[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] US Financial Collapse Will End Bush/Cheney Iraq War

[mary rose]

I cannot help but think of the symbolism of the land
of Mesopotamia being both the place of worship of
The Great Mother and what I view as the fall of God
after six thousand years of patriachial rule.

Let us hope that this signals the resurrection of the feminine
and an integration of the masculine so that we may move
forward into the future in health and wellness with a Universal
Mind.

mary rose

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Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] US Financial Collapse Will End Bush/Cheney 
Iraq War



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US Financial Collapse Will End Bush/Cheney Iraq War
And it won't be 'a time of our choosing'
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8730
by Mike Whitney

Global Research, April 18, 2008
LewRockwell.com - 2008-04-16

"Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us...
You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, 
pointing out at you...
Come and search for them in the rubble of your "surgical" air raids, you may 
find a little leg or a little head... pleading for your attention.
Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morsels of 
food...
Come and see, come..."~  "Flying Kites," Layla Anwar


The US Military has won every battle it has fought in Iraq, but it has lost 
the war.

Wars are won politically, not militarily. Bush doesn't understand this. He 
still clings to the belief that a political settlement can be imposed 
through force. But he is mistaken. The use of overwhelming force has only 
spread the violence and added to the political instability. Now Iraq is 
ungovernable. Was that the objective? Miles of concrete blast-walls snake 
through Baghdad to separate the warring parties; the country is fragmented 
into a hundred smaller pieces each ruled by local militia commanders. These 
are the signs of failure not success. That's why the American people no 
longer support the occupation. They're just being practical; they know 
Bush's plan won't work. As Nir Rosen says, "Iraq has become Somalia."

The administration still supports Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, but 
al-Maliki is a meaningless figurehead who will have no effect on the 
country's future. He has no popular base of support and controls nothing 
beyond the walls of the Green Zone. The al-Maliki government is merely an 
Arab façade designed to convince the American people that political progress 
is being made, but there is no progress. It's a sham. The future is in the 
hands of the men with guns; they're the ones who have divided Iraq into 
locally-controlled fiefdoms and they are the one's who will ultimately 
decide who will rule the state. At present, the fighting between the 
factions is being described as "sectarian warfare," but the term is 
intentionally misleading. The fighting is political in nature; the various 
militias are competing with each other to see who will fill the vacuum left 
by the removal of Saddam. It's a power struggle. The media likes to portray 
the conflict as a clash between half-crazed Arabs - "dead-enders and 
terrorists" - who relish the idea killing their countrymen, but that's just 
a way of demonizing the enemy. In truth, the violence is entirely rational; 
it is the inevitable reaction to the dissolution of the state and the 
occupation by foreign troops. Many military experts predicted that there 
would be outbreaks of fighting after the initial invasion, but their 
warnings were shrugged off by clueless politicians and the cheerleading 
media. Now the violence has flared up again in Basra and Baghdad, and there 
is no end in sight. Only one thing seems certain, Iraq's future will not be 
decided at the ballot box. Bush has made sure of that.

The US military does not rule Iraq nor does it have the power to control 
events on the ground. It's just one of many militias vying for power in a 
state that is ruled by warlords. After the army conducts combat operations, 
it is forced to retreat to its camps and bases. This point needs to be 
emphasized in order to understand that there is no real future for the 
occupation. The US simply does not have the manpower to hold territory or to 
establish security. In fact, the presence of American troops incites 
violence because they are seen as forces of occupation, not liberators. 
Survey's show that the vast majority of the Iraqi people want US troops to 
leave. The military has destroyed too much of the country and slaughtered 
too many people to expect that these attitudes will change anytime soon. 
Iraqi poet and blogger Layla Anwar sums up the feelings of many of the war's 
victims in a recent post on her web site "An Arab Woman's Blues":

"At the gates of Babylon the Great, you are still struggling, fighting away, 
chasing this or the other, detaining, bombing from above, filling up 
morgues, hospitals, graveyards and embassies and borders with queues for 
exit-visas.

Not one Iraqi wishes your presence. Not one Iraqi accepts your occupation.

Got news for you SOBs, you will never control Iraq, not in six years, not in 
ten years, not in 20 years....You have brought upon yourself the hate and 
the curse of all Iraqis, Arabs and the rest of the world...now face your 
agony." (Layla Anwar; "An Arab Woman's Blues: Reflections in a sealed 
bottle")

Is Bush hoping to change the mind of Layla or the millions of other Iraqis 
who have lost loved ones or been forced into exile or seen their country and 
culture crushed beneath the boot heel of foreign occupation? The hearts and 
minds campaign is lost. The US will never be welcome in Iraq.

According to a survey in the British Medical Journal Lancet more than a 
million Iraqis have been killed in the war. Another four million have been 
either internally displaced or have fled the country. But the figures tell 
us nothing about the magnitude of the disaster that Bush has caused by 
attacking Iraq. The invasion is the greatest human catastrophe in the Middle 
East since the Nakba in 1948. Living standards have declined precipitously 
in every area - infant mortality, clean water, food, security, medical 
supplies, education, electrical power, employment etc. Even oil production 
is still below pre-war levels. The invasion is the most comprehensive policy 
failure since Vietnam; everything has gone wrong. The heart of the Arab 
world has descended into chaos. The suffering is incalculable.

The main problem is the occupation; it is the primary catalyst for violence 
and an obstacle to political settlement. As long as the occupation persists, 
so will the fighting. The claims that the so-called surge has changed the 
political landscape are greatly exaggerated. Retired Lt. General William 
Odom commented on this point in an interview on the Jim Lehrer News Hour:

"The surge has sustained military instability and achieved nothing in 
political consolidation.... Things are much worse now. And I don't see them 
getting any better. This was foreseeable a year and a half ago. And to 
continue to put the cozy veneer of comfortable half-truths on this is to 
deceive the American public and to make them think it is not the charade it 
is.... When you say that the Lebanization of Iraq is taking place, yes, but 
not because of Iran, but because the U.S. went in and made this kind of 
fragmentation possible. And it has occurred over the last five years.... The 
al-Maliki government is worse off now... The notion that there's some kind 
of progress is absurd. The al-Maliki government uses its Ministry of 
Interior like a death squad militia. So to call Sadr an extremist and Maliki 
a good guy just overlooks the reality that there are no good guys." (Jim 
Lehrer News Hour)

The war in Iraq was lost before the first shot was fired. The conflict never 
had the support of the American people and Iraq never posed a threat to US 
national security. The whole pretext for the war was based on lies; it was a 
coup orchestrated by elites and the media to carry out a far-right agenda. 
Now the mission has failed, but no one wants to admit their mistakes by 
withdrawing; so the butchery continues without pause.

How Will It End?

The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is 
unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war 
that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But 
fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was 
when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and 
militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to 
deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to 
happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic 
conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure 
on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the 
banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are 
falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. 
The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be 
at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United 
States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.

The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for at least a 
generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the war 
(preemption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification for 
unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There will 
have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible in the 
deaths of over one million Iraqis.