is quivering in anticipation.
And as long as I am your commander-in-chief, I promise you that I will only send you into harm’s way when it is absolutely necessary
George Bush would have said the same.
the United States of America – a nation that exists only because free men and women have bled for it from the beaches of Normandy to the deserts of Anbar; from the mountains of Korea to the streets of Kandahar.
What a warped view. Does Obama really believe that the USA would no longer exist if US troops wouldn’t have fought in Iraq, Korea and Afghanistan? Ridiculous.
Diplomacy and assistance is also required to help the millions of displaced Iraqis. These men, women and children are a living consequence of this war and a challenge to stability in the region, and they must become a part of Iraq’s reconciliation and recovery. America has a strategic interest – and a moral responsibility – to act.
This statement was about the only part that genuinely impressed me, and I will try to keep an eye on how much of this rhetoric translates into real improvements on the ground.
To sum up, Obama’s speech was nothing to write home about, no announcement of a much needed reduction in military spending, no sign of a man aware of the negative fall-out US imperial policies are producing, if anything I get the feeling he is suffering from the same delusions of grandeur his many predecessors could be diagnosed with. America must lead the world, if the world wants it or not. For those of us who had enough of this his speech was boring, back slapping mush, designed to rally the troops around the new CiC, getting them ready to fight the wars Obama deems absolutely necessary.
Since Obama’s choice of SecDef is the same as that of the Bushistas, giving you an idea of his proximity to the neo-con doctrine, if you lived in Afghanistan or the Pakistani border region, or Gaza for that matter, and had no access to news, you wouldn’t know that Bush isn’t pulling the strings any longer. As commander he already has authorized numerous attacks on foreign soil that killed harmless civilians, made apologetic comments excusing mass murder. The only thing that remains to be seen is if on those days of no scruples he goes to bed at night, snuggling up to Michelle and feeling all chuffed with himself. My impression is he does.
Posted by: Juan Moment | Mar 1 2009 13:07 utc | 58
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