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The U.S. Military Sends A Message To Iraqis
This NYT piece on U.S. troops leaving Iraq is somewhat funny: U.S. Uses an Insurgent Attack to Send a Message to Iraqis
The statement suggested such rocket attacks had been staged for propaganda purposes to create the impression that the Americans are fleeing under fire after more than eight years of war.
“Terrorists groups are conducting attacks against American forces in order to create a false idea that they have forced us to leave,” the statement said.
So that "impression" is not the reality? What then? U.S. troops are leaving Iraq in parade formations, while being offered sweets and getting showered with flowers?
Further down:
The military has kept the departure timeline a secret, and American soldiers sometimes leave without notice from the bases they share with the Iraqi Army.
At one base in Ramadi, Iraqi and American officers held a low-key farewell party but left the departure time unstated. Iraqi soldiers discovered one morning the Americans had driven away in the middle of the night. “We just woke up and they were gone,” Col. Hisham Abid Fayadh said.
Sneaking away in the dark certainly "sends a message to Iraqis". Though it is probably not the one the U.S. would like to send. But I am quite sure it is well understood. Everywhere.
Claudio, you are putting words in my mouth, or words in my fingers, when you say/write this:
@ben and MB – a general trend is one thing, denying the existence of counter-tendencies and even the possible effectiveness of any form of resistance is wrong and self-defeating
Where do I deny what you say I am denying? Nowhere, that’s where. That’s a Strawman. To me, the general trend is of utmost importance, and it’s what must be reversed, or neutralized, but that cannot be accomplished by claiming victory where none exists.
You then say this:
to say “mission accomplished” of Iraq is really off the mark; of course, as with Vietnam, the Us is not called to answer for the destruction and suffering it caused
What exactly was the mission, Claudio? Are we to believe the mission was the official explanation provided? If so, which official explanation, since there seem to be so many, and they changed with the tide?
As Watson said on the other thread, if perpetual war is the goal, and by association destruction and suffering, then it’s not off the mark to call the Iraq escapade, Mission Accomplished. In my opinion, there can be, and are, multiple objectives to any of these military escapades, some of them made official, most of them made privy to only a select few on a need to know basis. Where some objectives may not be met, others will have been accomplished with resounding success. In Iraq, a country was destroyed, a state was failed and destruction and suffering was dealt in spades……and all at a bountiful profit paid for by the generations of U.S. slaves to come.
Yes, I’ll say it again, because it’s true, Mission Accomplished!!
And of course, none of this is without consequence……..that general trend line included. I don’t presume it follows its current trajectory into infinity….far from it. It’s traveling at the speed of light, like a prodigious fiery comet, into an equally prodigious static entity called System Constraints, and the aftermath of that collision is not suited for mature audiences, let alone children.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Nov 28 2011 20:27 utc | 44
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