Spinning the US Failure in Iraq

[ProSense]

Spinning the US Failure in Iraq

By Robert Parry
August 20, 2010

When I watched the last U.S. combat battalions leave Iraq on Wednesday night, I couldn’t help but recall the scene when the last Soviet troops departed Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989. In both cases, the two governments soft-pedaled the hard truth about the strategic defeats that the withdrawals represented.

Official Washington, in particular, has been eager to spin the Iraq withdrawal as a success, a prelude to a bright Iraqi future in which the United States can begin recouping its $1 trillion-plus investment over the past seven years (not to mention, get something back for the 4,416 American soldiers who died during the adventure).

But the prospects for long-term U.S. domination of Iraq appear dim. Once the 50,000 American military “advisers” are gone, scheduled to depart by the end of 2011, the United States will have to rely on a small army of State Department security contractors to protect a network of diplomatic offices, including a giant embassy in Baghdad and consulates in Erbil, Kurdistan, and in Basra in the south.

Meanwhile, any residual U.S. military presence, however it’s packaged, remains unpopular with an Iraqi society that has resented the bloody U.S. occupation that has left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions injured, unemployed, sweltering in the heat, and homeless.

For instance, supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have vowed to take up arms again if the U.S. withdrawal is not completed on schedule. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, a two-acre section of Martyrs' cemetery has been set aside for a renewed uprising if the U.S. forces remain after the withdrawal deadline, the Washington Post reported on Aug. 18.

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President Barack Obama wants to continue the military drawdown without getting blamed for what history may record as a humiliating U.S. defeat; the influential neocons want to pretend that their recommended “surge” in 2007 worked and that their original idea to invade in 2003 was the right call; Republicans don’t want to remind the voters about President George W. Bush’s WMD lies; and the major U.S. media hopes an aura of “success” in Iraq will obscure its own role in the debacle.

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On edit: In other words, the U.S. is going to and cannot remain in Iraq in the same way they did Germany.

[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t

[gratuitous]

2. The role of the U.S. media in the debacle will be wholly obscured

There may be many iffy things to be said about Iraq: Is the country better or worse off; was the outcome worth the price in money and lives; have we enhanced the stability of the region; and so forth. But one thing that is a lead pipe cinch is that the role of the media in encouraging the uncritical acceptance of the prosecution of this matter will disappear down the memory hole. Nobody anywhere on the teevee, the radio or in any of the papers will remember what they did from fall 2002 though spring 2003. "Judith who? Curveball? We said WHAT about Colin Powell at the UN? Nope, don't remember any of that at all."

[malaise]

3. Lots of people don't plan to forget their role

It won't disappear.