OUR MIDDLE EAST DEBACLE
An FBI worker in the Twin Cities alerted the White House in 2001 that something suspicious was happening. Arab Moslems were taking lessons in the U.S. to learn to pilot a plane, but were not interested in learning how to land the plane. The White House, under George W. Bush, paid no attention. After the Twin Towers in NYC came down Bush decided to invade Afghanistan and get Osama bin Laden. The U.S. military had bin Laden trapped and let him go so they could focus on invading Iraq. Bush lied over and over to Congress and the world to give credence to his long-planned desire to invade Iraq. Bush is now considered by many people the world over to be a war criminal that should be tried in the dock in The Hague. So far that much is clear. But there are some things that are rarely reported. The cost in death, money, stolen and destroyed artifacts, angering Pakistan (a nuclear power now became a nation of people that hate the U.S.), the failure of democracy in Iraq, the continuing failure in Afghanistan, the Iraqi misadventure by Bush that brought down the American economy, ad infinitum.
Here is a part of an article printed in "Worldwide WAMM" in its latest issue, page 1...
"Shaymaa Abdulkadham Hasan Hasan was born in Baghdad, Iraq, on 7 July 1982. She was only eight years old when the U.S. declared war on Iraq in January 1991. More bombs were dropped on her country in the 43 days of the First Gulf War than were dropped in all of World War II -- the equivalent of seven-and-one-half Hiroshimas. Iraq went from a highly-developed, technologically sophisticated and self-reliant country to a country whose people had to cope with totally new circumstances of life: no electriticity, no clean or running water, food and fuel shortages, and transportation problems. People had to go to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for their water, their refrigerators and stoves stopped working, their toilets would not flush, sewage piled up in the streets, and before long their children, the most vulnerable among them, began to die.
"For most Americans, the First Gulf War ended in March 1991, but for Shaymaa's people the war had only begun. The new war of sanctions, which did not allow Iraq to import sufficient medicine and food, or materials necessary to repair the infrastructure, continued for 20 long years. It was a low-intensity war; it resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children and caused emotional and physical disablilities in two generations of Iraqi children. John and Karl Mueller reported in the May 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs [magazine] that 'the sanctions against Iraq have caused more deaths than all the weapons of mass destruction in the history of the world.'
"Then, on 20 March 2003, came 'Shock and Awe,' a second war, followed by eight years of occupation. And now Shaymaa lives under a puppet government in a country still devoid of basic necessities."
Those who still support Bush's decisions and misadventures will point to the fact that Saddam Hussein was toppled. But the cost is rarely considered in the U.S. Look around you at the failure of Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. Our economy is struggling to recover from Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people died and continue to die, Pakistan was an ally but now a nation where the people hate the U.S., there is no stable democracy in Iraq, Osama bin Laden is still alive and operating, there is over 9% unemployment in the U.S., people are in denial about our cause for all this grief, England is holding hearings about the many mistakes of their government in going along with Bush in Iraq, the infrastructure of Iraq is still in shambles. progress in Iraq is coming along at a snail's pace, Americans have split in two over support or criticism of the Iraq invasion, Iraq has become an ally of Iran, we are on the brink of war with Pakistan, the Talliban still rule much of Afghanistan, the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are extremely corrupt, drug poppies are grown in huge areas of Afghanistan and even where we have troops, American money spent in those two nations is squandered and pilfered, we used torture in secret places to try and get snippets of truth. the world detests Gitmo, both political parties can be blamed for much failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no end in sight to the misery and mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Middle Eastern people are revolting and we are in danger of seeing new governments that will be set up in many nations that are filled with people and leaders who hate the U.S., and the quagmire and dangers created by the U.S. are growing, not subsiding. But here is what it is costing us in actual dollar figures [are you sitting down?]...
The cost for one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year is $1.2 million dollars. That is the cost of one U.S. soldier in that war-torn nation for one year! Think of it! The cost, even now, for one U.S. soldier in Iraq for one year is over $600,000. There is no end in sight. This is not a political partisan issue ...unless you want it to be. It is nothing short of a tragedy, a major tragedy!
After all the money and lives lost in the Middle East, are we closer to solving the terrorist problems there? Not only are we nowhere near solving that problem, the unrest and revolts in the Middle East bring us a problem where we are afraid that newly-formed nations will be havens for terrorists, and they will establish new governments that hate the U.S. We have created a monster. If you think our current economic problems are bad, wait until the oil flow is interupted and petro goes to $5 or more a gallon. Wait until Israel's neighbors are more hostile to that nation. Wait until the cost of petrol turns our economic recovery into an economic nightmare. Wait until we see even more money taken from the middle class to create a majority of poor people in the U.S. (with a larger group of very wealthy who prey and make money on war goods). And while all this may lay on our horizon, we have right-wingers yelling for actions that will only exacerbate the situation. After all, it was a right-wing American government that rattled its weapons, invaded Iraq, angered our nuclear ally Pakistan, and created the dilemma described above. And shame on Obama for not working to stop this insanity!
Meanwhile on the home front we have right-wingers who are afraid of their own shadow. Every Moslem frightens them. Every illegal alien scares them. There can never be enough guns for their comfort. When a prisoner is released from Gitmo or any prison, they cower in a dark closet. These are the heroic war-mongers who pound their chests, pack guns in their fear, and don't risk a damn thing to create a climate in which more lives and destruction will be put at risk. Yes, I have become a severe critic of today's right-wingers. They risk nothing except the lives and well-being of their fellow Americans. And I am getting very sick of this mentality.
