Originally Posted by
ChrisGeorge
I agree that the average American is being misled as to the nature of the situation in Iraq. The American public has been fed the line by Bush and Co. that it is mainly a war against Al Queda and the people who attacked the World Trade Center. They are not being told that the U.S. is trapped in an unwinnable civil war. I also agree that there is a myth about the invincibility of the U.S. armed forces. In this situation, they can't win because they are fighting an undefined enemy in a hostile country.
The blueprint for this war was drawn up in Korea and has been followed, with only slight modification, everywhere the US has invaded since Korea. The US seems to be a prisoner of it's own propaganda when it comes to military action. An often used, but failed, tactic is that of pacification and the British experience in Malaya is often held up as a shining example of this tactic, forgetting of course that the British were fighting Chinese communist "insurgents" and not native Malayans. The majority of the native population in Malaya, Muslims, where as averse to communism, no matter what stripe, as were the British capitalists. This, and this fact alone, led to the success of the pacification policy.
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US foreign policy has been, for the most part, a disaster ever since the Monroe Doctrine declaration. The only thing American foreign policy seems to accomplish is the fostering and festering of long term hatred of that country and, by extension, it's citizens. Who would blame Syrians, Lebanese, Sudanese, Saudis, etc hating Americans. It is the US that keeps despotic dictators, like the Saudi Royal family, in power and bombs them from 30,000 feet and sends cruise missiles from a thousand miles at sea. And when they do happen to dislodge a dictator, like the Iranians did the Shah in 1948, the US CIA returns him to the throne to continue his despotic rule. The same can be said for the countries of the Caribbean, Central and South America. The US kept despotic criminals in power for the sake of the investments of United Fruit, IT&T and ALCOA. They, the US, are doing the same in the Middle East for Israel, Exxon-Mobil, Texaco et al. Who was it who said; "What you shall sow, so shall you reap"?
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