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The
new U.S. administration's promised
withdrawal from Iraq seems to be best
described by the French term, "valse
hesitation," a dance that involves constantly starting and
stopping and never moving very far. In fact, some aspects of it
are not real change at all but only a rose by another name.
For
example, two investigative journalists reported on the March
26 broadcast of “Democracy Now,” a public radio program. Gareth
Porter explained the deceptiveness of Obama's
promise to remove U.S. combat forces by the
end of August 2010. The combat units will simply be
renamed "advisory and assistance brigades" but
will remain essentially the same:
"What’s
happening is that the basic combat organization in Iraq,
the brigade combat team, is going to be slightly revamped by
adding a few dozen, perhaps more than that, officers who will be
doing the advising and assistance directly with the Iraqi military
and police, perhaps some other institutions, as well—it’s not clear—but
they will be added on top of the existing brigade combat team,
rather than having any fundamental change in the structure of
those organizations in Iraq. So, what we have is the same combat
potential, same combat organization, which will remain on the
ground in Iraq."
Furthermore,
the plundering of U.S. taxpayers by private
military contractors will continue.
The
other journalist interviewed, Pratap Chatterjee, said: "Well, in addition to
the troops that Gareth mentioned, there are civilian police
trainers, and there are civilian army military trainers, who
accompany, you know, Afghan units in Afghanistan and Iraqi units
in Iraq, and they do training on the ground. And so, they are
looking—in fact, the CEO of DynCorp, in his last investor call about
a month ago, said, 'We’re looking forward to actually a lot more
work in Afghanistan based on what’s happening.'
“This
is in February of 2009. So, the contractors are expecting a
boom, because they expect to augment the military training teams.”
In
fact, the cost of the war in Iraq for American taxpayers
is staggering, 10 times the official estimates earlier in the
adventure: The New York Times reported March 19: “At the
outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it would
cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore
order and install a new government.
“Five
years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600
billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a
Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the
long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget
Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is
more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the
American occupation continues.
“Among
economists and policymakers, the question of how to tally the cost
of the war is a matter of hot dispute. And the costs continue
to climb.”
The
Iraq war has been the most
privatized war the U.S. has fought since the
Spanish-American war in the golden age of the Robber Barons, the
model for the capitalist offensive of the last 30 years. In
that war, it became notorious that more soldiers died from
corporate corruption than from the bullets of the enemy.
Apparently, the mercenary corporations are hoping that they get another
big windfall if the war in Afghanistan expands to the level of the
Iraq war.
Corruption
has been one of the outstanding features of the Iraq war, both the
corruption of officers by the big corporations and the suffering
of the soldiers as a result of shoddy work by
civilian contractors. Bad electrical wiring is one of the
outstanding examples.
AP
reported March 26: "The military is racing to inspect more
than 90,000 U.S.-run facilities across Iraq to reduce a deadly
threat troops face far off the battlefield:
electrocution or shock while showering or using
appliances. About one-third of the inspections so far have turned up
major electrical problems, according to interviews and an internal
military document obtained by The Associated Press." The
dispatch noted that three soldiers have been reported killed
by electrical shocks while showering.
The
AP report continued: "Scores more soldiers suffered shocks
between September 2006 and July 2008, according to a database
maintained by KBR Inc., the Houston-based contractor that oversees
maintenance at most U.S. facilities in Iraq.
"'We
got a ton of buildings we know probably aren't safe and we
just don't have them done yet,' said Jim Childs, an electrician
the task force hired to help with the inspections. 'It's Russian
roulette. I cringe every time I hear of a shock.'"
The
report did not estimate the number of soldiers injured by
faulty wiring. But it did cite one serious case: "Ron Vance,
who served as a sergeant in the California Army National Guard,
remembers being knocked out cold in a shower building in 2004 in Taji, Iraq. He said he screamed
and fell while showering, suffering burns on his back
and shoulders. Another soldier who tried to pry him from the
shower head also was injured. Vance, 57, of Fresno, Calif., said he's still
too traumatized to shower without his wife nearby."
And
while the American military suffered serious casualities
as a result of faulty work by U.S. companies, the billions the
U.S. has allegedly spent
for "reconstructing" the country destroyed by
its military have failed, after six years, to meet more than
52 percent of Iraq's demand for electricity.
The
Middle-Eastern adventures of a declining American capitalism
must thus have set a historical record for war
profiteering. Now, the experts are estimating the U.S. "withdrawal" from
Iraq is going to cost the
American taxpayers even more than remaining there.
The
Washington Post reported March 25: "The removal of about
140,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 will be a
'massive and expensive effort' that is likely to increase rather
than lower Iraq-related expenditures during the withdrawal
and for several years after its completion, government
investigators said in a report released yesterday."
However,
the report went on to explain that one of the
reasons "withdrawal" is going to be so expensive is that
it will not really be withdrawal: "President Obama has said all 'combat' troops will
depart Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010, leaving a residual force of 35,000
to 50,000 until the end of the following year. According to Army
officials interviewed by the investigators, the intention is for
six of the current 14 brigades in Iraq to remain behind after the
combat departures."
Furthermore,
the U.S. will leave an enormously
expensive vice-regal fortress in place: "The U.S. diplomatic
mission in Baghdad currently numbers
about 1,300 officials, including 450 assigned to
provincial reconstruction teams outside the embassy, the report
said. 'How does the U.S. government plan
to provide security, housing, medical evaluation, and life support
for its civilian personnel as U.S. forces draw down and eventually
leave Iraq?' it [the Government Accountability Office report cited in
the article] asked."
In
all, it is clear enough that the phased withdrawal pledged by Obama will leave a massively expensive and
corrupt colonial establishment in place. It will continue to
foster the waste of American resources and the degeneration of the
U.S. productive economy through
corrupt parasitic profiteering. It will continue to maintain the U.S. military adventure in
the Middle
East
and threaten to draw the United States into expanding wars in
the region.
The
American people need to demand that the
government stop throwing good money after bad and stop
wasting the lives of the country's young people for the
profit of parasitic corporations. The U.S. needs to get out of the Middle East now before it is drawn even
farther into a deepening quagmire.
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