It Didn't Have to End This Way: The US Army's candor is disturbing but not surprising. People from Thomas Malthus to Jay Hansen have been warning us for quite some time, that sooner rather than later, our species would be running into the finite parameters defining our existence. Malthus has been excoriated by those ignorant of the fact that his predictions were made a century prior to the discovery of "rock oil", thus delaying but not usurping humanity's inevitable decline. I would suggest that the US Army as well as the rest of the Megamachine has in fact been implementing this "redrawing" operation for quite some time. 9-11 was just the pretext contrived to catalyze the process. Unfortunately for the Megamachine, their desperation due to time constraints has led to some rather unprofessional results in the propaganda department. Exxon has just announced a multi million dollar ad campaign denouncing peak oil theory. This comes on the heels of their well known multi million dollar ad campaign denouncing global warming (sorry, climate change). What can they possibly hope to accomplish through such disinformaion? To buy time. The same thing we're all doing. An MSNBC news poll tonight asked the question whether this war on "terror" is akin to fighting the Nazis in WW II. 52% out of over a quarter million respondents answered in the negative. What's going to happen when the critical mass of people overcome their own cognitive dissonance and see this regime for the awful muderers they are? A full fledged taxpayer revolt is not too far fetched, and might throw a wrench into the Army's plans.

Submitted on Friday, Sep 1, 2006 at 2:31:19 AM

Middle Eastern MAp: Many thanks to Mr. Mosaddeq Ahmed for his thought-provoking article. Many field and company grade officers, the middle management sector of the Officers' Corps, are expressing views similar to those expressed in this article. Their experience and observations in commanding operations there in the current environment give them a particularly relevant and authoritative perspective in their views. For the sake of simplicity, I will confine these remarks to Iraq only. Even a cursory reading of Iraqi history must lead to the conclusion that the current State is a League of Nations mandate state without any sort of unifying or nationalizing factors. The current boundaries of Iraq are literally, lines drawn on a map by European diplomats. The tribalism, the sectarianism and the extreme ethnic divergences that have created the 100 or so separate armed political groups that existed in Iraq BEFORE the invasion have been exacerbated by the delegitimazation of the national institutions under the occupation. Despite the American rhetoric about free and fair elections, vast segments of the Iraqi population boycotted the elections as a political strategy. People and politicians will respond to power and the Occupation backed regime is the most powerful group currently in Iraq, but it only has power when it is backed by American firepower. The Administration did not split Iraq because that would have sent the message of conquest too boldly to the neighboring countries and nations like Saudi Arabia may very well have been even more destabilized than they have been from our current inept and futile operations. Kurdistan is not going to happen. The inauguration of a Kurdish state would entail taking territory from Iran and Turkey as well. If the Turkish and Iranian Kurdish territories were not granted in the first land grant, it would embroil those countries in a nasty war against the Kurds that would bring on Saddamesque atrocities and end in the absorption of the current Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq into Turkey and Iran. The statement that ethnic cleansing works is odious beyond comment, and untrue. The current border difficulties we are experiencing domestically in this country show that ethnic cleansing doesn't work. After a 200 year long ethnic cleansing campaign against the red race, we know find our borders swarming with millions of their descendants trying to make a living in the land of where their fathers died. The good news is that reliable polls show that Iraqi nationalism has a strong hold on the imagination of Iraqi masses and that they are committed to the country within its current borders. In an odd way the current sectarian violence may be the catalyst to more general Iraqi identity. It has been reliably reported that people are changing their names from overtly Shia of Sunni names to more general Arab names, thus submerging the raw edge of sectarianism. Perhaps, after the incendiary influence of the occupation has been removed and the Iraqis have had a period of reconciliation the seeds of nationalism that are now being sown from resistance to the foreign occupiers and merging of sectarian differences will flower in a resurgence of Iraqi identity and development. The American foreign policy and military establishment need to understand the American aid and involvement are NOT ESSENTIAL in other peoples' development. Our role in the world should be to provide educational resources, research, commerce and perhaps investment funds for peaceful and productive enterprises. Robert Chapman Lansing, New York

Submitted on Friday, Sep 1, 2006 at 11:59:54 AM