With US officials still hopeful that Iraq’s ongoing offensive in Mosul is the beginning of the end of ISIS’ presence in that country, top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary James Mattis, are also eager to point out that it’s not going to mean the end of the US military presence in Iraq.
In comments to Congressional committees over the course of the week, Mattis was very clear about the need to keep US troops in Iraq, calling it a “national interest” and insisting US forces need to stabilize Iraq, while downplaying the idea that this would be nation-building.
It’s not going to be a short process either. While Mattis wasn’t very specific on how long this post-ISIS US military presence would last, he made it clear that it would be “years,” and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joe Dunford said the same thing later.
Pentagon officials have been insisting since last year that the deployment to Iraq this time is more or less permanent. That they are couching this as a matter of “years” now does not necessarily mean that the timespan is going to be finite, but that they don’t want to admit, believing the war is closer to ending, that they intend to stay in an open-ended manner.
…. Glad to see Mattis is planning for the debt ceiling. Lots of U.S. allies like fully-paid-up rich NATO members can easily and eagerly pool a measly US$ 2 billion for Iraq if the U.S. can’t.
Imagine if the Donald hadn’t drained the swamp and didn’t surround himself with neocon reincarnates. Time to jump off the Trump train wreck.
Empire building isn’t stopped easily, history tells us. No outside force has stopped empire building quickly, as witnessed in WW2.
But history is short on telling us how the empire defends itself against small threats from without. And in the age of nuclear weapons that has become much more an issue that needs to be defended against. Small belligerants such as N.Korea pop up to challenge. Other large and powerful nations now exist too that have the might to change the outcome.
A mad psychopath doesn’t have the capacity to imagine that he can be stopped by anyone. That is the nature of the illness.
Iraq – for years. Afghanistan for years. Libya for years. West Africa for years. The Gulf States for years. Eastern Europe for years. The only thing that will draw the legions home is the barbarians at the gates or, better still, pouring across the border fence. In America to-day, though, that might be ;into Canada; or ‘into Mexico’.
But they did tell us the next one is ‘asymmetrical, intergenerational war’, didn’t they? It’s the ONLY thing the MIC has gotten right since 9/11/
In each and every case that action is justified because of “national interest”, that “interest” needs to be named specifically. Only by naming or identifying what specific national interest is being served can we then make a determination as to it value for being an expense that the American taxpayer needs to bear the cost of. It is not enough for us to guess that it is oil or shipping lanes etc, it needs to be named by the individuals who are asking for the service of protection.
The 64 million dollar question is always: has he cleared this statement with the President?
Top 3 headlines on the site all are stories about how US Generals want more troops in three different countries for never-ending occupations.
I think this site may find it easier to list the countries that are not occupied by US troops and where the US Generals don’t want to have more troops.
Could market that as another book of blank pages like the recent hit “Reasons to vote Democrat”.
It certainly seems like the US has troops in almost every country, and where there are a few countries that don’t have US troops there always seem to be apoplectic US generals demanding that for the good of mankind there absolutely have to be US troops there even if they have to nuke human civilization back to the Stone Age to make it happen.
And when people say “if you don’t like it here….leave,” where are we supposed to go? There is nowhere on earth that the US is not occupying either militarily or with CIA agents, etc. NOWHERE.
I didn’t miss anything. I only had to go back 25 years to make my point.
Put enough troops in place to protect themselves. Don’t hang our personal out to dry
Bring them ALL home – they have no business there in the first place.
You mean the banksters and the MIC want troops there for years….and their puppets in government and the military are happily responding to the “request.”
In other words, the U.S. is going to occupy Iraq for a very long time.