[CanYoAssDigIt] The US Has Lost; Let's Leave

A very important and excellent arfticle. I have to admit that I was
saddened and dismayed when David Heath Jr expressed the opinion that
"we" should seal the borders of Iraq and drop a nuclear bomb on the
country.

For what, the crime of resisting the illegal and anti-democratic
occupation of their country? For having the gall to believe in their
cause more than "we" believe in ours, and actually winning? I can only
hope that it was the brain tumor talking when he wrote that.

Let us hope that "we" figure out what some of us have known all along,
and get the hell out of Iraq, and hope that they can achieve the
democracy "we" are trying to deny them.

November 18, 2005
The US Has Lost; Let's Leave
Murtha and the L Word

By DAVE LINDORFF

Rep. John Murtha, the decorated Vietnam and Korean War Marine vet and
conservative Pennsylvania Democrat who stunned Bush administration and
Republican congressional warhawks and Democratic go-alongs like Sens.
Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Joe Biden alike with his call for an
immediate U.S. pullout from Iraq, left unsaid one important word in
his dramatic turnaround announcement: defeat.

But that's the real message of his change of heart from Iraq War
backer and booster to peacenik.

The war begun by President Bush with such bravado and so little
braino, which was designed to convert him from a dismal president to a
crisp and awe-inspiring commander-in-chief, has been lost.

The nearly 2100 Americans who have died so far to help the president
get re-elected, to make him look like a leader, and to provide cover
for his criminal executive power grab, have died for nothing.

An unorganized bunch of insurgents armed with nothing but raw guts,
aging Soviet-era rifles, and home-made explosives, have routed the
most powerful military machine the world has ever known.

There will be efforts to cover up this astonishing defeat, just as
there were efforts made by the Nixon and Ford administrations to hide
the fact that the U.S. was defeated in Indochina, too, but the truth
is clear.

American military might can destroy a country. It can kill hundreds of
thousands of innocent civilians. It can sow terror through the use of
indiscriminate use of such WMDs as DU explosives, phosphorus bombs,
helicopter and fixed-wing gunships and computerized drones and
missiles. But it cannot defeat a concerted popular resistance.

The American military, according to some generals, is once again, as
it was during the Vietnam War, falling apart. Recruitment is
collapsing, both for the regular Army and Marines, and for the
reserves and the National Guard. Parts and even ammunition are in
short supply. Morale is at an all time low and sinking.

Who in Iraq would want to die for Bush and Cheney at this point? And
yet they keep on dying.

Murtha has it right. It's long past time to call the whole disastrous
thing off. The Bush-Cheney mantra of "stay the course" is the
desperate cry of two mad men caught in a trap of their own making--two
men who are perfectly willing to send thousands more American soldiers
to their deaths, and to slaughter tens of thousands more innocent
Iraqis, in order to cling to power and to defer a final reckoning for
their crimes.

They cannot be permitted to do this.

The war is lost. Iraq has been destroyed and will have to be helped
for a long time to allow its people to recover somehow from the
devastation caused by decades of brutal dictatorship, American-led
sanctions and America's war of aggression and criminal occupation. The
broken military will have to be returned home and made into something
appropriate for a world that settles disputes diplomatically, not by
unilateral acts of violence and terror. Finally, the veterans of this
war will need help recovering from the horrors they were forced to
participate in and from the physical and psychic wounds they have
endured.

Meanwhile, the political leaders who brought all this about must be
called to account. Either they apologize, as growing numbers of
Democrats (and some Republicans) have begun to do, like Murtha and
vice-presidential candidate John Edwards have done, or they must be
ousted. Half steps like Kerry's admission that his pro-war vote and
his pro-war campaign were mistakes, after which he then trashed Murtha
on Hardball, won't do. As for the criminal authors of this war-Bush,
Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice and others--they should be impeached or indicted as
appropriate.)

The first step will be admitting that the US has been defeated in
Iraq. Murtha is right that the troops did what was asked of them, but
their sacrifices were for naught. The war is lost.

Then we can begin the blame game in earnest.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the
Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch
columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" to be published this fall by
Common Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by
Lindorff can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com

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