Iraq Sumit

On the surface of things, it would appear that the Bush administration has come to the ugly reality that the war in Iraq is wholly un-winnable and the long term effects on the U.S. military will greatly reduce their ability to function as an entity. For good or ill, the American forces are clearly becoming the canaries in the cave mine in the great experiment of the semi-new tactic that has come out of Washington, a policy of pre-emptive strikes. For those who read the Stars and Stripes, the militaries official news paper, it becomes apparent that the causalities of this current war goes far behind just the 3000+ dead that have been reported. What tend to get lost in this discussion are those tens, of thousands who are coming home with missing limbs, psychological trauma, and un-explained illness and so on. And these are the ones that the US commanding  general in Iraq was looking at when he recently wrote the well documented report that stated the Iraq war is affecting our military’s ability to engage in future conflicts.  And it would seem to be this reality that has forced Washington to invite Tehran and Syria to the table during the up and coming summit surrounding the crises in Iraq.

Despite all the heretic from the hawks, they now have to face the fact that Iran might be the only hope for the new Iraqi government to survive. For such an admission to occur, it would mean that the Bush administration has recognized that they have painted themselves into a corner and they desperately need a way out. Domestic support for the war is at an all time low. According to an ABC poll, 56% of Americans support the withdraw of US troops by March of next year. If that were not enough, the latest rounds of crack downs in Baghdad have been failures by most accounts. Throw in the attempted assassination of the Iraqi vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi and the infiltration of the Baghdad’s police force by insurgence and you just start to get the picture of how dire the situation really is. Just as a side note, the tactic of having rebel forces to join the police force of the puppet government was originally used in Algeria to fight the French imperialists. It turned out that it was one of the most successful campaigns to throw out the invading western nation.

So now with Tehran at the table along with Syria, there ironically seems to be a voice of reason. I say ironically here because neither country supports the progressive route as much as they prefer not to have a destabilized nation on their borders. But, the question here really has to be how much influence they will have in this late stage of what several international outlets have called a sectarian civil war.

In Congress, there still is no Conesus on what to do about Bush’s proposed increase of American forces in Iraq. The number that is being thrown around is 21,500. Some alternative media outlets have stated that the actual number maybe larger. The Democrats first looked to block this increase in troop levels by cutting funds for the war but, because of internal battles and a slim hold on the Senate, they had no chance of passing such a bill. So the new bill has no mention of the reduction of funds to the wars. And there is some doubt if the new senate bill to roll back Bush’s war making powers to 2002 levels. The republicans have already made it clear that they will vote strictly on party lines and many of the more conservative Democrats have made it clear that they would be nerves t support such a bill.

None of this should come as a surprise when you consider that they are only party in any countries history to have such a huge win as was the case last year and still come off as being lost and defeated. But we’ll see.

Until next time.  

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