Kind regards,
Politics in Depth Team

This is mostly due to the fact that al Qaeda was never more than a few hundred people, America is hard to get to if the security forces are doing their job at all, and the fact that Bush has sent hundreds of thousands of men to the Middle East and Central/South Asia to be shot at there – which would seem to save any bin-Ladenites the trouble of coming to America.

However, as long as US combat forces remain on foreign soil, the American people are being put in danger of further suicide attacks.

As Robert A. Pape showed in his book Dying to Win, occupation by foreign combat forces is the only thing which serves to motivate suicide attacks. And as 10 men just proved in Mumbai, there is no security which can stop determined groups of men from committing acts of wide scale violence. What must be fought is the terrorists’ motivation.

The US empire is a moral and practical disaster which does not serve the interests of the vast majority of Americans anyway. So bringing our troops home and protecting Americans from terrorism should be the easy answer.

Thanks for the effort you’ve been doing for creating more awareness about the role of the united states in making a whole country get shattered and demolish a whole generation dreams ..

My question Is : Do you think the new american iraqi security pact makes any change to the iraqi people ,, and to those who were affected by the war .. who is to pay them for the damages and losses they’ve earned .. and what role is your organization doing in order to make the victims get back to their normal life ?

Thank you

Antiwar.com opposes the idea of paying reparations only because we don’t want to see paying them out as an excuse to stay (“Look! We painted a school!) and we are leery of the prospect of who would get the money really, and who would be in charge of distributing it.

If there were some way to easily and automatically drop a separate check into every Iraqis hand as our troops left, that would be but a small token of the true debt owed to the people of that land.

(The US should never have supported him in the first place either. Backing dictators is wrong.)

This whole pullout plan appears to me to no more than political campaign rhetoric. I often tend to listen and trust what US commanders in Iraq say more than what US politicians say. Gen. Petraius told congress this year that “We have major interests” in Iraq. Based on this assumption, it is unlikely that the US will ever withdraw in Iraq, both its combat or non combat troops. Obama will find a way to go back on his promise and keep the troops in Iraq. What is your intake sir on this?

Have no hope for Obama, but keep a keen eye on events; he may be forced to live up to his promise after all.

Does antiwar.com see Obama as good news for Iraq?

As far as I know, he’s not in any position to directly challenge the Maliki government, but if he calls his group back to war against American forces, things could become much more difficult.

Sadr has tried in the past to form a coalition with Sunni Arabs against the Maliki government. The current administration has worked hard to prevent any such thing (though it might not have worked anyway).

Renewed fighting against the Mahdi Army would also mean the increased danger of war with Iran since the US military like to pretend whenever a Sadrist sets off a bomb that it must have come from Iran. We saw this lie pushed through most of 2007 and the first half of this year. It was the basis of the Kyle-Lieberman amendment in the summer of ’07 pushing for strikes inside Iran.

More war propaganda like that we do not need.

To be clear: The benefits to the US are non-existent. If there is any such thing as a single “national interest,” this is most certainly not serving it. Only those who work for the national security state as government employees and private contractors, oil company executives and think tank wienies benefit at the expense of the people of Iraq and the United States.

If Obama is really the ‘Change’ how is Gates renewal in the Pentagon help this concept?

If we try to be optimistic, we could hope that he only kept Gates in order to keep a tough-guy Republican face on his perceived wimpy plan to withdraw so that it would be easier politically here.

Also, Gates and Obama are in agreement that they need to escalate the war against the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As far as the law, when has that ever stopped the US government from doing anything?

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Best,
Politics in Depth Team