http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/another-antiwar-general-calls-for-escalation/
On November 10th, I wrote about retired General Eatons call for a Manhattan Project-level effort to build the Iraqi security forces, a sentiment in clear distinction to an article in the Nation Magazine that characterized him as antiwar. That same article grouped him with General John Batiste, who is even more bellicose based on this interview on Chris Matthewss MSNBC Hardball show last night:
MATTHEWS: Well, help us. What should we do in Iraq? Who should we be shooting at and fighting at, and who should we be defending? What side should we be on in Iraq? Tell us how to what`s going on over there, and what should we be doing?
BATISTE: Chris, the first thing we have to do, like I said, is recognize that we are fighting a long-term struggle. Iraq is but phase one in this whole effort. This could go on for decades. We need to mobilize this country in multiple areas. We have been fighting this war on the cheap. We`ve inconvenienced the American people as little as possible and that`s not how we`re going to eventually win this struggle.
We need to properly resource the Army and the Marine Corps. These great organizations we`ve never fielded better military forces in our history are too small for our national strategy. We need to get serious about funding this war. We need to think about some kind of a war tax so we are not funding this war at the expense of our domestic budget. It goes on and on.
Matthews is an interesting figure. He was much more closely aligned with the political center, even hailing Bushs war on terror when it first began, but has become truculently opposed to continuing involvement in Iraq. Along with MSNBCs Keith Olbermann, whose show follows Matthews, the two constitute the leading edge of television antiwar journalism.
The night before Matthews interviewed Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and pressed him to define what his party would do about ending the war in Iraq, now that it controlled both houses of Congress. Reed, who is a bit to the left of figures such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, was not very forthcoming:
"Well, we have to try every option to try to regain the momentum. I don`t think we are in a position of winning, as the president said before the election. We have to do all we can to regain the momentum and try to move this Iraqi government forward."
Other Democrats are advocating dovish sounding policies, but that all fall short of pulling out of Iraq. Barack Obama, who was exposed as a creature of big business by Ken Silverstein in a recent Harpers, says that American troops should be redeployed to the Kurdish-held North. Joe Biden advocates dividing the country into 3 parts along the lines that Peter Galbraith has described in the New York Review of Books.
But most of all, both parties seem bent on buying time in the hopes that the imperialists can regain the momentum as Reed stated. At this point, you are leaving the realm of politics and entering the world of clinical psychology and the phenomenon of denial in particular.
I can understand why these bourgeois politicians are so deeply reluctant to withdraw from Iraq. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is one of the worlds largest oil suppliers. In an ensuing civil war, the only outcome would be hostile to US interests, with either a pro-Iranian regime or one that might embody a kind of radicalized Baathism.
Although this war is obviously less costly in terms of US lives than the Vietnam War, it is now reaching the same level of intractability. There are signs that the Democrats will attempt to wriggle out of responsibility for ending the war by arguing that war-making powers are invested in the Executive branch. This means that we face another 2 years of war until after the 2008 election. This will of course deepen the political crisis in the US and present openings for the left. The only question, as has been the case for the past half-century or so, is whether it has the presence of mind and the guts to take advantage of it.
