Defense Secretary Gates on Iraq: We're staying!

Its amazing how divorced from reality Defense Secretary Gates and the Bush administration is when it comes to Iraq. His plan for the US in Iraq is a a protracted U.S. troop presence along the lines of the military stabilization force in South Korea. According to him, this "would assure allies in the Middle East that the United States will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam." Lt. General Raymond T. Odierno agreed with this plan stating that it would help "the Iraqi security forces and the government to continue to stabilize itself, and continue to set itself up for success for years to come."

Yet the fact is the US presence in Iraq is the real obstacle to stabilization. Our military presence is increasingly resented by the Iraqi people which isn't surprising considering over 600,000 have died since the beginning of this war. A recent poll from the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes found 71 percent of Iraqis want the withdrawal of U.S. troops regardless of the short term breakdown in security. Even the Iraqi Parliament has turned against the US. Early in May a majority of the Iraqi Parliament (144 members) signed a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for military withdrawal. Just recently, they passed a binding resolution requiring parliament to approve an extension of the UN mandate of US and British occupation in Iraq.

Furthermore, the long tours forced on the troops in Iraq with this "surge" has diminished their morale. According to a recent study released by the Office of the Surgeon General of the US Army Medical Command on soldiers' ethics and mental health, 10 percent of the Soldiers and Marines interviewed reported "mistreating noncombatants damaged/destroyed Iraqi property when not necessary or hit/kicked a noncombatant when not necessary)." Those suffering mental health problem (anxiety, depression or acute stress) were twice as likely to engage in such acts. Such issues among soldiers stemmed from the long periods of deployment in Iraq (over a year). Thus "the surge, as implemented by [General] Petraeus, is doing everything exactly wrong for the soldiers and Marines described in this study, namely:

• The surge has increased the frequency of soldier deployments; it requires them to serve 15 months in Iraq on each deployment, rather than 12, and it reduced to 12 months the period they can expect to be at home with their families to recuperate.
• Most importantly, for both soldiers and Marines, the surge exacerbates their already prolonged exposure to combat. It is not just a question of operations being more intense; a fundamental aspect of the surge is to locate soldiers and Marines outside their base camps and garrisons into forward locations, in the middle of towns and cities, in civilian neighborhoods."

So the chance for Iraqi civilian abuse by the US military will increase and lead to further atrocities with this prolongued "surge."

By ignoring the interests of the Iraqi people and that of the US troops supposed to be protecting them, the Bush administration will never have any success in Iraq. Instead they will create more resentment and more violence with their blatant attempt to turn this fight for (what the Bush administration claims as) democracy in Iraq into a permanent occupation existing to steal their oil. As the US constructs the largest embassy in the world in Iraq and several permanent "super-bases" (described as big "enough to have its own 'neighborhoods' ") while putting pressure on Iraq to pass an Oil Law privatizing that industry, such intentions become increasingly clear.