thedrifter
11-30-03, 08:54 AM
11-25-2003
Iraqi Resistance Is on the Rise
By David Pyne
Over the last two weeks, we have witnessed an increasingly deadly spate of attacks by Iraqi resistance forces beginning with the downing of a U.S. Army MH-47 Chinook helicopter on Nov. 2 that killed 16 Gis, and culminating in the collision of two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, on Nov. 15 when one swerved to avoid hostile fire, killing 17 GIs in the second deadliest day of the war.
In just the first two weeks of November, the United States suffered almost as many deaths during this period than it did during the entire month of October, which was the deadliest month of the post-war period.
In response, the Bush administration is growing increasingly desperate in its attempts to paint its Iraq adventure as a success in an effort to reduce what most political pundits agree is its greatest electoral vulnerability as the 2004 presidential election campaign gets underway.
Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, forecasts trouble for Bush and his team, predicting, “If casualties continue at this rate, Bush will lose the next election, I don’t care how good the economy is. Americans are clearly seeing Iraq as Vietnam without the jungle.”
There appears to be a concerted effort by the administration to engage in a perception management campaign and whitewash all of the bad news and increasing casualties occurring in Iraq to prevent further erosion of public support for its questionable policies.
On Oct. 26, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz narrowly missed being killed by a rocket attack mounted against the Al-Rashid hotel where he was staying by increasingly emboldened Iraqi resistance forces. Following this attack, the president responded by stating that the latest attacks provided clear evidence that the administration’s Iraq policy was succeeding because they showed the desperation of those who oppose the U.S.-led occupation.
That statement led Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, one of the nation’s leading neocon warhawks to exclaim, “This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam, in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground.” Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper was even more harsh in his criticisms, noting that the administration’s behavior is “almost a repeat” of Vietnam-era rhetoric. “For the president to say these attacks show we are winning is almost Orwellian,” Van Riper concluded.
Bush appears either increasingly divorced from the reality of the situation in Iraq or unwilling to admit the failure of U.S. policy there – or perhaps both.
The administration’s credibility with the American people has taken a serious dive in response to its failed public relations offensive aimed at diverting public attention away from its inability to find any of Saddam’s purported WMD stocks, capture Saddam Hussein, stem the rising death toll among American troops and defeat the Iraqi resistance. For the first time since the war began, a recent Newsweek poll shows that a majority of the American people disapprove of the president’s performance with regards to Iraq.
Many seasoned U.S. military veterans are finding the smoke and mirrors emanating from the administration all too familiar.
Referring to the government’s handling of news in Vietnam, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni – a Vietnam veteran and former commander of Central Command – told a group of Marine Corps officers on Sept. 4, “We heard the garbage and the lies. We saw the sacrifice, and we swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again?”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Dan Christman said that if the United States is struggling to maintain order in Iraq a year from now, a battalion of dissenters could grow into a small army. “There are an awful lot of retired officers who agree with General Zinni,” he said. “This really resonates.” Other retired general officers who have publicly challenged the handling of the war include Maj. Gen. William Nash, former Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and former NATO Supreme Commander (and Democratic presidential candidate) Gen. Wesley Clark.
Contrary to the image that the administration is attempting to portray, time may not be on the coalition’s side. U.S. intelligence and military officials are now saying U.S. forces in Iraq have a limited time to break the resistance before the general population joins it. The Washington Post on Oct. 28 quoted a senior intelligence official who estimated that the United States has a three-to-six-month window to put down the resistance. The military believes that insurgencies like the one in Iraq coalesce into larger rebellions if allowed to fester.
The increasingly successful enemy attacks call into question the administration’s entire Iraq policy, which is in desperate need of immediate and radical revision in order to save the lives of hundreds if not thousands of U.S. soldiers who will otherwise end up dying in Iraq during the next several years. Swift changes in U.S. policy in Iraq are required to counteract the increased threat of terrorism and the rising trend of global anti-Americanism that have arisen from the unprovoked U.S. invasion and subsequent botched occupation of Iraq.
The truth is that the level of American casualties in Iraq is completely unacceptable. Worse, these casualties are completely unnecessary seeing that the continued large-scale U.S. occupation and U.S. taxpayer-funded rebuilding of Iraq do not further U.S. national interests. Our troops are not expendable as the neocons, who view their deaths merely as necessary sacrifices in their continuing quest to establish a new American Empire centered in the Middle East, would have us believe.
A decade from now, a majority of U.S. historians will likely look back upon the present conflict in Iraq as an unnecessary war in which hundreds if not thousands of brave American soldiers lost their lives only to see America stage a humiliating retreat in the face of mounting casualties.
They will recall that these casualties were inflicted by an increasingly numerous and well-coordinated guerilla enemy which began with a few sporadic attacks and ended with a nationwide rebellion against U.S. imperial occupation. They will describe the conflict as America’s second Vietnam War. Will they also record this war as the main issue that brought down a once popular U.S. president? Only time will tell.
Contributing Editor David T. Pyne is President of the Center for the National Security Interest. He can be reached at pyne@national-security.org. © 2003 David T. Pyne.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=268&rnd=172.13615120506591
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
Iraqi Resistance Is on the Rise
By David Pyne
Over the last two weeks, we have witnessed an increasingly deadly spate of attacks by Iraqi resistance forces beginning with the downing of a U.S. Army MH-47 Chinook helicopter on Nov. 2 that killed 16 Gis, and culminating in the collision of two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, on Nov. 15 when one swerved to avoid hostile fire, killing 17 GIs in the second deadliest day of the war.
In just the first two weeks of November, the United States suffered almost as many deaths during this period than it did during the entire month of October, which was the deadliest month of the post-war period.
In response, the Bush administration is growing increasingly desperate in its attempts to paint its Iraq adventure as a success in an effort to reduce what most political pundits agree is its greatest electoral vulnerability as the 2004 presidential election campaign gets underway.
Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, forecasts trouble for Bush and his team, predicting, “If casualties continue at this rate, Bush will lose the next election, I don’t care how good the economy is. Americans are clearly seeing Iraq as Vietnam without the jungle.”
There appears to be a concerted effort by the administration to engage in a perception management campaign and whitewash all of the bad news and increasing casualties occurring in Iraq to prevent further erosion of public support for its questionable policies.
On Oct. 26, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz narrowly missed being killed by a rocket attack mounted against the Al-Rashid hotel where he was staying by increasingly emboldened Iraqi resistance forces. Following this attack, the president responded by stating that the latest attacks provided clear evidence that the administration’s Iraq policy was succeeding because they showed the desperation of those who oppose the U.S.-led occupation.
That statement led Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, one of the nation’s leading neocon warhawks to exclaim, “This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam, in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground.” Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper was even more harsh in his criticisms, noting that the administration’s behavior is “almost a repeat” of Vietnam-era rhetoric. “For the president to say these attacks show we are winning is almost Orwellian,” Van Riper concluded.
Bush appears either increasingly divorced from the reality of the situation in Iraq or unwilling to admit the failure of U.S. policy there – or perhaps both.
The administration’s credibility with the American people has taken a serious dive in response to its failed public relations offensive aimed at diverting public attention away from its inability to find any of Saddam’s purported WMD stocks, capture Saddam Hussein, stem the rising death toll among American troops and defeat the Iraqi resistance. For the first time since the war began, a recent Newsweek poll shows that a majority of the American people disapprove of the president’s performance with regards to Iraq.
Many seasoned U.S. military veterans are finding the smoke and mirrors emanating from the administration all too familiar.
Referring to the government’s handling of news in Vietnam, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni – a Vietnam veteran and former commander of Central Command – told a group of Marine Corps officers on Sept. 4, “We heard the garbage and the lies. We saw the sacrifice, and we swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again?”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Dan Christman said that if the United States is struggling to maintain order in Iraq a year from now, a battalion of dissenters could grow into a small army. “There are an awful lot of retired officers who agree with General Zinni,” he said. “This really resonates.” Other retired general officers who have publicly challenged the handling of the war include Maj. Gen. William Nash, former Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and former NATO Supreme Commander (and Democratic presidential candidate) Gen. Wesley Clark.
Contrary to the image that the administration is attempting to portray, time may not be on the coalition’s side. U.S. intelligence and military officials are now saying U.S. forces in Iraq have a limited time to break the resistance before the general population joins it. The Washington Post on Oct. 28 quoted a senior intelligence official who estimated that the United States has a three-to-six-month window to put down the resistance. The military believes that insurgencies like the one in Iraq coalesce into larger rebellions if allowed to fester.
The increasingly successful enemy attacks call into question the administration’s entire Iraq policy, which is in desperate need of immediate and radical revision in order to save the lives of hundreds if not thousands of U.S. soldiers who will otherwise end up dying in Iraq during the next several years. Swift changes in U.S. policy in Iraq are required to counteract the increased threat of terrorism and the rising trend of global anti-Americanism that have arisen from the unprovoked U.S. invasion and subsequent botched occupation of Iraq.
The truth is that the level of American casualties in Iraq is completely unacceptable. Worse, these casualties are completely unnecessary seeing that the continued large-scale U.S. occupation and U.S. taxpayer-funded rebuilding of Iraq do not further U.S. national interests. Our troops are not expendable as the neocons, who view their deaths merely as necessary sacrifices in their continuing quest to establish a new American Empire centered in the Middle East, would have us believe.
A decade from now, a majority of U.S. historians will likely look back upon the present conflict in Iraq as an unnecessary war in which hundreds if not thousands of brave American soldiers lost their lives only to see America stage a humiliating retreat in the face of mounting casualties.
They will recall that these casualties were inflicted by an increasingly numerous and well-coordinated guerilla enemy which began with a few sporadic attacks and ended with a nationwide rebellion against U.S. imperial occupation. They will describe the conflict as America’s second Vietnam War. Will they also record this war as the main issue that brought down a once popular U.S. president? Only time will tell.
Contributing Editor David T. Pyne is President of the Center for the National Security Interest. He can be reached at pyne@national-security.org. © 2003 David T. Pyne.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=268&rnd=172.13615120506591
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: