Showing posts tagged occupation
Obama’s Iraq speech: An exercise in cowardice and deceit
The most chilling passage came at the end of the 19-minute speech, when Obama declared, “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” adding, “And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true.”
It is for this statement, rather than all the double-talk about troop withdrawals, that Obama’s miserable speech deserves to be remembered. It was rhetoric befitting a military-ruled banana republic or a fascist state. The military—not the Constitution, not the will of the people or the country’s ostensibly democratic institutions—constitutes the “steel” in the “ship of state.” Presumably, the democratic rights of the people are so much ballast to be cast overboard as needed.
One would hardly imagine that over a million Iraqis lost their lives as a result of this unprovoked US war; that some 4 million have been driven from their homes by violence, either forced into exile or displaced within the war-torn country itself. Every institution and essential component of social infrastructure was laid waste by the US invasion, which unleashed what can most accurately be described as sociocide—the murder of an entire society. The devastation wrought by US militarism has left a shattered nation of widows, homeless, unemployed and wounded.
“Nothing could be further from the truth [Barack Obama’s declaration this week that US combat troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq at the end of the month, and the way the British and American press are heralding it as the real thing; as the “end of the war”]. The US isn’t withdrawing from Iraq at all – it’s rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush’s war on terror was retitled “overseas contingency operations” when Obama became president, US “combat operations” will be rebadged from next month as “stability operations”.
But as Major General Stephen Lanza, the US military spokesman in Iraq, told the New York Times: “In practical terms, nothing will change”. After this month’s withdrawal, there will still be 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases, “advising” and training the Iraqi army, “providing security” and carrying out “counter-terrorism” missions. In US military speak, that covers pretty well everything they might want to do.”