punditman says...
According to Richard Gwyn, in today's Toronto Star, the Americans have "gone" from Iraq. This of course is wrong; Gwyn surely knows it and Punditman will email him and ask why he planted this falsehood in an otherwise insightful piece about how insiders blabbed to Bob Woodward about Afghanistan in Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars.
We are led to believe that Iraq, while perhaps not Disneyland (for example, torture continues unabated), is a much better place now that Saddam is dead and the Americans have gone stayed on in large numbers and are still participating in combat. Of course they have not gone. Just as there is no way that they intend on leaving Afghanistan. As an example of how false reality becomes news, journalist John Pilger recently wrote a revealing article entitled Flying the Flag, Faking the News. He cites the Iraq example as follows:
False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the "last US soldiers" silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.
Fact: They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.
The difference is that with Afghanistan, at least for the time being, the US and NATO are publicly stating they have no way of leaving and no intention of doing so. Quoting from Woodward's book, Gwyn notes that General David Patreus certainly isn't anticipating some near time exit, “I don't think you win this war...You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives, and probably our kids' lives.”
But look for that storyline to change. Punditman says that at some point, for political reasons, the propagandists of our era will decide to "engineer public consent" for the greater good by creating yet another "false reality," which will then become a "news event" (i.e., "we are now leaving Afghanistan"). Will a reality-TV, celebrity-obsessed, distracted populace believe them? Punditman won't. Peacenik won't. Stay tuned.
Postscipt:
Punditman's email to Mr. Gwyn has gone unanswered. Meanwhile, for an army that has "gone" from Iraq, the US military sure continues to do a lot of damage: US Combat Continues in ‘Post-Combat’ Iraq Despite Claims of 'End of Combat' in Iraq, Rules of Engagement Never Changed.
