The last convoy of US troops to leave Iraq has entered Kuwait, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The final column of about 100 armoured vehicles carrying 500 soldiers crossed the southern Iraqi desert overnight.Meanwhile, the veterans from the war are finding it hard to find work. The unemployment rate for young veterans is 30%.
Many more Americans will die from short-term and long-term medical problems from injuries or diseases associated with this war. If things follow the Agent Orange timeline, sometime around 2050, those poisoned by the burn pits may see some help.
Another prediction: Later in this decade and into the `20s, "homeless Iraq/Afghan War Vets" will be as much a part of the lexicon as it was for Viet Nam vets in the 1980s.
Another: In the `20s and `30s, there will be a scandal as to how underfunded the Veterans' Administration is and how shoddy their treatment of aging Iraq/Afghan War vets is.
Another: The Marine Corps will shrink and go back to being a light sea-mobile infantry force. They have to do it to survive, for if they remain the heavy infantry force that the Afghan War forced them to be, eventually Congress will start asking what is the difference between the Corps and the Army and "wuffo we need two armies?"
Another: The Army will lose big in the upcoming postwar budget battles. Almost everyone will have lost the taste for another big war. This country will not want to pay for another trillion-dollar exercise in boosting the manhood of an insecure silver-spoon president. The thinkers will foresee limited interventions, with drones, some manned aircraft and special forces. Heavy armor, artillery and heavy infantry forces will be slowly slashed.
Another: The Navy will, sooner or later, bleat about how CVs and LHAs make perfect mobile drone bases. The Air Force will have to explain why its F-22s were of no use in the last two wars. The F-35 will be scaled back and ultimately axed.
Another: The huge American diplomatic presence in Iraq will not last for very long. The Iraqi government will place greater and greater restrictions on the mercenaries who provide security and eventually run them out of the country. The billion-dollar embassy complex will be scaled back and eventually abandoned.
Still another: The big losers in the end of the Iraq War, other than the now thoroughly discredited neocons, will be the Kurds. Take a look at this CIA map of the region:
What passes for Kurdish lands is completely landlocked. The Kurds claim territory that is now controlled by three peoples who pretty much hate them: The Arabs, the Turks and the Persians. Other than the standard guerrilla tactic of retreating to the mountains, they have no safe areas, no lands controlled by a friendlies. The Kurds thrived because of American protection, and now that is gone. The "go to the hills" tactic will become of marginal utility once Iran, Iraq and Turkey begin to deploy their own armed spy drones.
Finally, the Republicans will continue to wail and whine about how we should have stayed in Iraq. Like the amoral douche-nozzles that they are, they will ignore the point that the withdrawal date was negotiated by President George "Chimpy" Bush. They will ignore that if troops had remained, that they would have been subjected to Iraqi law and that the Republicans would have complained much about that.
1 comment:
And in the end, the politicians in Washington, DC will have learned exactly the same amount about Iraq that they learned about Vietnam -- nothing to change their foolish ways.
"My Father's Rifle" did a pretty good job of introducing Kurds of today in my mind.
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