So, the Iraqi war winds down at last. Ironically, given that the timetable for withdrawal was negotiated by Bush, who had no intention of honoring the agreement,* and that it forces Obama to keep a campaign promise that he's since repudiated. Turns out they both didn't take into account how much the Iraqis hate being an occupied colonial state run by a puppet government. And so, after killing roughly five percent of the country's population and created the chaos that led about another twenty percent to flee (either to relocate in other areas of Iraq to escape 'ethnic cleaning' or to leave the country entirely for Jordan et al), in the end we settle for the Vietnam option: leave behind massive amounts of armaments,** withdraw to a fortress-embassy, and Go Home.***
About Time.
--JDR
--JDR
*kind of like Churchill's promises to free India after WWII
**when we left S. Vietnam, it had the world's third largest airforce, since we gave them most of the military equipment in the field rather than bringing it back home. It didn't do them any good.
***here's hoping there's no secret clause in the agreement we don't know about -- like Nixon's promising the N. Vietnamese war reparations
No comments:
Post a Comment