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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Thanks to Our Military Debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, America's 'Superpower' Status Has Officially Ended

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not only drained American treasure, but exposed the relative helplessness of the "sole superpower."

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.”
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1 comment:

  1. 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.

    ReplyDelete

Just keep it civil.