GEORGE MCGOVERN RIDES AGAIN !

[Zlatko Waterman]

A plan for leaving Iraq-- by McGovern and Polk:




http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e15430.htm

a long article, but very much worth reading-- a different perspective on things. Not all the content of the article is personally appealing to me, but what do you think?


--Z

[jimboloco]

I wanna read this, wilco later
off to sleep
and then the jewel mines.
It;s hopeful that someday a responsible congress will take back control, like starting next week.

[stilltrucking]

Interesting article, thanks for posting the link.

Did you read the comments to the article? There are a 168 of them.

I read through them and it seems like everybody has already said anything I can think of.

My only hope is that the democrats will take control of congress and then at least there will be some oversight of the war. I don’t see us getting out anytime soon. I think we should but I just don’t see it happening. Here are a couple of the 168 comments that I found interesting.

Also this link if very informative. It is a BBC documentary. It is from one of the comments.
The Power of Nightmares 1 of 3

Here are two of the comments that I found interesting.

This is a thoughtful and sincere piece -- and a complete fantasy.

First of all, it is too cautious; reparations for egregious deaths is set at 50,000 people, when the recent John Hopkins' scientific estimate is around 655,000 innocent people slaughtered or otherwise brought to death by US invasion and genocidal war.

This is a moral calculus that makes the false assumption that at heart the USA is simply misguided but can come to its senses. If this were so, the conflict would not have gone on as long as it has. There are no moral senses to revive, the 2-term Bush reign is only the beginning of an endemic crisis of democracy and deeply situated depravity of the majority of Americans, particularly the Religious Reich.

The article implies that it is cheaper to calculate and pay reparations than to continue with a losing situation. This is naïve and reduces the horror to one of money. If there are to be expenditures to set things right, where are the funds for War Crimes courts to apply the Nuremberg principles (ironically largely created by the United States) to the leaders responsible for this evil? And that would only be the beginning; to truly clean house, it would be necessary to de-corporate all the Halliburtons et. al. who have profiteered from this horrific invasion/occupation, and to confiscate all their assets and money to create a fund that would truly finance a compensation fund for Iraq, and for all the families who have lost one of their children in death or permanent disability to this totally wrong conflict (note that I refrain from calling it a 'war' since that would normalize it, when in fact it is an invasion and occupation of the worst kind, deserving of the most severe punishment of those responsible).

To be effective, management of a reparation fund as well as tribunal for War Crimes has to be in the hands of an international tribunal that comes from non-aligned nations with no demonstrated dependency on or antipathy towards the USA -- oh, but are there any?

...
vicjoe | 10.29.06 - 1:07 am | #

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As I ponder the McGovern / Polk exit stategy from the war in Iraq, Colin Powell's words of prophecy ring loudly in my ears..."If You Break it, You own it".

The desicion to invade and occupy Iraq ,by the Bush administration, cannot be overturned at this late hour and must be
accepted as a "done deal" by those who seek to extricate U.S. and U.K. troops from Iraqi soil.

To advocate the withdrawl from the theatre of war by the U.S. and leave Syria, Jordan, Morrocco,Tunisia and Egypt holding our "bag" may not be as workable as it seems to be from the outside looking in.

The McGovern / Polk Plan ,while speaking intelligently and compassionatly to the issues of Iraqi soveriegnty and stability may touch too lightly on the increasing civil strife in Iraq and leave the plan for Iraqi control of civilian affairs to a fledgling government without the experience or resolve to correct the errors in United States judgement that has left Iraq in the throws of a civil war that could easily manifest it's sectarian strifes across the Iraqi border with Iran ,should U.S.forces not be present to prevent it from happenning.

The United States has found itself in a complex and seeminly intractable conflict of it's own making.

Who can argue that the sectarian violence in Iraq is ,by design, holding U.S. soldiers in place as the only viable restraint to an all out Sunni / Shiite war.

As U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq, peacekeeping forces would be deluged by a Sunni rush to the oil fields and result in a war over resources, leaving rank and file Iraqis to grapple with a myriad of infrastructure and social service sector inadequacies.

Realistically speaking , the Bush administration was steered into the Iraqi war by the financial needs of Oil brokers, Halliburton, Lockhead Martin, Raytheon ,Kellog ,Brown and Root, and a host of international bankers who desparely desired the cash flow that only a war can provide.

The McGovern / Polk plan talks about the savings to the U.S. but may not adequately address the blow-back of war in the gulf region that will ultimately have to absorb the geopolitical reality of middle eastern Holy warriors , at least 2o million of them, looking for gainful employment in a country where the best job available for the last 5 years has been fighting the occupation of Iraq.

The United States has transformed Iraq into the training ground for an ever increasing number of Holy warriors who will not lay down their arms until the threat of western control of Iraqi oil fields is vanquished. This immutable fact of life reduces the problem to it's most elemental denomination...

Will the Bush administration have the guts to ignore the pleas of oil companies who have allready sunk large amounts of investor capital into Iraqi oil infrastructure and will be loath to abandon what they hoped would be a gusher of dollars for a long time to come.

Will Isreali lobbiests get the cold shoulder from Senators and Congressional representatives that they deserve and withdraw from the buisiness of stealing the United States from the taxpayers and citizens
and resolve to make friends of the enemies that the U.S. has been continually fighting for them?

One would think that substituting forgiveness and love for reveange and hedgmony would finally make sense to Washington beaureaucrats in the face of the abysmal failure of the War on Terror to produce any substantive positive result for U.S. citizens and citizens of Iraq,while lining the pockets of oil companies, weapons manufcturers,security service leeches, Iran, Hezbollah and eventually Dick Cheyney, George Bush, Condaleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld.

If we put the profiteers of war in a single group we see a pattern of lies and deception that ends up in a very disquieting place. We also see the losers in Palestine , Darfur, Lebanon, and Iraq with eyes of compassion and know the truth that war makes the wealthy richer and steals the very food and water from the tables of the poor.
jerrygates | 10.29.06 - 7:27 am | #

[whimsicaldeb]

A plan for leaving Iraq-- by McGovern and Polk:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e15430.htm
a long article, but very much worth reading-- a different perspective on things. Not all the content of the article is personally appealing to me, but what do you think?
--Z

Well... I prefer


Strategic Redeployment:
A Progressive Plan for Iraq and the Struggle Against Violent Extremists
By Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis*
Source:
http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/ ... oyment.pdf

Additional Info:
'Strategic Redeployment' vs. 'Out Now'
by Gilbert Achcar
and Stephen R. Shalom
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9220