January 3, 2012
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It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana.
It was to be “mission accomplished” all the way. And then, of course,
it wasn’t. And then, almost nine dismal years later, it was over
(sorta).
It was
the Iraq War, and we were the uninvited guests who didn’t want to go
home. To the last second, despite President Obama’s repeated promise
that all American troops were leaving, despite an agreement the Iraqi
government had signed with George W. Bush’s administration in 2008,
America’s military commanders continued to lobby and Washington continued to negotiate for 10,000 to 20,000 U.S. troops to remain in-country as advisors and trainers.
Only
when the Iraqis simply refused to guarantee those troops immunity from
local law did the last Americans begin to cross the border into Kuwait.
It was only then that our top officials began to hail the thing they
had never wanted, the end of the American military presence in Iraq, as
marking an era of “accomplishment.” They also began praising their own
“decision” to leave as a triumph, and proclaimed that the troops were
departing with -- as the president put it -- “their heads held high.”
1 comment:
Do we really need these silly fascist pronouncements? As if we don't really know that what Bush claimed was his purpose, was no where near accomplished, while in fact the opposite is true. By all means praise the troops for their performance, yeah that's true and tolerable as well. But trying to pony ride fake political success on top of the performance of the duty bound troops is disgusting/nauseating, to say the least.
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