|
Recent
Stories
May
6, 2003
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
"You Talk of Freedom; You Detest Freedom"
April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
May
7, 2003
Winning a War; Alienating
the World
10 Lessons of
the Iraq War
by DAVID KRIEGER
There are always lessons to be learned after a
war. Often governments and pundits focus only on lessons having
to do with military strategies and tactics, such as troop deployments,
engagement in battles, bombing targets and the effectiveness
of different weapons systems. There are, of course, far bigger
lessons to be learned, and here are some of the principal ones
from the Iraq War.
1. In the eyes of the Bush administration,
the relevance of international organizations such as the United
Nations depends primarily upon their willingness to rubberstamp
US policy, legal or illegal, moral or immoral.
2. The Bush Doctrine of Preemptive
War may be employed against threats that have no basis in fact.
3. The American people appear to take
little notice of the "bait and switch" tactic of initiating
a war to prevent use of weapons of mass destruction and then
celebrating regime change when no such weapons are found.
4. A country that spends $400 billion
a year on its military, providing them with the latest in high-tech
weaponry, can achieve clear military victory over a country
that spends 1/400th of that amount and possesses virtually no
high-tech weaponry.
5. Embedding journalists with troops
leads to reporters providing only perspectives sanctioned by
the military in their reports to the public. It is analogous
to the imprinting of ducklings.
6. The American people can be easily
manipulated, with the help of both embedded and non-embedded
media, to support an illegal war.
7. An imperial presidency does not
require Congress to exercise its Constitutional authority to
declare war; it requires only a compliant Congress to provide
increasingly large sums of money for foreign wars.
8. It is far easier to destroy a dictatorial
regime by military might than it is to rebuild a country as a
functioning democracy.
9. If other countries wish to avoid
the fate of Saddam Hussein and Iraq, they better develop strong
arsenals of weapons of mass destruction for protection against
potential US aggression.
10. In all wars it is the innocent who
suffer most. Thus, Saddam Hussein remains unaccounted for and
George Bush stages a jet flight to the aircraft carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln, while Ali Ismaeel Abbas lies in a hospital bed
without his parents and brother, who were killed in a US attack,
and without his arms.
The most important lessons of the Iraq
War may remain as yet unrevealed, but there is a sense that American
unilateralism is likely to continue to alienate important allies,
while the triumphalism of the Bush administration is likely to
taunt terrorists, making them more numerous and tenacious in
their commitment to violent retaliation.
David Krieger
is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of Hope in a Dark
Time (Capra Press, 2003), and author of Choose
Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway
Press, 2002). He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
Yesterday's
Features
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|