BUSH'S NEW WAR STRATEGY: STAY THE COURSE
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistNaturally, General Petraeus plays the same tune that Bush wants to here: “Stay the course–because we are making progress.”
But unfortunately, the reality on the ground is proving all that more harder to cover up with optimism and political spin:
Just this week, a leading Sunni sheik was assassinated by an Iraqi bomb.
The Iraqi police force needs to be disbanded and started over from scratch.
The Iraqi government is completely dysfunctional.
Only one of the political benchmarks have actually been met. (Or actually not. The meeting--between the leaders of the sects on August 26th--caused the Pentagon to revise that de-Baathification objective from being "unsatisfactory" to "satisfactory".
All because of that meeting! But the funny thing, is that no legislation has been passed!)
The rest have failed.
The Iraqi security forces need another 18 months to be "effective." (Not that we haven't heard
this before...)
And the list goes on.
This is the reality of the war in which we have effectively lost to the insurgents.
No amount of ‘good news’ and spin from the White House can erase what many Americans see now as a lost cause.
You don't hear
victory, just a "redefining of definitions of progress" and goals which can't possibly be met now or in the near future.
Certainly not when Bush leaves office.Things are too far gone to simply turn a blind eye towards our failures and try to start things over--which is what this adminstration has been trying to do.
Try to restart a war in which events of the last 4.5 years never existed at all. In reality, Bush is trying to rewrite history before his term of dishonor completes itself.Sp his idea to bring home the troops is nothing more than an insult, and a slap in the face for our serving military.
Considering that the conditions on the ground mirror a low-level civil war, all Bush is doing is buying time for himself–not the troops. Those troops whom were added to the surge have to be pulled back anyways.
Not because they
succeeded in doing anything impressive, but because they are stretched past the breaking point and have no fresh replacements on tap to replace them.
So they have to come home. But rumors are circulating even now that the President and his military crony advisors are planning on extending tours once more and shortening leaves--to make his surge more
permanent through 2008.
With no stability, unity, or democracy in
sight, Bush is just trying to escape the mess he’s created by announcing that he is indeed the Decider--no matter--and he has decided that no change in course is warranted–until
after he leaves office.
Which begs the question:
Is the Iraq war still worth it?Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1 at yahoo.comLabels: Bush, civil war, insurgents, Iraq, stay the course, troops
IRAQIS: YOU NEED TO RISE UP AND FIGHT!
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistIt’s official people: The Iraqis are arming themselves.
Not the ill-equipped and under trained security forces of Iraq, but the
civilians themselves.
231 years ago, Colonial citizens did the same against British forces in their fight for independence against the Crown of England. They spent years fighting a bloody conflict which gave birth to the United States of America.
Unlike that revolution, the one being fought inside Iraq isn’t for freedom, liberty, independence, or
unity.
But survival.
Iraq’s government has been a colossal failure by far in Bush’s model for change and democracy in the Middle East.
The citizens are being threatened by all sides of the conflict: From foreign elements of Al-Qaeda and other groups, to the so-called
Coalition of the Willing which is comprised of the ever-shrinking forces of the US-led coalition.
And since Iraq’s own security forces cannot bring peace and stability to Iraq, it’s up to the citizens of that country to take matters into their own hands and bring and
end to the bloodshed that has plagued Iraq since 2003.
Take out the foreign elements that saturate your soil! Take out those who continue to impede and marginalize you in every which way!
Take out those occupation forces whom continue to deliver more pain and agony unto your neighbors, your children, and your children’s children–instead of those lofty promises of reconstruction, prosperity, and security which has been in short supply for several years now!
Do whatever it takes to give yourselves hope and promise for a better tomorrow!
Rise up and fight! Rise up and take back your beleaguered country!
Fight! Fight! Fight!Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1 at yahoo.comLabels: Bush, civil war, forces, Iraqis, rise, security, up
BUSH’S DESPERATION IS BECOMING CLEAR
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistIn an effort to paint Iraq the central war on terror, Bush rushed to declassify information that the American public had known since this war on Iraq began:
That Osama bin Laden is going to use Iraq as the central staging point for his attacks.
Does W think we are
stupid?
That one day we would wake up and say, “Hey! You’re right! We should stay in Iraq until the job is done?”
I think not!
The sad fact is, is that Iraq wasn’t the central stage in our terror war. That was Afghanistan.
We should’ve stayed there.
But we didn’t. Or rather
Bush didn’t. Bush made the rash assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and rushed in to overthrow Saddam–by taking his eyes off Osama at Tora Bora for a split second.
And in that split second, Bush blinked, and Osama escaped. The bulk of his leadership escaped, while a great many of his followers were killed in the ensuing US invasion.
After toppling Saddam’s government, Bush inadvertently created a
vacuum in which the insurgency and groups like Al-Qaeda could fill with splintered-association groups, and keep the American-led coalition hopelessly pinned down through constant fighting.
And it’s worked.
Now, Bush is desperately trying to paint this war as the central war on terror–desperate to regain whatever support he still has left to him.
Like he’s done in the past when things have gone south in Iraq.
And they have.
But no matter what, neither Bush or any future President can fight what’s begun.
By shifting the war to Iraq–instead of Afghanistan–we’ve created a nightmare scenario that could’ve only come from a fictionalized movie.
And with each passing day, we are paying for it in both blood and treasure.
All because Bush wanted Iraq for his very own.Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1@yahoo.comLabels: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Bush, civil war, desperation, insurgency, Iraq, Saddam, Tora Bora
DON’T GET TOO OVERLY EXCITED–U.S. HAS ONLY BOUGHT ITSELF TIME IN THIS TWO-FRONT WAR.
By Schuyler ThorpeAuthor and Political ActivistIt comes as no surprise that the security operation in Baghdad has lessened some of the impact and horrors of the raging 4-year-old Sunni-led insurgency.
But before any of you war supporters start popping those champagne corks, you might want to just hold off the celebrating permanently:
All this has done is bought the US-led coalition forces some time and breathing room.
The insurgency has gone to ground and laid low for the time being, calculating new attacks and new approaches to the security operation–and probing the whole thing for weaknesses. But it doesn’t mean that the insurgency has been defeated by any means.
Even the capture of Al-Qaeda of Iraq’s leader (supposedly captured–no one has actually confirmed this publicly), hasn’t lessened the daily car bombings, the violence, and the killing of Iraq’s vulnerable citizens.
Make no mistake about it:
This insurgency hasn’t been crushed. And it won’t be militarily–no matter how many troops Bush sends into Iraq.
And we won’t even be able to hold onto the said areas once things are in place. Because–like before–the insurgency will rise and strike either at will or elsewhere in Iraq; thus drawing away much needed security from other cities and even the capital itself.
While Bush and his cronies are crowing about this latest “success”–they are still dangerously short-sighted in the long term:
We still won’t win this war by force or playing it up as a victory
in the war against terror.What will win this war is one thing which Bush doesn’t have or won’t embrace willingly:
Diplomacy.
And while he thinks that the talks with Iran this month was still a win for the US, it proved that we have lost a lot of ground with the international community as a whole.
Instead of, “Sure, we’ll sign on board,” Iran has simply offered, “We’ll think about it and let you know the results.”
That in itself is a slap in the face for our long-standing foreign policy initiatives.
And it will be awhile before the nations of the world begin to trust the United States openly again.
A long time indeed…Schuyler Thorpe is an author, a political activist, and a frequent letter writer to The Everett Herald of Snohomish County. He can be reached at: starchildalpha1@yahoo.comLabels: Al-Qaeda of Iraq, Bush, civil war, insurgency, Iran, Iraq, time, United States
