Four Years And Counting

I feel obligated to write something about the fourth anniversary of the War in Iraq. I having been thinking about it all week, and I have been wanting to write something all day about the night I was sitting in my apartment on 108th St. in NYC watching the Shock and Awe campaign get underway. I wanted to mention how I felt nauseous with dread and anticipation at the time for the bloodshed and waste of life, resources, and time this war would cause. I wanted to mention that I could practice, even then, the arguments I would be using four years later; they will be the same ones we will be using four years from now, as to why this war is wrong. I wanted to mention that I still feel as helpless and weak as I did that night, knowing that there is nothing I can do to stop this war. I could rant and rave, educate myself, share facts with as many people as I could, but in the end the war would continue, and even now I know it will continue for another 5, 10, 20, 25 years. The United States of America will not leave Iraq until every last drop of oil in the region is gone.

Earlier today, I watched a montage that CNN had put together to commemorate the last four years and the war; this commercial made everything look so damn great. Maybe I am reading about a different war on the internet. Anyway, I don’t know what to really say that can’t be better summed up in this article.

Post-invasion, the U.S. military established 110 bases in Iraq. By spring 2006 the Pentagon had “reduced the size of its footprint” by consolidating them into approximately 75 bases across the country.

Organized around airfields “to facilitate resupply operations and troop mobility,” the major bases in Baghdad include: Camp Victory at the airport, which hosts as many as 14,000 U.S. troops; Anaconda Air Base, just north of Baghdad, which spreads across 15 square miles and is being built for 20,000 U.S. troops; Camp Falcon / Al Sarq, which will accommodate 5,000 U.S. soldiers; and the so-called U.S. “embassy complex” in the Green Zone. There, $1 billion is being spent on a 100-acre installation, comparable to the size of Vatican City, with a Marine barracks, 300 homes, 21 other buildings, and its own electrical, water, and sewage systems.

Read the article in its entirety here.

The US is not going anywhere anytime so, so don’t let the Democratic candidates try and tell you otherwise. This plus this does not bode well for people looking for a democratic Middle East. So what now? What do we do now?