(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, by Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz. For more about the Winter Soldier hearings, read this FPIF commentary by Glantz, an FPIF contributor. You can also watch Rosas’ testimony.)
The economic chickens are coming home to roost.
Some commentators compare the current economic crisis to 9/11 — a cataclysm that changed everything.
The five-day Russo-Georgian war in the Caucasus brought into sharp focus many conflicts rooted in the region’s history and in aggressive U.S.-NATO policies since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Notable among these were the military encirclement of Russia and attempts to control energy resources in areas long dominated by the Soviet Union. The net effect was to hasten a dangerous new era of rivalry between the world’s two most powerful nuclear states, one that will be shaped hereafter by the current global recession and the changes it is bringing about in the economic practices of all states.
Prelude
The recently passed financial bailout package has drawn the ire of citizens throughout the United States. Both conservatives and liberals have condemned Congress and the White House for rescuing Wall Street titans, who caused the economic death spiral in the first place, by transferring an enormous fiscal burden to middle- and working-class taxpayers. At a time when people are losing their homes and struggling to make ends meet, many Americans find the bailout’s $700 billion price tag to be simply outrageous.
At a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July, Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said: “We all agree that a militarized foreign policy is not in our interests.” He’s right. Since 2004, the annual Unified Security Budget report has outlined and promoted a rebalancing of resources funding offense (military forces), defense (homeland security), and prevention (non-military international engagement, including diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, peacekeeping, and contributions to international organizations.)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. It seems that old military commitments also never die. But they also don’t fade away — they live on forever.
If most Americans think Iran and Georgia are the two most volatile flashpoints in the world, one can hardly blame them. The possibility that the Bush administration might strike at Tehran’s nuclear facilities has been hinted about for the past two years, and the White House’s pronouncements on Russia seem like Cold War déjà vu.
As a journalist who has reported extensively on the death and destruction that is U.S.- occupied Iraq, perhaps I should be happy about the prosecution of former Marine Corps Sergeant Jose Luis Nazario Jr. Standing accused of killing unarmed four detainees in Fallujah in 2004, Nazario is the first Iraq War veteran to be tried for war crimes in a civilian court. His trial, which began in Southern California this week, marks a new chapter in American jurisprudence – with the long arm of the law reaching past the jurisdiction of a military court martial. If convicted of all charges, Nazario could face more than 10 years in prison, according to the Associated Press.