By Prensa Latina
Washington : The two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama lie about one of the most important issues facing the country today, that is Iraq, asserts Alternet, a progressive online newsletter.
Both nominees are crystal clear in their rhetoric about Iraq. In a statement released on the occasion of the 4,000th U.S. combat death in Iraq, Clinton said, “I have made [a] promise. And I intend to honor it by bringing a responsible end to this war, and bringing our troops home safely.”
Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign piped in with an even more definitive statement: “It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home.”
On the campaign trail, the two candidates often speak of bringing the troops home and ending the war, and Democratic primary voters, 80 percent of whom want US troops out of Iraq within 12 months, reward them with boisterous applause.
However, both Clinton and Obama have been very clear — in the fine print — about the fact that they will leave a significant number of “residual forces” in Iraq, albeit with a more limited mission than the Bush administration has pursued.
They would protect U.S. infrastructure and personnel — Obama says “the U.S. embassy” — train Iraqi forces and retain a rapid-response force to conduct “limited counter-terrorism” missions.
When one looks at the big picture, says editor of Alternet Joshua Holland, the end game appears to be a significant draw-down of troops — with as many as 100,000 sent home or redeployed to Afghanistan, where thin NATO troops are struggling to contain a re-emergent Taliban.
Both [candidates] intend to keep the Green Zone intact. Both of them intend to keep the current US embassy project, which is slated to be the largest embassy in the history of the world.
The Associated Press described it as a “fortresslike compound rising beside the Tigris River … the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future.”
Obama and Clinton have co-sponsored legislation that would increase accountability for the 180,000 security contractors — some authorized to carry weapons and use deadly force — that have run around Iraq largely unaccountable under U.S. and Iraqi laws and the military justice system (Clinton only did so after coming under pressure from human rights and other activists). Creating accountability is a positive step, but neither Clinton nor Obama have said that they would discontinue the use of mercenaries and other private contractors in Iraq.
There is a mile-wide gap between the Democrats’ analysis of the war and that of John McCain, but all three candidates have embraced the Catch-22 that assures our enduring presence in Iraq and the sad reality is that they only differ in figures as to the number of troops that should remain in the Middle Eastern country.
Lacking a central government with broad legitimacy among different Iraqi constituencies, Iraq’s political conflicts are not a matter of academic debate. Every influential political party in Iraq has an armed wing — a militia — and decreasing the number of combat troops in Iraq will not help bring those parties to the table to come to a real accommodation.
On the other hand, transforming Iraq’s economy overnight was a matter of ideology trumping common sense, and it’s shattered a way of life for hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and fanned the flames of the anti-US insurgency.
The economic model favored by the Bush administration is deeply unpopular with the Iraqi people, and many of its most destructive features would likely be undone following a US withdrawal.
Holland warns it’s impossible to “win” an occupation; the question now is whether we will end it on negotiated terms before a Tet Offensive, or whether we’ll help fuel a long, drawn-out civil conflict. Those are our choices, and, tragically, all three presidential candidates appear to favor the latter option.