Too Much Stuff: How Our Profligate Consumerism Might Keep Us in Iraq

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted November 21, 2008.

And it doesn't stop there. In mid-2007, when the issue of our "stuff" first became part of the withdrawal news, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pointed out: "You're talking about not just U.S. soldiers, but millions of tons of contractor equipment that belongs to the United States government, and a variety of other things… This is a massive logistical undertaking whenever it takes place." So, one might ask, what about those many tens of thousands of private contractors in Iraq and all their materiel? Presumably, some of them, too, would have to withdraw, mainly through the bottleneck of Kuwait and its overburdened ports. This would, as the military now portrays it, be an American Dunkirk stretching on for years.

The Argument of Last Resort

Now, back in the days when we had less experience fighting losing wars, Americans in retreat simply shoved those extra helicopters off the decks of aircraft carriers in chaos, burned free-floating cash in tin drums, and left tons of expensive equipment and massive bases behind for the enemy to turn into future industrial parks. At the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in April 1975, while everything in sight was being burned or destroyed including precious advanced electronic equipment, money actually rained down from the Embassy incinerator on the roof upon amazed Vietnamese allies huddled below, waiting for a promised airlift to safety that, for most, never came.

Withdrawal then was unsightly, unseemly, and environmentally unsound. But, as we know, the lessons of Vietnam were subsequently learned.

Today, the Pentagon and the military top command plan to be far more responsible consumers and far better environmentalists, however long it takes, and the Department of Agriculture's "stringent requirements" for the "power-washing" -- this, in the desert, of course -- of every object to be returned to the U.S. will help ensure that this is so. "Ever since U.S. authorities found plague-infected rats in cargo returning from the Vietnam War," the AP's Hanley has written, "the decontamination process has been demanding: water blasting of equipment, treatment with insecticide and rodenticide, inspections, certifications."

And don't forget the shrink-wrapping of those helicopters -- who knows how many -- for that long, salt-free sea voyage home.

Think of this as a version of the Pottery Barn Rule that Secretary of State Colin Powell supposedly cited in warning President Bush on the dangers of invading Iraq: "You break it, you own it." For the departure from Iraq, this might be rewritten as: You bring it, you own it.

You might say that, in the end, Bush's secret plan for never withdrawing from Iraq was but an extension of his shop-till-you-drop response to 9/11. The idea was to put so much stuff in the country that we'd have to stay.

And now, as the mission threatens to wind down, the top brass are evidently claiming that an Obama timeline for withdrawal would violate our property rights and squander a vast array of expensive equipment. You'll hear no apologies from the military for traveling heavy, despite the fact that they are now arguing against a reasonable withdrawal timetable based on the need to enact a kind of 12-step program for armed consumer sobriety.

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Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

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