President Obama is in the midst of seeking $83.4 billion dollars in what is being termed ‘emergency funding’ for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If he is successful, the 2009 budget for those wars alone, not including the defense budget, will reach upwards of $150 billion dollars and place the overall cost of both wars at almost the trillion dollar mark.
Obviously, the military expenditures of the Bush Administration were extremely significant, increasing every year between 2001 and 2008 with the majority of funds approved by Congress between 2003 and 2008 going towards the war effort in Iraq. During that time, Obama was a critic of the use of ‘emergency funding’ to avoid costs being included in overall budgets, which has left many very perplexed as to why he is now attempting it himself.
Meanwhile, the President made a surprise visit to Iraq recently in which he echoed the now stale death rattle of the Bush Administration – it’s time that Iraqis took responsibility for their country. To his credit he did say that the United States has “no claim on Iraqi territory and resources,” though I’ll believe that when I see actual evidence that the US won’t be leasing real estate for military purposes and the West doesn’t end up engineering a coup if the Iraqis ever have the audacity to nationalize their oil industry.
That said, one can’t overlook the whole ‘take responsibility’ comment. Every time that it’s made I feel a burning sensation flow up my back and think of the absolute catastrophe that the invasion and occupation have caused. For the United States not to take responsibility for the production of the current climate in Iraq is the sort of nonsense that only world powers can get away with. You don’t invade a country, bomb the shit out of it, leave millions in substandard living conditions for years, help create the very insurgency that you then have to fight, set the table for a civil war, have your presence attract foreign terrorists like flies – all of which results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions – and then claim that it’s time someone else to ‘take responsibility’.
‘When they stand up, we’ll stand down’. Easier said than done when there are some 2 million people displaced within the country alone as a direct result of what has transpired over the last six years.
In short, it’s like me coming over to your house, taking a shit on your couch, and then telling you that you’re responsible for cleaning it up. Oh, and that you’re now better off because of it.
The United States should most certainly disengage militarily from Iraq. And in the process they should pay the Iraqi people for the damage that they’ve caused so that they have something tangible with which to ‘take responsibility’. How about that?
During the visit President Obama applauded US troops in Iraq for what he called an “extraordinary achievement”. Throughout the United States right now there are a plethora of Vietnam vets smirking. The reason? Because when you lose a war and can’t admit it that’s how you phrase it to the people that actually paid the price, either with their lives or their sanity.
