Obama should listen to Iraqis rather than lecturing them »
Posted By dissent 8 months, 3 weeks ago in News
While broadly sticking to his promise to pull combat troops out in 16 months (the date of August 2010 he now favours is actually 18 months), he has raised serious doubts about sticking to the 2011 deadline. Now he suggests some US forces may stay after that time, for training or counter-terrorism purposes.
More worryingly, Obama is increasingly adopting a narrative of the US presence that sounds like the Bush version. US troops, Bush always used to say, are in Iraq to defend democracy and provide security until the Iraqis are ready to step up to the plate. Obama now says the same, and expresses concern that as US troops start to leave Iraq violence may resume. It's comforting and paternalistic stuff, designed to paint a picture of neutral peacekeepers nobly holding the ring until the natives grow up or come to their senses.
Read Full Story at guardian.co.uk »
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dissent
we live in a culture of war.
let's make it a culture of peace.
"my country is the world. and my religion is to ...
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tchef8 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is partly what I figured would happen. We have gotten ourselves into a situation that is not easily walked away from. The Iraqis need to take responsibility for their own country. But will they if we leave? It continues to look like the minute that we leave that country they are just going to go back to fighting each other. I don't think it matters how long we stay, this is going to be the outcome.
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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So far the indications are that Obama does not (and never has) intend to get out of Iraq ever. Surprising how many Americans can be duped by simply changing the "rhetoric".
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Obama's Nightmare in Iraq
With last week's announced escalation of the war in Afghanistan, including an Iraq-like "surge" replete with 4,000 more U.S. troops and a sizable increase in private contractors, President Barack Obama blew the lid off of any lingering perceptions that he somehow represents a significant change in how the U.S. conducts its foreign policy.
In the meantime, more reports have emerged that bolster suspicions that Obama's Iraq policy is but a downsized version of Bush's and that a total withdrawal of U.S. forces is not on the horizon.... In the latest episode of Occupation Rebranded, it was revealed that the administration intends to reclassify some combat forces as "advisory and assistance brigades." While Obama's administration is officially shunning the use of the term "global war on terror," the labels du jour, unfortunately, seem to be the biggest changes we will see for some time.
While Obama -- and public attention -- shifted foreign policy focus last week to Afghanistan, lost in the media blitz was another important report that examines how taxpayers will continue to pay for the Iraq occupation for years to come, withdrawal or not. This report, released in March by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, provides a sobering look at Obama's "massive and expensive" Iraq plan, identifying several crucial questions that have yet to be addressed.
...Among the questions the Obama administration has yet to answer: How to dismantle or hand over the 283 U.S. installations in Iraq (including more than 50 large military bases); What to do with the 160,000-plus private U.S. contractors in Iraq; Who will provide security for the massive -- and likely expanding -- army of diplomats deployed in the country at the monstrous U.S. embassy in Baghdad? -
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Endoscopy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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They are in control of most of their country with a little backup from foreign troops. The last group of provinces that need require foreign troops to lead the way are to be self contained in 6 months. Where have the liberals been looking. Not at what is really happening in Iraq. Obama lecturing them that they need to start taking control was an embarrassment for the US. They have been doing that and now control most of the country. Silly liberal president.
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fsev418 months, 3 weeks ago
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We're already seeing the Iraqi government (predominantly Shiite) arresting the leaders of the Sunni "Awakening" forces (that we are paying to fight AQ in Iraq and maintain "peace" in there areas) and almost immediately violence increased in Shiite areas. Their disagreements will never be over.
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Well, at least that is the state propaganda we are fed to "justify" continued occupation. I wonder how all the Iraqi fractions managed to stay united during the war with Iran?
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If one listens to what Iraqis themselves say, a rather different picture (that most of our media carefully suppress) emerges. Here is something from today's news.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis rally against U.S.
Six years after the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein's government, tens of thousands of Iraqis gathered in the rain in Iraq's capital Thursday to mark the anniversary and renew calls for an American withdrawal.
The demonstrators came in response to calls by Muqtada al Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric who's long decried the U.S. military's occupation, but there were also Sunni Muslims in the crowd....
Speakers at the rally called on President Barack Obama to "keep his promise to the world" and withdraw U.S. troops quickly....
...Police said that many Sunnis, including prominent leaders, took part.
Among the Sunni leaders was Hameed al Hayis, who helped launch the Sons of Iraq, groups of Sunni militiamen whom the U.S. began paying in 2007 to ally with Americans and help root out al Qaeda in Iraq. Many Sons of Iraq members are former insurgents.
More recently, Hayis formed a majority-Sunni political party that's openly critical of Iraq's Shiite-led government, and won two seats on Anbar's provincial council in January.
In a speech Thursday, Hayis demanded that the government release Shiite Sadrist prisoners and that high-ranking government security officials resign. The recent spike in violence proves that they're unqualified, he said.
His attendance Thursday suggests that his party may be looking to strike an alliance with Sadrists, a possibility that Hayis didn't rule out in an interview after the demonstration.
"Our Sadrist brothers have a clear vision. We appreciate that they don't compromise on that," he said. "They don't want an occupation on their land."
Any alliance shouldn't come as a surprise, Hayis added: "This is only an unusual idea to people with short memories, because we must remember there was a time when we were all Iraqis. The divisions only came when the Americans came."...
http://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1479293.htm...
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calitennflo8 months, 3 weeks ago
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We should always remeber what the word listen means...you list or manifest the now new moments centering the time...beginning with what is, is...a walk of emotional intelligence, one to the correct. When you list ten...ten is the truthful account of what one hears...and carrying it on to the correct, as the correct or uncorrect.
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Agreements are made from within...not the paper collected somewhere the courts. We are the vessel that ho%D*%f-%p.%i (%t, %L) %wx%hlds the equal measure between two courts.
Representation...is re present (as a verb) the action the c missing is what the individual sees and agrees If you change what one sees and agrees...you must from a solid foundation...one that everyone walks.
A seperation unto the word...ends always from...if one accepts...it becomes of...in the sight of this individual...are many with eyes...that too will see the of, from, to, by, even with at times.
From the beginning..we see what is still our solid foundation...it feels and urges you on...
A solid form is for the manifest in man or woman, an ability to know the truth...feel this equal...know the fair and impartial step we walk dictates the rest.
One day...all will agree...it's nice to have a dwelling place...but better to have us. Two sides of our sight...starts from within...our knowlege. -
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dvtexan8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Not only Dems called this "war" a failure......I called it that from the start and I am far from being on the left.
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This region has been like this forever and anybody that thinks this will change is just being foolish. Bush was not the main problem with the war, he just did not think about what we would cause by being there.....not sure he really gave a crap about what would happen to these people.
There was not one person running for president that said we would remove every person from Iraq because everybody knew that would not work. In fact, there is not one place in the world that we have attacked in the past that we have removed every troop so that kind of thinking came from the talking heads and political hacks, not from any of the candidates themselves.
Fact is we never should have gone into Iraq and it will always we an unwinnable situation no matter what is done. We let the real murderers go free to take part in this "war" and now there is nothing that can be done to fit the errors. -
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Albmore8 months, 3 weeks ago
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As a veteran of the first Gulf war, I remember General Powell warning if we went to Bagdad that we would be opening Pandoras Box. That is why we stopped and tried containment of Hussian. I think the biggest failure afterwards under Clinton was that the US and mostly the NATO nations was not hard enough in enforcing the terms of the cease fire. They allowed Sadam to play with them. A swift military action then when he started to ignore the terms would have had the entire NATO forces there involved and would have solved the problem in less time ith a larger military group that could had quickly brought stability and security.
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jimdoze8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Europe was like that forever as well, dvt. This time we didn't wait for aggressor country(ies) to drive the whole world into war. Far better this than to have waited for Iraq to collaspse, endure a genocidal interregnum and then have it partitioned militarily by Iran and Turkey... while the daily flow of oil gets cut off, collapsing the whole world into depression, thereby producing a protracted period of worldwide socio-political turmoil out of which would emerge a new age of nationalistic militarism.
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birdsabound8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Hate to have to point out the obvious, folks, but things really remain pretty much as they have been.
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The TRUTH (for Obama no less than for Bush before him, and indeed for a succession of "administrations" of one sort and another going back many years now --- all the way back, in fact, to the "establishment" of "modern" "Iraq" (by its "surrogate father"--- who was really WINSTON CHURCHILL!), is that "Iraq" really has NOT actually been a REAL NATION!
What it ACTUALLY is is a CHIMERA, cobbled together of three not really compatible ethnic groups, who have been more or less "ordered" by "the West" to bind themselves (very unnaturally) together into a "nation" to suit said "Western interests" in "controlling" the OIL resources that these people happen to have the misfortune to possess.
They are supposed to "serve" as the "counterweight" to "offset" Iran --- and if such "overriding" considerations as THAT end up ultimately resulting in obscenities like the dictatorship of a Saddam (SPONSORED and BANKROLLEDD by "US", through "our" buying so much of what he had to sell), followed by winding up being cannon fodder in "our" squabbles with practitioners of "terror" who arise and would drive "us" away --- well that is, one is supposed to suppose, just "tough".
What utter ARROGANCE on "OUR" PART!
You know, folks, it really simply is not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It would be much SMARTER --- and probably in the long run much CHEAPER too --- to get OFF of "OUR" ADDICTIVE DEPENDENCY ON OTHER PEOPLES' OIL. And the truth is that the technological ALTERNATIVES to actually DO that REALLY DO EXIST!
In the AUTOMOTIVE "arena", in particular, "we" could LONG ago now already have started building ELECTRIC / I.C.E. CHIMERA CARS in preference to trying to perpetuate a CHIMERA "NATION"!
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Natureboy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is based on a fiction. Even when he was running for office, Obama said he would pull out the troops "except for a residual force" and his aides leaked that such a force may number as many as 50,000 troops. And of course this does not even address the quarter of a million civilian contractors serving military functions in Iraq. Pullout? I don't think so.
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And yes, Obama's narrative about the occupation is purely BS. The PNAC was candid about it - this war is for the purpose of "integrating the Middle East into the global economy," i.e., privatizing their oil and making them the b!tches of Walmart, McDonalds and Nike.
And Iraq is only the beachhead in this conflict. Don't expect the U.S. to get out of the Middle East unless our economy collapses and we are simply unable to continue. -
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dissent8 months, 3 weeks ago
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we kick the sh*t out of this country, kill over a million (give or take a few hundred thousand coz nobody's counting), send two million runny for cover out of iraq into neighboring countries, turn two million more into refugees inside iraq, light the fuse on secular violence, destroy iraq's infrastructure completely, inflict now more than 6 years of savage war on it....
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and then our new prez (the change we can believe in), same as the ol' prez, sneaks in because he'd be dead if he didn't, and says...
"pick yourself up boy! stand up for yourself!"
..... and sneaks back out again.
obama stopped by iraq like a dog stops by a tree
the bullsh*t and arrogance is never-ending. new prez: same imperial dog, same imperial leg action, same imperial p*ss
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