Tom Ricks, Imperialist And Loving It
By Steve Hynd Sunday Feb 15, 2009 9:00am
Tom Ricks, hagiographer to generals and much-lauded fellow of the Obama administration's "counterinsurgency HQ" at the Center for a New American Security, finally comes out and says it: the US has accepted the White Man's Burden from previous colonial empires and will be meddling in the Middle East for centuries, "following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Romans and the British".
For thousands of years, it has been the fate of the West's great powers to become involved in the region's politics. [as if they had no choice - C] Since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when British and French influence suffered a major reduction, it has been the United States' turn to take the lead there. And sitting on that wall, it struck me that the more we talk about getting out of the Middle East, the more deeply we seem to become engaged in it.
President Obama campaigned on withdrawing from Iraq, but even he has talked about a post-occupation force. The widespread expectation inside the U.S. military is that we will have tens of thousands of troops there for years to come. Indeed, in his last interview with me last November, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told me that he would like to see about 30,000 troops still there in 2014 or 2015.
...So, to address the perceptive question that Petraeus posed during the invasion: How does this end?
Probably the best answer came from Charlie Miller, who did the first draft of policy development and presidential reporting for Petraeus. "I don't think it does end," he replied. "There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. . . . We're thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War."
He goes on to explain that, no matter when the US eventually leaves, there'll be a civil war in Iraq.
Toby Dodge, a British defense expert who was an occasional adviser to Petraeus, "the current Iraqi government is full of Iranian clients. You'll almost certainly end up with a rough and ready dictatorship . . . that will be in hock to Iran."
...Maj. Matt Whitney, who spent 2006 advising Iraqi generals, predicted that once U.S. forces were out of the way, Iraqi commanders would relapse to the brutal ways of earlier days: "Saddam Hussein taught them how to [suppress urban populations] and we've just reinforced that lesson for four years," he said. "They're ready to kill people -- a lot of people -- in order to get stability in Iraq."
..."When you got to know them and they'd be honest with you, every single one of them thought that the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq was absolutely ludicrous," said Maj. Chad Quayle, who advised an Iraqi battalion in south Baghdad during the surge.
So can someone explain to me how squandering "blood, treasure, prestige and credibility" for decades to simply delay the inevitable is better than getting out now? And if that explanation is forthcoming from military-enamoured liberal COIN hawks, maybe while they're at it they can explain why, in extolling the virtues of their new and improved war-fighting and nation-building formula, they keep neglecting to be specific about the generations-long colonialism it entails.
Crossposted from Newshoggers
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Snip - "The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the US military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well."
[ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KB11... ]
And CNAS is the House of Petraeus when it comes to think-tanking.
Regards, C
Garth Porter is your source? The story's just about been smoked out as a hoax; rightfully so. Get the hook out of yer mouth.
Someone joins just to leave that comment.
Link to "debunking" please, if you would - especially since others have confirmed that neocon former general Jack Keane, surge architect, is orchestrating his proteges, including Petraeus and Odierno in pushback against Obama's withdrawal timetable.
Full disclosure - I'm happy to call Gareth Porter a friend and have nothing but respect for his integrity as a journalist.
Regards, C
Porter basically accuses Petreaus of plotting against the president, with no proof and you want a link to the 'debunking'. Use google, it's already been written about on several blogs and papers--besides the wing-nut ones. I'll throw it back at you, how about proof that it's true.
I 'joined' because I this was an article about Ricks who wrote Fiasco about the same time-frame I was in Iraq.
I'm an Obama supporter and a two tour veteran of Iraqi "Freedom", who greatly disliked Bush and Rummy's stint as SecDefense.
Perhaps someone who was actually there and can confirm Ricks veracity or lack of it is suspect to you.
Gareth about his proof and he spoke to staffers who knew the details but feared for their jobs if they were identified. That's a standard journalistic technique you don't blink at when the NYT or WaPo use it, even when they're doing so for "official leaks". Yes, I'd like a link to some non rightwing "blogs and papers" on this, please.
As to Ricks and the period since fiasco, several prominent journalists and one former DoD staffer have told me he's changed since then, hitching his wagon unquestioningly to Petraeus' star.
I'll withdraw 'debunked' that isn't accurate. But it's only been printed in 'alternate' news sources and not confirmed anywhere else.
It also seems in direct opposition to what I'd guess P would do. If true I'll be the first to admit it, and will be greatly disappointed.
A member for 14 minutes, and only here to defend Betrayus? Hmm.
Try some critical thinking. Gen Shinseki was ignored and ousted from the job as Army COS because he disagreed with Rummy and Bush over troop involvement. He promoted a 500,000 troop occupation, a 'surge' of sorts and was vilified.
Petreaus' counter-insurgency strategy was a f'you to Rummy, Cheney, Tommy Franks and Bush who wanted more with less.
I was in Iraq during some of this time frame and figured perhaps I could add to the discussion.
here? And you're a big defender of Gen. Betrayus? Say, you wouldn't be anywhere near Fort Belvoir, would you? Maybe Langley?
...there's a spook under your bed.
I'm in Seattle, that hotbed of CIA activity.
I saw what Petreaus did vis-a-vis the previous nitwits who promoted Rummy's BS.
P basically utilized a common sense approach and has been given a lot of kudos by most who've served there, especially those of us who were there under the Bremer/Rummy/Tommy Franks days.
"There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. ." Presence??? Invasion/occupation/repression/corporatist back room deals/secret police/permanent military bases to ensure access to oil/torture -- - more accurate terms.
but we've all been told that Obama will end this madness.
You mean to say he won't then?
Obama is pro-empire just like every other mainstream candidate. Every empire in history has ended due to an overstretched military.
He will keep pissing away blood + treasure and contribute to the slow decline in the American quality of life. Where is all that 'Change' coming from again????
but Obama is a black man with heritage from Africa.
You mean that a black American will continue the exploitation of other downtrodden and exploited races? Even from his ancestral Africa?
What the hell does that have to do with anything?
tell me why you think it doesn't.
As America's first black President - you would think - he'd be more sensitive to the history of exploitation and empire/neo-colonialism than say, the usual office holders in the past.
Doesn't that attitude in and of itself smack of imperialism? That he will be the "savior" of all of the down trodden people and set the free?
you have an odd notion of what constitutes imperialism.
im·pe·ri·al·ism:
1. The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.
2. The system, policies, or practices of such a government.
Even the effort to end oppression is accompanied by the meddling into another's government, therefore extending your authority, therefore being imperialistic.
Unless you just drop everything and walk out. Which is an option, but I'm not sure it's the right one.
meddling - your term - is hardly imperialistic. The US meddles all the time in other countries, but that doesn't make it imperialist.
the definition above by Truth_Critic is more apt.
It requires hegemony.
Furthermore - how does the discontinuance of imperialist policies by Obama - say such as a couple of wars, or preventing economic exploitation by MNC's, amount to imperialism?
Your argument is illogically based.
Ann Dunham Soetoro (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995), mother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States; was an American anthropologist who specialized in rural development. In an interview, Obama referred to his mother as "the dominant figure in my formative years... The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."
Soul1239
Very well said. With Obama's desire to keep American soldiers in Iraq and his continuation of Bush's murderous policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama [the former "alleged" antiwar candidate]proves the accuracy of James Bonds' statement in the movie Goldeneye when Bond [played by Pierce Brosnan] noted that "Government's change but the lies stay the same."
{Deleted, Off Topic and ludicrous. SiteMonitor}
First of all, what's with the apostrophe in "m'an," man? A little vague on punctuation? What a surprise, what with wingnuts being so smart 'n' all.
Craigslist Ad:
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Lighten up Francis, I'm a dem.
for rude
nt
have a sense of humor? That's sad. That's probably the worst of Bill Murray's movies from that period. But it is about the Army--hmmm.
...how's that?
line in a movie that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Your brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned.
is that you take yourself very seriously and seem unable to grapple with the fact someone might have a legit viewpoint that doesn't align itself with yours.
I can quote Tolstoy if you'd like, or Caesar's Commentaries.
How's that Craigslist sale going?
It's over Johnny. It's over! :-)
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ay6dKKcxQ&fe... ]
and just what I needed to hear!
Your very welcome, X2 :-)
...is funny. ;-)
The jury is still out but they've got their pencils raised and they're leaning toward the "NO" check box.
not God. US Presidents have been doing shady stuff since Washington to keep the US running. Our job as citizens is to keep this stuff to a minimum.
Reconstruction after the Civil War .. carpetbaggers, thieves, scalawags, rape, murder, deprivation, profiteering ..
Probably a very apt analogy ..
Reconstruction. Reconstruction was actually working really well until it was abandoned in favor of making nice with the ex-Rebs. Then we got Jim Crow, segregation, decades of lynching, etc. I think a better analogy would be a fort in Indian Territory: Making US troops the favorite target of people who'd otherwise be killing each other.
Yup .. if it hadnt been for those dam Southerners, the Reconstruction of the South would have worked out really well ..
Same problem "we" are having with those dam Iraqis ..
/snark
This guy is an extremely astute observer of events in Iraq. 'Fiasco' was the singularly most informative book I have yet to read on the first two years of the Iraq invasion.
I've been discussing this with some journalist buddies and they all say it's not the same Thom Ricks anymore. He hitched his wagon to Petraeus and the neo-liberal COIN crew and became a hack who only bends the truth in service of their agenda. Again, the old bugbear of "stenograpohy in exchange for access" seems to be the culprit.
Regards, C
Ricks Fiasco was amazingly accurate as far as my recollections. His criticism of Franks, Rummy and Bremer was dead on and in line with what many of us in Iraq were thinking. Whatever else he's become or has written he got some good info on Fiasco.
Fiasco was great.
You might want to read my previous posts on these excerpts from his new book, though.
http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/generals-hag...
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/02/today...
'Defense' spending as a jobs program. Real News here
It is a better jobs program than tax cuts!
It is a worse jobs program than everything else.
It is good for blowing other countries up, if you are into that sort of thing.
..this discussion? The neo-con NWO guys made this perfectly clear in their PNAC docs regarding the US "strategic defense" plans for the 21st century back in 1999 (I think that's when it was published).
Their paper stated quite clearly that the idea was/is to: preemptively move into the Middle East by force(they settled on Iraq for starters); take possession of the natural resources (oil/gas fields); build permanent, forward military bases in that area from which to continue to spread US hegemony through the ME. Oh, and to get the American populace (and other Western nations)to go along with this ridiculous proposition, something like a New Pearl Harbor would be required - so, voila 9/11 happened.
So, now we're there, we've killed Saddam and a whole bunch of Iraqis who were not happy with us taking over their sovereign lands, and we've constructed a whole bunch of huge, very, very permanent military bases. Plus, we so thoroughly ravaged their infrastructure in Iraq, our corporations have moved in (pretending they care) to "help rebuild" - for a small fee - what our military destroyed.
We ain't goin' nowhere!! The PNAC'ers only seem to be out of power, but you can bet your last dollar (which they're also trying to take now) that they are still in control behind the scenes. Read their plan - follow the dots.
Fraud on the second (the first being wall street) front, from the NY Times.
Here
Did you see Richard Engel's recent report on the US Embassy Building in Baghdad? It sure looks like the US is planning a long-term stay.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24188...
There's a famous saying, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' The 'fool' in this case is the US, its military and President Obama himself for allowing this madness to continue and escalate.
CSPAN - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXelUuw4nWk
How refreshing and rare it is to see someone (and a Republican, no less) asking the Iraqi people how they feel about the US presence.
Kudos to Mr Paul.
I think they just provided cover to the corporatists who wanted to profiteer from a huge war and the corruption and presumed seizing of Iraqi oil that would soon follow. "Useful idiots" is what Stalin called them. Ideologues are seldom so interested in outright corruption; at least not initially.
Ever check out Rummy's resume? How about Cheney's? Oh and Paul Wolfowitz became the head of the IMF.
..Elitists = International Financial Cabal = Fascists = .....
...you get the idea.
{ Deleted. Off Topic and out there. SiteMonitor}
Don't quit your day job.
What is the use of writing history books if the people who lead this country either don't read them or pay no attention to what is written. All because of a handfull of colonial thinking idealogues, all the American citizen gets is the bill.
... probably should be thrown overboard for publicly defying his commander in chief, then placed under 24/7 surveillance by the F.B.I., just to be safe.
Hegemony? You mean like filling up one side's coffers with money over the other? Or training a force to stage a coup? You mean that kind of "meddling" doesn't constitute hegemony? I guess not overtly, anyway.
Tom Ricks' bellicose rhetoric makes little sense given the fact that he stated on Countdown a couple of years ago that only 2 percent of the people who are fighting against the U.S. and other coalition forces are comprised of outside forces or jihadists. Not exactly a compelling reason for the United States to keep their soldiers indefinitely in Iraq [or Afghanistan for that matter].
... odierno's one of those blowhards so full of head-steam and self-delusion, someone could easily get him with a computerized john wayne phone prank...
I'd take anything Ricks says seriously. His account of the Bush/Chaney/Rummy/Bremer f-ups in the 2003/2004 invasion of Iraq are exactly what I saw as a member of the invading forces.
He pretty much hit all the right criticisms and reflected the feeling of a lot of us in the Army who were opposed to the way Gen Shinseki was treated to how a lot of Army and Marines saw Bremer and his stooges mismanage the first year.
gave you a distinctly acute view of history in the making.
I have washed a Humvee but it was full of bloodstains. The driver, a 26 year old from Ohio, was sent to Germany minus his left hand.
I worked most of southern Iraq in 2003/04 at the Marine version (I was Army attached to the USMC) of a division level TOC.
" ... to how a lot of Army and Marines saw Bremer and his stooges mismanage the first year." "Mismanage" the first year? This sounds exactly what Kerry said during the 2004 campaign, that Bush had done a terrible job of mismanaging the Iraq war, while never stating the obvious, which was that the Iraq war, just as in Afghanistan, is a war crime that never should have been foisted upon the people of Iraq [or Afghanistan] in the first place.
The hope is that one day Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of his administration will stand in the dock for their war crimes while Obama and his crew will be standing next to them for ordering air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan which have resulted in the needless slaughter of so many countless civilians and children, whose remains have been scattered across those war-torn countries.
Anyone familiar with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four would recognize all of this immediately. None of our adventures in the Middle East have anything to do with democracy, or ever have. It's all about draining out the petroleum.
For some reason, our leaders have never believed they could just tell us that's what they were doing; they've always felt obligated to coat it in the sugar candy of "bringing democracy". But they proved with that Palestinian election that to them, "democracy" is just a euphemism for "you will elect the guys we approve of". The minute the population elects someone they DON'T approve of, the shit hits the fan.
It would be nice if the whole pretense of "democracy" could be dropped, and we could just make havoc as the robber barons we are, instead of pretending we care about how they run their shit. I'm pretty sure the people whose heads we're crushing would at least appreciate the honesty.
...cause the robber barons are doing just that right now to the financial system/economy - removing the pretense of caring ......about us....
Have you read 1984? Perpetual war. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
If you haven't read it lately it's worth the time.
I'm not sure but I'm guessing it's Cheney and Rove's playbook.
I read it in High School back in the UK.
Rove's playbook, btw, was the Thatcher years in the UK. He admitted it to the Scotsman newspaper in an interview back in 2004. Aggressively remove checks and balances, regulations and worker powers while enticing greedy voters by waving wads of "ownership society" cash at them. Have a war to ensure you're re-elected. Then sell everything the nation owned that wasn't nailed down to your corporate sponsors. The voter ends up like the guy who pawned all his furniture and his house, standing on what used to be his front lawn waving a big fold of bills and yelling "look at all I've got" - just don't look behind him.
Regards, C
Good point about TR's dishonest language, Cernig. What a waste of talent, to use his writing skills to minimize, or even celebrate, the initiation of force to extract values of others.
"...(T)he US has accepted the White Man's Burden from previous colonial empires and will be meddling in the Middle East for centuries, "following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great...".
Wouldn't that mean that first we'll have to discontinue "Don't Ask, Don't Tell?
And no, I'm not refering to torture.
The real reason George Bush's world domination failed is becauase of his inability to discard the anti-gay agenda.
Had Bush been able to accept gays in the military, he could have ordered a restart of the selective service system. As long as gays were not permitted into the all-volunteer forces, then to change to a draft would have opened a massive exit for anybody to claim they are gay and they would not be drafted.
Had Bush had the draft, he could have invated Iran, Syria and anybody else in his way.
YOU CANNOT PLAY NAPOLEAN WITHOUT CONSCRIPTION!
Americans have to recognize that in a culture still in an 8th century time zone, democracy is a ludicrous idea.
Maybe in a thousand years they will have gotten through their primitive tribalism and be ready for something else.
It took more than 1,000 years for Europe to come to democracy and it passed through the Enlightenment first. Arab culture so far has managed to avoid anything like the Enlightenment and if its political and religious leaders are indicators of the trend, will not come to it anytime soon - like within the next 500 years or so.
I watched something about this very subject on youtube called "The Ring of Truth" or something like that.
It spoke regarding the unified plans of Great Britian and that the Elites (bankers and rich families under HMQE II) are still very clearly in power over most of the world.
When they weaken our resolve significantly they will offer salvation form the horrors they caused in the form of a World Government.
Today. its stated as such.
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