Contrary to popular opinion, and the direct order of President Obama, the head of Iraq operations, Gen. George Casey, Army Chief of Staff, said the Pentagon plans on being in Iraq for another ten years. This is not theoretical.
Casey said his comments about the long war in Iraq were not meant to conflict with administration policies.
This is the zenith of military arrogance. To publicly contradict the Commander-in-Chief, and then say, in the same sentence, that such a statement is not a contradiction.
As part of GWOT (Global War on Terrorism), the greatest boon to Pentagon careerism in history, Casey gathered a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think-tanks at an invitation-only briefing. He said his plan is for combat troops to remain in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained US commitment to "fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East."
This is classic imperialist rhetoric, a sadly typical and not very creative pretext for expansion of the empire. It means that because the US military is already there, and threats might endanger it, the imperial frontier must be pushed back, for defensive reasons only. No territorial aggrandizement is intended of course. We're there, so lets expand a bit to make us even safer.
And what might expansion look like? The US already controls Iraq, Saudi, and the Persian Gulf. Iran beckons. We are in Afghanistan. Why not go for Pakistan? The US is already bombing Pakistan every week.
You think I am making this up? Casey said
the United States must be ready to take on sustained fights in the Middle East while meeting other commitments.
...the situation in Afghanistan would get worse before it gets better. "There's going to be a big fight in the South," he said.
Going to be? Right now there is civil war in northern Pakistan, where Taliban fanatics get there quotas of irregulars to fight the "Great Satan" (USA).
Casey trotted out the standard line about how local security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were years away from being able to control the situation. Funny how the horizon timeline for security is always moving away from us. Bush II was telling us that great progress was being made training Iraqi police, etc. That was in 2004.
I have a solution. No More Imperialism. Get out of the occupation business. The American taxpayer does not need to be spending $500 billion a year on imperialism. I leave you with this telling quote from Casey, boasting about how vastly larger his Army budget had become since 9/11.
He also noted that the Army's budget had grown to $220 billion from $68 billion before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
He said the Army is two-thirds of the way through a complete overhaul from the Cold War-era force built around tanks and artillery to today's terrorist-driven realities.
Special note on "terrorist-driven realities". We spend three times as much on the Army post-9/11, because of sandal wearing, bearded, stinking religious fanatics who have no army, no navy, no air force. This is considered "reality" in the Pentagon. Here is another reality: the American taxpayer does not NEED to be extorted to the tune of half a trillion dollars per year to satisfy Pentagon careerists.