Richard Cheney, The Kwantung Army, And The Gang Of Four

Iraq: A Gang of Four Production

At the BBC we read Cheney insists Iraq surge working in http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6925368.stm

As we read through, we come across this:  

"The Petraeus-Crocker report is due to be presented before Congress on 15 September. Democrats, who are in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, want President George W Bush to come up with a military withdrawal plan from Iraq for 2008. But the man Mr Bush has nominated as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Michael Mullen, has predicted that the US will be in Iraq for years, not months, and he warned Congress against attempts to secure a rapid pull-out of troops. "  

This brings us to the point where we must stop and consider.

Surely the generals and the army know how to fight a war, at least some of the time. They did not seem to know how to fight this type of war. General Petraeus had to be rescued from oblivion and obloquy to head up the new and improved fourth generation warfare. We must ask ourselves whether the tail is wagging the dog. Are we still in control of our own destiny? Or has our blind devotion to things military led us to an impasse where war's events control all aspects of our lives?

Do the exigencies of the war in Iraq - as they are perceived by the military- take precedence over all other considerations? We might easily answer that if we had some sort of policy in place rather than the roughly cobbled mish-mosh used by the present administration, then we would follow our policy. You have to have a goal. Our goal in Iraq was elimate Weapons of Mass Destruction. There weren't any. So then we said it was all worth it so we might hang Saddam Hussein in a frightful execution scenario after a trial in a kangaroo court. And then we said we have to stop the mighty and powerful IRAN. And so on and so on.

There literally is no end to this, in case you haven't figured that out yet.
What does it mean to have no goal, no well defined policy to follow and judge one's actions? One result is that the tail tends to wag the dog, or the tiger. This means that events are no longer controlled by the decision makers in Washington D.C., rather the events in Iraq and the war are in controll and the people in Washington scurry about trying to address issues, cover their backsides, and generally try to create the illusion that they planned it all from the beginning.

Let us look back in history to 1905 when Japan sent the Kwangtung Army to Manchuria to guard Japanese interests.
Manchuria is a huge area and many in Jpana and in the Kwangtung Army thought it would be just what Japan needed to alleviate the overcrowding of the home islands, to be markets for their goods, and to be a source for raw materials for Japan's industry.
By the summer of 1931, elements within the Kwangtung Army were ready to take Manchuria from Chinese control. A charge of dynamite was planted on the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway near Mukden; its explosion was to be the excuse to "bring order" by sending troops to seize Mukden.

By the morning of September 19, 1931 Mukden was in Japanese hands, much to the dismay of the world and Tokyo. The Cabinet ordered the Army General Staff to limit the scope of hostilities, but individuals within the Kwangtung Army ignored this. The War Ministry finally radioed the Kwangtung Army a reproach:  
1. The Kwangtung Army is to refrain from any new project such as becoming independent from the Imperial Army and seizing control of Manchuria and Mongolia...


We do not mean to imply that the US Army is acting like the Kwangtung Army.
We do mean to imply that events in war sometimes shape policy rather than policy shaping the conduct of the war. If there is no strong, well defined policy -such as is the present case-then it is easier for the events and exigencies of war to define policy, effectively taking decision making from the hands of elected representatives. We are seeing indications of this already. Our representatives and those who wish to be our representatives clearly are divided into 2 camps: (1) those who see the WAR as a given and are determined to let it play out into whatever dead end it goes to, and (2) those who maintain the right and honor to choose whether or not they will commit themselves to this infamy.

The Gang of Four of the title are Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Ms. Rice. They have been aided and abetted in their actions by numerous neoconservatives. Neoconservatives now say that the Iraq War was a strategic blunder. I say that it was more than that; this War was a lie and a crime. It was conceived in iniquity and born in perfidy. March 19, 2003 is a Day that will truly live in infamy. We must take back the right to choose between good and evil. We must not assume a worldy-wise posture and shrug, saying that people will have wars anyway.

Our whole way of life is based on the premise that we are free to choose, so now you must choose.

Th-th-that's all, Folks !

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