WWB: long term occupations

WHAT WAR BRINGS: long term occupations

It is a fact that wars and occupations come to an end one day. Could be weeks, months, years, decades, but they do come to an end.

However, I don’t seen any end (at this time) to the eight year occupation of Afghanistan, or the almost six and a half year occupation of Iraq. And we have about 130,000 to 140,000 troops now in Iraq (due to go down by 10% by the end of the year) and about 50,000 in Afghanistan. THAT is sure to go up.

Army Chief Says US Ready to Be in Iraq 10 Years

Casey said several times that he wasn't the person making policy, but the military was preparing to have a fighting force deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come. Casey said his planning envisions 10 combat brigades plus command and support forces committed to the two wars.

When asked whether the Army had any measurement for knowing how big it should be, Casey responded, "How about the reality scenario?" This scenario, he said, must take into account that "we're going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan."

I would call it the ‘insanity scenario’ but then I happen to be a linear thinker with some morals…. two BIG differences that Casey does not share with me.

But, over in Britain, they are calling for keeping troops in Afghanistan for DECADES!

AND no chance that NATO would pull out in the next 40 years!

Well, it sure looks like we plan to stay in Afghanistan for awhile.

Barracks and Burger King: U.S. Builds a Supersized Base in Afghanistan

And the Taliban don’t seem to mind. They think the more troops we send, the more targets they have. This is a very good article on what the Taliban are thinking and doing, and why ‘beating’ them is a totally silly idea, unless the REAL plan is to make Afghanistan into a wasteland (which the evil shits just might do).

Inside the Taliban

The men separated into three groups. Two headed to different villages, while the third climbed up the cliff to take up fighting positions. We followed one group down to a small village.

After half an hour we were among houses, and the men dispersed. We waited outside a green door while a Talib went in to talk to the owners. In a valley where everyone comes from the same tribe and everyone is someone's cousin, finding a shelter for the night is simply a matter of knocking on a door.

The family gave us their largest room and six of us took their places, on cushions and mattresses that were still warm. A kerosene lamp was lit and we shared a dinner of eggs, tomato, yoghurt and dry, dark bread.

Of course, we have already pulled out from Iraqi cities and they are now going to vote on whether they want us to stay until the end of 2011 or leave in the summer of 2010.

Oh wait, there’s no vote. It has been cancelled.

When Iraq's Parliament ratified its security pact with the US last year, allowing the presence of US troops until the end of 2011, it built in a provision for a public referendum vote to take place. This would let the Iraqi people decide the ultimate future of the pact. If the public voted to negate it, the US withdrawal deadline would have been shifted up to next summer.

The vote, scheduled to take place by July 30, never happened.

….. American interests likely played a significant role in the missed vote. The postponement came a week after Maliki's White House visit, during which both he and President Obama reiterated the December 2011 deadline for withdrawal. Neither mentioned the referendum.

Well, so much for sovereignty! Jokes on you! Bullets still headed your way also:

And US troops are still shooting up Iraqis after the convoy comes under attack.

American troops shot dead two attackers who tried to blast their convoy with hand grenades near Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, the US military said on Wednesday. In addition, one civilian was killed and four wounded in Tuesday’s incident, which also saw the convoy coming under small arms fire, said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Philip Smith.

….. As part of a security pact between Baghdad and Washington, the vast majority of US troops have left Iraq’s urban areas ahead of a complete withdrawal from the country, due by the end of 2011.

However, some American soldiers remain in Iraqi cities as trainers and advisors.

WHOOPS!! They lied. Some Iraqi police thought that what they were told was the truth and tried to arrest the US soldiers for killing Iraqis. But the puppet Prime Minister said that was a mistake.

Two of the wounded civilians were children, in case any Americans are noticing or care.

Yeap, it’s official: US troops back on patrol in Iraq

Nearly a month after American troops officially withdrew from urban areas in Iraq, they are quietly going back in again, patrolling the streets of towns and cities where, despite improvements in security, violence remains an everyday occurrence.

From the sounds of this article, one would be lead to think that the American troops had nothing, NOTHING to do with the violence in Iraq at any point in time. They were all just out taking a stroll one night, and gallantly came to the damsel in distress calls. They were calls that the rest of the world could not hear.

Of course, the Iraqi people cannot understand why American troops are still in their streets.

A vote in the US House of Representatives was held on the amendment that required an exit strategy for Afghanistan in June 2009.

It lost.

We don’t need no stinking exit strategy! We can do wars and occupations FOREVER!!!!

And here is a message from the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq:

Open Letter to the American People on Independence Day, 4th July

But let me tell you what your country has achieved for you. Your government has committee the most evil act against humanity for the sake of controlling the resources of another nation in your name, in the name of your humanity and your civilisation. It tried to legalise this evil crime by initiating a so called treaty with the so called government of Iraq. History will Jude those Iraqis who signed, voted and who are quite about it as having committed high treason against the people of Iraq; it is simply an attempt to legalise the most evil act committed in the history of humanity. I do not mean the millions of orphans, or the millions of widows, or the millions of displaced people, or the crimes committed by your military army against detainees, or the destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. I mean the use of the American military of at least 2000 tons of depleted uranium in the war against Iraq, which has polluted more or less all aspects of the environment in my beloved Iraq.

I don’t think they like us, and I don’t think those Iraqis will have any appreciation or good feelings about what we did for them. But then, the people of Oklahoma City don’t really appreciate Timothy McVeigh for taking out that ugly building downtown either.

So, pretty soon we will have more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan under Obama than we ever had under Bush. And while there is talk of an exit strategy in Iraq, it does not look like it is being implemented. And, over in Afghanistan, there is only talk of escalation. But, we have a new strategy in Afghanistan, and this is covered by MSNBC. And this analysis of MSNBC’s headlines comes from the blog A Tiny Revolution:

Channeling Orwell

Checking the MSNBC headlines, this caught my eye: “Order to protect Afghan civilians frustrates U.S. troops”

Protect? Protect from whom? Translation: Order to protect Afghan civilians from US troops frustrates US troops.

“Drive to reduce casualties slows Marines’ progress.”

Progress, what progress?

Translation: The world's mightiest military has been fighting the "cavemen" for 8 years and, according to its commander on the grounds, is losing the war to the cavemen. Why? MSNBC explains :

“U.S. troops are under orders not to attack if civilians would be harmed.”

When you can't kill the women and children, then "progress slows down" and freedom & democracy must wait.

And this was in the comments:

Apparently somebody over at MSNBC realized that maybe they should change the headline. Click on the link now or you can google it, and the google page title is still the old headline, but the link directs to a new story. The new story headline: "Marines in Afghan town meet fire from all sides." Oh the irony of that re-write.

Anyone up to the challenge of listing all the various reasons we were told for staying in Iraq and/or Afghanistan? It must be a hell of a long list by now. The latest in Afghanistan is that we are there to keep the Taliban away from the Afghan people…. which means we are going to keep the Afghan people away from the Afghan people. That should work out just swell.

Ralph Lopez wrote a diary on the real reasons for war in Afghanistan.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: long term occupations, and all the horrors that it brings.

Afghan children starving after being displaced by US bombings