Eric Haney is a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army and a founding member of Delta Force, the military’s elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He tells the LA Daily News that the Iraq war has damaged the US for generations:
Q: What’s your assessment of the war in Iraq?
A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and…pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That’s why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.
We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.
Q: What is the cost to our country?
A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. … And I say “we,” because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they’re going to have from now on.
He also talks about the US policy of torturing “terror” suspects and the ability of the Bush administration to throw away the US constitution.
These are the “values” supported by Blair and Howard (and encouraged by the Murdoch followers). The Iraq war – “imperial overreach“, in the words of one commentator – has hastened the increasing irrelevance of the US empire. China is rising, and so is India. By so strongly supporting the US, leaders like Blair and Howard show themselves to be the sycophants they really are. The US era is coming to an end.