The charade in August, 2010 that "supposedly" saw the withdrawal of the last U.S. combat troops in Iraq was finally admitted on Friday when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "suggested" troops could remain in Iraq for years.
In response thousands of Iraqi protestors loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric still located in Iran, took to the streets of Baghdad (after witnessing his video message during Friday's prayers) to demonstrate against any continued U.S. military presence in the country.
All American troops are supposed to leave Iraq by the end of this year (an agreement reached with the Iraqi government during the last year of the Bush administration).
But Gates' message delivered to U.S. troops in northern Iraq was quickly pounced on by al-Sadr who said he'd reconstitute his Mahdi army if the U.S. didn't honor its pledge for all American troops to leave Iraq by the end of December.
Now anyone (even remotely) following the events in Iraq since our pre-emptive invasion and occupation began in March 2003 could easily conclude the U.S. had no intention of completely withdrawing from the country. So Gates' "suggestion" of troops remaining just confirms our real intentions.
Yet Iraq has pretty much been off the radar screen lately eclipsed by the Arab "spring" and the escalating war in Afghanistan.
With American domestic politics lately focusing on a possible government shutdown along with the lingering effects of the great recession America's wars seem largely forgotten by most Americans, a sign of how detached we are on issues that don't impact us directly.
Aside from the occasional protests against our wars (the last one held last month on the 8th anniversary of the Iraq war held outside the White House where yours truly joined veterans [now opposed to war] were arrested in a civil disobedience action) Americans generally seem resigned and indifferent to the military mayhem we inflict on other peoples.
Officially one supposes our wars are against the spread of Osama bin Laden type radical Islamic terrorism but this is just a ruse, a smokescreen to justify endless war revealing our slide into imperialism and world wide hegemony.
The Arab "spring" of grassroots, spontaneous peoples' protests against the oppressive dictators and their regimes had NOTHING connected with Islamic terrorism. Miraculously, U.S. support of these dictators and their regimes (who accepted American defense dollars in exchange for their support in our "war on terrorism") was also not a focus of the indigenous protests by the people in these Arab Muslim countries.
These Arab revolts show unmistakably that our wars are trumped up affairs and unnecessary; a cruel deceit perpetrated by the military/industrial/political complex on the American people since 9/11.
Communism pretty much ceased to exist with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 so 9/11 and Osama bin Laden became our new foil and the face of our new "enemy" which we must fight to the death.
But this is the contrived hoax only the American people seem to have swallowed. The rest of the world sees through the masquerade while the people on the other end of our firepower see it all too well and justifiably hate us for it.
But to Americans who have been successfully marketed with beer and car ads what's so hard about selling a few wars against terrorists and the perpetrators of 9/11 to those gullible enough to believe such propaganda.
That marketing success seems literally proven, considering most Americans acquiescence, tolerance and indifference to our unnecessary wars.
