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Welcome home, you troops who made it all the way home, and who aren’t being re-routed to Afghanistan or anywhere else. Take care of yourselves and don’t be shy about asking the country to fulfill its commitments to you. People need to be reminded that this, too, is part of the cost of war.
There’s not much else to say, is there? Nevertheless, with the Iraq War ending — or “ending,” as noted in this cartoon video by Mark Fiore — it a good time for Americans to assess how much of this war was worth it — and to whom. (If you’re the Iranian government, for example, we all know that you have much to celebrate.)
The cartoon above, by the way, is from an artist named Carl Latuff, available through this site. It contains hundreds of cartoons, apparently, others of which I have not reviewed and which therefore I can’t endorse — but I think that this one hits one particular nail on the head. It states:
Download for free zip files containing high-resolution artworks (cartoons, photomontages, comics) produced by me from 2002 to March, 2008. All the artworks can be freely reproduced, without my formal permission…. Once saved to your computer, share it with people. Upload it on different servers, make it available on websites and file sharing clients, save it to CD, make copies and distribute. Make these cartoons to reach people with no access to Internet.
I think that least one can do when someone shares their years of work for free is to give them that sort of acknowledgement.
Now it’s your turn, Orange Juice Blog readers, to celebrate the end(ish) of this war in your own inimitable ways.
This is a very sad day for the victims of our war.
This was a war that waged in response to the attacks on 9/11, unfortunately Iraq had nothing to do with it.
We were told that they had WMDs, and we had better get over there and preemptively put a stop to it. None were ever found.
We killed hundreds of thousands of locals (some estimates over a million), almost 4,500 of our own, and more than 32,000 physically wounded. Mental casualties can’t be assessed for decades.
It cost us almost a trillion dollars, none of it paid for. We put it all on the credit card while giving out tax breaks. All while our infrastructure crumbled.
So what did we accomplish?
We created the best recruitment tools imaginable for radical Arab organizations (and probably helped create some), by having drones attack wedding parties, and girls schools.
We trounced on our own personal freedoms with domestic wire tapping, FISA and the Patriot Act.
We had Americans defending water boarding, and actually boasting about it.
We created multimillionaires by hiring mercenaries to do things that we wouldn’t allow our military to do.
Not a real proud day for real Americans.
Nobody is planning a ticker-tape parade today. I think we would like to downplay this whole mess.
I would add that, despite all the saber-rattling on IRAN during the Bush years and all the talk about what a threat they were, the invasion of Iraq had the effect of STRENGTHENING Iran in the region. Iraq, a formerly Sunni-governed country, became a Shiite-led country, now perfectly aligned with the interests of Iran. Nice. Thanks, neocons!
You’re right, and that is very sad for the brave men and women who signed up to risk their lives, in the wake of 9/11, to do whatever their government deemed would keep us safe from such attacks.
*Thank you President Obama….you did what you said you would do. Someone that actually keeps a campaign promise. Shocking!
Now, let’s get our guys out of the Afghan hills and back home too! We will have to
send some new, improved model drones however!
Welcome home troops………..It is going to be a great Christmas and 2012!
We largely have the invaluable Wikileaks and the heroic Bradley Manning to thank for getting us out of this quagmire. The Obama administration, which seems to be as much a hostage to the military industrial complex as most every administration, was negotiating hard to keep a lot more troops there, but they needed the Iraqis’ consent. After Wikileaks released some damning evidence of the unpunished, covered-up murders of Iraqi families by some of our bad-apple troops, the Iraqis had no choice but to say forget it.
So now my 2007 version of “Jingle Bell Rock” sounds more celebratory than rebellious:
Bring ‘em back bring ‘em back bring ‘em back home,
Pack ‘em in trucks and shlepp ‘em in jeeps,
Squeeze ‘em in humvees, a dozen to one,
Now your Exit Plan has begun!
Bring ‘em back bring ‘em back bring ‘em back home,
Here a battalion, there a platoon,
Fly home that jet plane as full as you dare,
thru the frosty air!
It’s the right time, yes it’s high time,
to end this dumbass war!
Turn our Bradleys into ploughshares:
We ain’t gonna study war no more!
Bring ‘em back bring ‘em back bring ‘em back home,
Ship ‘em home ‘round the clock;
With all dispatch snatch ’em out of Iraq,
That’s your Exit Plan, that’s our Exit Plan,
that’s the Exit Plan Rock!
That is some mighty impressive parodification there!
Yep, those troops can now be used to fight that war next to the USA border.
Free Mexico from those mass murderers.
When you use paid informers you can get any kind of information you want. For the right price my sources will give you the real scoop on Iran – just make an offer.
You mean they’ll tell you what you want to hear, right? Like Curveball.
They’ll also do that if you torture them.
Over(ish) I like that.
The Iraqi people will continue to kill each other like they been doing all along.
The USA and the west needs to stop trying to civilize a population of people who for thousands of years have beaten, murdered, raped, degraded and enslaved their own female population. What makes us think that because these Arab whackjobs can be tamed. They are an invented, brutal chaotic population who only can be ruled with fear and burtality. But with men and women from the US and Europe going into the hell they might have instilled a little bit of humanity into people that act like animals against their own. Iraq will not impove nor will they prosper because they are Muslims and the Muslim religion is not a religion of peace but an ideology of hate and oppression.