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Calling BS on Biden in Iraq
Biden’s trip to Iraq had several components to it, all worth examining for their overflowing levels of bullshit.
Victory Lap
This is perhaps the slimiest part of the trip, as Biden sought to assign credit for the US military withdrawal from Iraq to his boss. Obama famously campaigned saying he would end the war in Iraq, and Biden said he did, carefully ignoring that the White House begged and pleaded Iraq to allow our troops to stay, and that the withdrawal took place only after talks over immunity broke down. The military got asked to leave more than anything. In addition, Biden’s claim that Obama kept his promise ignores the 16,000 person State Department occupation team which will replace the military. No victory lap, Joe, sorry.
We Won/Accomplished Something
Biden soft-played this, as well he should have. The US won not much, accomplished not much and even any meager gains that a meth-crazed neocon can come up with have to be weighed against the loss of lives and tremendous costs. Seeing vets without legs wheeling around Walmart having to use food stamps for Hamburger Helper does not represent any victory. Like all other VIPs, Biden had to sneak into Iraq unannounced and at night to avoid being killed. And, to drive home the irony, two separate attacks in northeastern Iraq killed 17 people on Thursday, the third day of Biden’s visit.
US Defense Contractors Made Out
Joe’s only sincere moments came when he pimped for US defense contractors to make even more money.
US Ambassador Jeffrey in Baghdad said that “We have about $8 billion, give or take some, of active (foreign military sales) cases with Iraq. That’s not counting the new one that just came out for the F-16s. That will send it up by a number of additional billions of dollars. This is one of the biggest programmes in the world.”
Biden talked military sales to Iraq, and some 200 uniformed military will remain in Iraq to oversee the sales and training.
Honoring the Iraq Army
Biden’s final point in Iraq is the most awkward stretch of reality to fit the US meme.
He and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki addressed about 120 U.S. service members and 100 Iraqi troops gathered at al-Faw Palace, Saddam’s old crib. Biden thanked the troops and recognized their “achievements” over the past eight+ years. “This palace, a grotesque monument to a dictator’s greed, is today filled with American and Iraqi warriors, bound together by shared sacrifice in service to their countries. Here in Iraq you became partners… and friends… and now, undeniably, you are brothers-in-arms.”
Few American troops see things that way, and even fewer Iraqis do. The US invaded Iraq in 2003, heartily killing Iraqi soldiers who picked no fight with America. We then kicked off a civil war that included mucho Iraqi-on-US violence. Now that we’re bored with Iraq as a battleground, we are leaving that mess for the Iraqis to clean up, mislabeling some coerced cooperation and staged joint ops into being brothers-in-arms.
Nobody but maybe Joe Biden believes that. Ask any American soldier if s/he would ever turn his back on an armed Iraqi, or walk into an Iraqi military compound unarmed voluntarily. Nobody did that when I was in Iraq and nobody would do that now. Even as Joe warbled at the palace, at joint training facilities like the former FOB Hammer/Besmiyah range, US personnel live on their own compound surrounded by their own security.
Hey, but if Joe Biden really believes what he says, let’s have him fly into Iraq on an announced visit, in the daytime, and spend a day without American security with some Iraqi soldiers.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. I call bullshit Joe.
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