- Bush will not admit that his troops are too exhausted
to sustain his vengeful global missions...
-
- The most penetrating critique of the realism informing
President Bush's second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition,
was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt Gen James Helmly, chief
of the US Army Reserve.
-
- In an internal memorandum, he described "the Army
Reserve's inability under current policies, procedures and practices ...
to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and
Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being
unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating
into a broken force".
-
- These "dysfunctional" policies are producing
a crisis "more acute and hurtful", as the Reserve's ability to
mobilise troops is "eroding daily".
-
- The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed
of a "volunteer" army that came into being with the end of military
conscription during the Vietnam war. More than 40% are National Guard and
Reserves, most having completed second tours of duty and being sent out
again.
-
- The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only
by "stop-loss" orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service
after their contractual enlistment expires - a back-door draft.
-
- Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30% last year. The Pentagon
justified this de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely
a short-term solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilises
and an Iraqi security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon
announced that the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006.
Advertiser links Skiing Holidays
-
- Sportvac Ski Tours is offering quality ski and snowboard...
sportvac.com Holiday Skiing Package
-
- Now posted our holiday skiing package. Just hit our page
and... danaplace.com Book Holiday Ski Vacation Lodging
-
- Offering a wide selection of CO, UT, ID, WY and BC...
mountainres.com
-
- "I don't know where these troops are coming from.
It's mystifying," Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat
on the House armed services committee, told me. "There's no policy
to deal with the fact we have a military in extremis."
-
- Bush's speech calling for "ending tyranny in all
the world" was of consistent abstraction uninflected by anything as
specific as the actual condition of the military that would presumably
be sent scurrying on various global missions.
-
- But the speech was aflame with images of destruction
and vengeance. The neoconservatives were ecstatic, perhaps as much by their
influence in inserting their gnostic codewords into the speech as the dogmatism
of the speech itself.
-
- For them, Bush's rhetoric about "eternal hope that
is meant to be fulfiled" was a sign of their triumph. The speech,
crowed neocon William Kristol, who consulted on it, was indeed "informed
by Strauss" - a reference to Leo Strauss, philosopher of obscurantist
strands of absolutist thought, mentor and inspiration to some neocons who
believe they fulfil his teaching by acting as tutors to politicians in
need of their superior guidance.
-
- 'Informed" is hardly the precise word to account
for the manipulation of Bush's impulses by cultish advisers with ulterior
motives.
-
- Even as the neocons revelled in their influence, Bush's
glittering generalities, lofted on wings of hypocrisy, crashed to earth.
Would we launch campaigns against tyrannical governments in Pakistan, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, or China?
-
- Of course, the White House briefed reporters, Bush didn't
mean his rhetoric to suggest any change in strategy.
-
- Unfortunately for Condoleezza Rice, such levels of empty
abstraction could not glide her through her Senate confirmation as secretary
of state without abrasion.
-
- With implacable rigidity, she stood by every administration
decision. There was no disinformation on Saddam Hussein's development of
nuclear weapons of mass destruction; any suggestion that she had been misleading
in the rush to war was an attack on her personal integrity. The light military
force for the invasion was just right. And it was just right now.
-
- Contrary to Senator Joseph Biden of the foreign relations
committee, who stated that there are only 14,000 trained Iraqi security
forces, she insisted there are 120,000. Why, secretary of defence Rumsfeld
had told her so.
-
- Then, implicitly acknowledging the failure to create
a credible Iraqi army, the Pentagon announced that the US forces would
remain at the same level for the next two years. Rice's Pollyanna testimony
was suddenly inoperative.
-
- The administration has no strategy for Iraq or for the
coerced American army plodding endlessly across the desert.
-
- Representative Tauscher wonders when the House armed
services committee, along with the rest of the Congress, will learn anything
from the Bush administration that might be considered factual: "They
are never persuaded by the facts. Nobody can tell you what their plan is
and they don't feel the need to have one."
-
- On the eve of the Iraqi election, neither the president's
soaring rhetoric nor the new secretary of state's fantasy numbers touch
the brutal facts on the ground.
-
-
- Sidney Blumethal is former senior adviser to President
Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars sidney_blumenthal @yahoo.com
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1399444,00.html
|
