Today's Stories

October 10 / 12, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is McCain a Lot Sicker Than We Know?

Patrick Cockburn
War in the Time of Cholera

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

David Vest
The Great Rescue of 2008: Could Whatever Follows Bush Be Even Worse?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Meltdown at the Pentagon

Andy Worthington
The Ordeal of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama the Subhuman

Helga Serrano /
Hector Tamayo
Ecuador Charts the Way

Dave Lindorff
When Money Flies

Mats Svensson
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement

Rannie Amiri
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now

Website of the Day
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

Weekend Edition
October 10 / 12, 2008

Hormones, Profanities, Machismo, Tattoos and Blood

21 Days to Baghdad

By AHMAD FARUQUI

The presidential debates have reignited interest in the Iraq War, now in the seventh month of it sixth year. Not surprisingly, those who opposed it from the start cite the costs of the war and those who started it cite its benefits.

The opponents state that in addition to the gargantuan treasure that it has taken from American taxpayers, the war has led nearly 5,000 Americans to their deaths along with more than 100,000 Iraqis. And for those Iraqis still living, life has been one long nightmare. Caught in the cross-fire between US troops and insurgents and face power cuts, street garbage, kidnappings, beheadings and suicide bombings on a daily basis, their quality of life has plummeted. They were better off under Saddam’s dictatorship.

The opponents of the war remind us that the war was fought on false pretenses. No weapons of mass destruction were ever discovered in Iraq nor was any connection ever established between the Iraqi regime and the terrorist acts of 9/11. In other words, Iraq posed no threat to the national security of the United States so even under the Bush Doctrine the war was fought in vain. It has caused tremendous damage to the international credibility of the US. Moreover, by unleashing a new, fiercer generation of terrorists, it has worsened the security of Americans throughout the globe.[1]

Those who supported the war say that an evil regime has been taken out and replaced by a democratic one. They cite this as a major benefit for the citizens of Iraq even though one would be hard pressed to find much evidence of this in Iraqi opinion polls. In addition, they argue, the grave threat that Saddam posed to Israel has been eliminated. Of course, they know better than anyone else that the war has changed the power balance in the region decisively in favor of Saddam’s nemesis. Without firing a shot, the real victor in this war has been Iran. And reading their books and papers, one sees anxiety about the Iranian nuclear program writ large in the minds of the neocons. Not to be deprived of a silver lining, the war proponents assert that the surge launched by General David Patraeus has worked.

But even the hawks have given up all hopes of achieving a clear and decisive victory in Iraq. It would be a bit gratuitous to declare victory twice. They had already proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003 on the decks of the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast off San Diego. Now the best they hope to accomplish is a graduated withdrawal from Iraq. Gone is the swagger and boasting. No one talks of Iraq as being an extended outpost of the American Empire from which democracy and peace would radiate forth through the Arab Middle East.[2]

A likely scenario is that US troops will first be withdrawn from all urban areas and sequestered in the safety of the vast Iraqi desert. Then the bulk of the American garrison will be pulled out from Iraq with a few brigades left behind for the long haul.

In a sign of the times, the Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has begun talking tough with the forces that brought it to power. It has called for a specific time table for an American withdrawal. The tension will become more pronounced in the next two months as the UN mandate for the American presence nears expiration.

All of this appears to be a fry cry from the euphoria that surrounded the initial victory in war. The invasion began on the 20th of March, 2003 as US troops punched through into southern Iraq from Kuwait. As the western bank of the Tigris was pounded, towering plumes of reddish-yellow smoke framed the night sky, causing one observer to note that it could have come out of the “Disasters of War” sequence of paintings by the Spanish artist Goya.[3]

The war culminated three weeks later when a Marine engineering vehicle commonly used to tow disabled tanks pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussain in al-Fardous Square in Baghdad on the 9th of April, 2003. Prior to pulling down the statue, Marine Corporal Edwin Chin climbed to the top, put a chain around the statue and “hooded” it with an American flag. His fiancé noted, “He wanted to show the Iraqi people that they were free, that they were liberated, that the US was there to help them and that Saddam is over.”[4]

Several months later, encomiums to American generalship began to be published. John Keegan, whom Tom Clancy has termed “the best military historian of our generation,” was quick to put out his book, “The Iraq War.”[5] General Tommy Franks, the US commander who directed the war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, promptly published his memoirs to capitalize on the moment, “American Soldier: It doesn’t take a hero.” And there were many others that followed.

It suffices to quote from Keegan, who begins his book by saying: “Some wars begin badly. Some end badly. The Iraq War of 2003 was exceptional in both beginning well for the Anglo-American force that waged it victoriously.” Referring exultantly to the 21-day duration of the war, he says: “Campaigns so brief are rare, a lighting campaign so complete in its results almost unprecedented.” And in the fall of Baghdad, he finds “a model of a modern military operation, cunningly planned with every electronic aid, skillfully executed by highly trained troops.” Keegan concluded by saying that the war was won at the cost of only 155 British and American lives.

But these were “macro” assessments. The job of providing a “micro” assessment was left to Evan Wright, an American reporter who was embedded in the Second Platoon of Bravo Company of the First Reconnaissance Battalion of the US Marine Corps.

His book about the invasion, “Generation Kill,” based on articles he had written for Rolling Stone magazine, was published in 2004.[6] But it did not quite seize the public imagination. That honor was left to a mini series based on the book that was shown this summer by a major cable TV channel.

The image of war that emerges from Wright is anything but glorious. As the Marines in this platoon rolled off into Iraq in their lightly armed Humvees, they only had a vague idea of who they were fighting.

They knew that the enemy had no air cover and that his capability had been seriously eroded by sanctions that were put in place after the Gulf War of 1991. But even then, the Marines know that the war would not be a slam dunk. Saddam’s army was equipped with several thousand tanks, artillery pieces and it probably possessed nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Danger lurked in the sands of the vast Iraqi desert.

The Marines were young men drawn from Camp Pendleton, California, on a par with the Navy Seals or the Army’s Special Operation Forces. But their exposure to the outside world had been limited to jaunts south of the border, to places such as Tijuana, Mexico.

Their youthful bodies and minds were overflowing with hormones, profanities, machismo and tattoos. One had a broken smile because two front teeth are missing. Another had an ungainly appearance for which he has been nicknamed “Manimal.” Yet another was believed to have fled the scene of battle at Khafji during the 1991 Gulf War and was called simply “The Coward.” Their leader, who did not command much respect from any of the troops, was called “Captain America.”

As it marched into Iraq, this platoon, like the rest of the Corps, was simply out to “Get Some!” No one had bothered to educate its soldiers about the local culture. So when they saw their first Iraqi around 10 in the morning, and discovered that he was attired in flowing robes, they cussed the “Hajji” for wearing pajamas in daylight.

As the war rolled on, the Marines encountered a few scattered remnants of the Iraqi Army but more often the enemy was the paramilitary forces known as the fedayeen, who had sworn to give their lives for Saddam. These insurgents would descend upon the Marines from no where, making it difficult to distinguish the militants from the civilians. It had turned into a war in the shadows, unlike the war that they had gamed for.

In the cross-fire that ensured, innocent shepherds, villagers and city dwellers were killed. The Marines watched helplessly as a shot-up boy died in his mother’s arms and as a father carried his dead girl whose brain has spilled out to a road-side grave. A Sheikh begged the Marines not to rape his daughters while other Iraqis offered them their boys as an alternative.

As the invasion progressed, large numbers of Iraqi soldiers surrendered, many without a fight. The Marines encountered long lines of Iraqi troops walking past them in civilian clothes. Many carried pink cards given to them by American Army units to whom they had surrendered earlier. With these cards, they had the right to be protected and fed by the conquerors.

However, the Marines were not in a position to feed them. So they did the next best thing. They “un-surrendered” the Iraqi soldiers and found a way to bypass the requirements of the Geneva Conventions which seemed far too onerous to be practical. The Iraqi soldiers complained that the fedayeen had formed hunter killer teams to take them out. However, the Marines refused to provide them protection and sent them in the other direction, knowing that meant certain death for the deserters.

Evidence of Iraqi military incompetence was every where. Their armor would wait until 10 in the morning to begin rolling out, at which time US combat aircraft would take them out with consummate ease given fresh meaning to the metaphor about shooting ducks.

In one night encounter, an Iraqi T-72 tank, the best in Saddam’s arsenal, was taken out by a single Marine with a missile shot from less than 200 yards away. After a major battle with an Iraqi division, a US major general said that his troops won not because of his brilliance but because of the idiocy of his counterpart.

One Marine officer acknowledged that if a foreign force were to occupy a US suburb, the residents would do their best to catch an invader and string him up. Yet, when a Marine was killed, the others resorted to taking their revenge on the nearby village.

The Air Force was called in and dropped thousand pound bombs on the village. The Marines, from a distance, saw Iraqi men evaporate before their eyes. In another encounter, a Marine sniper was sent in to dispatch potential Iraqi spotters from a distance. As he saw them drop to the ground through his scope, he reminded himself not to take pleasure in the act of killing. His pastor had told him that killing was allowed in the Christian faith as long as he did not take pleasure in it.

On the long road to Baghdad, the Marines relieved themselves under the open sky, day or night, and littered the roads with wrappers from their ready-to-eat rations. At night, they were haunted by visions of those that they had killed in the daytime.

Some Marines fell victim to friendly fire, some were run over by friendly vehicles as they slept next to their vehicles and some, who could not take it anymore, stepped into a ditch and shot themselves in the head. Even for the victors, war was one long ride through Dante’s hell.

And yet, somehow, amidst all the chaos and destruction, the Iraqi farmer continued to tend to his sheep and drove his herds nonchalantly through heavily armored US formations.

In a postscript to a newly issued paperback version of his book, Wright revisits the Marines with whom he had invested Iraq in the spring of 2003. He finds that many are despondent. More than four thousand of their buddies are dead.

They won the war but lost the peace. And while they were winning, some of them burned villages in order to save them, bringing back those terrible, terrible memories of Vietnam. The crazier ones just shot guns to blow things up. Even the sensible ones were anxious to “get in the game,” as if war was a game too good to miss out on.

Wright does not moralize about the war. Nor does he tell us how the Iraqis viewed the “shock and awe” that was being meted out to them. But what he does tell makes plain the futility and un-necessity not just of this war but of all wars.

One is reminded of the letter that the Duke of Wellington wrote in June 1815 from the field of Waterloo. It contained a line which has continued to reverberate through history ever since: “Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”[7]

Ahmad Faruqui, an economist based in San Francisco, is affiliated with the University of Bradford’s Pakistan Security Research Unit. His newest book, “Musharraf’s Pakistan, Bush’s America and the Middle East,” has been published by Vanguard Books in Lahore. He can be reached at: Faruqui@Pacbell.Net.


Notes

[1] In The Battle for Peace, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, retired Marine General Tony Zinni argues that “The real new threats come from instability…the chaos it generates can spark large and dangerous changes anywhere they land.

[2] Prior to the war, neocons William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan had opined that if Bush succeeded in deposing Saddam, he would “set a historic precedent—for Iraq, which could become the first Arab democracy; for the United States, which will demonstrate to all the compatibility of its interests and ideals; and for the world, which America will have made a safer and just place.” Quoted in Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, Penguin Books, 2004.

[3] Life Books, The War in Iraq: The Illustrated History, New York, 2003.

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1049567824980.html.

[5] John Keegan, The Iraq War, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004.

[6] Evan Wright, Generation Kill, Putnam, New York, 2004.

[7] Edward Shepherd Creasy, Decisive Battles of the World, The Colonial Press, 1899.

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