Marines on diplomatic mission

US troops are spreading into Helmand, tasked with clearing the area of Taliban insurgents and supporters, which translates in that province roughly to wiping out a large chunk of its native tribal Pashtun population. At the same time as US forces by the thousands are being helicoptered into remote Afghanistan, Afghan politicians are traveling the country far and wide in the lead up to August’s elections.

As U.S. Marines launched a major offensive against Taliban insurgents in southern Helmand Province, the presidential campaign unfolding in more peaceful parts of northern and eastern Afghanistan last week seemed to be taking place on another planet.

Whether addressing rallies, chatting with voters in the street or receiving delegations of tribal leaders, candidates barely mentioned the violent insurgency that international experts fear could sabotage the Aug. 20 polling.

Instead, the presidential hopefuls stuck to themes they knew would resonate with Afghan audiences. They denounced civilian casualties by foreign forces and called for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban.

So, going by this article we can safely assume that Afghans in general are pissed off about the many civilian casualties and would prefer to come peacefully to some arrangement with the Taliban. What they will get instead is The Surge. Obama delivers the exact opposite of what the Afghan people are hoping for. How come I am not the least surprised?

McCrystal is said to be emphasizing the “protective” nature of the Marines mission, but who is he kidding? The Taliban are everywhere, they are everyone, they bloody well live there.

[...] They [US Troops] will have to overcome deeply entrenched suspicions of American aims in the region, and resentment over civilian casualties inflicted during previous U.S. operations. "This operation will cause even more insecurity," says Joma Khan, a 32-year old unemployed man in Lashkar Gah. "Because when people lose their family members or their houses gets destroyed, then they join Taliban."

Aware of the danger, McChrystal has made the protection of civilians the central tenet of his new approach to fighting the Taliban, even going so far as to limit the use of aerial bombardment to the most extreme circumstances - a turnabout for U.S. ground forces that have grown dependent on air support. McChrystal has also declared in a soon-to-be-released tactical directive that soldiers should hold their fire if there is even the slightest risk of a civilian presence in the target zone. "Suppose the insurgent occupies an enemy home or village and engages you from there, with the clear idea that when you respond you are going to create collateral damage," explains McChrystal. "He's going to blame that on you. Even if you kill the insurgents, what happens is you have made the insurgency wider. You are going to run into more IEDs. You are going to run into more insurgents, [and] at the end of the day you are going to suffer more casualties." [...]

Presumably the same people who believe this “we’ve come in peace” crap will also fall hook, line and sinker for Brig. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson’s feel good spiel:

[...] "We’re doing this very differently," Nicholson said, according to the Washington Post. "We’re going to be with the people. We’re not going to drive to work. We’re going to walk to work."

Nicholson emphasised this dual capacity of the Marines’ mission in Helmand: "We’re not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied," he told officers. "You’re going to drink lots of tea. You’re going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people." [...]

Marines without air support embedded in the Pashtun population, walking to work and on orders to drink tea with the locals, which planet is that guy living on? They are neither trained/programmed to be diplomats nor are they known to be nice people one can easily walk up to and have a leisurely chat with. These are schooled killers armed to their teeth good at intimidating and snuffing out lives. James Cogan’s view is imho the closest estimate I came across on how this ramp up in troop presence will play out.

The Obama administration has ordered the 2^nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (2 MEB) into a potentially bloody offensive in the southern province of Helmand. The objective is the suppression of the ethnic Pashtun population, which is overwhelmingly hostile to the seven-and-a-half year US and NATO occupation of the country and rejects the legitimacy of the Afghan puppet government headed by President Hamid Karzai.

Early Thursday morning, 2 MEB began what has been described as the biggest airlift of marines since the Vietnam War. Code-named “Khanjar”—Pashtun for “strike of the sword”—the operation is the largest undertaken by the Marine Corp since it led the assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November 2004. In all, some 4,000 marines and a 600-strong battalion of the Afghan Army are involved, supported by an array of jet fighters, unmanned drones and helicopter gunships.

An article in Friday’s New York Times by veteran war correspondent Carlotta Gall, who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001, made clear why Helmand has been targeted for the first major operation in Obama’s Afghan “surge”.

She wrote that the “mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan”. People have “taken up arms against the foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger at losing relatives in airstrikes”.

Gall noted: “The southern provinces have suffered the worst civilian casualties since NATO’s deployment into the region in 2006. Thousands of people have been displaced by fighting and taken refuge in the towns. ‘Now there are more people siding with the Taliban than with the government’, said Abdul Qadir Noorzai, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission...”

One man interviewed by Gall in June declared: “Who are the Taliban? They are the local people.” Another, whose house was bombed by US jets two months ago, said: “We Muslims don’t like them [the foreign troops]. They are the source of danger.” […]

The offensive has been timed to coincide with the initial stages of an assault by the Pakistani military into the tribal agency of South Waziristan. The ethnic Pashtun tribal agencies are largely controlled by Islamist movements with close links to the Taliban, who provide Afghan guerillas with safe haven and contribute their own fighters to the anti-occupation insurgency. […]

The marines in Helmand will duplicate the methods used by the US military in Iraq and they are well qualified to do so. Most of the 2 MEB units, and many of the officers and enlisted men, served one or multiple tours in Iraq’s western province of Anbar. The surge tactics were first tested in Anbar, a centre of Sunni Arab resistance to the US invasion. Over two years, the marines honed their counter-insurgency methods at the cost of thousands of Iraqi lives and the repression of the entire population.

Everyone in the newly occupied areas of Helmand—men, women and children—will be treated as potential insurgents. Bases will be established in towns and villages, from which US troops will use intimidation to identify resistance fighters. Afghans will face constant road-blocks, identity checks and searches. Men of fighting age will have to endure the most humiliating treatment. Local tribal leaders will be offered cash bribes to order their clans to collaborate with the occupation. If they refuse, they will be marked as Taliban sympathisers [...]…. Read the full text here.

For the people living there it’s a lose/lose situation, and I have a feeling that when US troops will be leaving Afghanistan at some point in the future, they’ll be just as popular amongst “the liberated” as they were in Vietnam on their day of departure or now in Iraq.

New Year in Gaza, like the old

Seeing that it is still early in 2009, time to write my first post for the year. I know, I know, you've all been missing me badly, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, he that can have patience, can have what he will. Anyhow my esteemed readers, best wishes for the New Year. May this turn around the sun bring you & your loved ones inner peace and all the happiness you can handle.

It is however with sadness that I choose the topic for this year’s opening post, but as I write these lines, sitting at my computer, fully aware that I am witnessing today’s Nazis committing mass murder in our day, I can’t shake the feeling that by joining the line of bloggers expressing their grief about the casualties the Israeli dictatorship is raking up in Palestinian lands, I am wasting my and your time. Neither me writing this post nor you reading it will bring back the hundreds of innocent human lives lost so far in the latest episode of this seemingly never-ending drama. The same accounts for the fade of the survivors.

What a sorry affair this conflict around Palestine/Israel has become. It’s a game of Middle Eastern regional power politics being played, with Palestinian and Israeli civilians the pawns ordained to do the bleeding. Just by looking at the time-span this dispute has been allowed to go on for, we get an indication on how disingenuous and two-faced most parties involved really are.

Hamas, in a sense not unlike the Afghani Taliban, has become the genie that can’t be put back in the bottle. Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement, founded in the late eighties by Sheik Yassin, was initially welcomed if not cultivated and fed by US and Israeli clandestine services and their associated puppet regimes in the region. The idea was to help breed an inter-Palestinian rival to USrael’s public enemy number one at the time, Arafat’s PLO. Divide and conquer, tried, trusted, works every time.

Just like the many Arab dictatorships need Zionist Israel to provide the diversion needed to keep their own citizens under control, does Israel need Hamas and Fatah’s existence, their sporadic suicide bombs and mortar attacks. Without them, without the constant fighting, they’d have no more excuse to continue the illegal land grab they are engaged in, and are getting away with under the cover of war.

Instead of de-escalating the situation, Israel does the exact opposite – confining over a million Palestinian people to a penal ghetto, starving the locked up population of humanitarian aid and life’s basics – and then acts shocked when the ghetto inmates fling low-grade rockets at them, crying crocodiles tears and snivelling about the odd Israeli victim.

Israel is doing what it is for the same reason a dog licks its balls, because it can. They feel an itch and know that no-one cares enough to stop them. Israeli analysts have been studying the Palestinian resistance for more than half a century and by now have surely figured out that any military counter-insurgency measures against an opponent that actually lives in the warzone, is like punching your fist into a bucket of water - the moment you pull it out its back to how it was. My bet is that Israel's strategists know full well that the bloodshed will not bring about the end of Hamas, quite contrary, if anything their current onslaught will increase the groups popularity amongst the huddled up masses in Gaza’s basements. So why, if not to feed the flames, this gruesome Israeli military incursion?

Throughout all of this drama, Palestinians pretty much were, and are now, on their own. Their brothers in Egypt & the Arab league can’t come to the rescue, too convenient is the ever festering status of Palestine for Mubarak and his fellow totalitarian Arab leaders.

European powers, as always displaying no backbone when it comes down to standing up for the oppressed, are no hopers too. Merkel and her unconditional support for the Israeli murder spree is the prime example for what Palestinians can expect from the EU. Hollow words and a few shekels to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure - Israel needs new targets for future bombing raids.

And then there is Obama, already a write off, an AIPAC sleeper who got activated; his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who felt himself so obligated that he had to serve his time in the Israeli Oppression Force and whose father it seems was a member of the Jewish terror group Irgun, forget the US admin, bastards the lot of them.

All Obama had to do was come out of his ivory tower and tell the Israeli leadership that if they continue with their atrocious war crimes against defenseless civilians, it will spell the end of any US weapons and logistics support. Not a single bomb would have been dropped on Gaza. He didn't, and hence carries some responsibility for the deaths and injuries inflicted on the Palestinian civilians.

One thing is for sure, and after 40 years of Israel’s continued illegal occupation of Palestinian land one can be fairly certain, the ruling elites across the world will not lift a finger to bring this conflict to an end. They will do what they do best, squabble amongst them in some fancy conference room, only to emerge with a declaration that nothing can be done, calling on both sides to be more friendly to each other. The slow but steady theft of Palestinian land will continue, and so will the suffering.

Should you be so inclined, please contribute to Gaza’s aid.

The George & Kevin Show

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin “Busy Beaver” Rudd is in Washington. He had a bit of a meeting with the US leader, George Bush Jr., and their mutual understanding was omnipresent. It came as no surprise then when both cowboys in their press conference seem to read from the same script. And true to his word, that his administration will be more “pro-active” in world politics, Kevin went straight for it:

Ahead of the NATO summit in Bucharest next week, Mr Rudd re-emphasised the need for the Europeans to play a bigger role in the more dangerous south of Afghanistan.

Let’s just get this straight. The Australian Prime Minister complains about the European troop commitment to the invasion / occupation of Afghanistan. I am not sure when it was the last time Kevin or his advisors had a glance at the troop numbers supplied by the 40 allied nations to ISAF, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, but here are some pretty recent figures:

To put these numbers in perspective, of the 39 countries contributing to ISAF, 75% are European who combined provide some 23’000 of the total of 43’000 allied soldiers that make up ISAF, that is more than half the boots on the ground. Looking at the 8 countries who contribute more personnel & resources than Australia, 6 are European. So why this constant blame game?

What is the aim of insinuating that if it weren’t for the lack of courage by the European contingent, there would have been more progress in NATO’s Afghan adventure?

Although it was the US administration which initiated the whole sorry affair that the war in Afghanistan has become, with 23’000 European troops their involvement exceeds the US contribution in terms of man power by 50%.

But then again, Kevin’s remark was not designed to mock the troop numbers of our European allies, but more likely to suggest that the ones that were there are underperforming. Something along the lines of Europeans are cowardly hiding in the “quiet North West” while the Mericans, Canadians & Australians have to do all the fighting in the “dangerous South East”.

According to a CNN count, as of March 28, 2008 there have been 777 coalition deaths – listed in order of casualty numbers:

Whilst the casualty numbers seem to imply indeed that US troops are paying a higher price than many of their European allies, European countries have lost more than 200 of their soldiers in the invasion / occupation of Afghanistan, which is more than a quarter of all allied casualties. Australia had to bemoan luckily only 4 thereof.

This ISAF map shows where the respective nations have deployed their troops. Should, as repeatedly requested by US officials and now not surprisingly Kevin Rudd, Europeans take on a greater role in the south eastern end of Afghanistan and move their units into those hard fought for areas, who would fill the void in the north west? With the Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, French & Italians all moving south, would the Mericans and Canadians move north, in effect swapping jobs with the Europeans? Sounds like rotating NATO troops along the lines of “Come on guys, you do the killing for a while, we’re due for a holiday.”

More from Kevin on that issue:

"We need to sign up a common script both military and civil on how we actually prosecute and succeed in this conflict," he said.

If I read that correctly then they don’t have yet a common strategy on how to succeed in Afghanistan. And that after 6 years!!! My o my, where will this end.

But then again, with two such mighty good leaders in place, I am almost certain we will have world peace in no time at all. Check out their credentials:

In what was often a jovial press conference, Mr Bush pegged Mr Rudd as a straight-shooter who was a strategic thinker and basically a decent guy.

And he was quick to agree that he too was befitting of the moniker "Man of Steel", a term he first bestowed on John Howard for his resolve in the war against terror.

Mr Rudd returned the favour by making the President an honorary Queenslander...

Queenslanders must be absolutely stoked with having George Bush as a fellow citizen. The man on whose orders some 100’000 Iraqis had to die will be proudly wearing the Maroons jumper Kevin has given him.

The Blues better watch out, George doesn't like loosing. Before you know it he'll spike NSW onto the axis of evil.

Finally, after all these numbers, sports & politics, and just to wrap this up, here a link to a site that cracked me up when I read it today, Vlads Daily Gloat, the radical Russian with a weakness for anything US American.

The Answer as per Robert H. Jackson

Hello people, thanx for stopping by. My last post was end of March, unreal how time seems to fly when you’re having fun. Been overseas on business for a week, moved into a new place, and then 9 days with my daughter Indiana (who turned eight a few weeks back), we had a ball. Can't wait to see her again in July.

Now, what really jolted me back into writing a post was a most interesting thread I've read on Moon of Alabama . It's titled In Favor of Killing American Troops. The gist of the original post is that the more US troops die in Iraq, the quicker the US regime will withdraw its troops. Of course, with the MoA's readership being largely left leaning US American, the ensuing discussion turned into a moral minefield.

How can it be right to wish for the death of US soldiers, who are only in Iraq because they were ordered to, and who, despite mistakes by their political puppeteers, are trying to be the good guys in the scenario.

Is it ethically alright to argue that the way out of the chaos in Iraq is more death and carnage?

As the post’s title clearly shows, the MoA’s author, the in Hamburg living Bernhard, takes the stance that it is. He got mega flak in various of the comments and the blog’s generally pretty united community took this home hitting opinion piece to reveal that when it comes down to it, like if it is desirable to see US soldiers killed to stop Iraq’s invasion, some of their viewpoints are actually worlds apart. Well written and imho quite valid arguments on both sides of the fence.

It really is a hard one. I understand Bernhard’s logic, it’s based on the assumption that the occupation itself is largely to blame for the bloodshed amongst Iraqis. The facts speak for themselves. The invasion of Iraq is a self-perpetuating disaster, brutally initiated and maintained by US forces. Every day since Invasion-day four years ago hundreds of innocent Iraqis had to die needlessly in the clashes, and, so the line of thought goes, the longer the US occupation of Iraq continues the more people will die. Hence, whatever helps to end the occupation is good for the Iraqi people.

And loosing steadily more instead of less US troops means the impact of the sheer numbers of GI’s killed will, as it did in Vietnam, finally ween the 30 or so percent left of the war supporting US public from any support for a continued large scale military presence in Iraq . The hope is that enough public outcry would eventually force the White House to bring the troops home. The more GI’s die in Iraq, the quicker that will happen.

On the other hand - and also quite plausible for people without crystal balls - a withdrawal of US troops could actually turn out to be the shifting from 2^nd to 3^rd on the ride down nightmare alley. Opposing militias and other violent elements could act with even less constraints, unleashing a civil war of unseen proportions, causing more hardship to the general populus than if the US troops were there.

Also, the majority of US voters, some 70% percent of the population is already in the "Bring’em Home"-camp, no more casualties needed to convince them. The remaining 30%, the ones who want to see the troops stay on till Christmas and Easter fall on the same day, are largely hardcore "USA Ueber Alles" punters, and more US deaths might not make a crumb of a difference to them.

And who’s to say that the US government, republican or not, would give in to increased public pressure. I certainly haven’t noticed any such inclination in the Bush/Cheney admin, and the current gang of leading Democrats haven’t shown the guts yet either to use the tools at their disposal to force the WH to start pulling out the troops. Be that Obama or Hillary, the political establishment in the US plans to have troops there for decades to come. The booty of having the finger on Iraq’s oil valves is simply too precious, too important is Iraq as a square on the strategic chess board to withdraw the troops in a hurry.

Now, many of the troops caught up in the Iraq quagmire are probably really nice people, citizens who joined the US, Polish, British or Australian Armed Forces for all the right motives, as in protecting their countries and people etc. However, they find themselves being used by their respective leaders to occupy foreign countries instead, fighting a civilian population. I understand that in many a soldier's case Iraq is not their war of choice, just people doing a job to feed their families back home. Is it right to hope for their deaths?

Hmmm, lets see. What are they guilty of? Lets ask a person with a bit of authority on the subject of war and guilt, Robert H Jackson, Chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials 1945:

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us." - Nuremberg Tribunal

Aha, according to the rules back then, they are part of a group of people who are committing what can be described as a war crime, the army conducting an aggressive war. The argument that the soldiers are simply following orders is in my eyes only mildly mitigating, they are still the ones committing the crime, the executioners. If you don’t want to be part of it, don’t be!! At least the soldier has a choice and a protective jacket, the many thousands of now dead Iraqis who died at their hands did have neither.

The Secret Carnage.

By SHERWOOD ROSS

An estimated 78,000 Iraqis were killed by U.S. and Coalition air strikes from the start of the war through June of last year, an article in "The Nation" magazine says.

The estimate is based on the supposition that 13 percent of the 601,000 Iraqis who met violent deaths reported by The Lancet study released last October "had been killed by bomb, missile, rocket or cannon up to last June," author Nick Turse writes in the June 11th issue of the weekly magazine...

With their decision to sign up with the military, in other words their expressed willingness to learn how to kill fellow humans as effectively as possible, their implied readiness to leave brains and hearts at the barracks gate, soldiers forfeit the entitlement to sympathy when KIA on foreign soil for no other reason than a decent pay cheque, owing it to the squad and family honour. They were dumb enough to let themselves be made lackeys of people with as little scruples as they can possibly get away with.

So, despite the harshness of it all, soldiers on the aggressor side are fair game. The laws established and applied in Nuremberg made sense then and do so today. Justice Jackson’s definition of war crimes does include what’s going on in Iraq and by inference legitimises the country’s resistance, at least in as much as it targets only occupation forces.

But the armed resistance doesn’t stop there, and that’s where the whole guilty and not guilty thing unravels. Nothing is as clear cut in Iraq.

Many of the same militias and insurgents who fight the occupiers are also engaged in atrocities amongst the civilian population, displaying a cruelty and indifference to innocent civilian lives which compares easily with the US brutality. These monsters also have to be stopped, if not brought to justice. Who’s gonna do that? Maliki’s goons? Blue Helmets? Hardly.

As the occupying force it is the US troops duty to provide security for the occupied nation’s population. Which requires and consequently legitimises their presence.

So, as twisted as it sounds, the resistance to the occupiers is legit, but so is the effort of the US to stop the resistance. How do you solve that one? A cat chasing its tail.

To conclude, imho the US and allied troops are guilty of instigating an armed conflict, causing the death of thousands of innocent people and wounding many thousands more, which by established measures can be classed as a war crime punishable with, depending on the degree of involvement, possibly even death (see Nuremburg). Should a US or allied soldier die in Iraq, he or she had it coming. Do I wish for their death? A slightly wavering No, on the grounds that I don’t wish for the death of anyone who isn’t really a vicious and savagely murderous person, which I don’t belief a great many of the soldiers are, such a blanket approach is idiotic.

I can’t really make up my mind if a complete withdrawal of US troops will benefit the general population. Despite my readings, I am too far removed from Iraq to make a really informed judgment, my prediction being though that the situation in Iraq - the current civil war between the various factions - will not change. It's hard to imagine that it could get much worse.

It is not that the US troops currently provide a great deal of security, if anything it’s the opposite. You don’t want to drive too close to a US army convoy. To an Iraqi hearing an Apache helicopter circling above is probably also not causing feelings of protection. I therefore believe that a withdrawal presents more a chance for the Iraqi people to come together and move forward as it does represent the loss of an effective and well-meaning guard of Iraqi rights and safety.

Naturally, the home coming soldiers should not be prosecuted, just as the ordinary German soldier wasn’t 60 years ago. But also just as 60 years ago, the leaders who orchestrated this war crime should be held accountable by some form of peoples court, maybe not to face the gallows like the Nazis back then, but at least with a decade of having to wear orange jumpsuits while living in a mesh cage the size of a single car garage, and if naughty (like talking without permission) being chained with both hands to the floor for hours on end.

Fat chance though guess, so the best I can realistically hope for is that as few as possible innocent Iraqis will have to pay with their lives the price levied by the parties involved in the process of the country finding its feet. At the same time I do hope that not more than necessary US and allied troopers will die in the time it takes for the WH to recognise the darkness of its decision to stay on, and issue the inevitable order to start with the occupation’s end.

I hope the goodwill left between the waring camps will be enough to allow a return to senses, particularly the one responsible for recognising that fishing for a positive way forward starts with throwing in a line.

Exit Under Construction

…If you stand up and say your policy is to bring about a withdrawal of all combat units by March 2008, that is noted by terrorist leaders. It is a source of encouragement and comfort,…

PM John Howard
Hansard
12th February 2007

What a classic, the COW will stay till the insurgency disappears, just like when one pushes a red hot iron in ones eyeball long enough the pain will go away.

The so popular coalition troops have to watch every step they make outside their fortresses, fear almost every person they meet on the streets. The hearts and minds who haven’t been won or arrested yet (lets say the insurgents and their supporters within the Iraqi population) are numbering in the millions.

The enemies of our troops have lived in that country/trench for generations and will do so for generations to come. US forces come for 6 monthly stints, with their wives and children back home in the U Safe America. They operate on a complete different time scale than the Iraqi population. For the COW soldiers to “wait out” the insurgency would mean they’d have to move there, probably forever.

Military counter-insurgency measures against an enemy who actually lives in the warzone is like punching your fist into a bucket of water, the moment you pull it out its back to how it was. I guess that is what the huge permanent bases are for, to leave the fist in the bucket (if permanent military bases in Iraq are such a good idea, maybe Australia should build one too), although I suppose they are seen by many Iraqis as ulcers with all the ugly consequences this will entail.

Despite the good intentions the troops have, their daily efforts to rebuild the country and finding the alleged bad guys, I am afraid to say, if anything, the US presence fuels the enemy’s recruitment drive. Been fighting the "enemy" now for 4 years in Iraq, but they don't seem to get less.

To stay the course as suggested by John Howard, to stick with the US till "the Iraqi people can look after their own security" or along those wishy washy lines, underlines the lack of strategies to deal with the current scenario.

Cheney, Howard and their ideological associates, who want to keep combat troops in Iraq till the day when US soldiers on leisure time can peacefully sit in a suburban café in Baghdad and mingle with the locals, till the day when the last "terrorist", militia man and insurgent has been captured or killed by Iraqi troops, envision a day that is as likely to arrive in Iraq as the Titanic in NY. No waiting will change this. Too many mistakes have been made by the captain and the guys on the lookout.

And still, in John Howard's support it is argued that the whole issue of deadlines for withdrawals is meant to make us feel better, the US and Australian electorate, rather than the Iraqi people themselves.

According to their way of thinking it is Senator Obama and Kevin Rudd and other friends of this withdrawal idea who should examine their motivations a bit more carefully.

However, many polls and surveys show that a lot of Iraqis want the US troops to leave, and I can almost guarantee that’s not because they want to make us feel better. More likely it’s because in a lot of areas living conditions have gotten progressively worse since the invasion, and that not just in terms of security.

If one actually examines the reasons for why the US troops are in Iraq, one might want to consider this:

…Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas -- reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to…

Kenneth T. Derr
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Chevron Corporation
Speech To the Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, California
November 5, 1998

And, voila, 9 years later they have, more access than most other countries would give private corporations. Comments by analysts to the newly approved Iraqi National Oil laws:

…Iraq will not be capable of controlling the levels -- the limits of production, which means that Iraq cannot be a part of OPEC anymore. And Iraq will have this very complicated institution called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, that will have representatives from the foreign oil companies on the board of it, so representatives from, let’s say, ExxonMobil and Shell and British Petroleum will be on the federal board of Iraq approving their own contracts.

…the law certainly opens the door to US oil companies and the Bush administration winning a very large piece of their objective of going to war in Iraq, at least winning it on paper. The law does almost word for word what was laid out in the Baker-Hamilton recommendation, which I discussed previously on your show, which is, at the very basic level, to turn Iraq's nationalized oil system, the model that 90% of the world’s oil is governed by, take its nationalized oil system and turn it into a commercial system fully open to foreign corporate investment on terms as of yet to be decided...

IMHO, the motivations for the invasion are the determining factor for the time of withdrawal. The exit strategy for Iraq hinges on the original objectives being achieved. From the initial US support of Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran, to the harsh sanctions against Iraq after the Kuwait invasion, to Operation Shock and Awe, to Fallujah, to Abu Ghraib, I get the impression that the well being of the common Iraqi was never really the main concern of the West's engagement in that country. The primary objective appears to be more of economic and geo-strategic nature, oust Saddam Hussein and secure Iraq's oil supply for western oil cos, and whilst there establish some bases near Iran, Russia and Israel.

Saddam is dead, the oil laws are almost passed and the bases are as good as finished. And so, should the surge fail, which it is bound to do, the US military is according to Sec Def Gates planning to pull out some of its contingent fairly soon. Well, better see what Cheney and Howard have to say about that.