President Bush's October 6 speech on terrorism rebuffed calls to withdraw from Iraq and rejected the argument that the Iraq war has fostered terrorism. But Roger W. Cressy, a former White House counter terrorism advisor, replied that to say Iraq has not contributed to the rise of the global Sunni terrorism extremism movement is "delusional" thinking. Could it be possible that the Bush administration has become delusional and is seriously misleading the public again?
The Congressional Research Service reports that we are now spending $7 billion a month to wage the war on terror. That report also stated that the average monthly cost for Iraq alone is now $5.9 billion or 19% higher than last year. Actually this is not really a "war on terror" in the conventional sense. Instead of a war we have entered a continual campaign against world wide terrorist groups that could last forever. Experts now say that we can never reach victory to exterminate insurgent terrorists in Iraq or elsewhere. In reality, the Iraq insurgency is steadily growing by drawing young Muslims from throughout the world; it is dangerously delusional for our political leaders to deny this fact!
Achieving true democracy in Iraq will take centuries of social evolution. For instance, the proposed Iraq constitution recognizes Islam as its guiding source of law. Accordingly, human rights for all will take decades to achieve. In addition, the Iraqi politicians have announced they do not want occupation troops to remain and are calling for a withdrawal timeline. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr told an Arab newspaper it will take five years to put down Iraq's insurgency because of the inadequacy of Iraq's security forces. But polls taken by Sadoun Dulami, the Iraqi Prime Minister, show that over 85% of Iraqis want the United States to withdraw as soon as possible.
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546 recognized the Iraqi government as sovereign, with the June 2004 "transition of power" document as the basis for their motion calling for withdrawal. The world now knows that the United States invaded Iraq under false pretenses to rid it of weapons of mass destruction, which were subsequently proven to be nonexistent. Then we declared our intent to "liberate the Iraqi people" . Neither of these lofty goals have been realized. Now, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin sensibly says that we should acknowledge our past mistakes, avoid making continued mistakes and plan to end our involvement in Iraq.
Americans are aware that our occupation forces are not capable of creating security in Iraq. Recent Gallup polls show that over 51% of the American public believe that the Bush administration misled us into war and a significant majority of 58% say that no matter how long US troops remain in Iraq they will not be able to establish a stable democratic government there. Thankfully, we now have "The Out of Iraq" caucus in the United States House of Representatives considering a rational withdrawal policy.
Increasingly Americans everywhere are becoming aware of the rising death rates of our troops in Iraq and the unsupportable financial drain of the occupation, which is actually undermining both our foreign and domestic security as well as the general welfare. Our national security and homeland defense now demand a reprioritizing of our budgetary expenses and plans. It is time we implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel headed by former National Security advisors Samuel Berger and Brent Scowcroft who recommended that we must put more resources into post-conflict security and reconstruction or we will seriously undermine U.S. foreign policy goals and give more impetus to the Iraqi insurgency.
Rational proposals are that the timetable for withdrawal of troops could parallel the buildup of Iraqi security forces which make take years to achieve. However, we obviously cannot continue our counterproductive occupation for years to come. Therefore our plans for military disengagement and enhanced reconstruction efforts should be announced following the Iraqi elections this fall, or we must face the dark reality of years of occupation fighting the insurgency with untold tragic deaths of our children and grandchildren.
History records that Nero fiddled as Rome burned. The noted historian H.G. Wells said that human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe and that humankind is now capable of destroying itself by ignorance and modern weapons. Hopefully we have finally learned that many delusional leaders have actually destroyed their countries because of ignorance and false ideologies. Let us not make that mistake again and plan now to leave Iraq under United Nations supervision within the near future.
Robert Valett
(retired professor, California State University, Fresno}
Telephone 559-449-9067
email
robertv@csufresno.edu
5308 N. Colonial #102, Fresno, CA 93704
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