I don't think we should listen to Slaughter. Her punditry was and is lacking in perspicacity, good judgment, common sense and the capacity to spot a lie.

This debate about how best to withdraw from Iraq is a non-starter, oh sure America can "debate" about it, and will do so endlessly, but nothing will happen. It's a non-starter because America, or at least the elites that 'really" run the show from behind the curtain, have no intention of leaving the region. None. Zero. Ain't gonna happen, not on their watch anyway.

The debate about why to go in was silly, stupid, childish, and based on lies, just as is the debate about how to get out. To understand why America will never leave, one must understand why they went there in the first place. Everything you need to know about that can be found on the PNAC site. It's all about global hegemony. Global hegemony has been the goal of America since around I believe, 1948, when George Keen said, 'The US has 6% of the world's population, but it enjoys 50% of the world's resources. US foreign policy is intended to keep it that way.' PNAC is on side with that, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, America was in a position to actually achieve that goal.

Lots of people say, "It's about oil", others say "Israel" some, say both. It is about oil and it is about Israel, but it goes beyond that. Strategic thinkers know that the real enemy of the hegemon is China. America must take the oil, or China will, it is that simple. The world's gas tank is now half empty. Soon, very soon, prices will double, triple and quadruple, this could happen on a very short time scale, and has little to do with "tension in the Middle East" as it is so often euphemistically phrased. It's supply and demand. It's that simple.

The American people actually agree with this. What American, other than a few Green Party types, would actually accept a serious reduction in their standard of living? If America does not control the Middle East -- totally, this will happen. And no American will accept it, it would be political suicide for any President to allow that to happen. He would be dragged from his office by enraged mobs of carless people and he or she knows it.

Someday, soon, America will have to give up its cars, they will have to move from the vast air conditioned and oil heated suburbs to the cities, and the cities will suffer greatly, for America has not planned for that. The diminishing supply of oil will ineluctably lead to a huge increase in the price. That increase will change everything. Air travel will again be only the province of the wealthy. A car will be a true luxury.

The only way to avoid this is to control the oil. And America will control the oil. China must be contained. In this sense it does not matter what the American people think they want. Whether they know it or not, Kennan was right.

America takes far more than its share. It always has. This policy will continue. There is no other path for America.

McCain is correct when he says that America will be in Iraq for another 100 years, or at least until the oil is gone, whichever comes first.

If wars have to be fought, if millions more have to die for oil, well, that is, in the parlance of mass murderers like Madeline Albright, who said about the 500,000 "extra deaths" in Iraq, "worth it".

It's either that or Americans will have to start living like the rest of the world, i.e. within their means, and that is truly unacceptable to the vast mass of the American people. George F. Kennan knew that, Hilary knows that, and Obama will know it too.

For more insight into the mind of an elite strategic thinker read Kennan himself.

http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan/pps23.html