When the Goal Is War Profits — No Amount of Deadly Silliness Appears to Be too Much — Repeating the Tiresomely Futile Training Mission in Iraq

© 2015 Peter Free

 

11 June 2015

 

 

Explaining the evident imbecility of American foreign policy can only be done from a cynical perspective

 

We are repetitively stupid on purpose because that is where war profits are.

 

To wit — after the interminably American-trained Iraq Army has twice run away from its outnumbered and out-weaponed ISIL foe — losing enormous amounts of American weaponry to the enemy in the process — the United States is again sending advisors to pretend-whip Iraq’s haplessly unmotivated troops and leadership into shape:

 

 

US President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of up to 450 more US troops to Iraq to advise and assist local forces in an effort to reverse the recent gains of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

 

Under the plan, the United States will open a fifth training site in Iraq, with the goal of integrating Iraqi Security Forces and Sunni fighters. The immediate objective is to retake the city of Ramadi, seized by ISIL last month.

 

Obama made the decision at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi and based on advice from Pentagon leaders, the White House said. The US troops will not be used in a combat role.

 

"These new advisers will work to build capacity of Iraqi forces, including local tribal fighters, to improve their ability to plan, lead, and conduct operations against ISIL in eastern Anbar under the command of the prime minister," Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said.

 

© 2015 Associated Press and Al Jazeera, US to send hundreds of extra troops to train Iraqi army, Al Jazeera English (11 June 2015)

 

This Iraq Army is, of course, the same bunch of sectarian folks who have not cared about preserving the Western-imposed, in name only Iraqi nation since the US began its deadly meddling and “training” in 2003.

 

Why the outcome would be different now, after another round of half-assed American interference, escapes me and everyone else who has a functioning and culturally attuned brain.

 

 

The moral? — When apparently ineducable stupidity reigns among American leaders who should know better, something else must be afoot

 

The only folks who benefit from the interminable US meddling in the Middle East is the Military Industrial Complex, which today makes up a very significant fraction of the American economy.

 

Throw in the American public’s now defining cowardice, and we have a recipe for perpetually fomenting war in other people’s backyards:

 

 

Ever since the scared little men of the Bush administration came to Washington, we've let ourselves be scared by everyone and everything.

 

© 2015 Daily Take Team, America: Not the Home of the Brave, but of the Scared S**tless, TruthOut (01 June 2015)

 

It seems that “we” are endlessly willing to expend other people’s blood to keep our pitiful selves safe at the mall. We apparently do not even care whether those “foreign” folk’s bleeding accomplishes something useful.

 

It would be difficult to come up with a more puke-inducing description of American national culture than this one. But there you have it. Our foreign policy defines us as greedy, brainless and cowardly — all in one swoop.

 

I can understand why our Islamic foes hold us in cultural contempt. Their arguably justified feeling makes them more formidable.

 

 

The cycle of suffering continues.