Ritz
Wala sipingani na wewe,
Mimi natoa darasa tu, lihusulo ugaidi,
Marekani ndio imefanya ugaidi wala sina kipingamizi!
Yericko Nyerere,
Wewe si ndiyo umesema umeandika kitabu vita dhidi ya ugaidi na Wamarekani wakapata mshutuko mkubwa mpaka ukapata mualiko Marekani.
Ni darsa lipi unalolitoa hapa kuhusu ugaidi?
Hebu msome Dan Nowick wa USA TODAY kutoka Arizona, halafu jipime wewe na yeye nani anatoa dasra na nani kaipa mshutuko serikali ya Marekani.
10 years later, many see Iraq War as costly mistake
The U.S. suffered more than 4,480 deaths and 32,000 wounded during the Iraq War, which opened 10 years ago this week.
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
Story Highlights
- War opened with 'shock and awe' bombing of Baghdad
- Intelligence on WMDs turned out to be wrong
- Early widespread support for war turned to skepticism, recriminations
WASHINGTON -- A U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq with "shock and awe" 10 years ago this week, launching a war that lit up Baghdad with torrential explosions and toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. But for many Americans, the war's faulty premise that Iraq was stockpiling deadly weapons of mass destruction continues to make the decision to invade difficult to justify.
Few, if any, at the time expected that Operation Iraqi Freedom, which President George W. Bush announced on March 19, 2003, as military strikes began, would lead to an extended military presence that would last nearly nine years. The United States would suffer more than 4,480 deaths through the Iraq War's official end on Dec. 15, 2011. More than 32,000 others would be wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians would die violently, according to the website Iraq Body Count.
The price tag for the war, according to nonpartisan congressional researchers, was at least $806 billion, although that figure doesn't take into account related expenses such as coming decades of veterans benefits and other costs including medical treatment and job retraining for wounded soldiers. The massive spending contributed to the nation's current financial troubles and limits U.S. ability to respond robustly, if needed, to other international threats.
While history's verdict is not yet in, the new Iraq so far hasn't turned out to be the stable, strategic ally in the region that U.S. officials envisioned, despite the $60 billion that taxpayers spent on reconstruction. Greatly weakened, Iraq now is viewed as vulnerable to influence from neighboring Iran as well as internal sectarian violence.
In 2005, many Iraqis proudly flashed ink-stained purple fingers and thumbs after they voted in free elections, but today, the dream of democracy taking hold in Iraq is questionable at best. Corruption is rampant, and confidence in the country's institutions, such as its law-enforcement and legal systems, is low. Even the Iraq War's staunchest defenders are pessimistic about the country's postwar outlook.
"We went into Iraq without properly anticipating the consequences of being there and without properly understanding the culture of Iraq," said Gordon Adams, a professor of foreign policy at American University in Washington. "Poor planning and poor knowledge combined to prolong that conflict way past what it should have been. ... We created a lot of damage and didn't leave anything terribly healthy behind."
Back home, partisan emotions remain raw.
Democrats tend to characterize the war as a misadventure from the start, instigated by Bush administration officials spoiling for a fight with Saddam and willing to use the flimsiest evidence to exploit the American public's anxiety about terrorism after al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Some Republicans counter that the world is well rid of Saddam, who was captured and eventually hanged in 2006, while blaming Democratic President Barack Obama, who had opposed the war from the start, for frittering away the success achieved by Bush's 2007 surge strategy that is credited with turning the war around.
Others, from former Vice President Dick Cheney to former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, have suggested that the Iraq War and the fall of Saddam may have helped spawn the so-called Arab Spring movement that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in nations such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, although most foreign-policy analysts see no evidence of that.
U.S. soldiers board a C-17 aircraft at Baghdad International Airport on in July 2010, as they begin their journey home.(Photo: Maya Alleruzzo, AP)
Coming in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush White House's case for war, particularly the argument about weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs, initially won widespread public and political support. In October 2002, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 and the Senate voted 77-23 to authorize the use of force against Iraq. A March 2003 Pew Research Center poll indicated that 72 percent of U.S. adults supported the decision to attack Iraq. But that opinion changed dramatically as the war dragged on. By February 2008, Pew had found that 58 percent believed it was the wrong decision.
For the war-weary American public, the most lasting legacy may be lingering cynicism and a loss of trust in government authorities as well as a reluctance to intervene militarily on such a scale or undertake nation-building in the future.
Questions remain
Ten years after the Iraq War's start, questions still smolder, including the major one about the stunning intelligence failure with regard to the weapons of mass destruction.
War supporters struggle to come to grips with the bad information, while critics remain suspicious about the motives of the Bush administration officials involved.
"In anyone's candid moments, they will tell you were it not for the WMD, we wouldn't have authorized use of force there," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who as a member of the House voted in support of the joint resolution that led to the Iraq invasion. "I don't attribute any nefarious motives to President Bush or those involved. I think we were just wrong. Sometimes, you're wrong."
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the Bush White House's case on Iraq's alleged biological- and chemical-weapon stockpile in a dramatic Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council.
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources," Powell said. "These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
Then-CIA Director George Tenet was quoted in a 2004 book by veteran Washington journalist Bob Woodward as having told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had WMDs, although Tenet later complained that the quote's context was imprecise.
But the conclusions presented by Powell were based not on "solid intelligence" but on shoddy intelligence.
In a recent interview with
The Arizona Republic, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in retrospect there is little doubt the Bush administration's position on Iraq WMDs "probably was not correct" and that Powell delivered "false information" to the U.N.
McCain, then and now a senior GOP member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, backed the decision to invade and, when the going got rough, he was an early champion of the surge, or troop escalation, led by Gen. David Petraeus.
Perhaps more than most Capitol Hill supporters of the Iraq War, McCain paid something of a political price. His 2008 campaign for the presidency was hobbled by war fatigue and Bush's war-related unpopularity.
McCain said he regrets the way Obama wrapped up the war without reaching an agreement with the Iraqi government that would have kept some U.S. troops in the country during the transition.
"Was Saddam Hussein a long-term threat to the United States and his neighbors? Of course," McCain said. "Was that justification to go to war? It's very difficult to assess that. But the tragedy of Iraq is that we had it won, thanks to the surge that began with David Petraeus in 2007, but this administration willfully arranged it so that there was no residual force left behind, and we are now seeing the unraveling of Iraq."
A fear of WMDs
Former Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during most of the run-up to the Iraq War, said the consensus in the intelligence community was that Saddam had chemical weapons and some capacity to quickly convert biological materials into weapons. He dismissed the "Bush lied, people died" bumper-sticker slogan of war opponents as "silly" and superficial.
"I happen to know that our guys went to a lot of trouble wearing chemical protection when they got to within 22 miles of Baghdad because their intel said they were going to start using it against them," said Kyl, who did not seek re-election in 2012. "And they really believed it. And they were surprised when he didn't use it. And they were eventually surprised when they couldn't find the WMD."
But Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., said he was skeptical of the Bush administration's claims at the time and now believes the whole argument was just "a pretext" to go to war to oust Saddam, whom Bush's advisers viewed as a tyrant. Saddam had been effectively contained since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Pastor said. Pastor voted against authorizing the use of force against Iraq, seeing it as a distraction from the war in Afghanistan against the terror network that had attacked the United States on 9/11.
"In those years (after the Gulf War), there was constant surveillance," said Pastor, who is the most senior member of Arizona's House delegation. "There was no way that they (Iraqis) could develop that armament and have it ready or move it and all of that stuff. I think they (members of Bush's team) were just itching to go to war."
The second-guessing and recriminations over the reason for the war have led to an overall erosion of public trust in elected leaders when it comes to weighty issues, several lawmakers and experts told
The Republic.
"I think people are now skeptical, and my sense is this is a bipartisan skepticism," said Adams, of American University. "Part of the Obama administration's extreme reluctance to engage major American military forces or American credibility in regional struggles like (the civil war in) Syria is the domestic unpopularity of doing so. Iraq and Afghanistan became very unpopular wars, and as a result, I don't see much appetite in either political party for the massive engagement of American military force."
'A very sad situation'
Iraq remains under tremendous pressure from internal strife, and its future is uncertain.
"It's a very sad situation, in my view, particularly in light of the sacrifice of so much American blood and treasure," McCain said.
The war's cost in dollars and lives can't be justified "by saying that we have a strong partner or a meaningful strategic relationship" with Iraq - two main goals that have not been accomplished, said Anthony Cordesman, a national-security analyst at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
"There are not that many parallels between Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam as countries, but there are a lot of parallels in the mistakes we made," said Cordesman, a former McCain aide who also served in the administrations of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. "In trying to impose too many of our values too quickly. In assuming that we could do this quickly and underestimating the cost. In reacting slowly to military and insurgent developments. In creating a structure which we hoped would bring unity, but because of the way that the constitution and politics worked out, created significant sectarian and ethnic divisions in each country."
If the United States has learned lessons from those conflicts, "it certainly has not been clear to date," he added.
The war also did nothing to curb Iran's ambitions, and Iraq, with its strength considerably diminished, no longer is in a position to act as a regional counterbalance.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., predicted history will judge the Iraq War "as one of the last muscle shows by the United States that actually didn't work in our favor."
"You remember World War II, Korea, all the major wars of this nation," Grijalva said. "This is one that slips into the background, and people are comfortable with it slipping into the background. I think the legacy of this is always going to be that it was a mistake, that it was pre-emptive, that it wasn't based on real information, and that the whole struggle could have been handled differently."
Wala sipingani na wewe,
Mimi natoa darasa tu, lihusulo ugaidi,
America: The World's Number One Sponsor Of Terrorism
By Garikai Chengu
April 23, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - Just as there are good dictators and bad dictators in Washington's eyes, there are also good terrorists and bad terrorists: Al Qaeda in Iraq, bad. Al Qaeda in Syria, good. Al Qaeda in Mali, bad. Al Qaeda in Libya, good, now bad. This hypocrisy manifests itself most acutely in how western media reports on the victims of terror. On the same day as the recent Boston bombings, at least 75 people were killed in Iraq and more than 250 injured by a series of car bombs.
Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the car bombings and within minutes of the bombings in Boston, western media outlets, politicians and security experts all hastily concluded that Islamic terror was to blame. This is despite the fact that according to the FBI only 6% of terror attacks on US soil are by Muslims. In fact, Jewish extremists committed more terror attacks in the US than Muslims over the last three decades. Yet notice the disparity in media coverage between the two.
Muslims constitute 1% of the US population, but they are 13 percent of the victims of religious-based hate crimes. Clearly, Muslims at home and abroad are disproportionately the victims of terrorism. Yet in the media there is an outpouring of rage and condemnation whenever western citizens are killed, while reports of more frequent Muslim deaths are muted. In the western media there would appear to be a distinct Hierarchy of Human Life.
America's policy of openly backing Islamic terrorist groups stems largely from the Cold War era. Back then America saw the world in rather simple terms: on one side the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded as a Soviet tool; on the other side Western nations and militant political Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union. The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked that "by any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation."
The CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a barrier both to Soviet expansion and to the spread of Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported the Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia and the Jamaat-e-Islami against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not least there is Al-Qaeda. Lest we forget, Bin Laden was trained,
armed and funded by the CIA.
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook admitted that "Al-Qaeda, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of Mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians." America's relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a love-hate affair. Depending on whether a terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group, typically with drones.
American anti-terrorist operations and drones are reported to have killed at least 4700 people over the last decade, the vast majority of whom were innocent men, women and children. For every innocent civilian killed by an American drone strike, there are hundreds of grieving relatives that will inevitably resent America, any number of whom may turn to militant Islam and terrorism.
Truth is, American anti-terrorist operations are only creating more anti-American terrorists. The best that force can do is impose order. It can never elicit harmony. Therefore, a "war on terror" is flawed in theory and disastrous in practice. The war on terror has made Al Qaeda much stronger than it was on 9/11. In fact, the more Washington emphasizes war and confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation.
Quite aside from creating more terrorists than it kills, America's war on terror also has the unintended consequence of slowly but surely bankrupting the nation. Terrorist attacks on US soil embolden the right wing elements of the military industrial complex and the resulting military actions by these right wing elements embolden terrorists further. It is this vicious cycle of war and terror that future historians may well consider to be one of the key elements that precipitated the decline of the great capitalist American Empire. Adam Smith, the grandfather of capitalism was a staunch anti-imperialist. He argued that imperialism is costly and eventually bankrupts the country. In fact, one year of the US military budget is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
The monumental expansion of US military bases across the globe, in the name of counter-terrorism, illustrates the degree to which America's treasury is being overstretched by the military industrial elite who commandeer the purse strings.
As Will Blum has pointed out, following the bombing of Iraq, the US wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Following the bombing of Yugoslavia, the US wound up with military bases in Hungary, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia, Kosovo and Albania. Following the recent bombing of Afghanistan, the US is now winding up with bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Much like late stage ancient Rome and the barbarians, Washington is over-stretching and over-extending itself in the name of terrorists. Like Rome, the hubris of Washington's politicians and the gung-ho nature of its generals are threatening the empire. The three interconnected forces that destroy empires – lack of money, military over-reach and the catastrophic loss of self-confidence that stems from the other two – seem to have coalesced around America with astonishing speed since the Twin Towers tragically fell.
[h=1]The US has killed more than 168 children in Pakistan[/h] 08/12/11
Chris Woods
Drone War Exposed – the complete picture of CIA strikes in Pakistan. The Obama administration has come to rely heavily on CIA drone strikes to attack alleged militants in the country's western tribal areas. To date, at least 236 drone attacks have been ordered in Obama's name.
CIA drone strikes have led to far more deaths in Pakistan than previously understood, according to extensive new research published by the Bureau. More than 160 children are among at least 2,292 people reported killed in US attacks since 2004. There are credible reports of at least 385 civilians among the dead.
In a surprise move, a counter-terrorism official has also released US government estimates of the numbers killed. These state that an estimated 2,050 people have been killed in drone strikes – of whom all but an estimated 50 are combatants.
Reassessment
The Bureau's fundamental reassessment of the covert US campaign involved a complete re-examination of all that is known about each US drone strike.
[TD="bgcolor: #E6DBDA"]
‘The Obama administration must explain the
legal basis for drone strikes in Pakistan to
avoid the perception that it acts with impunity.
The Pakistan government must also ensure
accountability for indiscriminate killing, in vio-
lation of international law, that occurs inside
Pakistan,' Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International
[/TD]
The study is based on close analysis of credible materials: some 2,000 media reports; witness testimonies; field reports of NGOs and lawyers; secret US government cables; leaked intelligence documents, and relevant accounts by journalists, politicians and former intelligence officers.
The Bureau's findings are published in a 22,000-word database which covers each individual strike in Pakistan in detail. A powerful search engine, an extensive timeline and searchable maps accompany the data.
The result is the clearest public understanding so far of the CIA's covert drone war against the militants. Yet US intelligence officials are understood to be briefing against the Bureau's work, claiming ‘significant problems with its numbers and methodologies.'
Iain Overton, the Bureau's editor said: ‘It comes as no surprise that the US intelligence services would attack our findings in this way. But to claim our methodology is problematic before we had even published reveals how they really operate. A revelation that is reinforced by the fact that they cannot bring themselves to refer to non-combatants as what they really are: civilians and, all too often, children'.
Many more strikes
The Bureau's data reveals many more CIA attacks on alleged militant targets than previously reported. At least 291 US drone strikes are now known to have taken place since 2004.
The intended targets – militants in the tribal areas – appear to make up the majority of those killed. There are 126 named militants among the dead since 2004, though hundreds are unknown, low-ranking fighters. But as many as 168 children have also been reported killed among at least 385 civilians.
More than 1,100 people are also revealed to have been injured in the US drone attacks – the first time this number has been collated.
In the wake of the Bureau's findings Amnesty International has called for more CIA transparency. ‘The Obama administration must explain the legal basis for drone strikes in Pakistan to avoid the perception that it acts with impunity. The Pakistan government must also ensure accountability for indiscriminate killing, in violation of international law, that occurs inside Pakistan,' said Amnesty's Director of Asia Pacific Sam Zarifi.
