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The Forum > Article Comments > The dark, sordid truth > Comments

The dark, sordid truth : Comments

By Tom Clifford, published 27/6/2007

Vietnam was the 'Bright, Shining Lie'; Iraq is the 'Dark, Sordid Truth'. The war is lost and the signposts to retreat are clearly visible.

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A sobering reminder that it is not the body count which measures the faulre of the invasion - it is the refugee count.
Posted by healthwatcher, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 9:25:34 AM
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"The war is lost," Tom Clifford says, but is it accurate to call this a war?

Lakoff has been saying we need to see Iraq as an "occupation" -- partly because it plays better as a political frame; partly because the military's role is principally aimed at logistics (especially oil), rather than combat.

We could add a third reason: "occupation" better explains how so many the Muslim world see links to the Israel/Palestine conflict. It reveals that Crusader stereotype of the Christian West more clearly.

I don't mean to split hairs here. It is a murderously violent situation involving massive military deployments. But I fear that we dignify the wrong people's mythologies when we call it a war.
Posted by Tom Clark, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 9:39:08 AM
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The Americans have no intention of leaving. Even if they withdraw to their three giant airbases and abandon Baghdad to chaos they will stay because they need to control oil flows in the Middle East. To quote from http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/2007/06/50_years_of_war.html:

" PERMANENT BASES OUT IN THE OPEN: The Iraq Study Group advised, "The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq." Yet for the first time, the Bush administration "is beginning publicly to discuss basing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades to come," the New York Times reported yesterday, noting that the subject is "so fraught with political landmines that officials are tiptoeing around the inevitable questions about what the United States' long-term mission would be there." In public, administration officials are mostly silent. "But when speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for maintaining three or four major bases in the country, all well outside of the crowded urban areas where casualties have soared." "

Most of the billions invested into infrastructure spending in Iraq has gone into these military bases. They have never had any intention of leaving.
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 10:24:54 AM
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Only for Tony Blair and John Howard joining George W Bush in the attack on Iraq, very likely the illegal action would
never have eventuated.

With both still as cocky and cocksure as ever, especially Johnny Howard, one wonders how future historians will treat them
Posted by bushbred, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 11:27:51 AM
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so, what else is new?

the most useful question to ask, in my view, is: how was the decision to enter iraq taken, and if not satisfied with the decision process, what must be done to prevent such flawed decisions in future?

there seems to me to be a submissive acceptance that presidents/prime ministers/fuehers will go on plunging the world in misery, while we watch on with shaking heads. can't we do better?
Posted by DEMOS, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 1:02:23 PM
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BB Part One

Michael in Adelaide
So sad to read your Post, Michael. But also congrats to you for having the guts but commonsense to have analysed what is really happening in Iraq and the whole Middle East. Under the lap, but rampant neo-colonialism. And certainly it was all there to see or note with Paul Bremer talking about Iraq becoming an important part of a globalised economy patterned on the American Way plus. And what else could you expect with oil-man Dick Cheney really pulling the political strings.

Truly the Americans haven’t changed, especially the Texans, where even a preacher would place a loaded six-gun under the pulpit before he softly caressed the Bible later as he readied for his Sermon.

So sad also to suspect that Tony Blair and John
Howard, knew what the dirty plan was about for a start, especially with neo-Con Paul Wolfowitz having helped design the US Project for the 21st Century, which strongly supported regime change for Iraq, Iran, and all those other evil global peoples.

Also sad to say, little Israel is part of the project too, obviously out to benefit, as is shown every time she makes a move America does not attempt to stop her, White House Secretary Condy Rice, stepping in and taking over the role of the UN President, the UN leaders now usually passed by the White House, making sure they have insignificant characters enough to stay out of sight and never to protest.

More Later
Posted by bushbred, Wednesday, 27 June 2007 1:42:01 PM
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BB Part Two

With all such going on, we could wonder where the real honesty and decency lies. Not among the evil Islamics, surely as Georgie Dubya might say. And yet the real example of truth and kindness in the whole long years of the Crusades turned out to be Saladin, who not only did not have the streets of Jerusalem after capture, running in enemy blood as did our Crusaders, but also in other forays always gave protection to women and children. Indeed, Saladin was also regarded as Saintly later by many Western thinkers, different to the Knight Templars, who after mixing with the Islamics over many years, returned to France telling of many instances of kindness and decency among the so-called enemies. As a result the leader of the Templars was burnt to death in a slow oven by order of the French king of the time.

It is so interesting that today's Freemasons are said to have grown from the same Knight Templars. If they have, maybe it would be better for the Craft today to again look for the wisdom and understanding that those who tried to find peace with the Islamics during the Crusades does symbolise for today's Middle East?

So never we know, Michael, what prying people like you and I might achieve, and yet also might even die in a slow hot oven? But what the hell? Cheers, mate.

George C - Mandurah - WA
Posted by bushbred, Thursday, 28 June 2007 4:53:02 PM
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The US assumed that the Iraqi culture would love a Western style democracy.The Iraqi culture were not up to this stage of our expectations in their evolution.It was like trying to make a child appreciate differential calculus.It was destined to fail.

They killed the only man who could unite Iraq and now it must be divided into three separate versions of Islam.

We have to ask a very pertinate question here.Is the death and violence any less under US rule as opposed to Saddham's rule?Saddham just reflected the culture that bred him,and Iraq will be more violent and ruthless without him..
Posted by Arjay, Thursday, 28 June 2007 11:39:11 PM
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One can say it's another Vietnam, but to start there is really ignoring the most important part in all this - the people.

The people of Vietnam would be much better off if the US didn't pull out, it's now a communist dump like all other communist dumps, where the people have little rights.

As a member of Amnesty, I only last month received an email about a priest in Hanoi sentenced to ten years for criticising the government.

Say what you want about the US, and Bush, but you could spit in his face and get no more than a six month suspended sentence. He won't order his cronies to kill your family in the middle of the night.

In short, his values are good, for he is a westerner.

One has only to look at Germany, Japan, and South Korea, to see that wherever the Americans go, the nation is better off for it.

The difference between North and South Korea alone is enough surely to ram this point home to anyone who doesn't see it themselves.

South = rich

North = poor

Iraq is totally different, and as one of the more enlightened members of this forum, ARJAY, has noted above, the culture of the Iraqi's is their biggest downfall.

It may be uncomfortable to hear, but Arabs have no work ethic. They are tribal.

They NEED a dictator, like all Arab states.

They aren't ready for democracy, they see it as mob rule - as it has been since Hamas' election win.

Westerners don't see democracy in such a way.

No matter who has the majority in our countries we don't allow them to undermine the democratic process, or trample on minorities rights.

Most people against the Iraq war are really just against Bush and his administration, as no one could truly say Iraq was a good place under Saddam Hussein.

The racism, the sectarianism, of the Iraqi's, is sickening.

They're behaviour is in step with tribal Arab cultural and religious values however, which is the problem.

I disagree with the author about the US retreating...
Posted by Benjamin, Friday, 29 June 2007 11:27:39 AM
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...I see this Iraq war just the beginning in a global war on Islam, once western leaders recognise that it really is Islamic values we are fighting.

We ought to be upfront with Muslims when they accuse the west of this, because it is.

Even in our own countries Muslims feel attacked, as we don't allow polygamy, or apostates to be killed. We don't allow homosexuals to be stoned to death.

We recoil at the burqa, as women are people here, not sex objects or baby machines.

We are appalled at Sharia, at the value of women being less in Islamic courts, or losing one's hand for stealing.

We don't accept that non-Muslims are inferior beings, or that none should be worshipped but Allah under Islam.

It is these things we went to war for, it is girls schools in Afghanistan now opened that give us the food we need mentally to keep going, for we are fighting for what's right.

We need more wars, against those who don't share our values yet want our nuclear technology.

The west is open, which is why it is our people that are the inventors, the scientists, the thinkers.

Islamic states promote the opposite, which is why Islamic societies have no thinkers, scientists (unless trained in the west).

It is so clear who lives better, as refugee flows prove. The western world is open, tolerant, democratic, the non-west is an intolerant, savage, racist wasteland.

This war, like those against Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, is another neccessary war.

I predict Iran will be bombed soon.

Sadly, much of what happened last century will happen again, although this time it won't be against only states, but an entire ideology.

Our leaders may need something like a nuclear terrorist attack to realise it, but they will realise that Islamic values are incompatible with human rights.

The war is only in it's earliest stage...
Posted by Benjamin, Friday, 29 June 2007 11:33:02 AM
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