Losing
Iraq, Nuking Iran
By Paul Craig Roberts
08 June, 2007
Counterpunch
The
war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized by American military
officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the first year of
the attempted occupation.
Winning is no longer an option.
Our best hope, Gen. Sanchez says, is "to stave off defeat,"
and that requires more intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez
sees in the entirety of our national political leadership: "I am
absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this
time."
More evidence that the war
is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting: "U.S.-led soldiers
control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on Monday."
After five years of war the US controls one-third of one city and nothing
else.
A host of US commanding generals
have said that the Iraq war is destroying the US military. A year ago
Colin Powell said that the US Army is "about broken." Lt.
Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush has "piecemealed our force to death."
Gen. Barry McCafrey testified to the US Senate that "the Army will
unravel."
Col. Andy Bacevich, America's
foremost writer on military affairs, documents in the current issue
of The American Conservative that Bush's insane war has depleted and
exhausted the US Army and Marine Corps:
"Only a third of the
regular Army's brigades qualify as combat-ready. In the reserve components,
none meet that standard. When the last of the units reaches Baghdad
as part of the president's strategy of escalation, the US will be left
without a ready-to-deploy land force reserve."
"The stress of repeated
combat tours is sapping the Army's lifeblood. Especially worrying is
the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The service is currently
short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the number is projected
to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse shape. There
the shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are bailing
out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to
staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus
to newly promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional three
years. Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer and fewer
want in: ROTC scholarships go unfilled for a lack of qualified applicants."
Bush has taken every desperate
measure. Enlistment ages have been pushed up from 35 to 42. The percentage
of high school dropouts and the number of recruits scoring at the bottom
end of tests have spiked. The US military is forced to recruit among
drug users and convicted criminals. Bacevich reports that wavers "issued
to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent." Combat tours have been
extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being deployed
again and again.
There is no equipment for
training. Bacevich reports that "some $212 billion worth has been
destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out." What remains is in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Under these circumstances,
"staying the course" means total defeat.
Even the neoconservative
warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of a "cakewalk
war" that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost.
But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran.
Vice President Dick Cheney is spear-heading the neocon plan, and Norman
Podhoretz is the plan's leading propagandist with his numerous pleas
published in the Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz,
like every neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written
that Islam must be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide
for the Muslim people.
The neocons think that by
bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to arm the Shiite militias in
Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with surface
to air missiles and unleash the militias against US troops. These weapons
would neutralize US tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the US
military edge, leaving divided and isolated US forces subject to being
cut off from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge
of losing most of its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to "save
the troops" by nuking Iran.
Five years of unsuccessful
war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's recent military defeat in Lebanon
have convinced the neocons that America and Israel cannot establish
hegemony over the Middle East with conventional forces alone. The neocons
have changed US war doctrine, which now permits the US to preemptively
strike with nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are forever
heard saying, "what's the use of having nuclear weapons if you
can't use them."
Neocons have convinced themselves
that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world that Muslims have no alternative
to submitting to the will of the US government. Insurgency and terrorism
cannot prevail against nuclear weapons.
Many US military officers
are horrified at what they think would be the worst ever orchestrated
war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But Dick Cheney
is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the ignominy
of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who saved
Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media
providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their
plan can pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the
failure that their delusion has wrought.
The American electorate decided
last November that they must do something about the failed war and gave
the Democrats control of both houses of Congress. However, the Democrats
have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war crimes than to
represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue president accountable.
The prospect of nuking Iran
doesn't seem to disturb the three frontrunners for the Republican nomination,
who agreed in their June 5 debate that the US might use nuclear weapons
to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities.
If Cheney again prevails,
America will supplant the Third Reich as the most reviled country in
recorded history.
Paul Craig Roberts
was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.
He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny
of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: [email protected]
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.