Glenn Greenwald: Slaying Make-Believe Villains

You know that 2006 incident when U.S. troops killed innocent Iraqi civilians?

You must have read about it. No, not that one, the other one. The one made public by U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, who stole state secrets and gave them to an Australian publisher? Yeah, that one.

Well, that was Obama’s fault.

And now it’s coming back to bite him in his immoral ass, because when you commit war crimes, the country that represents the victims of those war crimes won’t give your armies immunity anymore, and so you have to leave the country (not your own, just theirs). Hence President Obama’s recent announcement that the United States would complete a full withdrawal of the remaining 40,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of 2011.

Salon.com emoblogger Glenn Greenwald has more:

Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war.

“In other words,” Greenwald says, “Moreover…And in general…indeed” and “In sum,” the guy who “leaked those cables” – “whoever” that may be – “is responsible for one of the most consequential, beneficial and noble acts of this generation.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to define criminal behavior as noble, nor would I give such kudos to a man who gave away classified documents to a foreigner, but let’s talk about this “noble act.”

Here’s the timeline: The United States was attacked (9/11); the American people were told to go shopping and to visit Disney World (9/27); the American people did as they were told while the U.S. government invaded Afghanistan and started initiating a plan that was years in the making to invade Iraq as well; the American people were warned about “mushroom clouds” and “yellow cake” and “weapons of mass destruction”; they were told that Saddam Hussein was a threat to our national security, that he was killing his own people, and that there was a link between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked American on 9/11; the American people were still shopping as we invaded Iraq; America woke up for a while when the truth about mushroom clouds, yellow cake, weapons of mass destruction and that alleged link between Iraq and al-Qaeda were all revealed as fabrications; then the American people went back to shopping, because they weren’t forced to pay higher taxes to pay for the Iraq War, and therefore why should they care?

Nearly nine years later, the war is finally drawing to a close. President Obama, seeing that the threat of Iranian influence in an unprotected Iraq could pose problems for Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general, discusses with the Iraqi president the idea of keeping a few thousand troops in Iraq beyond the 2011 deadline, set in 2008, in order to continue training Iraqi security forces.

There’s very little about the Iraq War that can be called noble, but I doubt there are many who would say it’s ignoble to leave three-to-five thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for security purposes, for continued training of the Iraqi military, and in order to “keep an eye” on Iran and Syria.

We destroyed their cities, their lives and their families. Iraq should be worn on every American’s chest like a Scarlet Letter.

The fact is, the Iraqi people are no happier about being occupied by a foreign power than they were about being oppressed by a mass murdering dictator.

It’s more cute than “noble” that Greenwald gives Bradley Manning kudos for allegedly ending a war that both countries agree would end long before any confidential U.S. cables were made public.

What’s not cute is spinning a tale of “corrupt, illegal and deceitful acts” as some sort of pockmark on the Obama Administration.

If my memory serves me correctly, Obama wasn’t even a U.S. senator when Iraq was invaded, and the 2006 incident that Greenwald believes is the reason that troops are coming home at the end of 2011 actually took place on President Bush’s watch. Not surprisingly, Bush isn’t mentioned once in Greenwald’s post.

Obama didn’t start the war. He didn’t even support the war when it did start. And he wasn’t the commander in chief in 2006. Obama merely asked if the Iraqi government would agree to keeping a small number of U.S. troops in the country in order to continue training Iraqi security forces.

Despite Greenwald’s elegant spin, that is not a pockmark on the face of this administration. It’s a sign that Obama is willing to pay America’s dues for a war he didn’t start, even when we can’t afford it, and in spite of the American public’s opposition to it.

When they said no, he gave a speech announcing the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Had such sanity governed our foreign policy decisions in 2003, we’d never have had to worry about the killing of civilians in 2006, or the negotiations of a withdrawal in 2011, nearly nine years after our government carpet bombed a country that, in fact, had nothing to do with 9/11.

Indeed, moreover and in sum, Bradley Manning would never have been incarcerated, because he never would have had a reason to give classified documents to a foreigner.

Once again, Greenwald is pointing fingers at a make-believe villain.