- The new year began on the hopeful note that Bush's illegal
war in Iraq would soon be ended. The repudiation of Bush and the Republicans
in the November congressional election, the Iraq Study Group's unanimous
conclusion that the US needs to remove its troops from the sectarian strife
Bush set in motion by invading Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld's removal as defense
secretary and his replacement by Iraqi Study Group member Robert Gates,
the thumbs down given by America's top military commanders to the neoconservatives'
plan to send more US troops to Iraq, and new polls of the US military that
reveal that only a minority supports Bush's Iraq policy, thus giving new
meaning to "support the troops," are all indications that Americans
have shed the stupor that has given carte blanche to George W. Bush.
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- When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge
option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed
in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an
administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option
is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear
sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that
Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order
to protect his own delusions.
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- The American establishment, concerned by Bush's egregious
mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him.
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- However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that
Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military
advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli
lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.
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- In the January 5 issue of CounterPunch
John Walsh gives a good description of the struggle between the American
establishment and the neocons.
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- Peter Spiegel, the Pentagon correspondent for the Los
Angeles Times, reported on January 4 that the neocons have used the failure
of the administration's policy in Iraq to convince Bush to launch an aggressive
counterinsurgency requiring the buildup of troop levels by extending deployments
beyond the agreed terms.
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- Raed Jarrar (CounterPunch,
January 4) suggests that the Shi'ite militias, such as the one led
by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There
seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the
Shi'ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WW II, 150,000
US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq's
minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional
US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against
the Shi'ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the
minority Sunnis.
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- The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is
that the majority Shi'ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi'ites
are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against
US troops and Shi'ite militias and death squads.The US owes its presence
in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the
Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim
world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs
at the same time.
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- Attacking the Shi'ite militias while fighting a Sunni
insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders
and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional
neocon allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed
in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January
5. He wants no part of the Republican Party's sacrifice of US soldiers
to sectarian conflict.
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- In recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, Republican
Senator John McCain, who believes in the efficacy of violence and not in
diplomacy, pressed General Abizaid to request more US troops to be sent
to Iraq. General Abizaid replied as follows:
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- "Senator McCain, I met with every divisional commander,
General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together.
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- And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were
to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability
to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."
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- Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military
commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself
from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent
German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.
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- By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis
in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope
to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle
East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion
of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response
to military disaster. The neocons believe that the loss of an American
army would be met with the electorate's demand for revenge. The barriers
to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.
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- Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for
Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a
plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims,
Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination.
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- Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a
purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.
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- Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against
diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the
US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.
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- Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the
"war on terror" is all about.
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- Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate
Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor
of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including
The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous
academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University
and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He
has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress
on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service
Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal
of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at:paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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