Cranking Up The Occupation

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The Bush regime has escalated their Iraq war by launching military operations in Baghdad and Ramadi, even as Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki were signaling with words and actions that they were in the process of transferring responsibility for security to the new Iraqi army.

Some 20,000 U.S. troops ushered 50,000 Iraqi military and police forces into and around Baghdad in what Bush and Maliki described as a security crackdown. A similar, military force numbering in the hundreds was ordered in and around Ramadi to 'capitalize' on the killing of their longtime nemesis, Zarqawi. The tactic in both cities was the same: surround the cities with barriers and checkpoints, establishing outposts to stage further operations.

Along with the close occupation, there will be an escalation of 'anti-insurgent' raids and airstrikes, increasing the possibility for civilian casualties and the certain reprisals against the deliberately compacted forces. Ramadi has a population of about 440,000, Baghdad 5,600,000. All that this contrived posse will accomplish is more resentment, more recrimination, and more unrest.

Amazingly, the residents of Baghdad and Ramadi have not been told to evacuate, despite lessons which should have been learned from the civilian deaths that occurred as a result of the past assault on Fallujah, and the reports of deliberate and collateral killings by American troops and warplanes throughout Iraq.

In Baghdad the effort got off to an incredibly bad start as the militarized resistance unleashed an unceasing string of bombings, a mass kidnapping of Iraqi bakers, and a direct assault on a hastily constructed U.S. checkpoint which resulted in one dead American soldier and two other troops missing and assumed kidnapped. That sparked another massive deployment of U.S. forces in and around Baghdad in a frantic effort to locate the missing soldiers.

The exasperation of Sunni Arab deputy prime minister, Salam Zikam Ali al-Zubaie was on public display in a TV interview on al-Jazeera. “I can say that I am not pleased with the way the Baghdad security plan began,” al-Zubaie complained.

In Ramadi, the AC-130 Spectre gunship is being employed, military sources say, in the hunt for followers of Zarqawi. According to the AP, the assault on Ramadi is described by the Pentagon as an "isolation" tactic against insurgents there, but almost certainly, the most devastating impact of both offensives will be on the residents who have to navigate through the hastily erected checkpoints and maze of military impeding their free movement in their own town. How many more innocent Iraqis have to die at these checkpoints in a hail of bullets from the deadly rifles of our defensive troops?

Not surprisingly, an American AC-130 Spectre gunship was named responsible recently for bombing an Iraqi home and killing an inhabitant. Iraqis reportedly allege that a building was destroyed by a C-130 to hide the bodies of civilians killed by coalition forces.

Its hard to imagine that bombing in these residential areas won't result in even more innocent Iraqis killed. Myriads of the same Iraqis who enabled the Maliki regime to assume power with their vote are to be surrounded and held hostage by our lethal forces who are, perhaps, necessarily more concerned with their own safety than with the well-being of the residents who are forced to live at the business end of their guns, tanks, and warplanes.

Bush wants his own 'Tet' offensive in Iraq to vainly "roll back the terrorist's fringe" and give his War Party a glimmer of progress in Iraq to carry into the midterm elections and beyond. There really isn't any plan in place for the drawdown of troops the Bush regime's mouthpieces have been hinting at since before the last Iraqi election took place. If anything the WH seems to be digging in.

The pullout talk intensified in the days preceding Maliki's appointment as the head of the new Iraqi imperium, but it was quickly suppressed, perhaps to accommodate their latest escalation, or, maybe they just dug an even deeper hole with the killing of their old nemesis. The violence in Iraq increases with every swaggering political exploitation Bush commits here at home. Every time he re-declares war there, the militarized opposition obliges. 'Bring it on.'

How quickly they appointed another enemy, replacing Zarqawi, to strike fear into the war-weary American public. Strange how silent their new terror induced protege has been in the wake of the cabal's coronation.

The Bush regime may well intend to begin to reduce the size of the U.S. contingent in Iraq, but, the numbers discussed publicly (troops down to 100,000 by the end of the year) will do little to reassure Iraqis that Maliki's reign isn't just a chronic extension of the bloody American imperialism that enabled him to achieve power, and enables him to serve.

The escalation of operations in Baghdad and Ramadi can only be seen as a tighter occupation to the residents who have no association to the elements Bush and Maliki claim to be concerned with. So much of what has occurred in their name since they voted has been directed against their communities with the incessant search and destroy missions and the 'insurgent' round-ups which have resulted in hundreds detained since the initial invasion, indefinitely, without charges or access to counsel. The state of war that surrounds the U.S. presence in Iraq allows a perpetual cycle of resistance and recrimination. resulting in an ever-evolving class of antagonists for the American forces to point to as justification for further military 'clampdowns.'

The illogic behind the new offensives is revealed in the bluster of the commander of the 1st battalion, quoted in an AP article: "When you plant a flag on the enemy's favorite playground, that sends a very strong signal to the Iraqi people and to the enemy."

Sadly, this officer is projecting his own ambition onto a parcel and population that aren't his to manipulate and lord over. Prime Minister Maliki announced today that Iraqi forces would take control of security away from coalition forces in the southern province of Muthanna in a month. The British military forces who dominate there now say they have no intention of leaving Iraq, though. Australia's prime minister today dismissed the possibility for a quick withdrawal of his country's troops from greater Iraq (450 in Muthanna now).

There really is nothing to point to that would indicate a desire of the Bush regime to pull our forces out of Iraq. If anything, all of Bush's latest ranting about Iraqis wanting “to know with certainty that America will not abandon them after we have come this far,” has all the earmarks of a deepening involvement there. Even if Bush does manage to pull some 30,000 troops out before Christmas as some are counting on, the muckraking mission for those troops remaining stays the same, only then without the support of the exiting soldiers.

If the mission of the reduced force stays the same, their jeopardy increases. Only a reliance on our deadly bombers can insulate a reduced force from an increased burden from the misguided missions that will surely come from the increasingly political Washington preceeding the congressional elections.

That's what they face, perpetual war. That's why they are still there. They are the point of our politician's campaigns. They are the War Party's reason for being. How that must feel to soldier or citizen in Iraq; to be the fuel for their leader's political machines; to be thrown against each other in a heap, and for a wonder, to burn.

[sabra]

1. Excellent post!

k & r

[Scriptor Ignotus]

2. we need to keep using the term "Occupation"

and frame the Iraq Debate in those terms. I don't think most Americans favor a long-term deployment in Iraq. Great post.

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3. Yes, and in the beginning it was AN INVASION

i.e., a precedent-setting (for the U.S.) pre-emptive strike!

[bvar22]

4. Invasion ..... > Occupation....>Privitazation

*

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5. ...Bingo! (unfortunately, you're absolutely right) n/t

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7. Permanent War?

Dealing with Realities in Iraq and Washington
By Robert Dreyfuss

{snips}

The Bush administration's strategy in Iraq today, as in the invasion of 2003, is: Use military force to destroy the political infrastructure of the Iraqi state; shatter the old Iraqi armed forces; eliminate Iraq as a determined foe of U.S. hegemony in the oil-rich Persian Gulf; build on the wreckage of the old Iraq a new state beholden to the U.S.; create a new political class willing to be subservient to our interests in the region; and use that new Iraq as a base for further expansion.

To achieve all that, the President is determined to keep as much military power as he can in Iraq for as long as it takes, while recruiting, training, funding, and supervising a ruthless Iraqi police and security force that will gradually allow the American military to reduce their "footprint" in the country without entirely leaving. The endgame, as he and his advisors imagine it, would result in a permanent U.S. military presence in the country, including permanent bases and basing rights, and a predominant position for U.S. business and oil interests.


Let me now admit to having second thoughts on this matter. I no longer am convinced that the U.S. adventure in Iraq is lost. There is no guarantee that the Bush administration cannot succeed in its goals there. The only certain thing is that success -- what the president calls "victory in Iraq" -- will come at the expense of thousands more American deaths, tens of thousands more Iraqi deaths, and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Indeed, this war would have to be sustained not only by this administration, but by the next one and probably the one after that as well. For over three years, the United States has supported a massive military presence on the ground in Iraq, while taking steady casualties. It may be no less capable of doing so for the next two-and-a-half years, until the end of Bush's second term -- and during the next administration's reign, too, whether the president is named John McCain or Hillary Clinton. At least theoretically, a force of more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers could wage a brutal war of attrition against the resistance in Iraq for years to come. Last week, in a leak to the New York Times, the White House announced its intention to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years to come. Last week, too, the son of the president of Iraq (a Kurd) revealed that representatives of the Kurdish region are in negotiations with the United States to create a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq's north.

full article: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=93289

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8. Bush's Baghdad Palace

Nicholas von Hoffman 1 hour, 58 minutes ago

The Nation -- Among the many secrets the American government cannot keep, one of its biggest (104 acres) and most expensive ($592 million) is the American Embassy being built in Baghdad.

Surrounded by fifteen-foot-thick walls, almost as large as the Vatican on a scale comparable to the Mall of America, to which it seems to have a certain spiritual affinity, this is no simple object to hide.

So you think the Bush Administration is planning on leaving
Iraq? Read on . . . http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060620/cm_thenation/20060703howl

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6. final and link

June 20, 2006

Cranking Up The Occupation

by Ron Fullwood

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_060620_cranking_up_the_occu.htm