Friday, December 16, 2011

American Imperialism and I

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Chủ nghĩa đế quốc Mỹ và tôi


Iraq, sau khi Mỹ kết thúc vai trò chiến tranh, bây giờ phải xác định "nhiệm vụ thực hiện '

Obama ca ngợi vai trò của quân đội Mỹ trong việc tạo ra nền dân chủ Iraq. Bây giờ ông vẫn còn phải giúp đỡ Iraq giữ cho chính phủ mong manh của nó và chủ quyền.
Ban biên tập của Monitor / ngày 15 tháng 12 năm 2011
Lá cờ Mỹ và Iraq đang tiến hành trong một buổi lễ ở Baghdad 15 Tháng Mười Hai đánh dấu sự kết thúc chính thức của nhiệm vụ quân đội Mỹ trong chiến tranh. Việc rút quân cuối cùng sẽ được ngày 31 tháng 12.
Reuters / Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Pool
Như Tổng thống Obama kết thúc sứ mệnh quân sự Mỹ Iraq, chúng tôi hy vọng ít nhất một công dân Iraq sẽ yêu cầu rời Mỹ nói chung :
"Vì vậy, những gì bạn có để lại cho chúng ta?"
Có lẽ phản ứng sẽ được tương tự như những gì Ben Franklin nói với một người phụ nữ ở Philadelphia sau khi cô hỏi anh ta những gì Hội nghị Lập hiến 1787 đã chỉ cho người Mỹ:
"Một nước cộng hòa - nếu bạn có thể giữ nó."
Tạo một nền dân chủ tại Iraq là một trong những lý do cơ bản cho cuộc xâm lược của Mỹ vào năm 2003 (một đã kết thúc khả năng để sản xuất vũ khí hủy diệt hàng loạt của Iraq.) Nhưng dân chủ là lý do mà cả hai ông Obama và George W. Bush có thể tìm thấy mặt đất phổ biến trong những nỗ lực tương ứng của họ như là Chủ tịch để sắp xếp cho xuất cảnh đầu tổ chức cao của quân đội vào cuối năm 2011.
Hôm thứ Tư, ông Obama đã ca ngợi binh sĩ Hoa Kỳ này "thời điểm của sự thành công", mà ông định nghĩa là kết thúc một chế độ độc tài và "để lại sau lưng một nước Iraq có chủ quyền, ổn định, và tự chủ, với một chính phủ đại diện được bầu của người dân của nó."
Bình luận của ông vang vọng những người của ông Bush hai tháng trước khi cuộc xâm lược: "Nếu chúng ta giải phóng người dân Iraq, họ có thể yên tâm rằng chúng tôi sẽ giúp họ xây dựng một quốc gia là giải giáp và hòa bình, thống nhất và miễn phí." (Trong cùng một nói chuyện kéo dài trước khi mùa xuân Ả Rập - Bush cũng cho biết: "Một Iraq tự do có thể là một nguồn hy vọng cho tất cả các khu vực Trung Đông . ")
Tại thời điểm đó, 6 trong số 10 người Mỹ ủng hộ chiến tranh với Iraq. Nhưng như quân đội Mỹ cuối cùng rời đi, cuộc thăm dò khác cho thấy 60% người Mỹ nói rằng việc thu hồi sẽ dẫn đến "cuộc nội chiến tất cả ra."
Người Iraq tự có những lo lắng tương tự. Đó là lý do tại sao Obama để lại đằng sau một sự hiện diện dân sự mạnh mẽ ở Iraq có thể cung cấp thông tin tình báo chống khủng bố tiếp tục cũng như vũ khí và đào tạo cho lực lượng Iraq. Để giúp xây dựng các phòng vệ của đất nước, ví dụ, ông muốn bán thêm 18 máy bay chiến đấu F-16 cho Iraq.
Tuy nhiên, dân chủ vẫn còn lung lay tại Iraq mặc dù các cuộc bầu cử thành công. Thủ tướng Nouri al -Maliki, một người Shiite, Sunni đủ, người Kurd, hoặc các nhà lãnh đạo thế tục trong chính phủ để tạo ra sự ổn định.
Hoặc như Bộ trưởng Quốc phòng Leon Panetta đã nói: "Iraq sẽ được kiểm tra trong những ngày tới chủ nghĩa khủng bố, và những người sẽ tìm cách để phân chia, các vấn đề kinh tế và xã hội, nhu cầu của nền dân chủ của chính nó. "
Ông cũng nói rằng Hoa Kỳ "sẽ ở đó để đứng của người dân Iraq." Thật vậy, Mỹ vẫn có nhiều cổ phần tại Iraq sau khi sự mất mát của 4.487 cuộc sống Mỹ và 32.226 người bị thương. Việc quản lý yếu kém của chiến tranh sau khi cuộc xâm lược cũng đóng góp vào các vụ giết người không cần thiết của hàng ngàn dân thường Iraq.
Chỉ huy quân sự Hoa Kỳ đã hy vọng để giữ 20.000 quân ở Iraq cho một hoặc hai năm. Nhưng nó chỉ có thể được thu hồi này sẽ giúp các nhà lãnh đạo Iraq chịu trách nhiệm nhiều hơn cho tương lai của đất nước.
Nếu không có quân đội chiếm đóng, ông Maliki có thể được tốt hơn có thể là chủ quyền lãnh đạo để mời trở lại giúp đỡ của Mỹ, nếu cần thiết. Hoa Kỳ, sau khi tất cả, kế hoạch, để lại một lực lượng lớn ở gần đó Kuwait và vẫn là một đối tác thân thiết.
Dù vẫn còn phân chia người Iraq 30 triệu - tôn giáo, dầu sự giàu có, dân tộc - có thể hy vọng được làm việc thông qua các nền dân chủ mà họ đã giúp tạo ra. Nó bây giờ là tùy thuộc vào họ, không phải là người Mỹ, để xác định "nhiệm vụ thực hiện."

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Iraq, after US ends its war role, must now define 'mission accomplished'

Obama praises role of US troops in creating Iraqi democracy. Now he must still help Iraq keep its fragile government and sovereignty.
By the Monitor's Editorial Board / December 15, 2011
US and Iraqi flags are carried in a ceremony in Baghdad Dec. 15 marking the official end of US military mission in the war. The final troop withdrawal will be by Dec. 31.
Reuters/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Pool
As President Obama ends the American military mission in Iraq, we hope at least one Iraqi citizen will ask a departing US general:
“So, what have you left us?”
Perhaps the response will be similar to what Ben Franklin told a woman in Philadelphia after she asked him what the 1787 Constitutional Convention had just given the Americans:
“A republic – if you can keep it.”
Creating a democracy in Iraq was only one of many rationales for the US invasion in 2003 (another was ending Iraq’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.) But democracy is the one reason on which both Mr. Obama and George W. Bush could find common ground in their respective efforts as presidents to arrange for the head-held-high exit of troops by the end of 2011.
On Wednesday, Obama praised US soldiers for this “moment of success,” which he defined as ending a dictatorship and “leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”
His comments echo those made by Mr. Bush two months before the invasion: “If we liberate the Iraqi people, they can rest assured that we will help them build a country that is disarmed and peaceful and united and free.” (In that same talk – long before the Arab Spring – Bush also said: “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East.”)
At the time, 6 out of 10 Americans supported going to war with Iraq. But as the final US troops now leave, another poll shows 60 percent of Americans say the withdrawal will lead to “all-out civil war.”
Iraqis themselves have the same worry. That’s why Obama is leaving behind a robust civilian presence in Iraq that can provide continuing counterterrorism intelligence as well as weapons and training for Iraqi forces. To help build the country’s defenses, for example, he wants to sell 18 more F-16 fighter jets to Iraq.
Still, democracy remains wobbly in Iraq despite several successful elections. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has yet to include enough Sunnis, Kurds, or secular leaders in government to create stability.
Or as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta put it: “Iraq will be tested in the days ahead – by terrorism, and by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself.”
He also said the United States “will be there to stand by the Iraqi people.” Indeed, the US still has much at stake in Iraq after the loss of 4,487 American lives and another 32,226 wounded. The mismanagement of the war after the invasion also contributed to the needless killings of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
The US military command had hoped to keep 20,000 troops in Iraq for another year or two. But it may just be that this withdrawal will help Iraqi leaders take more responsibility for their country’s future.
Without occupying troops, Mr. Maliki might be better able as sovereign leader to invite back American help, if needed. The US, after all, plans to leave a large force in nearby Kuwait and to remain a close partner.
Whatever still divides the 30 million Iraqis – religion, oil wealth, ethnicity – can hopefully be worked out through the democracy that they helped create. It is now up to them, not the Americans, to define “mission accomplished.”

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  • As I read this editorial making the (departure) day a celebration of some sorts, My memory of one such last day of (departure) is refreshed.If I were the editor of the Christian Science Monitor, on that particular day, I would have said something similar, NOT.
    Flashback:
    North Vietnamese forces under the command of the Senior General Văn Tiến Dũng began their final attack on Saigon, which was commanded by General Nguyen Van Toan on April 29, with a heavy artillery bombardment. This bombardment at the Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport killed the last two American servicemen that died in Vietnam, Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge.[1]. By the afternoon of the next day, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points within the city and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace. South Vietnam capitulated shortly after. The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after communist leader Ho Chi Minh. The fall of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, which was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the war and institution of new rules by the communists contributed to a decline in the population of the city......
    .....By this time the Ford administration had also begun planning a complete evacuation of the American presence. Planning was complicated by practical, legal, and strategic concerns. The administration was divided on how swift the evacuations should be. The Pentagon sought to evacuate as fast as possible, to avoid the risk of casualties or other accidents. The U.S Ambassador to South Vietnam, Graham Martin, was technically the field commander for any evacuation, since evacuations are in the purview of the State Department. Martin drew the ire of many in the Pentagon by wishing to keep the evacuation process as quiet and orderly as possible. His desire for this was to prevent total chaos and to deflect the real possibility of South Vietnamese turning against Americans, and to keep all-out bloodshed from occurring.
    Ford approved a plan between the extremes in which all but 1,250 Americans—few enough to be removed in a single day's helicopter airlift—would be evacuated quickly; the remaining 1,250 would leave only when the airport was threatened. In between, as many Vietnamese refugees as possible would be flown out.
    Meanwhile, Martin began (in his words) "playing fast and loose with exit visas" to allow any and all who wished to leave Saigon to depart by any means available in the early days. Without the Pentagon's knowledge, Martin and Deputy Chief of Mission Wolfgang Lehmann had already begun allowing thousands of South Vietnamese nationals to depart.
    American evacuation planning was set against other administration policies. Ford still hoped to gain additional military aid for South Vietnam. Throughout April, he attempted to get Congress behind a proposed appropriation of $722 million, which might allow for the reconstitution of some of the South Vietnamese forces that had been destroyed. Kissinger was opposed to a full-scale evacuation as long as the aid option remained on the table, because the removal of American forces would signal a loss of faith in Thieu and severely weaken hi
    The original evacuation plans had not called for a large-scale helicopter operation at the United States Embassy, Saigon. Helicopters and buses were to shuttle people from the Embassy to the DAO Compound. However, in the course of the evacuation it turned out that a few thousand people were stranded at the embassy, including many Vietnamese. Additional Vietnamese civilians gathered outside the Embassy and scaled the walls, hoping to claim refugee status. Thunderstorms increased the difficulty of helicopter operations. Nevertheless, the evacuation from the Embassy continued more or less unbroken throughout the evening and night.
    At 03:45 on the morning of April 30, the refugee evacuation was halted. Ambassador Martin had been ordering that South Vietnamese be flown out with Americans up to that point. Kissinger and Ford quickly ordered Martin to evacuate only Americans from that point forward.
    Reluctantly, Martin announced that only Americans were to be flown out, due to worries that the North Vietnamese would soon take the city and the Ford administration's desire to announce the completion of the American evacuation. Ambassador Martin was ordered by President Ford to board the evacuation helicopter.
    The call sign of that helicopter was "Lady Ace 09", and the pilot carried direct orders from President Ford for Ambassador Martin to be on board. The pilot, Gerry Berry, had the orders written in grease-pencil on his knee-pads. Ambassador Martin's wife, Dorothy, had already been evacuated by previous flights, and left behind her personal suitcase so a South Vietnamese woman might be able to squeeze on board with her....
    Model of U.S. embassy in Saigon. The rooftop staircase that can be seen in the model is on permanent display at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
    "Lady Ace 09" from HMM-165 and piloted by Berry, took off around 05:00 - had Martin refused to leave, the Marines had a reserve order to arrest him and carry him away to ensure his safety. The embassy evacuation had flown out 978 Americans and about 1,100 Vietnamese. The Marines who had been securing the Embassy followed at dawn, with the last aircraft leaving at 07:53. A few hundred Vietnamese were left behind in the embassy compound, with an additional crowd gathered outside the walls.
    The Americans and the refugees they flew out were generally allowed to leave without intervention from either the North or South Vietnamese. Pilots of helicopters heading to Tan Son Nhat were aware that PAVN anti-aircraft guns were tracking them, but they refrained from firing. The Hanoi leadership, reckoning that completion of the evacuation would lessen the risk of American intervention, had instructed Dũng not to target the airlift itself. Meanwhile, members of the police in Saigon had been promised evacuation in exchange for protecting the American evacuation buses and control of the crowds in the city during the evacuation.
    Thank God for small mercies, I am not on the Christian Science Monitor's editorial board or for that matter, historically speaking, on board of the "Lady Ace 09" from HMM-165 and piloted by Berry, took off around 05:00
    ...and I am Sid Harth@sidileaks.net

  • sensi
    "Creating a democracy in Iraq was only one of many rationales for the US invasion in 2003 (another was ending Iraq’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.) "
    Huh, stop lying and playing the revisionists (or stop pretending to be journalists): they were no rational, only lies, deception, and mass media complicity to pave the way toward that appalling and illegal war of aggression...

  • locoyokel
    I think you're caviling. There were rationales for the war, they were just made up out of whole cloth.

  • Whew, the stench of hypocrisy and balderdash from all orifices of the Establishment - present company not excepted.  "Heads held high" indeed.

  • hit and run
    Need to break out that old "Mission Accomplished" banner that Bush had as a back-drop on a carrier many years ago.  It would be just as much a lie now as it was then.

  • The troops are being replaced by even more costily PMC's (PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS) our BILLION dollar embassy in Baghdad isn't built for tea and apple pie.

  • Onlyjoined Foraccess
    As I recall, the "mission" was that urgent, totally made-up need to find and destroy "weapons of mass destruction". But of course there never were any. Oops.I guess the secondary mission was just to get the heck out of there and we eventually succeeded at that.
    Hooray for us.

  • were are the WMD ? 8 hunred billion dollars spent  for what ? 4500 young American boys killed , 32,000  Americans without legs, or arms. Only Ron Paul undrestands , this madness

  • the war should end when Saddam Hussein was hanged, otherwise we just shifted from Irak to Afghanistan, which make more sense since the attack of 9-11 was plotted from Afghanistan by an organism that has no border or country.

  • for America it should end the day Saddam Hussein was hanged...otherwise we simply exchange Irak for Afghanistan which make more sense since the attack of 9-11 was plotted from Afghanistan by a group that has no border or no definitive country.

  • godeaux
    This is a comment on the Christian Science Monitor in general, rather than the subject of this editorial.  Though I subscribe to my local newspaper,  I get most of my news through the portal of Google News, which shuffles the sources for any given story.  As a consequence, I end up being directed to a wide array of publications:  Reuters, Fox News, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, just to name a few.Patterns become recognizable, and I learn that some sources come with a consistent slant on the news, be it right or left.  My guard sort of goes up, and I read with my radar up for subtle shifts in the presentation of the story.  With some, I have to take everything I read with a grain of salt.  However, when I see that I'm directed to the Christian Science Monitor I relax a little.  That is because I've come to find that the Monitor consistently delivers fact-based reporting that steers away from ideology more than any other source I encounter.  This article is a good example.  This editorial opinion piece is more fact-based than most straight news stories from other providers.
    I know I sound like a shill for the Christian Science Monitor, but it's not the case.  Indeed, when I first encountered the publication, I expected a religious-based slant, both in the reporting and editorials.  Again and again I have been surprised at how neutral it remains, especially when compared to other sources.
    That's it, just thought I'd share that.  What's been your experience?

  • locoyokel
    I've been reading this periodical since they came online which has got to be something like 15 years ago. It's a very good paper. One of the best. They've made some pretty radical changes to their business model and I they last for a long time into the future.

  • callmebc
    This is no more than extricating ourselves from a sad, sorry episode in our country's history that should never, ever had happened. While it's tempting to just finger Bush and his people for this lie-based, mismanaged, destructive and deadly mess, something this size doesn't happen without a lot of other people contributing, from a timid, irresponsibly non-critical press to other political leaders who should have known better, but were reluctant to be seen soft on terrorism, even when that wasn't the real issue.

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...and I am Sid Harth@arabuhuru.org

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