Enter Turkey — From Cakewalk to Quicksand

Paul Craig Roberts

John Lukacs in his monograph, June 1941: Hitler and Stalin, reports that “the best military experts throughout the world predicted the defeat of the Soviet Union within a few weeks, or within two months at the most” following Hitler’s invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941.

While the superb German military machine made an excellent showing, by the beginning of 1943 its offensive capability was exhausted and the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad. Germany lost the war one and one-half years before the US could manage the invasion of Normandy.  If Hitler had not depleted the German Army in Russia, a US invasion of Normandy could not have been contemplated.

Lukacs concerns himself with unintended consequences of June 22, 1941.  It is not too early, or too late, to concern ourselves with the unintended consequences of March 20, 2003. 

Four and one-quarter years ago the Pentagon and its neoconservative advisors and media propagandists promised Americans a “cakewalk” war of 3 to 6 weeks duration. Six weeks later on May 2, 2003, in history’s most ill-advised propaganda stunt, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, whose tower was adorned with a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished,” and announced the end to major combat operations in Iraq.

In fact, the war had hardly begun. Four years later with the failure in June 2007 of President Bush’s desperate last measure—”the surge”—US offensive capability is exhausted.  The US military can do no more and has less control of the situation than ever.

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Confiscating things and putting them in containers

See the full set of these disturbing photos at HERE