On Friday, October 21, 2011, Mr. Obama, invoking one of his campaign promises, announced the complete withdrawal of all U.S. Troops from Iraq by "the [Christian] holidays." Over the weekend, he and his media arm further spun the story, claiming the deadline had been negotiated by G.W. Bush.
Behind the scenes — later paragraphs — we discover that the Pentagon wanted to keep at least 3,000 to 5,000 troops on Iraqi soil. The true number was significantly larger. But they’re all leaving. Why?
It was almost certainly the S.O.F.A., the acronym for "Status Of Forces Agreement."
Obama’s announcement signals that US officials have been unable to negotiate with Iraq’s leaders a renewal of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the stationing and mission of American troops on Iraqi soil. Pentagon officials in particular, backed by a number of congressional leaders, had called for leaving a force of between 3,000 and 5,000 in Iraq for an extended period. –Iraq withdrawal: With US troops set to exit, 9-year war draws to close – CSMonitor.com
A key provision of any SOFA is exempting occupying soldiers from the laws of the country being occupied. It was this provision that Iraqi negotiators refused to renew. Thus, for example, once the old SOFA expired, U.S. soldiers who killed an Iraqi could be tried for murder under Iraqi law.
The Iraqis, it seems, found the back door to get rid of occupying U.S. troops.
This would likely work in other countries as well.
Vlahos is a contributing editor for The American Conservative magazine, a Washington correspondent for the DC-based homeland security magazine, Homeland Security Today, a long-time political writer for FOXNews.com, and weekly columnist for Antiwar.com.
And Balaam rose up in the morning and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab.
And God’s anger was kindled because he went, and the angel of the Lord stood in the way as an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him.
And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And the ass turned aside out of the way and went into the field, and Balaam smote the ass to turn her into the way.
America is in peril. A grim specter from yesteryear stalks the land, threatening to starve hardworking defense contractors. Our current wars might be snuffed out before they reach drinking age, and a potential intervention or two might even be aborted.
Trembling yet? You should be, because isolationism is back, and it’s haunting the halls of our capital. All those American bullets, missiles, and drones whizzing about might have lulled you into thinking that everything was fine, but top analysts say otherwise. Two honchos at Freedom House fret:
The debate about America’s world role recently has taken a disturbing direction. Prominent figures in both parties – including a number of the announced Republican presidential hopefuls – have anchored their rhetoric on demands for American withdrawal from various conflict zones and from international engagement generally.
Voices on the political margins – Dennis Kucinich on the left and Rand Paul on the right – are increasingly echoed by figures from the mainstream. Even President Obama has succumbed to the prevailing mood with his unfortunate June reference to “nation building here at home.”
Disturbing! And there’s more:
The isolationism that is gaining momentum is especially pernicious given the prospects for political change in the greater Middle East. If there is an issue where vigorous American leadership and American interests are organically related, it is the contemporary struggle for democracy in the Arab world.
And if there is one place where “vigorous American leadership” is roundly trusted and desired, it is surely the Arab world. But back to those “unfortunate” calls for “nation building here at home.” In June, Christopher Hitchens sniffed out that trend and tore it apart:
This [John Edwards’ lack of sexual sophistication, or something] is dispiriting. But not as small-time and small-minded as the recent line adopted, from Dennis Kucinich to John Boehner and by the National Conference of Mayors, to the effect that any expenditure overseas is a theft from the good people of Waterloo (or, if you insist, Winterset), Iowa. You have heard it: A bridge or a well in Kandahar is one less facility for our hurting heartland. We should be tending to business in our own backyards.
Hitchens will have none of that. What is it with these hicks from Cleveland and Bowling Green and West Chester Township and Waterloo and their sub-constant enthusiasm for shrapnel-ready projects? By the way, Waterloo is the hometown of Hitchens’ latest hate crush, Rep. Michele Bachmann. Bachmann enraged Hitchens by “pathetically advocating that we leave Col. Qaddafi alone”:
For Bachmann to choose this moment to say that the loony of Libya poses no threat is to disqualify herself from any consideration for high office.
Indeed. As Hitchens said elsewhere in the same article,
We need candidates who know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas.
Especially the drones, because those mobile laboratories of democracy can be used to liberate polychrome conurbations overseas, which will, in turn, raise morale here during the contraction phase of the trade cycle. Everybody wins, so long as the isolationists don’t.
But I’m not too worried about Michele Bachmann slowing down the perpetual-war machine that Hitchens and friends have worked so hard to maintain. Apparently, Frank Gaffney has her ear, and I trust that, whip in hand, he will dispel any reservations about empire from her silly little head.
What do zombies and the military industrial complex have in common? Let us count the ways. In fact, let military strategy & policy professor Michael Vlahos (relation, yes!) take you down that thorny path.
"Battle of Yonkers" By Daniel LuVisi
Michael writes in Dark Lord, Dark Victory: America’s Dark Passage,in the latest issue of Kosmos(.pdf), that the 9/11 War has eroded America’s “redeemer” identity, and instead has made it more akin to the “Dark Lord,” or “the mythic essence of children’s nightmares.” In other words, we’ve sort of lost our way, and where in the past “our historical method to redeem humanity has been war,” the current Long War has done nothing of the sort. In our zeal to recreate the glory and alleged redemption of World War II, the US manufactured another “true evil,” or Dark Faith (Muslim extremism), making it an epoch battle in which Muslims “readily understood it to mean … eviscerating the entire edifice of Muslim life, replacing it with American consciousness.”
But this has only made us weaker, nearly alone, reviled and unsure of ourselves. This Long War is a slow kill and a buzz kill.
So what’s this have to do with zombies? We can see it in the latest AMC series, “The Walking Dead,” but more poignantly, in World War Z, a bestselling science fiction novel of “The Zombie War” by Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft). After nine-years of playing a humiliating game of whack-a-mole with a “rag tag” enemy that was supposedly vanquished after 9/11 but in key areas has seemingly more support from the people we are supposed to be liberating than we ever did, Americans are now indulging in elaborate fantasies, like World War Z, in which they regain all of the pride and strength and virtue that was lost — by fighting an even more ruthless adversary, the ultimate evil – the flesh-eating undead.
Maybe, just maybe, we can win that war, and liberate ourselves!
Sounds “fantastical,” and sure, “The Walking Dead” is nothing but a slick soap opera with lots of blood and guts, but as Vlahos points out:
“…are not zombies our former selves — hence, the most terrifying and relentless enemy of all? Are not their ranks also flush with those who had lost American virtue: The passive, the narcissistic, the cynical, the uncaring? Sacred wars are about purification, revival and redemption. By indirection, Brooks is making the troubling point as well, that only zombies — or a national challenge equally existential — can renew America now.”
AMC's "The Walking Dead"
Brooks makes his own point, however indirectly, on his own website, below his mention of Mike’s piece. It seems U.S soldiers in Afghanistan have been buying out “zombie hunter” patches like hotcakes. He points to a summertime piece by the Global Post’s Ben Brody, where soldiers languishing on Forward Operating Bases waiting for some kind of meaning in what they are doing are increasing turning to … zombies.
Dog-eared copies of Max Brooks’ “World War Z,†a first person account of the Great Zombie War, and his definitive undead-fighting manual, “The Zombie Survival Guide,†are found wherever soldiers relax and oil their weapons.
One soldier showed me a huge, razor-sharp Nepalese Ghurka knife that weighed about seven pounds — a lot of extra weight to carry on patrol. He explained that because killing zombies required a decapitating or skull-crushing blow, there was simply no better tool for fighting the undead in close quarters.
As uniforms and body armor become more and more covered in Velcro, Zombie Hunter patches have become hot sellers for tactical suppliers. At the German Post Exchange at Kandahar Airfield, that patch is continually sold out.
The problems of war against the undead have parallels with the problems soldiers face daily in Afghanistan. A zombie needs no food, water or equipment and pursues the living with implacable determination. For soldiers trying to defend a million dollar vehicle against a malnourished, illiterate man wielding a $40 roadside bomb, the similarity must be chilling.
No, more like it’s morally degrading and humiliating and one of the few salves are heroic apocalyptic fantasies, where everything is black and white and good and evil. Indeed, maybe these fantasies do spill over to the battlefield, because it’s easier to think of the Taliban as mindless, flesh-starved creatures. One can hardly see how this helps our cause, or the people of Afghanistan for that matter. In fact, I can’t help but think when i read this, “oh well, there goes the rest of this bloody war.”
Soldier's Zombie Patch in Afghanistan -- Photo by GlobalPost
So how did it get to this point? Its a journey, but Dark Lord, Dark Victory attempts to explain it, noting that it is much of the citizenry’s fault for creating and maintaining this “warrior nation” identity encapsulated in the Defense Tribal Confederacy that is now crippled by its own myopic, misguided vision. An ambitious read that may leave you wondering just how far off these Zombie Wars really are.
Why Julian Assange (and Wikileaks) are so dangerous. In Assange’s own words – – –
Sun 31 Dec 2006 : The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance
…different structures of power are differentially affected by leaks (the defection of the inner to the outer) [and] its motivations may become clearer.
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance. ja-conspiracies.pdf
