Letters to the Editor
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Pax Americana in Progress
I recall the eerie similarity between the goals for a Pax Americana stated in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" and the lead up to the current occupation of Iraq. One would think that time and reality would have discredited the neo-con vision, but that would make one "reality based."
Hell's bells, you can't have a Pax Americana without permanent bases in the region. Controlling the world means controlling the world's energy supply as much as we can, and being able to control Iraq's spigots is one key. And that may well mean, as Greg Palast contends, keeping the spigots turned off in order to keep oil prices high.
As for the insurgency, pesky colonists are to be expected. The key is to make sure they keep the bulk of the fighting amongst themselves.
As for the troops, every empire requires a cannon-fodder class. Limit their career options at home, say nice things about them publicly once they're in uniform, and try not to tip your hand too often (Walter Reed, inadequate armor, inadequate rest between tours just shows the true contempt for this class).
And if you can't manufacture consent at home for your messy business of empire maintenance in the full Lippmannesque sense, at least you can manufacture enough confusion that the herd will move on to other concerns.
As for Iraqi's telling us to leave... if a Gandhi showed up and began galvanizing the people, he'd probably have to be eliminated.
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The United States of Amerika
Whatever the reason they won't get out...
they are hoist by a devastating petard of their own making.
Either as someone else pointed out here, they have nefarious plans to occupy the place in perpetuity (let's hazard a guess that it's for the Oil) or they are hanging around to save Bush's fragile reputation as someone who won't quit [and instead will stiff his successor]
I'm not personally convinced that it has anything to do with 'fighting them over there, so that we don't have to fight them over here'
as I imagine that they'd be more able to come and fight us over here, especially if we had our best men bogged down over there fighting Iraqui Sunnis and Shiites....Jihadists are surely not that stupid, and presumably they can read maps and make their way across oceans one way or another.
The odd thing about either of these positions, is that they take down the GOP with them. So even if all you want is Oil and you don't care about collateral damage OR you don't want to lose face, you still have the albatross of Iraq round your neck
it's a lose/lose for the GOP. It seems to me that they kept holding out for victory from '03 to '07 when in '05 they could have withdrawn and it wouldn't have been an issue with the same radioactive quality. By trying to win for the last 2 years, they've overrun the electoral timetable in such a way that withdrawing now will be suicidal for Bush. The whole 'cut and run' debate for the '06 midterms was because they thought they'd turn it round in time for '08 and be covered in glory. Well we're nearly there now and we KNOW that didn't happen.
So the GOP lose either way with their current position, unless they can find a way to terrorize us again with Iran's specter of WMD and maybe with a hint of election stealing a 3rd time round.
if they do, the US citizenry will deserve them, because they will have allowed their country to become a bona fide banana republic, albeit a luxury one, with a thriving tourist industry.
Hey maybe we are in a brand new postmodern entity, a fascist state that doesn't lock its own citizens up, only foreign nationals [for the time being]
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Bush's non-exit exit startegy.
Good on yer Brian, yer right on the money.
And fancy askin the military whether they'd like to leave Irak, DUH, bit like askin Dracula to leave the blood bank isn't it ?
After all, isn't WAR these guys bread and butter, doesn't it promise them promotion to the heights and a nice big fat pay rise as well ?
Why would any of them with draw from Irak when these possibilities are starin em in the face ?
Now go ask the Grunt on the ground, who has bugger all chances of promotion or pay rises worth talkin about, I suspect these people have already made their views loud and clear, and the way I understand it, stayin there is not an option for them.
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"Perhaps Permanently"?
the Bush administration's Iraq strategy requires U.S. troops to remain in that country for a long time, perhaps permanently.
"Perhaps??" Permanent military fortifications are not "perhaps." If even Joe Conason cannot bring himself to say that the Bush administration's Iraq strategy is assuredly a permanent occupation, and has always been intended as such, then we as a people are clearly not yet ready to face what's happening.
And let's be clear, here -- this is not something that's only recently become evident. It was clear at the very beginning of the war -- even before the war -- when neoconservatives connected to the administration wrote openly about using Iraq as the new American Middle Eastern staging ground that hadn't worked out in Saudi Arabia. Anyone who's spent the intervening time anxiously parsing administration statements and hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel has been thinking wishfully, to say the least. (By contrast, nobody ever speaks hypothetically about the far less unwelcome permanent bases we've built in Bahrain and Qatar during the same time.)
Here's a little glossary for those who are still having trouble with this: Republicans who talk about "finishing the job" mean "staying permanently." Democratic hawks who talk about "staged withdrawals" and "residual forces" mean "staying permanently." Anyone who bleats about "protecting our interests" or "meeting our commitments to our allies" is saying "staying permanently."
So long as we remain enthralled by the fantasy of public discourse on the basis of these euphemisms, any ensuing discussion we have, no matter how outraged, is as meaningless and contrived as the "tastes great" - "less filling" debate of those beer ads.
We could withdraw our entire force in about 8 weeks if were serious about letting Iraq be. It wouldn't be good for American power in the region. It wouldn't be good for Israel. It wouldn't be good for democracy in Iraq. But every day we stay is making things worse.