The Iraq War and How to Get Out of It
Jul 24th, 2006 at 1:37 pm by Susie
We went to hear Scott Ritter (former U.N. weapons inspector) and Ray McGovern (former CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) speak yesterday afternoon at a local event. It’s always good to hear Ray, who’s great with an audience, but I haven’t had a chance to see the hard-charging Ritter in person until now. It was interesting to hear Ritter sharply articulate the progressive movement’s strategy flaws in front of an audience mostly so unwilling to hear it.
Now, I left my glasses in the car, so my notes cannot be taken as sacrosant because I was writing in a blur. Anything I have in quotes, I think I got right. Here’s the general gist:
A young guy - a student, probably - got up to berate Ritter for being “condescending” and for not acknowledging the media, rigged votes, etc.
Ritter’s response was that he didn’t mean to be condescending, but that the media and the voting wasn’t really the problem.
“It’s a lot easier to steal an election when only 35% of the people vote,” he said. He said if people vote on a massive scale, fraud will become so blatantly obvious, it “will be treated as the criminal matter it is.” (I agree.)
As to the media, Ritter said, “If the readers of the local sports page had the kind of factual errors we have on the front page, they’d rip the editor’s head off.” (My friend and I applauded, we were part of only a handful who did. Which, of course, is the problem. Progressive activist types act like they’re above anything so plebian as reading the sports page.)
Ritter kept pounding home the point that Americans are no longer engaged citizens, but a nation of passive political consumers - who are waiting for someone else to fix our national crisis.
“They [Bush administration] said, ‘we have to sell the population on global hegemony,’ and they did it,” he said. “The country bought it. These are wars of imperial aggression to support our consumer lifestyle.”
Both McGovern and Ritter are united on the need to get U.S. troops out of Iraq now. In response to someone asking how we could do that when we’ve created this mess, that Iraquis were counting on us to protect them, Ritter was blunt. He called the question a continual “red herring.”
“We don’t care about the people of Iraq. If we did, we wouldn’t be there,” he said. He repeated that the Iraq invasion was never about terrorism, but U.S. domestic politics and the neocon dream of destabilizing the Middle East. He said the Iraqis were essentially pawns, and that it was time to get out and let them sort things out as best they can.
“American troops are an accelerant,” he said. “We are the problem, not the solution. The best way to support the troops is to see that the Iraq war memorial that will be built has as few names on it as possible.”
McGovern spoke about Israel as a prime example of the kind of “entangling alliances” George Washington warned us about. He said he’d raised some hackles when he said publicly the war was about O.I.L. - Oil, Israel and Logistics - America’s desire for permanent bases in the Middle East. “Because it is,” he said. “I was supposed to leave Israel out?” (Apparently some large Democratic donors called the DNC threatening to pull contributions unless Howard Dean denounced McGovern’s statement - which, McGovern said, he did.)
“Big donors should not control the way we react to public events,” he said.
Ritter pissed off many of the attendees with a rant about anti-war demonstrations. “You did nothing,” he said. “It’s a waste of time. Set a goal, achieve something. There are veterans from four wars who would be on your side in this. You just have to reach them.
“Demonstrations are futile gestures that mean nothing.”
One audience member questioned how we were supposed to be engaged citizens “when all we have here in Pennsylvania is a choice between Santorum and Casey, which is basically no choice at all.” (I was grinding my teeth at her comment.)
“Progressives have to recognize they are a minority opinion in this country,” he said. “You have to be willing to compromise on some of your core issues, and stick to the ones you know you can win. The Republicans have it down: Guns, gays and God.”
McGovern emphasized that the only way to stop the war is to elect people who will deny funding for it.
“We will not leave Iraq until every congressman and senator who voted for this war is removed from office - unless they’ve since recanted,” Ritter said. “That will take three to four election cycles, so we’re talking about 2016 at the earliest.”
How do we stop ourselves from getting into Iran? Tricky problem, Ritter said. “They have no WMDs, no nuclear weapons program and they’re not a threat to the U.S.”
However, he said, “We’re not anti-war. We’re anti-losing. Americans wouldn’t care about violating international law in wars of aggression - war crimes, really. We’re already guilty of crimes some Nazi generals were tried for.”
How did we get here?
“Fear, generated by ignorance,” he said. “The complacency of the American people. How do we get out of Iraq? Overcome the complacency. Exercise citizenship. Take the Constitution and live it, breathe it, follow it.”
McGovern said he would start with “three factoids and a stock tip.”
“First, we no longer have a free mainstream press.
“Second, the world is running out of oil.
“Third, we ought to start listening to presidents who were generals.”
The stock tip? A company making new gas pump meters that have room for an extra digit.
“Gas will double or triple if there’s war with Iran,” he predicted. “It’ll cost me $100 to fill up my tank, and my car isn’t that big.”
He spoke at length about how the intelligence was corrupted for political reasons, and how it led to bad decisions in Iraq. He said it makes him angry when he hears politicians talk about ’staying the course.’
“It’s called Vietnam, folks. It gets more violent every week.”
Withdrawal is no easy solution, he said, but we can attenuate some of the damage by engaging the resistance in talks and by disavowing any permanent military bases. He said the Pakistanis and Indians could help by filling in as we withdrew. “They hate us, but they need stability in the region.”
He’s not optimistic about the administration’s ever-expanding power grab. “Folks, time is running out for us,” he said. He said Section 413 of the new Intelligence Act gives the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to revoke the pensions of “CIA agents who discuss classified matters.”
“And who gets to decide what’s classified?” he said. “This is a crass, fascist trick and I hope the Senate takes it out.”
Let Iraq Have Its Civil War
It’s become evident within the last year that Iraqis are now more interested in killing each other than in killing American troops. This was bound to happen since religious differences always result in the bloodiest consequences. Yes, Americans have a different religion, but the Shia-Sunni sectarian warfare is about religious schism, inherently much more volatile and fanatic.
Do we just cut and run then, leaving Iraq for the benefit of some other country due to our effort? No. Let’s consolidate the few gains we’ve made and hunker down to see how the Shia-Sunni civil war plays out.
Move our troops and our Iraqi Green Zone government into friendly Kurdish territory. We can move back in if Iran or anyone else tries to intervene. Keep the Syrian border sealed. Reinforce the British troops in Basra so that the oil fields and the Gulf are protected.
The Sunnis, though a minority, will get plenty of help from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. Iran will supply the Shiites. Our troops and puppet government will be out of harm’s way.
Our troops will no longer have responsibility to control a territorial area too big for the force we have there. Yet we will still have a deterrent capability in the area.
No matter when we leave, a sectarian civil war will occur at some point. Why lose anymore American soldiers in trying to put off the inevitable?
This conflict looks less like Vietnam and more like the British Mandate in Palestine everyday. What did the British do? They left.
Thanks for putting this up. I’ve had similar attitudes from progressive activists up here in Massachusetts. I agree with Scott that we need to get out the vote and we need to get practical.
So, let’s get cracking!
Why demonstrate? To exercise “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Use it or lose it. To draw media attention to your cause. To organize and energize people for campaigning and voting. To put your body in the path of ongoing war crimes. To educate your judge and juries about the nature of those crimes…
I say, contra Mr. Ritter, that demonstrating is never futile.
i aggree w/ dr. g. (above comment).
we should definitely get out the vote, but EVERYONE should be hitting the streets FVERY PROTEST.
let’s meake ome NOISE, people!
it doesn’t MATTER if protesting isn’t a concrete way to make tangible change.
it’s a way to tell the world that some people don’t agree with what’s going on.
and it is a defense of free speech, which is presently under assault.
we should be doing BOTH THINGS.
… gonna keep on fighting for the things I want
Even though I know that when your dead you can’t
But I’d rather be a free man in my grave
Than living like a puppet or a slave …
speaking of puppets
i stopped going to protests when the puppets showed up…they arent protests anymore…they are parades….with all kinds of messages that are at odds with each other…there is no unity to them and no power at all….if they make you get a permit and provide toilets and control where you can march and for how long thats called a festival….i watched this happen this past winter in ft myers florida and across that state….the little spur of the moment protest got the locals complaining about people of color coming thru their nighborhoods and pissing in their bushes…the farmers complained that a one day protest was fine but if the illegals (slaves) didnt go to work for a week because they were at protests it would ruin them….and the protest organizers gave in to all the demands…and what did that get them?
exactly what ritter said…nothing.
when people are pissed off enough to shit in the street and get arrested and strike for weeks…that is a protest and that is when things will change…if you are just going to bang on some drums, hoist your goofy puppets, and sing we shall overcome please just stay home and write letters instead.
Iran, Israel, and Iraq
Three from Robot Wisdom: James Wolcott introduces us to Amir Taheri, “Chalabi 2.0″. Ralph Nader’s Open Letter to President Bush. “The time has come for you to return to Texas for a private meeting with your father, his former national…
When the US invaded the 1st time leftists demonstrated. They had no complaints against Saddam -he was a marxist. He killed 3 million Muslims with the help of a half dozen countries :Romania(now masonic entirely)TheUSA and Brittain, Germany and the USSR. All these people made money off Saddams buying power and the genocide rolled over Iraq’s Muslims . The sactions kept Iraq oil off the market 10 years. This kept the Gulf Oil prices high so Gulf Arabs could buy weapons in Texas. 90 % of the Isreali weapons are also made there.
Demonstrations are worthless because left wingers and right wingers agree on only one thing: Its Ok to kill Muslims. They made this deal 25 years ago, divvyed it up and wrote off the last barrier to marxism. Because the US chose to make enemies out of Muslims instead of allies they will now face communism with no Muslims to guard the frontiers. When they loose everything to the communists they will understand their mistake. All of the neo -cons will be long gone and the bankrupt country will be in grief over its lost easy lifestyle. The rest of the world is not going to let the US or the Israelis blow up the planet just so a dead Jewish mystic from 1st century of Rome can come back from the dead. They cannot even revive the constitution or the bill of Rights. Single issue voters are the problem. They delivered us into a dictatorship so they could punish the gays! The whole world is punished. All are punished. You could have seen this global genocide on Muslims back in 1979 when Hal Lindsey wrote the late Great Planet Earth and they made a movie out of it. Pornography for racist protestants looking for their next hate target. They are driveing big cars with bumper stickers that read “Drive 90 and freeze a Damn Yankee”
And where was I? In Midland Odessa Texas. Home of the world’s largest dance floor all lit plexiglass. Everybody drinking 4 and 5 alchoholic beverages on a week night. Then come Sunday they are at Church feeling smug knowing they are saved. They will wake up with a bad hangover and wonder what they did the night before. Texas.