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

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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