Stan Goff is a career military guy. He is also a prolific writer. This exerpt describes the impact the anti-war movement had on the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Remember when the news stations had up their graphics and their parade of retired jarheads? Would Turkey allow US to invade from the North? All our troops amassed in Kuwait. Hurry up and wait. It must have felt like a big made for TV movie production, reporters embedded. And ... we waited, while Powell dicked around at the UN. It was right then I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Here we were sitting ducks for a chem laced scud or some other Strangelovian horror. Hey they don't pay me to think but, if he had WMD wouldn't he have lobbed it at us while were all sitting in Kuwait. Hussein didn't have a pot to piss in.
The war was carefully stage managed, sold via PR firms like the Rendon Group. As was 9-11. The big plastic turkey in the living room as we wage genocidal war for profit all across God's green earth.
Do you want to tell your grandkids: Well Jr. it was like this ... veee ver joost vahloeen awwwdaahs.
From Full Spectrum Disorder:
How had the antiwar movement become a material force on the Iraqi battleground?
A snapshot of the tactical situation, as least what could be gleaned from different accounts, revealed that the original battle plan was scrapped. The complexity of planning a military operation of that scope is simply indescribable, and it takes months to do it right. But the unexpected loss of ground fronts, in Turkey in the north and Saudi Arabia in the south, forced a complete reconstruction of plans in a matter of days. The operation could be put off no longer. The aggressor's back was against the weather wall. The pre-summer sandstorms had already begun, and by late April the heat index inside a soldier's chemical protective gear could be 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
The international antiwar movement had firmed up political opposition around the world and forced the delays that culminated in the UN Security Council becoming a key arena of struggle. For the ossified left who couldn't see beyond their own simplistic shibboleths and who dismissed the UN on ideological - and therefore idealist - grounds, there was an example of how politics translates dialectically into military reality.
We had stalled the Bush administration to push the war back, and there was an effect. There is an effect to this day. Never doubt it.
Theatrical Militarism