Iraqi Liberation/ Occupation /War

The Iraqi Liberation/Occupation/War began in 2003. It is now 2008. Five years of war and counting.

As of June 7, 2008, the number of war American fatalities totaled 4,092. The total number of American war casualties totaled 30,333.

In March of 2008: Jonathan Steele and Suzanne Goldenberg report in the Guardian that, in the five years since the invasion, the civilian Iraqi body count “estimates put the toll at between 100,000 and one million.”

On June 18,2008: Jill Lawless of the associated press reports “In 2007, 11.4 million refugees were living outside their countries, compared with 9.9 million in 2006, the UNHCR said in its annual report. A further 26 million were displaced within their own countries, up from 24.2 million the year before. The group said nearly half the world’s refugees are from Afghanistan and Iraq. UNHCR said there are 3 million displaced Afghans, most in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and 2 million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan. A further 2.4 million Iraqis are internally displaced, an increase of 600,000 since the start of 2007.”

Despite the administrations promise that Iraq would pay for itself, as of June 7, 2008: The total cost of the war totaled $542,182,849,589. As early as 2006 Charles M.Young, in Rolling Stone, wrote, “Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at $2.267 trillion. That includes the government’s past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion).” In 2008, Nobelist Stiglitz together with Linda J. Bilmes authored a book titled “The Thee Trillion Dollar War.” It is clear that years are passing while we remain fully engaged in war. More and more, as the years increase, the impact of these numbers will be evident and sadly they will not decrease.

Misleading definitions have obscured the parameters of our chosen “War on Terror.” The current social definition of terrorism leaves no space for acts of revolution. Our current administration prefers not to make the distinction between terrorism and revolution. It may be true that thus far we have only applied this definition to people who rightfully deserved to be known as terrorists. That may be true, but the precedent we set by being less specific is ill planned and ill advised. Our “War on Terror” may never end. Our soldiers may never stop dying.

Whether or not you believed in the Iraqi Liberation/Occupation/War from the beginning, that fact is no longer relevant. Our government has failed us at every crossroad. They foretold their rosy predictions to coax us further into compliance and yet these predictions have been wrong at every turn. We were not greeted with candy and flowers, the oil is not paying for the reconstruction, there were no weapons of mass destruction, Pat Tillman did not go down in a blaze of glory, Jessica lynch lived because of the kindness of an Iraqi doctor, there were no connections between Iraq and 9/11, the mission was not completed, there was no “Victory,” Civil war now controls Iraq. They were wrong—every time, they were wrong.

They continue to petition our trust. They allowed the looting. They disbanded the Iraqi army and sent them home—with their guns, unemployed, without food, or water. They built walls in their cities. They erected a safe zone in the middle of their community and called it our American Embassy to be. They tortured their men, women, and children to extract information from people who barely understood our language. They fired our Arabic translators because they were gay. They refused what we know now to be good advice. They started a second war with no exit strategy. They put our loyal troops in harms way needlessly and for such reasons as greed. They resisted oversight. “THEY” represent “US.” They did all these things in our name. I gave “they” my trust. “They” have not represented me well. Has our past relationship with “they” given us any reason to trust them? I think not.

What we know now; is that the economy may not “trickle down” but values do. I charge that our “law makers” have failed the very society they were designated to protect, there by exposing how frail the bonds of American society truly are and from that foundation spiraled out the glorious mishap, which is now the Iraqi Liberation/Occupation/War. My mother told me not to hit first. What will you tell your children and how will you explain our decision as a nation to strike first when we were so wrong?

I hold congress accountable for giving birth to this pre-emptive war. By consequence, I now hold every branch of our government responsible for ending this war and bringing our troops home.

• Implement a calculated, responsible, and swift exit from Iraq for all military troops.

• Remove all contractors from Iraq immediately. Jeremy Scahill writes in his article “The Mercenary Revolution: Flush with Profits from the Iraq War, Military Contractors See a World of Business Opportunities;” that “Since the launch of the ‘global war on terror,’ the administration has systematically funneled billions of dollars in public money to corporations like Blackwater USA , DynCorp, Triple Canopy, Erinys and ArmorGroup. They have in turn used their lucrative government pay-outs to build up the infrastructure and reach of private armies so powerful that they rival or outgun some nation’s militaries…Precise data on the extent of U.S. spending on mercenary services is nearly impossible to obtain — by both journalists and elected officials—but some in Congress estimate that up to 40 cents of every tax dollar spent on the war goes to corporate war contractors. At present, the United States spends about $2 billion a week on its Iraq operations.” I understand that the more conventional logic regarding the benefits of using contractors rather than military personnel is that, despite the staggering costs of contractors, it is more affordable for the country in the long run. To me, this notion sounds like the type of idea that looks good on paper but doesn’t play out that well in actual fruition. The drawback is that although we supposedly offset our long-term costs by dodging the responsibilities of military benefits and maintenance fees, these employees are beholden to numerous loyalties. Our military is beholden to us and us alone. We get what we pay for and our soldiers pay the price for our discounts.

• Debar all contractors found to have misrepresented the intentions of the American government while in Iraq or at home. According to the National Bar association: “Debarment is a sanction used by the federal government to prohibit certain contractors from bidding on or receiving government contracts.” The crimes of contractors in Iraq and on our homefront seem to be an endless stream of brutal aggressions. Is this the face we want to represent us to the rest of the world?

• A public apology for the actions of contractors while employed in Iraq and prosecutions against those contractors where it is appropriate.

• No permanent bases in Iraq. We must give the Iraqi people a reason to believe in us so that we may resurrect a positive outcome to this unfortunate chapter in history.

• Re-focus the troops currently deployed in Iraq so that we may endeavor to re-build what we have broken as we have so often promised. We promised the Iraqi people that after we liberated them, we would re-build the functionality of their cities. People still live with rationed water and electricity but they do have guns and most of them are unemployed. Spending a fraction of the Iraqi Liberation/Occupation/War money on efforts to rebuild the country will go a long way toward destroying the ideological foundation that fuels a new youthful population of new jihadist recruits.