Going
to war with the arms and legs you have
NEW YORK - Long before the US launched a military attack on Iraq
in March last year, the Bush administration was forewarned about
the disastrous consequences of such an invasion.
But
despite the ominous warnings from the international community and
massive demonstrations by anti-war activists both in the US and
Europe, the White House decided to go to war in what turned out
to be a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction.
The
predictions against the war are now coming true: hundreds and thousands
of civilians killed, an increasing death toll of US soldiers numbering
more than 1,200, a violent insurgency against the military occupation,
the destruction of an entire country by incessant bombing and the
threat of a dismantled Iraq breaking-up into three separate nation
states of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Worse
still, the US is stuck in a Vietnam-style military quagmire unable
to extricate itself, with its ill-equipped soldiers fighting a losing
guerrilla war in an urban jungle.
At
a town hall-style meeting in a US military camp in neighbouring
Kuwait last week, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came in for
some sharp questioning by US soldiers who were complaining about
the lack of armoured vehicles to protect themselves from roadside
bombings and suicide attacks -- the weapons of choice by Iraqi insurgents
fighting a military occupation of their country.
The
soldiers, who challenged him, were about to be sent on active military
duty to Iraq. Rumsfeld, who was taken by surprise, responded with
his usual brand of arrogance: "You go to war with the army
you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later
time," he said.
With
nearly 10,000 US soldiers maimed for life and returning home with
torn off arms and legs, Rumsfeld's answer has triggered an avalanche
of protests, including from his own right wing conservatives who
are supportive of the war on Iraq. The defence secretary, who also
told his soldiers that no armour in the world could save them from
roadside bombings, finished his meeting and got into an armoured
vehicle himself that ferried him safely to the airport.
A
biting cartoon in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showed Rumsfeld in
the safety of an armoured car gazing at a U.S. soldier on crutches
with one arm and one leg missing.
In
a sarcastic variation of his comment on the shortage of armoured
vehicles, the cartoon mouths Rumsfeld as telling the physically-handicapped
soldier: "You go to war with the arms and legs you have. They're
not the arms and legs you might want or wish to have at a later
time."
Although
the death rate of US soldiers is still relatively low compared with
Vietnam, the increasing number of injured and maimed soldiers is
causing concern.
"These
soldiers are coming back to their communities, and people are seeing
just how high the price is that these young people are paying,"
says Dr. Richard Holt, a retired US army surgeon who now works at
the University of Texas Health Centre.
The
Pentagon, which is carrying on its own covert media propaganda war
to lie about the battlefront in Iraq, has been reluctant to release
detailed information about the conditions of the 9,765 soldiers
injured, as of last week.
According
to a report in the Boston Globe, "US troops injured in Iraq
have required limb amputations at twice the rate of past wars, and
as many as 20 percent have suffered head and neck injuries that
may require a lifetime of care."
Meanwhile,
after long refusing to risk the lives and limbs of its own workers
in Iraq, the UN has reversed its stance and is planning to expand
its international staff in the violence-ridden country in time for
upcoming elections in late January.
UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who withdrew most of the 650 UN international
staff from Iraq following a terrorist attack on the U.N. compound
in Baghdad which killed about 22 people in August last year, has
apparently caved into US pressure. The number of staffers, including
a UN protection force of mostly Fijians, will be increased, from
the current 59 to about 200.
But
the move to send more UN staff into Iraq has been opposed by the
Staff Union. "We were not consulted on this," a spokesman
for the Staff Union said last week. "We still stand by the
letter we sent to the Secretary-General last month," he added.
In that letter, both the union and another employee body, the Federation
of International Civil Servants, appealed to Annan's "good
judgment to ensure that no further staff members be sent to Iraq,
and that those already deployed be instructed to leave as soon as
possible."
In
October, Annan told reporters that he would not send staff to Iraq
unless there was "genuine improvement in the security environment
or solid arrangements for the protection of the staff."
But
why the sudden change of mind when the security situation in Iraq,
far from improving, has continued to deteriorate? The answer may
lie in recent calls for Annan's resignation by neo-conservatives
in the Bush administration.
Over
the last few weeks, right-wing politicians and newspapers have demanded
Annan resign over widespread charges of fraud and mismanagement
of Iraq's now-defunct, UN-supervised "oil-for-food" programme.
Last
week US Ambassador John Danforth made a public statement that despite
a right-wing conspiracy in his own administration, the White House
does not support the move to remove Annan ensuring his stay in office
till December 2006. And so, it is now pay back time.
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