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Nassau County will construct a memorial honoring residents who died serving the United States in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, officials said Monday.

Officials said they will break ground in the fall, nearly two decades since the start of the Afghanistan conflict. The monument will be located in Eisenhower Park in East Meadow, near the Veterans Memorial, officials said. It will join the memorial honoring the veterans who served in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam along with the memorial that honors all the armed forces in Eisenhower Park.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said the decision to construct the monument was made primarily to honor those from Nassau who served their nation oversees and to educate younger and future generations.

We must ensure that present and future generations continue to appreciate the sacrifice that our veterans in all wars have made to protect our freedoms, our very precious freedoms, that when you consider them are very rare throughout the course of human history, Curran said.

The county, Curran said, entered into a public-private partnership with Heroes Among Us, a non-for-profit organization based in Nassau County, to aid in erecting the monument. The organization already committed $10,000 of the roughly $100,000 needed for the memorial, Curran said.

Heroes Among Us was started by Virginia Cervasio after her 24-year-old son, Angelo, took his life in 2006 after battling post-traumatic stress disorder from serving the Air Force in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf in the communications management field.

Cervasio told Newsday, This memorial has a very special place in our hearts, acknowledging that veterans who died from suicide after returning home will also be included in the monument.

According to U.S. census statistics, more than 4,200 Nassau County residents served in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars since Sept. 11, 2001. According to Newsday statistics, 16 county residents died in Iraq and five died in Afghanistan.

Curran said roughly 50,000 military veterans reside in Nassau County.

Originally posted here:
Nassau plans memorial honoring those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan - The Island Now

As seenrecently,intermittentaltercationspersistin Iraqand Syriabetween American forces and various Iran-backed militias. These, however,stem from, andare a continuation of,a fundamental error in the design of the war. Thisshould have beenapparentto its instigators even beforethe warwas launched in 2003,andit isalmost breath-taking in its naivet.

An extensive U.S.Armystudyof the warcontendsthat the overwhelming majority of decisions in the Iraq War were made by highly intelligent, highly experienced, leaders. However, it concludesthat the failure to achieve our strategic objectivesderived from reasoning that contained systemic failures, and high among these was that U.S. leaders seemed to believe that other regional nations would not react.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States,President GeorgeW. Bush, whohadcome into office proposing a humble foreign policy,abruptlyreversed course. He nowproclaimedthat the countrys responsibility to history wasnowto rid the world of evilquite the boast given human history.

Then, a few months later, Bush specified ina major speech that, while evil presumablylurkedeverywhere,a special axis of evil existed,and it wasprimarily located inNorth Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

Iranfully realized it was in trouble, as didSyria,which alsosometimesappearedon the target listprovided almost daily by Bush and his coterie of cheer-leadingneoconservatives.If they needed further confirmation,defense advisorRichardPerle exultantlysuggestednot longafter the invasion of Iraq that a short messageshould now bedeliveredto other hostile regimes in the area: Youre next.

It was accordinglyclearly in the best, even supreme,interest of theregimes running North Korea and Syriatowork closely with, andtoprovide sanctuary for, friendlyShiasinIraq to make the American tenure inIraq as miserable as possible.Meanwhile, similarly threatenedNorth Koreaformally withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty andworkeddedicatedly to obtain nuclear weaponsto deter an American attack.

In addition to Iran and Syria, otheroutsiders weredrawn to Iraq anddedicated to sabotaging theoccupierspeace and to killingitsoccupyingforces.Inparticular,a Jordanian,Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,a Sunniwho sympathized with al-Qaedas ideology and agenda,becamethe leader of a small army of dedicated and brutal terrorists numbering perhaps in the thousands.

Zarqawisconnection toal-Qaeda may have helpedtoattract recruitsandtogeneratefinancial and logistical support, andhe wasfurther benefited by the tendency of the Americans to credithis forceswith a far larger portion of the violence inIraq than they probably committed,a process that also helped to burnish Zarqawis image in much of the Muslimworld as a resistance hero.

However,themindless brutalitiesof Zarqawis forcesstaging beheadings at mosques, bombing playgrounds, taking over hospitals,executing ordinary citizens, performing forced marriageseventually provedto be self-destructive, turning Iraqis against them, including many of thosewho had previously been fighting the American occupation either on theirown or in connection with Zarqawi.

Helped enormously by the alienation between jihadist marauders and Iraqitribes, the U.S.military was ableto bring civil warfare under somedegree of control in Iraq by 2009. However, the campaign to do sothe surge,it was calledcostover 1,000 American lives, seven times greaterthanthe United Stateshad lost in the 2003 invasion.

Zarqawis Sunni forces were thus eventually defeated,butthis came aboutonly aftertheyhad visited considerable destruction upon the occupiers.

On the other hand, Iran continued, and continues, to be a harassing element,impelled as wellnowbyresentment overthe sanctions leveled against it. Indeed, the Army study strikingly, if dismally,concludes in its assessment of the warin Iraqthat Iran appears to be the only victor.

In2010,brieferspointedoutto topAmericangeneralsin Afghanistanthat no counterinsurgencyefforton record had succeededwhen the insurgents had access to adeep cross-border sanctuary.Although they added thatthattheyhopedthe situation inAfghanistan would prove to be an exception, it has not proven to beonemore thana decade later.

The related experience in Iraq suggests that the briefers had it essentially right. Unless the United States wants directly to go to all-out war with Irancreating yet another disaster in the Middle Eastthe Iranians can keep this up forever.

John Mueller is a political scientist at Ohio State University and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. His book, The Stupidity of War: American Foreign Policy and the Case forComplacency,has justbeen publishedby Cambridge University Press.

Image: Reuters.

Read the original:
The War in Iraq Exposed Huge Flaws in American Strategic Thinking - The National Interest

On the evening of March 19, 2003, then-U.S. President George W. Bush addressed the American people in a live broadcast from the Oval Office. My fellow citizens, he opened, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger.

Those words marked the beginning of the Iraq Warone of the United States forever wars that continues, in one form or another, to this day. At the time, Bush led the United States to believe that a campaign of shock and awe would bring the Iraq War to a swift conclusion. But after eight years of fighting, thousands of service member deaths, and an unknown number of civilian casualties, the overwhelming majorityof U.S. citizens have come to regard the Iraq War as a grave foreign-policy mistake. Although the war formally ended almost a decade ago, the congressional act that sanctioned itthe 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)remains on the books and is subject to continued misuse. Today, on the 18thanniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we call for the 2002 AUMF to be repealed.

Regardless of ones opinion on the necessity of the Iraq War, theres no reason the 2002 AUMF should still be in force today.

First, the2002 AUMF has outlived its stated purpose: namely, defeating former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. U.S. forces deposed Saddams regime shortly after the 2003 invasion, and Saddam himself has been dead since 2006. Moreover, the Obama administration declared an official end to the Iraq War in October 2011. Since then, Iraq has become a close partner of the United States and consistently cooperates with the country on security issues. Since Iraq is a sovereign country, U.S. troops remain there only with the permission of the Iraqi government. There isno basis for continuing to label such an important ally as a threat to the United States or international security.

Additionally, the 2002 AUMF does nothing to keep Americans safe. From December 2011 until September 2014, then-U.S. President Barack Obama did not cite the AUMF in any of the periodic messages he sent to Congress explaining ongoing U.S. military activities around the world. Obama began citing the 2002 AUMF again in September 2014, as the United States commenced airstrikes against the Islamic Statewhich extended into the Trump era. But even in this case, both the Obama and Trump administrations referred to the 2002 AUMF as mere reinforcement. Administration lawyers pointed to other legal covers for U.S. military activity against the group. Repeal of the 2002 AUMF, then, would leave the United States power to combat ongoing threats of terrorism unchanged.

Finally, the continued existence of the 2002 authorization encourages the executive branch to act unilaterallythat is, without congressional approvalon military action. We need not go too far back in recent memory to see why this is dangerous.

After then-U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimaniwho was in Iraq at the timehis administration arguedthat the 2002 AUMF reinforced the presidents constitutional authority to order the attack. White House lawyers said thatthough the original 2002 AUMF targeted the old, long-deposed Iraqi regimeuses of force under the authorization need not address threats from the Iraqi Government apparatus only, and could extend to militias, terrorist groups, or other armed groups in Iraq. In short, the Trump administration purported that once a bad actor steps foot in Iraq, he becomes fair game for the U.S. militarysimply because Iraq once housed a dictator who was toppled 18 years ago.

This reasoning is, of course, absurd. But it poses a real danger to our relationship with the Iraqi people and their government. Suleimanis assassination not only risked direct U.S. military confrontation with Irana state actor the president should need congressional approval to attackit also elicited outrage from Iraq, a key Middle East partner. The attack was met with mass protests, condemnation from Iraqs president, and a vote by Iraqs parliament to expel U.S. troops from the country. And it could have all been avoided.

In the case of Suleimani, the use of a jaded war authorization to justify a U.S. attack in a country that is now more partner than enemy demonstrates the danger of allowing war authorizations to remain in force beyond their stated purpose. But the tendency to stretch war powers is not unique to Trump. Though Biden has not yet cited the 2002 AUMF to justify his military directives, his Feb. 25 airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria were launched without congressional authorization. Its clear that the executive branch will continue to stretch its war powers as long as it remains easy to do so. For this reason, we must remain vigilant of presidential circumvention of Congress no matter the occupant of the White House.

In Washington, the 2002AUMF has become somewhat of azombiean authorization that has long outlived its purpose yet still lurks among U.S. laws and poses a danger to the countrys interests. The House of Representatives has voted twice to repeal the 2002 AUMF, both times to no avail, andeach of us has recently introduced legislation in our respective chambers to finally repeal it for good. We have already been joined by a combined 12 Republican co-sponsors, demonstrating that a repeal of the 2002 AUMF can find bipartisan support.

Indeed, 80 percent of current Congress membersincluding Sen. Tim Kainewere not in office when the 2002 AUMF was passed, and many of those who wereincluding Rep. Barbara Leewere opposed to the authorization from the start. To claim, then, that the 2002 AUMF represents congressional consent for present military action is a farce.Today, 18 years after Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, it ispast time to give Congress a renewed say in the matter. We owe it to U.S. troops to ensure military action is in the national interest before Congress continues to send them into harms way using outdated justification.

Repealing the 2002 AUMF is a starting point for more foreign-policy reform. After doing away with the 2002 AUMF, we should consider how to address the 2001 AUMFwhich was originally passed in the aftermath of 9/11 but has since been used as a carte blanche to justify a wide-ranging war on terrorand discuss sunsetting any future AUMFs.We cannot let another 18 years go by without addressing unchecked executive power to authorize military force. One of the many painful lessons of the Iraq War is how grave a threat poorly written AUMFs pose for future abuses.

Continued here:
18 Years After the Invasion of Iraq, It's Time to Repeal the President's AUMF War Powers - Foreign Policy

It has now been eighteen years since the Iraq invasion,and I'm still not done raging about it. Nobody shouldbe.

The reason it's so important to stay enraged aboutIraq is because it's never been addressed or rectified inany real way whatsoever. All the corrupt mechanisms whichled to the invasion are still in place and its consequencesremain. It isn't something that happened in thepast.

The Iraq invasion feels kind of like if yourdad had stood up at the dinner table, cut off your sister'shead in front of everyone, gone right back to eating andnever suffered any consequences, and everyone just kind offorgot about it and carried on life like it never happened.The US-centralized empire is full of willful amnesiacspretending they don't remember Iraq because it's currentlypolitically convenient, and we must not let them dothis.

No institutional changes were made to ensurethat the evils of the Iraq invasion wouldn't be repeated.It's one of those big, glaring problems people just decidedto pretend is resolved, likeracism.

Iraq-Raping Neocon Upset ThatPeople Keep Bringing Up The Iraq Thing

"Youdont get to help murder a million human beings and thenact indignant when people bring it up. That is not athing."https://t.co/wZlUwBYzkG

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) January30, 2020

There's this weirdimplicit default assumption among the political/media classthat US government agencies have earned back the trust theylost with Iraq, despite their having made no changeswhatsoever to prevent another Iraq-like horror fromreoccurring, or even so much as apologizing. The reasonnobody responsible for the Iraq invasion suffered anyconsequences for the great evil they inflicted upon theworld is because the western empire had no intention ofchanging and has every intention of repeating such evils.The lies and killing continue unabated.

No changeswere made after the Iraq invasion to keep the US governmentfrom deceiving Americans into war. No new laws were made, nopolicies changed; no one was even fired. And indeed, thegovernment did deceive Americans into war again: theLibya and Syria interventions were both based on lies. It'shappened since, and it will happen again unless themurderous US war machine is stopped.

Don't take lifeadvice from people who are miserable. Don't take careeradvice from people whose careers aren't where you want tobe. Don't take creative advice from people who don't createthings. Don't take foreign policy advice from people whosupported the Iraq invasion.

EveryPresidential Election Since The Iraq War Has FeaturedCandidates Who Supported It

"And this says somuch about the state of the US political system today."https://t.co/zDjO992qiQ

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) October11, 2020

How true can PresidentBiden's claimbe that he regrets supporting the Iraq invasion if heappointed theguy who advised that decision as Secretary ofState?

It's absolutely insane that everyUS presidential general election since the Iraq invasionhas featured a mainstream candidate who actively supportedit. The argument that the Iraq invasion was supported bymost prominent politicians at the time is not a defense ofthose politicians, its an indictment of mainstreamAmerican politics. The fact that politicians who not onlysupported the Iraq invasion but actively facilitated it arestill becoming US presidential nominees proves the entireAmerican political system is corrupt beyond the possibilityof redemption.

Nobody who supported the Iraq invasionshould be working in politics at all. They shouldnt beable to find employment anywhere more prominent orinfluential than a cash register. This should be true ofpolitics, and it should be true of media aswell.

There is no valid reason for the entire US-ledworld order not to have been completely dismantled after theinvasion of Iraq. A world order which can create somethingas horrific as the unforgivable Iraq invasion (or thegenocide in Yemen today for that matter) is not a worldorder that will lead the world in a good direction. Thefacts are in. The US-led world order mustend.

This latest Biden airstrike isbeing spun as "defensive" and "retaliatory" despite itstargeting a nation the US invaded (Syria) in response toalleged attacks on US forces in another nation the USinvaded (Iraq). You can't invade a nation and then claimself-defense there. Ever.

CaitlinJohnstone

(@caitoz) February26, 2021

So much establishmentloyalism ultimately boils down to an entirely faith-basedand unquestioned belief that the corrupt, depraved powerestablishment which facilitated the Iraq war completelyevaporated as soon as George W Bush and Tony Blair leftoffice. There is literally no reason to believe this besidesit feeling more psychologically comfortable to believeit.

It's essential to keep in mind that westernpropaganda hasn't gotten less advanced since the Iraqinvasion, it has gotten moreadvanced. The Russiagate psyop and the smear campaignsagainst Assange and Corbyn make this abundantly clear. Youneed to be more critical of westernnarratives than with Iraq, not less.

Manipulatingpublic thought at mass scale is a science. Scientific fieldsdon't magically become less sophisticated over time, theybecome more sophisticated. Every time they run a newmass-scale manipulation, whether it succeeds or fails, theylearn from it. And they evolve.

We must remember thatthe mass media can create false narratives without evenspeaking them explicitly, just by giving a certainimpression. After the Iraq invasion 70 percent of Americansstillbelieved Saddam was responsible for 9/11, just becausereporters and politicians kept mentioning the two in thesame breath.

People who believed Iraqneeded regime change were pretty fucking dumb. People whobelieve either of the countries on either side of Iraq alsojust so happen to need regime change are exponentiallydumber. It's a strategically crucial region, you morons.pic.twitter.com/0ScClFMIKx

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) November12, 2018

Supporting the Vietnamwar was dumb. Supporting the Iraq invasion after being liedto about Vietnam was an order of magnitude dumber.Supporting any US war agendas after being lied to about Iraqis an order of magnitude even dumber than that.

Thedebate about whether America has the moral authority tointervene in other countries was settled once and for alleighteen years ago. Western mass media have spent the lasteighteen years trying to slowly spin the narrative away fromfacts and reality, but the Iraq invasion invalidates themall.

Iraq should be a one-word debunk of allpro-regime change arguments. You should be able to just say"Iraq" and have whoever's pushing escalations andinterventionism sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Thefact that that isn't enough shows how insanely propagandizedwe are.

America shouldn't be in the Middle East atall, much less Iraq, and the US government is solelyresponsible for every American soldier who diesthere.

Despite being proven right abouteverything from Iraq to Russiagate to Assange to Bolivia,we'll still get labeled crazy conspiracy theorists when wewarn about the empire's next evil manipulation. Our only"reward" for being right will be these worthless, joylesstold-you-sos. https://t.co/CSoc7fdAA9

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) November15, 2019

When a known compulsiveliar asks you to place your faith in him on a very importantmatter, you tell him to fuck off. When the western empiretells you to trust them that an evil government needs to beousted, you take it with an Iraq-sized grain ofsalt.

Never let anyone shout you down for openlydoubting US intelligence on foreign nations. Iraq means theydon't get to do that anymore. Ever.

I promise I willalways fight to remind the world about the Iraq invasion. Iwill always do everything I can to make sure that as manypeople as possible view all actions of the US-centralizedpower establishment through the lens of what they did tothat country for as long as I draw breath.

I willalways do everything I can to keep Iraq from being dismissedas an anomaly of history that could never happen again.Whenever the empire talks about Russia, China, Syria, Iran,Venezuela, North Korea, Yemen, or any other country, I willbe talking about what they did to Iraq.

You don't getto butcher a million people and then say "Oh yeah, but thatwas a whole eighteen years ago. You can trust us now."That's not a thing. The world has no business taking USdefense and intelligence agencies at their word aboutanything ever again.

Pro Tip: MentallyReplace All Uses Of Conspiracy Theorist With IraqRememberer

"All theyre really saying isthat youre one of those annoying pests who just wontshut up and forget about Iraq."https://t.co/d9UEDcqKOV

Caitlin Johnstone

(@caitoz) December5, 2019

I write about imperialwarmongering not just because it is intrinsically evil, butbecause it is the clearest evidence I can point to that thepeople who are running things are too sociopathic to be leftin charge. The power structure which raped Iraq should notexist. Period.

The way I see it we've got two options:find a way to drastically change the way we think andfunction as a species, or pray that the world will be savedby the same ruling elites who destroyed Iraq while makingthe poor poorer for the benefit of the extremelywealthy.

____________________________________

Thanksfor reading! The best way to get around the internet censorsand make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe tothe mailing list for at mywebsite or onSubstack, which will get you an emailnotification for everything I publish. My work is entirelyreader-supported, so if you enjoyed this pieceplease consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook,following my antics on Twitter, orthrowing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,Patreonor Paypal.If you want to read more you can buy mynew book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDFfor five bucks) or my old book Woke:A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more infoon who I am, where I stand, and what Im trying to do withthis platform, clickhere. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, hasmy permission to republish, use or translate anypart of this work (or anything else Ive written) in anyway they like free ofcharge.

Scoop Media

Rogue journalist

Caitlin Johnstone is a 100 percent crowdfunded rogue journalist, bogan socialist, anarcho-psychonaut, guerilla poet and utopia prepper living in Australia with her American husband and two kids. She writes about politics, economics, media, feminism and the nature of consciousness. She is the author of the illustrated poetry book "Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers."

Go here to see the original:
Thoughts On The Iraq Invasion | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz

An Iraqi man whose friends said was the last Jewish physician in Iraq has died, casting further doubt on the future of the Jewish heritage sites of Baghdad.

Thafer Fuad Elyahou died Monday from heart failure in his Baghdad home, Edwin Shuker, a leader of British Jews who was born in the Iraqi city,wroteon Facebook. Elyahou was 60.

Thafer worked under the most challenging of conditions, especially during the long years of war and sanctions, Shuker wrote. He continued to treat patients in the State hospitals knowing that many of them were not able to pay towards the treatment but always received each and everyone, with a broad smile and a warm welcome.

His death is an immense blow to administrating the affairs of the communitys remaining assets, including cemeteries, shrines, synagogues, and legacies.

Elyahou took over some of those duties from Sit Marcelle, an elder of the Jewish community who died last year. Elyahou had cared for her during her last months. He was buried not far from her grave at the Habibiya Jewish cemetery in northeastern Baghdad, Shuker wrote.

Elyahou was one of a handful of Jews living in Iraq, which until the 1970s had a sizable and ancient Jewish community. His death will rapidly lead to the total extinction of a presence that lasted 2,600 years, Shuker wrote.

At least 68 of 297 of Iraqs known Jewish heritage sites have been lost, the London-based Jewish Cultural Heritage Initiativereportedlast year.

Go here to see the original:
Iraqs last Jewish doctor dies of heart failure at 60 - Haaretz