Barack Obama, die vier-en-veertigste president van die VSA het die oorlog in Irak geërf van sy voorganger, George W Bush, en tydens sy verkiesing as president het hy ernstig belowe dat hy ‘n spoedige einde aan hierdie oorlog sou bring, oa met die doel om VSA troepe te kon konsentreer eerder in Afganistan, die vermeende hoofnes van Al- Qaeda wat in alle werklikheid in Pakistan ingeberg was.
Hy beskryf sy godsdienstige opvattings as volg: "I am a Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers´and sisters´keeper, treating others as they would treat me".
Obama het die oorlog in Irak laat voortgaan, en selfs die aantal soldate daar grootliks vermeerder, alles in teenstelling van sy verkiesings beloftes om ‘n spoedige einde aan die oorlog te bring. Die finale prys vir hierdie fiasko was die dood van 4,500 troepe, meer as 32,000 gewondes, en duisende soldate wat gelei het aan post-traumatic stress syndrome en ander sielkundige probleme. Die getalle Irakese gedood wissel van 150,000 tot oor ‘n miljoen. Die koste meer as een triljoen USA dollars.
By die terugkeer van die troepe na die VSA, het Obama hulle by Fort Bragg verwelkom met die volgende toespraak:
"We´re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people", he told the troops, praising their "extraordinary achievement". The "most important lesson was about our national character...that there´s nothing we Americans can´t do when we stick together... And that´s why the United States military is the most respected institution in our land". He commended their willingness to sacrifice "so much for a people that you had never met", which, he insisted, was "part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don´t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it´s right. There can be no fuller expression of America´s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are".
Volgens Peter Kuznick: Obama identified America´s uniqueness among nations as its "willingness...to pay a great price for the progress of human freedom and dignity". The wars he absurdly claimed, had made the United States "stronger and the world more secure". He compared the troops who had slaughtered hundreds of Iraqi civilians in Fallujah to the American colonists "who overthrew an empire", and to the World War II generation who "faced down fascism". Perhaps he hadn´t seen the American-flag burning jubilation of Fallujah´s crowd during their Day of Resistance and Freedom that commemorated the U.S. departure from Iraq. Perhaps he hadn´t read the accounts by U.S. marines of wanton and often indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, including woman and children. And what was either the most contemptible lie since the early days of the Bush administration or unfortunately sloppy and careless phrasing, Obama congratulated the troops for having "fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11", adding credence to the Bush-Cheney fabrication that the invasion of Iraq was somehow justified by Saddam´s support for Al-Qaeda and perpetuating the dangerous illusion that the occupation of either country, as of 2011, had anything at all to do with the initial A-Qaeda attack."
Obama felt compelled to cloak the war´s end in the kind of patriotic drivel that conjured up the powerfully haunting words of Rudyard Kipling, the erstwhile proponent of empire, who had convinced his son to enlist in the First World War, only to have him die his first day of combat. In his "Epitaphs of the War", Kipling wrote:
If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied".
Beste groete,
Pieter Redelinghuys
PS. Weens die feit dat die VSA bereid sou wees om ‘n uiters onlogiese, en op die lange duur, hopelose oorlog in Afganistan te voer met die doel om Al-Qaeda uit te wis, ‘n terroristeorganisasie wat eintlik in Pakistan gevestig is, het mense laat spekuleer dat daar ‘n alternatiewe rede vir hulle oorlog sou wees: In 2010 het die Pentagon se groep geoloë ontsaglike kosbare minerale in die land ontdek, lithium, koper, goud en yster.