130 More U.S. Troops to Iraq...There's Always Going to be an Excuse - This is Classic

[bigtree]

Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2014, 10:23 PM - Edit history (4)

. . . escalation.

I don't know that the President is slowly ratcheting the military presence in Iraq deliberately, with full knowledge that was going to be the end result of his first handful of troops. Maybe he's sincere that the mission he first envisioned and sold to the American people just happened to change so dramatically from defense of the embassy; directing and training Iraqi troops; to ordering direct attacks from our own warplanes.

Thing is, he's either hopelessly naive about the course of deployments into the middle of the civil strife of nations divided within themselves; he may indeed be malleable and easily manipulated by the pack of Bush-era hawks and dinosaurs in the Pentagon and his intelligence agencies; or he's just a goddamn liar.

Why should anyone believe anything he says regarding military deployments and activity in Iraq? He either is too ignorant to understand what he's committed the U.S. to in that country; or he's just plain bullshitting us.

After all, it's not as if this is some new reality that was somehow unspoken by opponents of the original plan to re-insert American troops there . . . and he's still calling them 'advisers.' Special forces deployed in a war zone aren't 'boots on the ground?' What, does he think... that they're floating in mid-air?

We've been played for fools, and anyone who supports this incremental escalation will have no room to argue when this escalation implodes in our faces. Give the military and the CIA an inch and they'll take a mile.

The Kurdish civilians have had an incredibly tragic experience. No one looking at their plight should be sanguine or indifferent to their plight. But the U.S. has no business re-introducing military forces there. We've done more than enough damage to their country. I'm not just talking about the 'shock and awe' of Bush's scatterbombing; I'm not just talking about the mass detentions without charge or trial -or the torturing and renditions.

I'm talking about the blowback - the counterproductive effect of our troop's mere presence which has already been demonstrated beyond any doubt to fuel and foster more resistant violence than it's able to put down.

Is there any more convincing measure of the folly of supporting this than the very fact that nothing our forces have done so far there has caused the military to assert that we're making any progress at all in putting down what they first called a rag-tag handful of insurgents? Don't tell me that more troops are the answer. Did a full scale occupation under Bush protect and defend civilians there any better?

Did we miss the horror of civilian killings all around our occupying troops under Bush; all with orders to attack and kill opponents at will? Did we miss the Iraqi family members who lined the river every day to watch the steady flow of dead and bloated bodies in the sad and awful expectation that they could identify one as their own kin?

Is there any more proof of the utter ignorance of a unilateral, escalated U.S. deployment than the virtual silence from the vast majority of the former 'coalition of willing' partners in our opportunistic imperialism?

Damn this president for taking our country back into war in Iraq. Damn him.




President Obama, left, meets with National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice on Tuesday Aug. 12 -Pete Souza


15 hours ago -John Kerry Says U.S. Doesn't Plan to Send More Troops to Iraq

Aug 12, 2014, 10:06 PM - US Sends 130 More Troops to Iraq

[grahamhgreen]

1. In my view, he's either a fool, a tool, or so lost inside the beltway, he can't see reality.

I fear he's just a tool of the MIC.

[bigtree]

5. look at the photo I posted in the op of him from today

. . . over his head.

[grahamhgreen]

7. He's got himself surrounded by all the wrong people.

[bigtree]

17. Bush holdovers

. . . and people who should know better practicing willful amnesia.

People convinced they can wage limited war . . . just like the President was convinced in Afghanistan that if he split the difference between what his Bush hawks nested in the Pentagon were advocating - and his delusion that his own political instinct is left of center - that he'd produce a moderate war.

He ended up presiding over the killing of more of our troops defending the politics of Karzai than Bush lost exacting revenge for 9-11.

[cantbeserious]

2. Regrettably, It Is All About The Oil

eom

[KoKo]

3. It's Incremental...and we have to see if Obama "holds firm" against Hillary's attacks from the Right

to see if he is finally Listening to Us.... There is some buzz out there that he doesn't want the Dem Party to go down on HIS WATCH...and with Hillary attacking him from the RW/Neocon Side....he finally has a chance to prove himself. I'm hoping against flagging hope...But still a Bit of Hope...that he Saves our Dem Party From Itself and it's RW Influence

Am I just dreaming? I'll go with that hope....one last time. He still has TWO YEARS LEFT... WILL HE HEAR US!



Edited only to tone down my shouting....

[bigtree]

6. when our organizing principle is 'trust' the president, instead of organizing around our values

. . . and principles, we get this kind of top down paternalism.

I just read another thread where there are posters here equating opposition to war with an attack on the party or some subversive attempt to discredit or merely an attempt to bring down the President.

We can't organize against government or military actions that we find outrageous or abhorrent to our own values by expecting the WH or the Pentagon to set the pace of our expectations or regulate the tone of our responses to their actions by demanding some fealty to government or the military. Principle should come first, and our politics should be about their response to OUR expectations, not just a matter of adjusting our expectations to meet their politics.

We're now a victim of too many Americans allowing the politicians to dictate the direction of our political advocacy, instead of establishing our own set of principles and values and demanding they respect us or stand aside for someone who will.

[grahamhgreen]

9. He needs to have a confab with John Lewis, & Bernie Sanders.

[morningfog]

4. Obama has lost all credibility on his Iraq policy, whatever it is.

Out of one side of his mouth he pledges no return of combat troops to Iraq. Out of the front of his mouth, he orders about 900 troops into Iraq (who are helping the pilots find targets) and 5 days and counting of bombings (by US pilots) still saying that no combat troops are returning to Iraq. Bull fucking shit. And, then he has the audacity to take offense when it is pointed out that he touted the removal of troops as a success and now is trying to say it wasn't his decision. It's true, it wasn't his decision because the US couldn't get Iraq to agree to immunity for our troops, and for damn good reason.

He wants it three ways. He has started down a foolish path with no successful exit. This will become the linchpin of the republican nominee's campaign. It is no wonder Hillary is jumped around wanting to excoriate herself from this debacle.

[bigtree]

10. Kerry making a speech 15 hours ago claiming no more troops to Iraq

. . . hours later, there we are, sending in more troops.

But don't worry, they're only 'advisers' and 'temporary.'

But, hey, don't speak up here, lest you be accused of being a republican or wanting Obama impeached, or wanting Democrats to lose in the midterms . . . on and on.

I have a solid record of opposing this kind of military activity; a solid fucking record. I came to DU in 2003 because there was a solid bloc of members here opposed to war in Iraq. I spent many sleepless days working my regular job at night and reading and writing for hours on end by day when I needed to rest.

Now there are these surrogates who can't find any more principle than defending the political establishment, hurling insults at those with values enough to oppose U.S. military intervention, no matter what the politics dictates.

Thousands of people in the streets when an Iraq invasion and occupation was just a twinkle in Bush's eye. Now you can't get a quorum to even talk about it, save to lecture us that the politicians know best . . .and they wonder why I turn away from the politics; why I reject it as an organizing principle. Ridicule, blind faith, and then outright indifference. This isn't what I found when I stumbled into this site over a decade ago . . .

[grahamhgreen]

18. I was actually

banned from using the term "trojan (insert Dems patron animal here)" on this site, but sometimes I wonder if that's what we have - how else to lead the anit-bush crowd into a pro-war stance.... it's remarkable.

I do believe however, that we will win in the end.

Never give up.

[bigwillq]

8. No more troops. No more money.

GET OUT OF IRAQ, NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bigtree]

14. take to the streets

. . . my old allies, the Friends, are conspicuously absent from the streets. I remember our thrice-weekly vigils in our relatively small town.

[Vattel]

11. I think we are committed to defending the Kurds

and that airstrikes and weapons and a few advisors may be sufficient for that mission. At least I hope that is as far as it will go.

[bigtree]

13. did they not conflate ISIS/ISIL with al-Qaeda at the very beginning of direct action?

from the August 08, 2014 Background Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on Iraq

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: This is not something new. ISIL originally was the group led by Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization we know very well. It’s important to keep in mind that ISIL is not a new phenomenon. It is al Qaeda in Iraq, and a part of the ideology which was spawned by Zarqawi all the way back in 2003. And to date, the largest terrorist attack ever in Iraq took place up in the Sinjar region in August of 2007, killing about 700 Yazidi civilians in a series of devastating car bombs then conducted by al Qaeda in Iraq.

It is their mission -- ISIL, and then al Qaeda in Iraq, same organization --

How deep and how far will the 'counterterrorism effort the President speaks of go?

from August 9, 2014, President Obama's statement on Iraq:

THE PRESIDENT: Now, there are some immediate concerns that we have to worry about. We have to make sure that ISIL is not engaging in the actions that could cripple a country permanently. There’s key infrastructure inside of Iraq that we have to be concerned about. My team has been vigilant, even before ISIL went into Mosul, about foreign fighters and jihadists gathering in Syria, and now in Iraq, who might potentially launch attacks outside the region against Western targets and U.S. targets. So there’s going to be a counterterrorism element that we are already preparing for and have been working diligently on for a long time now.

This is about more than Kurdish refuge on a mountain. Syrian Kurds have done more to move them off of those peaks than we have with our bombs . . .

Look at some of the "personnel and facilities" the President is talking about defending in Irbil

from McClatchy:

IRBIL, Iraq — A supposedly secret but locally well-known CIA station on the outskirts of Irbil’s airport is undergoing rapid expansion as the United States considers whether to engage in a war against Islamist militants who’ve seized control of half of Iraq in the past month.

Western contractors hired to expand the facility and a local intelligence official confirmed the construction project, which is visible from the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, the city whose fall June 9 triggered the Islamic State’s sweep through northern and central Iraq. Residents around the airport say they can hear daily what they suspect are American drones taking off and landing at the facility.

Expansion of the facility comes as it seems all but certain that the autonomous Kurdish regional government and the central government in Baghdad, never easy partners, are headed for an irrevocable split _ complicating any U.S. military hopes of coordinating the two entities’ efforts against the Islamic State.

. . . U.S. officials have known for some time that it was likely that they’d need to coordinate any steps it takes both in Baghdad and in Irbil, where the Peshmerga has worked closely over the years with the CIA, U.S. special forces and the Joint Special Operations Command, the military’s most secretive task force, which has become a bulwark of counterterrorism operations. Peshmerga forces already are manning checkpoints and bunkers to protect the facility, which sits just a few hundred yards from the highway . . .

So it's just a temporary defense of the Kurdish territory? Or, something more enduring?

Oil at the Center of Reason U.S. Has Launched Airstrikes in Iraq?

The New Republic ?@tnr The Real Reason the U.S. Has Launched Airstrikes in #Iraq: Oil. http://on.tnr.com/1pJEEn3

There are American consular personnel in Erbil, but they could be evacuated if necessary. What Obama left unsaid was that Erbil, a city of 1.5 million, is the capital of the Kurdish regional government and the administrative center of its oil industry, which accounts for about a quarter of Iraq’s oil. The Kurds claim that if they were to become an independent state, they would have the ninth-largest oil reserves in the world. And oil wells are near Erbil.

If the Islamic State were to take over Erbil, they would endanger Iraq’s oil production and, by extension, global access to oil. Prices would surge at a time when Europe, which buys oil from Iraq, has still not escaped the global recession. Oil prices have already risen in response to the Islamic State’s threat to Erbil, and on Thursday, American oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobile began evacuating their personnel from Kurdistan. But oil traders are predicting that American intervention could halt the rise. “In essence we find U.S. air strikes more bearish than bullish for oil as the act finally draws a line for IS and reinforces both the stability in south Iraq and in Kurdistan,” Oliver Jakob, a Swiss oil analyst, told Reuters.

In portraying American intervention in Iraq as a purely humanitarian effort, Obama is following the script he read from in Libya, when he justified American intervention as an effort to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. In a March 28, 2011 address to the nation, Obama painted the American intervention as a response to “brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis.” Oil was not mentioned, even though Libya was the world’s sixteenth-largest oil producer in 2009 and a major supplier to Europe. But oil was most likely involved, as became clear when, after preventing a massacre in Benghazi, the United States and its coalition partners stuck around to topple the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. If the Obama administration wanted to prevent the world’s peoples from brutal dictators and repressive regimes or from takeovers by terrorist groups, there are other countries besides Libya and Iraq where it could intervene. What distinguishes these two countries is that they are major oil producers . . .

[Vattel]

15. I agree with you that we have a variety of "interests" in the Kurdish part of northern Iraq.

But is it possible that defending that area will not require more than airstrikes and weapons? The question is genuine because I really don't know.

[bigtree]

16. power doesn't concede voluntarily

. . . without resistance.

[grasswire]

30. Halliburton HQ in Erbil.

There was a post about that just yesterday, I think.

[bigtree]

32. supporting oil interests

. . . logistics, supplies and the rest.

Not surprising, as most of the defense of that region by the U.S. is in some way a defense of those oil interests. Maybe not a direct defense, but the U.S. concern has always been that the region could fall into hands which our government feels would threaten our national security interests, as well as disrupt or alter our economic ones.

To those folks, defense of oil is paramount - to many Americans, our enduring and myopic reliance on oil is the culprit.

[Rex]

12. It was a disaster to believe we could just set up military bases where ever we want.

History will not be kind to the Bush family. They created the biggest clusterfuck mess ever...all criminal and completely immoral, unethical and over money and oil.

Obama, like ALL modern Dem POTUSes has to clean up these ungodly warcrimes. I REALLY which they would stop and go after the BFEE. He has a lot of problems and I don't even think he knows.

With the CIA spying on everyone and Congress not giving two shits about doing their job, seems the POTUS is all we got. I wish he would prosecute, but if he can figure out how to get us out of the ME entirely...it will be a start. If the SOS can figure out how to bring peace to the ME, oh right they don't want his help.

WE can't stay the worlds police. I think it is turning our own domestic police into paramilitary units...too much authoritarianism and not enough compassion.

Best I hope for is he will not leave the next POTUS with a war. But we've been in Iraq since 1991. It seems we cannot just up and leave that place.

Our corporations got a taste for oil and now are completely addicted to the stuff.

[bigtree]

19. »

[msanthrope]

20. Oh fer chrissakes....130 men? That's hardly an escalation.

That's tactical and logistics to help the Kurds hold their positions. It might be some recon, but I expect they are already be there.

Pendelton sounds like US Marines....possibly the 1 MEF.

[hobbit709]

21. That's how it starts.

[bigtree]

22. I get that's your opinion

. . . I sincerely don't believe that's an adequate response to all of the issues I've bothered to spell out in this post and others.

But, I get that you believe this is just 'tactical' and inconsequential.

My position has been for over a decade that zero troops should be in Iraq at any time. I hold fast to that belief and opinion.

[msanthrope]

23. I agree with zero troops. ISIS hasn't signed on to the plan, though. nt

[bigtree]

24. ISIS is just the latest incarnation of resistance to our nation's military meddling in Iraq

. . .we forfeited any moral justification for responding to insurgencies in Iraq with the force of our military; specifically troops, CIA operatives and drones.

The efficacy and efect of these deployments has been demonstrated counterproductive and dangerously provocative. The only response to the blowback from these deployments our politicians, military, and intelligence operatives seems to be able to manage is more opportunistic militarism, in a never ending cycle of attacks and reprisals.

We never account for the blowback, which has been a fostering and fueling of scores more resistant violence than our forces are able to put down. President Obama was correct when he stated that the solution is political in Iraq. He needs to trust his own words and live up to them.

[msanthrope]

25. I think the "Blame America First" approach is counterproductive.

We aren't responsible for ISIS...they are responsible for the atrocities they have committed, and they alone.

I agree with the President...the ultimate solution is political. But in the short term, the Kurds need our help staying alive.

[bigtree]

28. well, I heard that Blame-America-First retort all through the Bush-era militarism

Last edited Wed Aug 13, 2014, 11:57 AM - Edit history (2)

. . . even though I haven't heard that at all from the top levels of the present government.

I rejected it since the '80's and throughout the Bush-Cheney era, and I reject it now.

March 19, 2007
The Blame-America-First Crowd
By Michael Barone

"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984 . . .

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech last week. What is profoundly wrong is that too many of us are operating off the default assumption and have lost sight of who our real enemies are.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

26. Well...they attacked our ships in the Gulf of Tonk....they have WMD...Remember the Maine..or Alamo!

[Baclava]

27. Obama sends 130 Marines and special forces to Iraq

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel addresses the Marines assembled in a hangar at Camp Pendleton on Tuesday. Hagel announced the Iraq deployment in his remarks at this Southern California base

'This is not a combat boots on the ground kind of operation,' Hagel said

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2723139/US-sends-130-troops-Iraq.html

[bigtree]

29. our special forces will actually be hovering several inches above the ground

. . . at all times.

I get it.

[grasswire]

31. Bigtree, thank you for your service to country in speaking truth to power.

You have been diligent, thoughtful, and on top of things, and helpful to those of us who grok the cause of liberty.

[bigtree]

33. thanks, grasswire

. . . a very humble thanks and appreciation, as well, for your own diligence and commitment.

[ieoeja]

34. Marines have evacuated innocents in the middle of a civil war only about 1000 times before this.

This is nothing even remotely unusual. They go in. They come out. The entire process usually takes two or three days.

They've done it numerous times in Liberia. And, of course, they did it in Saigon. The NVA was already in parts of Saigon by the time the Marines went in. But the NVA agreed to exit the city long enough to let the Marines do their thing.