The end of Operation Iraqi Freedom
 

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It seems like only yesterday when the previous president announced an end to combat operations in Iraq. Unfortunately, it wasn't yesterday, but rather over 7 years ago, under a banner which brazenly and incorrectly read "Mission Accomplished". Since then, Iraqi casualties have possibly been as high as 1.2 million or more (accurate casualty estimates are virtually impossible between restriction of access and lies from the military and government; the 1.2m number is based on a study by Opinion Research Business survey), along with thousands of coalition deaths and the changing of Iraq from a functional state under a tyrannical ruler to a third world country with millions displaced and a civil war which is largely due to the foolish disbanding of the Republican Guard. al Qaeda and other radical fundamentalist organizations used the destabilization as an opportunity to move into Iraq, something Saddam Hussein, despite all of his horrific actions, prevented. The United States, which was more popular than ever because of sympathy for 9/11, managed to use up any political capital we had and have subsequently become hated and again verified as imperial and colonial. The current price tag for the war stand at around $742b, with more being spent every day.

While combat missions are officially over, over 50,000 US troops will be staying in Iraq, but not in combat roles but rather in support roles for the still-inadequate Iraqi police forces.

This doesn't feel like a victory. This doesn't even feel like relief. Relief, imho, would have been never going in, or pulling out as soon as it was discovered there were no WMDs or links to al Qaeda. Relief would have been extensive investigations and prosecution for lying us into an unnecessary war of aggression. There's nothing in what happened to prevent the next Iraq invasion, which is quite obvious based on the fear-talk coming from Washington about Iran and it's nonexistant (according to the IAEA) nuclear program.

I wish I could celebrate today. I really do.

i remember the day Dubya announced a resounding victory in military operations for the US troops in Iraq. It seems a distant memory with everything thats happened in the last 7 or so years.

The americans leave achieving nothing of the 3 things declared in Bush's speech for the start of the war. Quite namely "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger".

What they will be leaving behind is a political vacuum, a military vacuum, and a nation riddled by sanctions which makes for fertile ground for Al Qaeda militants. I cant wait for Iraqi War III

i wish i could celebrate the liberation of my iraqi brothers, but sadly we have nothing to celebrate but a grim future. the next few months will be critical. i just hope some of the neighbouring states will come to Iraq's aid. I know Iran will...

Just some FYI regarding the "last combat forces" exiting the Iraqi theater...

The US has been simultaneously deploying substantial "training" forces back to Iraq which include full armor battalions, expeditionary forces, special ops, infantry and more. Switching "combat troops" with "training forces" is simply an unfortunate bait-and-switch (hope-and-change?) to appease the President's hacked off base before the November mid-terms. Sorry to say, but we are in Iraq for the long-run.

Really the only way to get out of Iraq at this point would be to elect a liberal. So it's impossible.

Yep, this is nothing more then telling the people what they want to hear.

Silly Willravel....there are no liberals in U.S. politics.... :shakehead:

Up here in Canada, we're still working on getting out of Afghanistan with conservatives in power. Even then there is hope because it's a minority government. Yet, we will still be there in support roles in typical Canadian fashion. Many of us want combat operations to end. We're used to doing the support roles.

3 words: World's Largest Embassy.

it's funny reading these snide posts from our conservative comrades who in the main supported these bush administration gifts that keep on giving and the neo-con foreign policy ideology that made these debacles seem somehow reasonable, something edifying to get into, something with a Point, the sort of thing a military hegemon should be doing in order to solidify its military hegemon-ness. and iraq, why that was sold in the way world war 1 was, just a little military adventure kids, nothing to worry about, the locals will be grateful.

remember?

and iraq is a gift that keeps on giving. it'll keep on giving for a long time, sadly. thanks, george w bush and everyone who supported him.

Hey, it helps keep the American economy going. And you can just get the taxpayers to pay for it.

It's not just the world's largest embassy, or even just a gift that keeps on giving..... it's the world's largest stimulus package that keeps on giving.

nothing like spreading a little drone democracy to make a conservative feel all hopey-changey.

plus the conservative patronage system gets to have money thrown at it and no-one complains about throwing money at it. i mean, 23% of federal expenditures, 4.9% of gdp last year, more money than the rest of the world combined the right has plowed into their buddies in the military.


edit: it's been obvious to anyone who's looked past the confines of the pentagon's pool of relatively soporific images for the advantageous packaging of war that ending operations in iraq was not going to be as simple as one would perhaps have imagined.

Perhaps it's not so much an ending of operations as it is a closing of curtains on them...clearing the stage for the next play.

The show must go on.

Obama's decision to re-deploy troops is being trumpeted by some of my peers as some sort of victory for Bush, as Obama has (in their words) "admitted that Bush's policies on Iraq were right and has quickly gone back on his promise to withdraw troops from the area".

I feel like banging my head against a wall.

right. apparently in the odd little world of conservativeland, a place i had hoped dead and gone, if you're a republican and your fuck up is giant enough it ceases to be a fuck up at all. it's misunderstood. it's mis-characterized. it's the tea party. and complexity that's encountered in trying to deal with your giant fuck-up that's so big it isn't one any more isn't complexity. it's vindication.

i just wrote that down to see if i could follow the steps.

Mild threadjack:

I'd say WWI and Iraq are a little different. Something to do with the motivation of the players involved, the technology... stuff like mass media.

I can get down with generalizations, though. My Norman Rockwell life is almost entirely made from them. Especially the part I spent in uniform.

Iraq. It remains a fun little vacation spot and there are plenty of numbnuts out there willing to "go fight for their country." Whatever that means.

just to straighten out this particularly bizarre confusion:

if you remember from the factoid books, when parallel numbnuts in 1914 were sent out to fight for their various motherlands, all were assured that "the boyz will be home by christmas."

which i think was assumed to refer to christmas of that same year, 1914, and not to another that would be 16 million dead, 21 million wounded and 4 years later.

Gotcha. I was just worried about scale. I mean, comparing WWI to the GWOT is like comparing the hydrogen bomb to a fart.

Yes, the United States is there for the long haul, China too and many others. I am curious to see if the 'Iraqis' will ever be allowed to actually govern themselves and what kind of government takes shape. I was reading that China just signed something like a 5 billion oil contract and in a sense control southern Iraq for the foreseeable future while the local landlords are kept happy with a few sheckels thrown their way every now and then. Energy, don't you know. Everyone needs it to keep their hamster collections in line. And the internet where they are closely monitored and allowed to blow their collective loads all day everyday then fall back asleep and meanwhile the mainstreets across America remain calm and tranquil. Getting sleeepy....

Well, yeah. It was just a matter of time before the key players in Iraq started donning the golden straitjacket.

I was always skeptical of the 'pulling out of Iraq' claim - all sexual innuendo gladly (and appropriately) accepted here.

What's more, I've never been convinced that it is the right thing to do. Sure it would be ideal if we were never there, but that doesn't mean necessarily that the next best thing is to leave and pretend we were never there. Support the war or not, it is our fuck-up and it is a fuck-up that is far from resolved. Granted, maybe there are ways we can improve things there without a military presence, but I've seen no reason at this time to believe that the security situation for the people wouldn't devolve even more if our troops were removed. And ultimately those are the people forefront in my mind when I think about the Iraq situation.

The whole "pulling out" thing is deceptive. It refers only to the military. The US and its allies will still be there in the form of both government agencies and private companies. They're just trying to get the big green bull out of the ceramics shop because when it breaks stuff it makes big nasty headlines.

I disagree with the idea that we should continue to fuck the Iraqi chicken. Sometimes you fuck up and cut your losses. There is no way to make this a positive. Whether we leave now or a decade from now won't prevent the inevitable civil war. In the throes of "freedom," Iraqis will beat on each other.

We didn't belong there. We don't belong there. And it doesn't take a genius to see that they're not buying what the Great White Cowboy is selling.

I don't get you. Feds and private companies are going to do what?

Provide infrastructure and security through training, logistics, staffing. Basically the stuff they've been doing the whole time Big Army has been there.

That's what I was referring to with the golden straitjacket.

You went back and added more later. You're always doing that, lol.

I can't share your 'cut your losses' attitude.
1) We are talking about people dying by the hundreds of thousands and I'm not apt to be dismissive of that fact
2) I'm not talking about selling democracy or any of that horseshit and if any entity is is going to be 'selling a Great White Anything" it's apt to be 'feds and private companies' rather than the military
and 3) How can you be sure that we will be cutting any losses by leaving?

http://www.kentlaw.edu/jicl/articles...k_Calaguas.pdf

this is an interesting article that provides a brief overview of private contractors/mercenaries in their post-cold war form(s) and the arguments for and against using them. it's not definitive but it's one of those useful quick read secondary processing bits...

just to situate the discussion.

o yeah: you can find some infotainment on p. 18 of that article which indicates just how much mercenaries and other private "defense" contractors like republicans.

and the entire dynamic results in (again) this problem being raised:

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CIA_Red_Ce...22,_2_Feb_2010

which is (to repeat) what happens if people either figure out that the u.s. in fact is or begin to see the u.s. as exporting "terror"?

uh oh.

because one of the central "advantages" of these mercenaries is that the allow countries like, for example, the united states to circumvent those pesky legal restrictions on actions and adherence to those "quaint" human rights rules. unless of course they get caught. think abu ghraib. but i digress.

How can anyone be sure we're not cutting losses by leaving? Sorry we've done all we can there in my opinion and staying is nothing more then a never ending, very expensive game, of whack-o-mole.

It's a shit hole now and it will likely be a shit hole when we leave, whether that's in the next year or the next 20 years.

Is it too late to put Saddam and the Ba'ath Party back?

I mean...why were we so against a secularist ruling party in the Middle East during a war against Islamic terrorism?

The question of whether it is a shithole is irrelevant.
Was your objection to the war based simply on the legal aspects of it, or was it also based on the fate of the people living in said shithole?
Maybe the reason for my divergence is that my opinion on how this debacle should culminate is not primarily swayed by America's best interest. It's just not the way I think. Particularly since we are the ones who turned a basically functioning nation that we really didn't have to think about into a 'shithole' that we will never forget about.

And since we are largely responsible for Iraq becoming a bigger shithole what responsibility do we have towards making it a better shithole?

I can see both sides of it. Should we just wash our hands of it, back off and let the Iraqis work towards getting there own nation back on track (they probably couldn't do any worse) or do we bare some responsibility in fixing what we messed up in the first place? What "fixing it" means is entirely up for debate of course.

I'm not sure Iraq is something we can just shrug our shoulders over, leave and pretend the last couple of decades never happened. Our finger prints are all over what Iraq has become today.

Whoa, deja vu.

I find it relevant that (according to, IIRC, a poll in the NY Times), something on the order of 62% of Iraqis don't think the Americans should be leaving so soon.

I'm a believer in "you broke it, you fix it."

You mean: "Let's fix it so good that it'll stand on its own after we leave," right?

That's like saying a little kid on a bicycle will stay upright on the first solo try without training wheels.

If we're going to "fix" Iraq, it'll be helping them fix themselves. Duh, I know. We're doing it to the degree we can and the degree they'll accept it.

It's messy. And expensive.

And at the end of the day they're poor people that enjoy our money and have far too many groups vying for power the second we leave.

I know; I'm sorry. I edit the hell outta my posts. It's the ADHD. That and I'm the least intelligent person posting in this thread so I have to tread water.

re1) People have been dying when we weren't there (Kurds), when we showed up ("war," insurgents), and they're gonna die when we leave (insurgents, civil unrest, etc.). You can cry for them or you can just deal with the fact that it's a shitty time for Iraq. When is it ever enough?

re2) We're always selling democracy. It's what we do. We set up puppet governments that are largely unpopular with the locals because they're not primitive thugs down with some holy scripture handed down from a make-believe supernatural being. We're McDonalds and blue jeans and they dislike us for reasons that I can't really argue with... we go sticking our obese fingers into their dirt pies whenever they do something we don't like.

re3) I know we're cutting losses by leaving. How much money do we spend every day simply transporting food and water in Iraq?

We broke Iran by overthrowing the democratically elected government. And we've broken Saudi Arabia by supporting their monarchy. And we've broken Palestine by backing Israel even when they commit terrible acts. And we've broken Mexico with the war on drugs. Columbia, too. We've broken Cambodia. We broke countless Pacific islands. If you really do believe this "you broke it, you fix it", what about all of the other places we've broken? Should we fix Panama? Or Haiti? Or Cuba?

So what if it is true?

well, the reality is that the approach is to create an administrative transfer of the iraq theater (in all senses) from explicit combat to some kind of peculiar Ädvisory role in a context where this transfer obviously does not coincide with a deceleration of violence--although it's also possible that the level of violence has been kind of constant but the way its reported has varied it's hard to say really---either way it seems clear that there's a volatile-to-civil war-ish situation and the space seems really open for private military contractors to play a predominant war. i hope this doesn't become a mercenary theater. like angola or something. bad bad bad. very bad.

but looking at how the situation appears, quite apart from what i might prefer to see, i'm kinda unclear about what is happening.

what i wonder about is the extent of political opposition to the drawdown whatever you call it within the military and the possibility that brings with it of variation in what's being reported, so the creation of the impression that this is a strategically bad idea. part of the theater of public opinion dontcha know. i wonder the extent to which faction fights happen across information flows, don't you? makes watching the news kinda exhilirating. but i digress.

:rolleyes:

At least you're consistent, RB.

Seems he's not the only one. :rolleyes:

Wonder what the poll was on invading before we invaded?

We can not "buy" friends in that region, at any cost. Currently we're sending some 50 million to Pakistan to help flood victims. Will they like us more after doing so? I highly doubt it. We'll still be the evil "American Satan" to much of the population.

To some degree I agree with you and thought Powell was right when he stated you break it you own it (probably not a direct quote, but close.) Was one of many, many reasons I thought it was a stupid idea to begin with. However we keep building and building and people there who hate us keep blowing up what we just built. Whether it's a building or an alliance, the goal of far too many there is to destroy what ever we do. I don't see any end to that, ever.

It might seem silly at first, but if you make an analogy between American foreign policy and the current shifting structure of much of global society, you will see a very distinct difference.

Looking at communication, technology, and economy within the context of education, industry, business, and even leisure time, you will see a huge shift has occurred since the 20th century. What was once a predominantly limited, one-way (or at best two-way), and authoritarian structure for all of these things are now moving into the realm of open source, collaborative, and citizen-driven structures.

Whereas before research, knowledge, power, and communication were controlled by the few, these things are now accessible and influenced by masses. The barriers to entry in most realms of human endeavor have dropped if not disappeared completely. We have citizen journalists, amateur scientists, and nationless (yet global) group politics all contributing to how we shape our individual societies and our international relationships. We now have more connections to politics, whether direct or indirect. The masses generally have more influence now than they ever have before.

If you take a look at the big picture, and look at the long view, you will see America's policies abroad as brontosaurian. The image of the unilateral, neoliberal, authoritarian superpower is looking rather dated. It looks as though it's about to enter an age in which it cannot survive. Much like the dinosaurs.

One argument behind why the dinosaurs died out is because they were too specialized. Look at the T-rex. It was probably the most devastating hunter in the history of biology. But it didn't survive. Why? Because it couldn't adapt fast enough to a changing environment. It was too good at what it did and not good enough at doing other stuff—the kind of stuff that was required to thrive in a changing world.

Is America like the T-rex? I dunno. Maybe I'm just being silly.

T-Rex, not really. More like Rome.