The Cakewalk Warby
Paul Craig Roberts
The "cakewalk war" is now two and one-half years old. US casualties (dead and wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is the number of Iraqi insurgents according to US military commanders, each insurgent is responsible for one US casualty. US troops in Iraq number about 150,000. Obviously, US troops have not inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi insurgents. US troops have perhaps inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi civilian population, primarily women and children who are the "collateral damage" of the "righteous" and "virtuous" US invasion that is spreading civilian deaths all over Mesopotamia in the name of democracy. What could the US have possibly done to give America a worse name than to invade Iraq and murder its citizens? According to the September 1 Manufacturing & Technology News, the Government Accounting Office has reported that over the course of the cakewalk war, the US military’s use of small caliber ammunition has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about that number. If there are 20,000 insurgents, it means US troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each insurgent. Very few have been hit. We don’t know how many. To avoid the analogy with Vietnam, until last week the US military studiously avoided body counts. If 2,000 insurgents have been killed, each death required 900,000 rounds of ammunition. The combination of US government owned ammo plants and those of US commercial producers together cannot make bullets as fast as US troops are firing them. The Bush administration has had to turn to foreign producers such as Israel Military Industries. Think about that. Hollowed out US industry cannot produce enough ammunition to defeat a 20,000 man insurgency. US military analysts are beginning to wonder if the US has been defeated by the insurgency. Increasingly, Bush administration spokesmen sound like "Baghdad Bob." On September 19 the Washington Post reported that US military spinmeister Major General Rich Lynch declared "great success" against the insurgency that had just inflicted the worst casualties of the war, including a three-day mortar attack on the "safe" Green Zone. Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, says: "We can’t secure the airport road, can’t stop the incoming (mortar rounds) into the Green Zone, can’t stop the killings and kidnappings." The insurgency controls most of Baghdad and the Sunni provinces. With its judgement lost to frustration, the US military has 40,000 Iraqis in detention – twice the number of estimated insurgents. Who are these detainees? According to the Washington Post, "Many of the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded up on the advice of local teenagers who had stepped forward as informants, at times for what American soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than settling local scores." Obviously, the US, not knowing who or where the insurgents are, is just striking blindly, creating a larger insurgency. The Iraq government, despite being backed by the US military, is unable to control movements across the Iraqi – Syrian border. So the Bush administration has passed the buck to Syria. Puny Syria is declared guilty of not doing what the US military cannot do. Adam Ereli, the demented US State Department spokesperson, denounced the Syrian government for "permitting" insurgents to cross the border. The US government cannot prevent a steady stream of one million Mexicans from illegally crossing its border each year, but Syria is supposed to be able to stop a couple hundred foreign fighters from sneaking across its border. Ereli misrepresents Syria’s inability to be "an unwillingness" which indicates that Syria is consorting with terrorists, not only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and Palestine. Does this sound like Syria being set up for invasion? According to news reports, at Ted Forstmann’s annual meeting of movers and shakers last weekend, US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, predicted that US troops will soon enter into Syria. Simultaneously, the Bush administration is desperately trying to orchestrate a case that it can use to attack Iran.
At the Human Rights Conference on September 9, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, described Americans as "people with blood-soaked hands."
The entire world is asking this question. September 20, 2005 Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Copyright © 2005 Creators Syndicate |
"Who
are the terrorists," asked Mahathir, the Iraqis or the Americans?