Taiwan Sun
Monday 29th August, 2011
((Op-ed) William Rivers Pitt -Truthout)
• Time for Iraq withdrawal of U.S. troops to extend
• Afghanistan withdrawal to be put back to 2012
• Major U.S. corporations to benefit by hundreds of billions
A few days after this announcement came a report from the UK-based Daily Telegraph that is nothing short of staggering:
America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024.
The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.
Both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December, the Telegraph reported. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September, the article added.
2024.
More than twelve years from now.
Seven congressional elections and three presidential elections from now.
I will be 52 years old before any consideration is given to withdrawing American military forces from Afghanistan, according to the elements of this “strategic pact.”
America’s war in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, more than ten years ago. America’s war in Iraq began on March 20, 2003, almost nine years ago. Toss in the six months we have been engaged in the Libyan conflict, and what you have is the United States at war for a combined total of nineteen years…and now, according to reports, the Iraq withdrawal deadline has become thoroughly elastic, and the Afghanistan withdrawal timeline is about to be punted so far over the horizon as to become thoroughly meaningless.
Back when George W. Bush was in office, plenty of people were aware of how rich his family, friends and allies were getting off these conflicts. Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, KBR, the Bush-affiliated Carlyle Group, Blackwater/Xe and many others were raking in the cash thanks to a harshly simple economic algorithm: every day of these wars, every ration eaten, every uniform donned, every bullet fired, every bomb dropped, every missile launched, every helicopter shot down, and every body bag filled translates directly into extreme profits for someone.
Mr. Bush is gone now, but that algorithm remains ruthlessly in place. War-oriented companies like DynCorp, Washington Group International, Aegis Defense Services, URS Corporation, BAE Systems, Renco, CACI, Bechtel, General Dynamics, General Electric, and Titan, along with oil giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron, have profited to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars off these conflicts, and are poised to continue doing so well into the future.
Think about that.
Nineteen combined total years of war, amounting to approximately seven thousand consecutive days of profiteering off the blood, bone and flesh of soldiers and civilians.
We have heard much about the idea that certain financial institutions are “too big to fail,” and thus have been bailed out of the economic disaster zone they themselves helped to create, with little or no punishment for the perpetrators in the aftermath. While there can be no doubt that the actions of these essentially criminal enterprises have done great and lasting damage to the American economy, scant notice has been paid to the unimaginable expenditures we have thrown into a decade of largely fruitless warfare, and the brutal cost levied against the American people – most especially the soldiers and civilians who have borne the brunt of combat – all of which means obscene profit for a select few who you nor I will ever meet.
War profiteering is nothing new.
The writer William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “The Greatest Sedition Is Silence” and “House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation.” He lives and works in Boston.
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