Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter on Iraq.
So long as American politicians and policy makers feel that military options are more politically viable on the domestic political front than diplomacy, there will be no stopping our slippery slide down towards the abyss. The American people seem to be addicted to war and violence every bit as much as they are addicted to Middle Eastern oil.
The Iraqi insurgents are only too happy to help feed that addiction by creating the conditions that continually wave a red flag in the face of the American war machine, making us lash out blindly much like a bull in the arena, exhausting ourselves until we reach the point of being utterly powerless to prevent our opponents from slipping in behind and driving a blade through our heart.
Ritter believes secular Ba’athists are behind most of the insurgency, manipulating the Americans brilliantly, so brilliantly in fact, that the dimbulbs in DC aren’t even aware of the trap. That some Ba’athists want the US to invade Iran so they can seize control in Iraq during the resultant chaos may be true. However this seems a bit far-fetched. Chaos by definition is unmanageable, so how can it be gamed to install oneself in power? You just as easily could end up a corpse.
Ritter, like many commentators, ignores the obvious fact that the insurgency is multi-headed and composed of Iraqis who want the US out of their country. Nor, even though he helped expose of the lies leading to the invasion, does he appear to be opposed to imperialist invasions in principle, only this one, because as a right wing patriotic ex-Marine, he finds the fraudulent basis of the invasion to be near-treasonous.
Insurgencies can not grow and build unless they have broad support across all sectors of the populace. That’s what Ritter and most other commentators are missing. Forget all the analysis from afar about how this group in Iraq hates that group, the real story is that the insurgency is supported by most everyone there. Iraq isn’t falling apart because of Machiavellian Ba’athists or rebellious Kurds, it’s falling apart because the US invaded it, then lost the war they started when the people fought back.
The war now may spread across the entire Middle East, this from the repellent John Negroponte, who also deludes himself into thinking it’ll be between “rival Islamic sects” and not also a populace who wants the US out of their countries too. Hello $100 a barrel oil, while “pitiful, helpless giant” America watches impotently.
Ritter says the best way to avoid the coming chaos is to Bring The Troops Home Now, a demand that will echo across the country on March 18 during the nationwide antiwar demonstrations.