¡Viva La Patriótica Resistencia Antiimperialista D
Last Post in Iraq: this is the death knell of the American empire..by George GallowayUS military personnel lower their heads during the ceremony of the encasing of the US Forces-Iraq colours in Baghdad on December 15 2011.
So the Yanks are going home. Apart from the thousands of their servicemen and women whose lifeblood they are leaving in the sands of Iraq, and the tens of thousands too maimed or otherwise damaged to make it back to home and hearth. And minus the trillion-plus of dollars in treasure they have expended on destroying an Arab country (which may have lost a million souls and seen three millions off into exile), fanning the flames of fanaticism, making Iran more powerful, and unleashing a wave of sectarianism throughout the Muslim world. Nice work, but hardly "Mission Accomplished", as the melancholy valediction delivered by President Obama at Fort Bragg this week made clear to the discerning.
The more he talked about what he once called the "dumb war", the more obvious it was that his was the task of holding the dipped banner of defeat. And the crew of thick-necked servicemen straight out of central casting roaring their approval at his description of their success could not quite drown out the sound of the Last Post. This is the death knell of American empire, the end of the brief unipolar world in the ashes of whose hubris the lone bugler now stands playing the retreat. Like Ozymandias, history – which hasn't ended after all – will invite us to gaze upon its ruined works and tremble. But instead we will rejoice, rejoice. For the Project for the New American Century it will be never glad confident morning again.
The war that was waged – yes, for oil, and yes, also for Israel – was waged above all to terrify the world (especially China) with American power. It turned into the largest boomerang in history. For what has been demonstrated instead are the limits of near-bankrupt America's power. Far from being cowed, America's adversaries – and its enemies – have been emboldened. With shock and awe the empire soon dominated the skies over Iraq to be sure. But they never controlled a single street in the country from the day they invaded until this day of retreat. One street alone – Haifa Street in Baghdad – became the graveyard of scores, maybe hundreds of Americans.
Fortresses like Fallujah entered history alongside Stalingrad as symbols of the unvanquishable power of popular resistance to foreign invasion. Crimes like Abu Ghraib prison – where Iraqis were stripped naked and humiliated, forced to perform indecent acts upon each other and videotaped doing so for the entertainment of their torturers in the barracks afterwards – entered the lexicon of the barbarism of those who invade others, flying the colours of their "civilising" mission. As Chairman Mao once put it: "Sometimes the enemy struggles mightily to lift a huge stone; only to drop it on its own foot." In an America where a third of the population are living in poverty or terrifyingly near it, and where imperial hubris met its nemesis on Haifa Street, China now knows it has nothing to fear from this paper tiger.
I wrote at the time that the invasion of Iraq would be worse than a crime: it would be the Mother of All Blunders. I told Tony Blair – outside the men's lavatory in the library corridor of the House of Commons, to be precise – that the fall of Baghdad would be not the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. And that the Iraqis would fight them, with their teeth if necessary, until they had driven them from their land. I told Blair that there was no al-Qaida in Iraq, but that if he and Bush were to invade there would be thousands of them.
Comments (14)
Merry Christmas everyone.
u don't have a clue of what's going on around ya!
What would be helpful to me is your helping me to understand HOW to navigate through the Hadith Sutra's and to recognise what I am looking at when there is no apparent English translation.
Aleykhum Salaam, Firsalion.
Post Script : May I enquire if you copied and pasted your article
from another source and, if so, could you please quote those references so that I may refer to them?
Thank you.
Alex.
People should know (you too) that however they try to express their best of intentions, others will judge them by the worst of the possible intentions. All politicians struggle with this and we all struggle with listening to politicians because of this.
Using stronger words doesn't change opinions into facts, and most of this is just opinion.
A bunch of people were right about the concerns with Iraq and a bunch were wrong ... and a bunch who were wrong now claim they were right ...
I am glad that it's (essentially) over ... and I hope the Iraqi people are able to find a far better future than what they would have had if Sadam were still around.
Alex.
bigmouthed statements...are ... it is your fav emoticon, isn´t it?
read and learn
and something more - free of charge, from me to you!
read, learn and practice!
I am an well -educated, self-confident and itelligent woman.
You .....
have a green jumper.
And thanks for contribution in other blogs ... you have just shown off in real, who you are.
Dear firaslion,
Really how do you know that? Did they told you here or is it a guess? Please let me know the whole story what happened behind me because I have just called a spade a spade I didn't lie you know me I show up with facts I hate lying that's not my style neither is yours. So do let me know about it? I am online now waiting for your replay.
you showed us how educated you are,unfortunately people here are very stupid and already hate Muslims and they justify the killing in ALL Muslim countries,so there will never be a reasonable discussion with them and you don't need to enlighten them with your knowledge,they don't worth our time.
Walaikum Assalam