SCHEER: The Beginning Of The End

[radwriter0555]

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
April 6, 2004

It is the beginning of the end for the United States in Iraq. No amount of glib optimism from Bush administration soothsayers can conceal that reality. Sure, the U.S. possesses the military might to hang on indefinitely, but only through the continuous sacrifice of lives in a reckless venture that never had an honestly stated purpose.
Now that thousands of rioting Shiites have been added to the persistent Sunni insurrection targeting the U.S.-led occupation, it is absurd to define the enemy as only foreigners or agents of the captured tyrant Saddam Hussein. The "coalition" forces are the foreigners, in fact, and the U.S.-financed quisling local government fools no one, regardless of the planned "handover" of power.


Under the false conceit that the adventure made sense as part of the fight against terror, the U.S. seized a country containing a major portion of the world's most valued and scarce resource. Yet our leaders expect the natives to believe that the corporate camp followers of the U.S. military are only swarming over their country for the purpose of humanitarian reconstruction.


Just how dumb do we think they are? After all, Iraqis know their own tortuous history. Theirs is a country patched together at the end of a gun barrel by previous colonizers. The common denominator of those imperial designs was the exploitation of oil rather than the desire to produce a harmonious, let alone democratic, society.

The rest is here....

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18345

[AlinPA]

1. I fear its still a win for Rove, Bush* They get their continuous war,

making Bush* the "war president" (flags and all) and Halliburton has a cash cow.

[NeonLX]

2. Yup.

Look how long it took to get us out of Vietnam. And we haven't even begun to see the kind of carnage we saw back during that tragedy.

I hate being a pessimist. I also don't want to belittle those who have given their lives for Chimpy's Not-very-excellent Adventure.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. It's the end of the illusion that this is about "liberation," and perhaps

the beginning of the end of the illusion called "America."

The war will continue and likely spill across borders, resources will be plundered, more will die, and Bush will giggle.

[THUNDER HANDS]

4. how dumb do they think we are?

Very dumb, and for most of the population, their assessment is pretty accurate.