Ray Coughenour, Colonel (Ret) US Army: Why Keep Playing When The Game is Over

[babylonsister]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ray_coug_070510_why_keep_playing_whe.htm

Why Keep Playing When The Game is Over.

Imagine it is bottom of the ninth inning, your team (Visitors) are leading 4 to nothing, and the other team (Home Team) just struck out for their third out. That means the game is over and the Visitors won. Well not if you’re the current American President and Administration. They have decided to allow the Home Team, which is a loosely coordinated group of thugs called Al Quieda to keep playing the game. In fact they cannot even tell us when the game will end. The score is still 4-0 as will be explained later in this article, but some in our government and in our congress and on the conservative radio airwaves want the game to just go on and on. If you play to long the other team will eventually catch up.

I want to insure that there is no missed perception here. I am proud of what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and proud of what I did there. I have shaken the hands of Iraqi men who personally thanked me for removing Saddam. I have walked in 4,000 year old ruins in the City of Ur in southern Iraq that many historians accept as the birthplace of Abraham from the Bible. America has saved the “Cradle of Civilization”.

However, as is I hear the debate about what to do in Iraq and Afghanistan (The forgotten War) rage everyday I am perplexed. Perplexed as a career soldier with a Bronze Star from the war in Iraq, as the father of soldier in the combat zone, and as an American Citizen.


snip//


Back to the game scenario. Robert E. Lee said, “thank god war is so terrible lest we grow fond of it”. Mr. President, we won, we won. Quit listening to the defeatists who are trying to say if we leave Iraq and Afghanistan we have lost. The only way we can lose is if we stay too long. It is now up to the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan to step up to the plate and accept the tremendous gift of freedom we have given them, paid for with blood of our soldiers and hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Four and one-half years in Iraq and six years in Afghanistan is just too long. The day is done, the game is won, and it is time to come home.


Ray Coughenour
Colonel (Ret) US Army

[Boo Boo]

1. Col. Ray probably still believes in Santa and the Easter Bunny.

Earth to Ray...

It's the Oil, Stupid. We did not build that huge Embassy (our largest in the World) and those military installations for nothing, Bubba. We did not invade Iraq to give the gift of freedom (it was the WMD, remember?), and we sure as hell didn't spend all that friggin' money just to turn around and leave.

Cripes.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Interesting perspective, but the Colonel doesn't seem to realize that neither war

was about "the gift of freedom." The Bush Junta has never had any interest in anybody's "freedom." If they had their druthers, we'd all be in slave labor camps. The Iraq War is a corporate resource war, plain and simple--either to profit from that spigot, or suppress production to drive up the price. And the Afghanistan War was about looking like they meant to capture Osama bin Laden--but had no intention of doing so (read "House of Saud, House of Bush")--and may also be about the gas pipeline. Both wars are also about war profiteering--feeding the "military-industrial complex" with its regular blood portion. That these wars were about "freedom" was the line of malarkey that the Bush Junta sold to soldiers and gullible citizens. It is the false narrative of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. And this is why we're still there, in both wars. It's not about "freedom." It's about its opposite--fascism. Dominance and theft. The cementing of corporations and the state, and stuffing the pockets of the super-rich.

The colonel's simple solution therefore won't be allowed to work. And this is why it hasn't been considered, and won't be considered. It has never been about "freedom." It has all along been about occupation--permanent occupation. Further, Iraq is also about Iran, the ultimate target. Are our global corporate predators going to give up what may be their only chance to instigate war on Iran? No. The goal has all along been to ensconce the US military, private contractors (at enormous drain on US taxpayers), and secret operations in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. The US doesn't allow "freedom" to people who own the resources that our corporate predators want to steal.

The truth on the ground is that the Iraqi people and the Afghani people have never been more oppressed than they are now. Both societies have been smashed to pieces. In Iraq, they are not only living in an armed US military camp, with daily killings, tortures and home and neighborhood invasions by the US military or private contractors, they are suffering a civil war that Donald Rumsfeld encouraged--directly and more than likely with the black ops--with daily carnage, and a completely unsafe and abnormal environment. In Afghanistan, most of the country is controlled by war lords and drug traffickers again, due to our invasion. In both countries, women are not only suffering from fundamentalist Islam, they are not safe. And children are suffering the most--horrible injuries and death, poisoned by depleted uranium, lacking food or any kind of constructive, nurturing environment, medical care almost completely collapsed (especially in Iraq), lack of clean water, and they are daily shown examples of the humiliation and powerlessness of their parents, families and communities. "Freedom" is so out of touch with experience, especially with regard to the children, that it seems callous even to use the word. What does "freedom" mean to a starving child with its legs and arms blown off, or its eyesight destroyed? What does "freedom" mean to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are fleeing their country, who are now refugees without a home? What does "freedom" mean with tribal/religious killings occurring every day?

In some sense, he's right. Declare victory and get out. Though it would be a damned lie, at least it would remove US forces and unaccountable contractors from illegal, unjust, heinous wars. That fiction--that we "won" (against nearly helpless "enemies")--would then poison us, here at home, even more. It is dishonest. No reform will come of it. And there will be more corporate resource wars, and ever increasing militarization of our country. And it is nonsensical. What did we "win"? Absolutely nothing, except the hatred of the entire world. But if it would stop the horror--and I think it would (US withdrawal would result in regional and UN initiatives)--then I guess I shouldn't object to us living with yet another lie. Perhaps it's what we deserve--to become the laughingstock of the world because we think we were "victorious."