Recently, the respected polling firm Zogby found that 72 percent of American troops in Iraq think the US should exit the country within this year.
Additionally:
-42 percent say U.S. role is hazy
-A [p]lurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
-A [m]ajority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
-[J]ust one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
I've never been a big fan of militarocracy, government by soldiers. I'm especially wary of giving carte blanche on our foreign policy decisions to a group where Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11. It is widely known (outside those circles apparently) that Saddam had no role in 9/11.
But many Americans HAVE cited absolute deferrence to soldiers as a reason to eliminate democratic debate on the wisdom of the war. They've used the excuse that criticizing the aggression or the president would (hold hand over heart) undermine troop morale. Because according to them, soldiers are too weak of mind and fragile in spirit for any criticism of their commander-in-chief to be brokered. That's why we must suspend the normal democratic rules at home while the soldiers are on their sacred Crusade of spreading democracy abroad.
So what do those folks make of information like this? Does this mean that the soldiers are anti-troop? Has this famously conservative demographic suddenly become a bastion of left-wing hippie radicalism?
If you demanded absolute deferrence to them before, don't change your mind now.
Perhaps the soldiers are, along with many other Americans, starting to recognize that 'Don't cut and run' is smokescreen, not a strategy. Maybe they've realized that 'Stay the course' is empty rhetoric if no one, including the president, has any clue what that course is.
Our local daily actually did run a wire service story on the poll, contrary to some expectations.
I understand that the paper wants to emphasize stories with a local slant. But while Mega Millions lottery fever and the [insert catchy music] continuing saga of Banana Boy have been deemed worthy of front page placement, this significant story about surprising opinions of those required to risk their lives executing the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation was buried on page A3, just above liquor and furniture ads.
1 comment:
Unfortunately what some people don't realize is that the huge presence of US troops in foreign lands creates enemies that weren't previously there. The US never had a major permanent military presence in the Middle East until after Gulf War I. It's no coincidence that our major problems with international terrorism (the first WTC bombing, the USS Cole, the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassy bombings and 9/11) have occurred SINCE the arrival of the permanent military presence in the region. \
Regardless of what your intentions or the administration's true intentions may be, we are seen in the region as the colonial successors to the Ottomans and the British. Like it or not, that's the reality that you can't ignore. And that's why the region will never be stable or 'pacified' as long as we have a large contigent of troops there. They will see their quest as a righteous battle against foreign domination. People don't lke being ruled by foreigners. Heck, George Washington and company didn't like being ruled by the British... and they were British!
Far from being a deterrent, our massive military presence is both an invitation to terrorism and something that perpetuates it.
The main oppressors in the Middle East are not Israel or the United States (though they are not completely innocent). The main oppressors are the largely autocratic Arab regimes. However, as long as there is a huge US military presence in the region, it will allow the dictatorships to deflect people's attention and anger away from their own failings to the foreign Devil. Only when we leave and that scapegoat is removed will there be any hope of that anger being focused at the corrupt autocracies at home.
Your assertion that US troops won't leave Afghanistan or Iraq in our lifetimes is exactly what terrorist recruiters want to hear. As it allows them to 'prove' that the US is interested not in democracy or freedom or whatever nonsense the president spews but in dominating Muslim countries. If we have to remain there for decades as an imperial overlord, as you suggest, it only proves the pathetic failure of a policy which was sold as a plan for long-term security. It only vindicates the critics who claimed from the beginning that it was really a bill of goods.
And it's also true that the Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse for a completely unrelated aggression against Iraq. Your honest approach is a refreshing contast to the duplicity of many others on the right, but it's wrongheaded nonetheless.
Incidentally, the list of state sponsors of terrorism will never be empty because the military industrial complex needs an enemy to serve as an excuse for imperial excursions. You can dismiss this as paranoid rantings if you want, but your comments like the US will be in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades demonstrates my contention far better than I could.
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