[Marxism] Iraqi Resistance Ties down Superpower Army

[Jacob Levich <jlevich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Iraqi Resistance Ties down Superpower Army
Scope of US Imperialist Ambitions Would Require Forced Military Draft
by Jacob Levich

Aspects of India's Economy No. 38, December 2004

When the United States attacked Iraq in March 2003, Pentagon planners were 
confident that the country could be invaded and its people subdued using no 
more than 140,000 US ground troops. Within six months, it was believed, 
troop strength could be reduced to a single division, comprising 30,000 
soldiers ­ a number deemed sufficient to defend US bases and interests 
there in perpetuity. (New York Times, October 19, 
2004)<http://www.rupe-india.org/38/#note1>1 This rapid drawdown would leave 
the US in a position to pursue the next steps in an aggressive military 
program aimed at controlling all of West Asia (see Aspects No.s 33 & 34).

Nearly two years later, 138,000 US soldiers remain in Iraq. Though 
supplemented by 8,000 British soldiers, 20,000 highly-paid mercenaries 
contracted from security firms, and the purely token forces that comprise 
the so-called Coalition of the Willing, the occupiers are losing a grinding 
war of counterinsurgency that has stretched US military resources to 
breaking point. Soldiers are spread so thin on the ground that the US can 
no longer attempt to pacify a single city, Falluja, without temporarily 
ceding the rest of the Sunni Triangle to the 
resistance.<http://www.rupe-india.org/38/#note2>2 This personnel shortage 
has left the US hamstrung throughout West Asia and ill-prepared to cope 
with any new threats to its tenuous global supremacy. As a result, 
Washington may soon be forced to reintroduce military conscription for the 
first time since the Vietnam War.

Complete: http://www.rupe-india.org/38/draft.html

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