The Collapse of Bush’s Foreign Policy
From Turkey to Iraq to Pakistan, the mounting chaos proves the White House is just winging it.
The Bush administration once imagined that its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would be anchored by friendly neighbors, Turkey to the west and Pakistan to the east. Last week, as the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to deteriorate, the anchors themselves also came loose.
On Sunday, just days after the Turkish Parliament authorized an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish guerrillas ambushed and killed 17 Turkish soldiers inside Turkey. In Karachi, Pakistan, a massive bomb nearly killed U.S.-backed Benazir Bhutto, who was supposed to help stabilize the country. The Bush administration’s entire Middle East policy is coming undone — if it even has a policy left, other than just sticking its fingers in the multiple, and multiplying, holes in the dike.
In Iraq, the Kurds of the north are the United States’ most reliable allies. In addition to the 5.5 million Kurds in Iraq, however, persons speaking dialects of Kurdish constitute around 11 million of neighboring Turkey’s 70 million citizens. There are another 4 million Kurds next door in Iran, and up to 2 million in Syria. All three of Iraq’s northern neighbors fear that Kurdish nationalism, which has been fostered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, could tear them apart. Opposition to that nationalism could provide a platform for an alliance of Syria, Turkey and Iran — a nightmare for the Bush administration. Washington had hoped to isolate Syria, an ally of both Iran and of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That’s not how it is turning out.
Even after Turkey declined to sign on to the Iraq war, then U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz praised it in April 2003 as a dependable ally and secularizing model for the Muslim world. Since then, however, Washington’s relationship with Ankara has turned increasingly sour over U.S. favoritism toward the Kurds.
The Turkish Parliament late last week passed a resolution permitting the military to make incursions into Iraq in order to chase down guerrillas operating on both sides of the border. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad piled on, appearing to support the Turkish move, though under pressure from Baghdad he denied he had urged an invasion. Iran also fears Kurdish terrorism and has shelled Kurdish villages in Iraq in reprisal for guerrilla attacks in Iranian Kurdistan. Perhaps as a quid pro quo for Syrian support against the Kurds, Turkey offered this weekend to broker an agreement between Syria and Lebanon. Bush’s partiality to the Kurds has provided Damascus an opening for newly warm relations with Ankara.
On Sunday, guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) ambushed a Turkish military convoy, killing 17 soldiers. The Turkish military counterattacked, killing 32 persons it said were guerrillas. In Istanbul on Sunday, a thousand demonstrators came out to denounce the PKK. In the two weeks prior to Sunday, the PKK had killed 28 Turkish soldiers. The mustachioed president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, a member of the Islamist-leaning AK Party, vowed that his country would “pay any price” to protect itself. The new tensions have roiled the world petroleum markets, hurt the Turkish economy, and further destabilized an already violent Iraq.
The Iraqi leadership, already presiding over a failed state, agonized at being caught in the crossfire. The Iraqi president, the avuncular Kurd Jalal Talabani, hypocritically condemned al-Assad for urging a foreign military invasion of an Arab country, even though he himself had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Massoud Barzani, the pudgy turbaned leader of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, warned that his government would defend its citizens and not sit idly by if Turkish troops rolled through Kurdish cities in Iraq. On Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament, having been unable to agree on virtually any internal issue or enact any benchmark legislation, promptly passed a resolution condemning the Turkish Parliament.
The ratcheting up of tensions between Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Authority threatens to throw the last relatively quiet and prosperous corner of Iraq into turmoil. The turmoil is likely only beginning. The Iraqi Kurds are seeking to incorporate the oil-rich province of Kirkuk into their confederacy, and there is strong popular support for seceding from Iraq altogether. Turkish officials have repeatedly said that either move would set off a Turkish invasion.
As usual, the Bush administration has reacted to these predictable problems in a purely ad hoc manner. There is no evidence that anyone in the administration has crafted a policy for dealing with tensions between Ankara and America’s Kurdish allies. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist group, but the PKK is given safe harbor by the Kurdistan Regional Authority of northern Iraq. What will Bush do about having wound up as the de facto protector of a radical peasant guerrilla group that is attacking the troops of a NATO ally? If the United States acts against the PKK, it risks alienating the Iraqi Kurds, whose pro-American peshmerga fighters perform security duties and enlist as troops in the new Iraqi army. If Bush does not restrain the PKK, then he is playing Mullah Omar to its al-Qaida and “harboring” terrorists, which he trumpeted six years ago as grounds for war.
Meanwhile, to the east, another supposed bulwark against terror is wobbling. The Bush administration had lovingly brokered the deal whereby Bhutto was allowed to return to Pakistan by military dictator Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf lacks grassroots support and has been shaken by powerful challenges from the country’s supreme court, by his brutal crackdown on Muslim militants at the Red Mosque last summer, and by his continued inability to subdue the tribal forces and al-Qaida remnants in Waziristan and other rugged provinces along the Afghan border.
Washington therefore became convinced that Bhutto, who heads the popular Pakistan People’s Party, might be able to come back as prime minister and cohabit with Musharraf, who was recently elected president by the Parliament and who has pledged to take off his uniform and rule as a civilian. Bhutto was elected prime minister twice, serving from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996, but both stints ended amid charges of corruption. She had lived in exile since 1999, when a military coup brought Musharraf to power. There are open cases against her in both Pakistan and Switzerland, and Interpol put her on an international wanted list in 2006 at the Musharraf regime’s prompting. Washington persuaded Islamabad to drop the charges against her so that she could return.
The huge explosion that greeted Bhutto in her home turf of Karachi, however, suggests that her arrival is hardly the remedy for Pakistan’s instability. Bush administration officials were dismayed when some in Bhutto’s circle, such as still-exiled husband Asif Ali Zardari, initially accused the Musharraf government of being implicated in the bombing. The prospect of peace between the Bhutto camp and Musharraf’s authoritarian military has been put into question.
Bhutto herself was quick to fix the blame on al-Qaida and militants in the tribal areas of the north. More dispassionate observers, such as Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin, have also suggested that the Karachi bombing may well have been planned by militants in northern Pakistan, where the remnants of al-Qaida are thought to be hiding out. Those areas are ethnically and politically linked to southern Afghanistan, which has seen a resurgence of guerrilla violence.
And in Afghanistan itself, the situation is in a similar downward spiral. More than 5,000 Afghans have been killed in political violence so far this year, 600 of them members of the police. The United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan allege that a revived Taliban has taken the city of Musa Qala in Helmand province. This weekend, major gun battles in that vicinity left 50 guerrillas dead. Farther to the east in Kunar province, Afghan and NATO troops engaged Pushtun guerrillas, killing 20, with one civilian dead and six wounded. Just last Thursday, a Taliban ambush near Kandahar wounded 6 NATO soldiers.
The U.S. and NATO military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill, has said that between 40 and 60 percent of the Pushtun guerrilla movement is funded by opium poppies, the source of most of Western Europe’s heroin. The dilemma for the Americans and NATO is that eradicating the lucrative poppy crops in southern Pushtun provinces such as Helmand appears to be driving more villagers into the ranks of the revived Taliban. Afghanistan has only some 30,000 poorly trained troops, less than half the 70,000 that NATO had planned on by this point, and the government of Hamid Karzai shows little prospect of being able to stand against insurgents for years to come.
Along with the failed state in Iraq, which has neglected to use any decrease in violence temporarily provided by the recent U.S. troop escalation to effect political reconciliation, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan raises the specter of a collapse of both of Bush’s major state-building projects. The turmoil in Turkey and Pakistan damages U.S. relations with two allies that are key to shoring up the countries under American occupation.
After Sept. 11, when the Bush administration launched its global “war on terror,” the United States enjoyed some clear assets in fighting the al-Qaida terrorist network. In the Middle East, the United States had the support of secular Turkey, a NATO member. The long relationship of the powerful Pakistani military with that of the United States enabled Bush to turn the military dictator Musharraf against the Taliban, which Pakistan had earlier sponsored. Shiite Iran announced that it would provide help to the United States in its war on the hyper-Sunni Taliban regime. Baathist Syria and Iraq, secular Arab nationalist regimes, were potential bulwarks against Sunni radicalism in the Levant.
Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan’s willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his “war on terror.”
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.
Copyright © 2007 Salon Media Group, Inc.
The Turks apparently need some time to figure out how the game is played. Bush invaded Iraq after his country was attacked by Saudi terrorists, so the Turks are supposed to attack Saudi Arabia after their country has been attacked by Kurdish-Iraqi terrorists. It is no wonder the administration is baffled by the Turkish threats to invade Iraq.
Interesting that the press has reframed the PKK terminology.
When did the press begin calling the PKK terrorists by such names as Kurdish separatists or Kurdish rebels or Kurdish guerrillas?
Maybe its because we are openly supplying and training the PJAK, the Iranian Kurdish terrori….I mean freedom fighters to carry out acts of terr.. I mean incursions to destabilize that area of Iran.
I’m not sure we can tell the difference between PPK and PJAK on the ground … or even care to.
It’s the old Reagan era argument again : one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter (a la Nicaragua).
….avaricious, spoiled children of privilege. They are just ignorant, rotten, ‘babes in the woods’. Someone else has always paid the price for these monied lowlifes and their corporate minders.
The arab schemers have it over them 6/1 when it comes to duplicity.
Spike,
Yea, the Bushies achieved their personal “success” by being mendacious parasitic free riders off of a society (USA) made up mostly of honest hard-working people. Fed by such easy “success,” their hubris blinded them to the difficulties in conning people from a land where mendacity and double-dealing is a way of life.
They are in way over their heads.
Wonder if any Turks were killed with US made weapons?
Bet there’s a big memo within the press to not mention anything along these lines.
But yeah, Bush seems to really be between Iraq and a very hard place now. Can’t wait to see how the brainstorming neocon think tanks are trying to spin this for Perino to belch out the way they want us to look at it.
(sorry about the “Iraq and a hard place” bit, but figured someone would say it and thought better get it out of the way)
The US is famous around the world for declaring phoney wars that can’t be won: the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror. Neither poverty, drugs, nor terror are things you can launch wars against because they don’t respond to military measures. What’s next? A war on dandruff?
The entire world knew what would happen when Dubya blundered into Iraq at the behest of Big Oil and the Likud. Only the neo-cons and their Bush admin proteges, as well as rightwing brown-nosers such as Poodle Blair, were too ideologically blinkered. The result is plain to see. Over a million innocents have died. Worse is to come. And now these nutcases want to invade Iran? Come again.
There is sometning perversly amusing about the idea of the Bush adminstration opposing Turkish military actions agianst Kurdish Iraq. Way back in 2002-03 when the Neocondescenti in the Bush adminstration were trying to explain their disdain of diplomacy over the much more macho posture of military action Bushco justified its position by saying that they felt the need to defend their intersts whether the rest of the world liked it or not. (somebody start chanting U.S.A., U.S.A.!!)
Now we see Turks (whose opposition to the Iraqi invasion provoked them to refuse refueliong or over flight by American air craft in support of the invasion) taking exactly the same position as Bushco regarding Kurdish attacks on their military and voila!–the tables have been turned. Hey, are you ready to ruummmbllee and fummbllee into WWIII! Somebody get John Hagee to say Amen!!
What else do you expect from George Wanker Bush? Competence? Subtly of thought? A sense of irony? A knowledge of history? Care for other human beings? The man is less than excrement. A pile of sun blackened feces would be a better president than this human cataclysm.
This article is a load of crap, Bu$h’s foreign policy hasn’t collapsed, everything is going according to plan. Chaos was the intention and chaos is what he’s got.
Remember, in chaos, it’s easier to steal. Bush’s intention was to act as criminally as possible so ‘insurgents’ would be as enraged as possible and his wars can continue perpetually.
I can never understand why when people refer to the Kurds that no one seems cognizant that they actually do have a right to be free too.
Nevertheless Cole doesn’t state an apparent potentiality involving Turkey massing troops on it’s border. Turkey may want to go into a crippled Iraq and take and hold a slice of Iraq as a buffer zone. If not something worse.
Ever wonder how people felt in 1913 as alliances were formed which coalesced into war? India is offered a nuclear exception as a balance to Pakistan in the advent of a war with Iran causing it to fall to pakistani extremists?
Turkey ‘allowed’ to invade and likely seize a slice of Kurdish Iraq as their price to be an ‘allied’ non partcipant in case we war with Iran?
A recent arms deal with the Saudis and other mid east states as their price?
World wars need alliances or certain guarantees of staying out of it.
Despite all the talk about how Turkey can’t be talked out of this sequence of events… the convenient timing as Bush talks up war with Iran is hardly a coincidence. At best (at worst) Turkey feels we are the losers and intends to flex it’s muscle for it’s own ends seeing the ineptness and failure of Bush in Iraq.
The scariest scenario is Turkey being allowed to do what it wants as it’s price for a WW3 alliance. India, mid east states to the south of Iraq, Israel and Egypt and now Turkey.
Maybe only just a worry but if you were planning a war with Iran …such alliances would be required, would they not?
“What else do you expect from George Wanker Bush?”
Please, don’t give wanking such a bad name…
we need some factual research about whom the usa is supporting in that kurdish border region and against whom. all we know for sure is that the know nothings who run this administration have used up all our gambling chips. i think of the cia’s war by proxy in nicaragua against a legitimate government and the likelihood that our grandchildren will regret this government’s moves.
Actually, Bush has achieved all his goals.
Blow Back from this nightmare will be one NASTY son-of-a-bitch…make no mistake about it!
Let us never forget that, while Bush held the gun, the Congress–Republicans and Democrats both–pulled the trigger. We should throw out the whole lot of them and elect only non-millionaires to represent us!
If the Turks go in, watch the Iranians go in - voila an excuse for wwIII.
One could make an argument the perceived “foreign policy failures” are actually part of the master plan the neonuts have been working on for most of their insipid lives. Start lots of fires, arms all sides, and steal as much as possible while everyone’s busy killing each other - and not paying attention to Israel. Then, once everything has been “creatively destroyed,” swoop in with the economic hit team and carve up the spoils.
A real “foreign policy” would include silly little things like massive efforts to reduce poverty, disease, economic inequality, desperation and hopelessness - you know, the stuff that would actually improve “homeland” security, instead of undermining it and then using said undermining as a reason to destroy our Constitution.
This administration does not have a “foreign policy.” It has a Cheney-con policy that has nothing to do with America.
Wow, it is SO surprising that with the USA being led by an evil brain-damaged monkey, and a corrupt blood-soaked Congress, and allies bought and paid for with taxpayer money, that things aren’t going better….
The foreign policy is to do whatever it takes to get US into endless war to support the military industrial complex, those ‘nice’ oily companies, and to control the oil reserves in the mid-east.
All the rest is dressing for politicians, news agencies, historians, and professors to write about.
See Jim Holt’s article in London Review of Books. Bushie’s (and many Dems) policy may be going fine: To control and profit long-term from Iraq’s $30 trillion in oil, there need only be well staffed permanent hardened US enclaves and total chaos surrounding them. Policy right on track, if the massive death-toll doesn’t bother you….
ezeflyer: “Actually, Bush has achieved all his goals.”
All his goals but his “greatest,” the one for which he must believe he will go down in history with, or just go down.
I believe it was an Axis of Evil, not a duality of evil.
tetti_tatti amongst others are with whom I would agree -that this is part of the ‘master plan’. There was one commentator who proclaimed (perhaps correctly) that all people are entitled to freedom - and hence the many reservations in the US after decimating the native americans.
Along these lines - we could give African Americans the states of Missippi, South Carolina, Georgia -historical records will indicate where the slave trade was the greatest - and along these lines of thought - the African Americans ’should’ have their own country called the USAA or SAA(State of African Americans). Let’s not forget the mexicans that range from Nevada to California.
The point is -the ‘right’ for people to have their own soveriegn state because they are different has been used and may be seen as a cloaked divide and conquer. One of the many examples would be Pakistan/Bangladesh/India where despite living together for centuries - long term counter-insurgency against India’s two hundred year clamor for independence resulted in splitting the ‘identy’ of the participants involved in the singular goal of removing British occupation and having that goal split into cries for autonomy and soveriegnty based on creed and linguistic roots. This is now more contemporarily referred to as ‘Balkanization’.
As for the so-called failure - no doubt - that the imperial and perhaps racist approach to Iraq by american planners have caused an extension of effort, arms and conflict than may have been necessary or even advisable. However, if the plan was for the MIDDLE EAST - then there is some rational for taking this approach and fanning the embers of conflict over the bordering states.
In this respect - the Kurds are PERFECT- as there are substantial populations of Kurds in Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. If amalgamated - a seperate ‘Kurdistan’ would cause havoc in the target states not under US imperial sway and ensure fealty to the US if Kurdistan WAS established - with the prized Kirkuk ol fields as tribute for their independence. In addition - it increases the ‘buffer’ region -and so impedes Turkey, Iran and Syria from mounting any proxy or overt counter measures.
In addition - the increased instability would be the logic for extending US presence for decades. This presence would cause then be the justification for the superbases that are being constructed since the arrial of US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Therefore - a strong presence of US backed puppets - Saudi/Kuwait/Qatar are all a lock, add in Iraq + Afghanistan and then put to simmer till boils the militarily backed (USA controlled) counters to populism in Turkey and Pakistan- viola - you REALLY DO CONTROL the middle east!!
There are still lots of Bush/Cheney bumper stickers here in Florida. They are mostly on the pickup trucks with the rubber balls hanging from the hitch. Chickenhawks rule. And you see them on lots of SUV’s and cars along with the obligatory “Support our Troops” ribbons and the Jesus Fish.
I’ve been meaning to get a Jesus Fish for my car. I intend to glue a fish with legs on top of it, humping it. It should get some feedback here and next time I go to South Carolina.
Bush scrawls “Let Freedom Reign” in one of his love notes to Condi — when not needing a bathroom break — but he forgot to amend that to excerpt Northern Iraq. The Kurds have been our most reliable friends in the region, even after Poppy Bush reneged on his promise of independence after the First Gulf War and allowed Saddam to use choppers and bio-chemical weapons to kill unruly Kurds, who strongly desire and deserve independence from the crazy religious squabbles of the Sunni and Shia to the South.
Junior will no doubt eventually back Turkey’s incursions into Kurdistan to ‘git the terra-ists’ to protect our airbase in Turkey, which funnels the majority of US military supplies into his debacle in Iraq.
As has been mentioned here by Frank and BBBunnyIII, chaos is indeed useful to the profit margins of Bush’s campaign contributors and the oil companies; the Kurds were just stupid enough to believe all of the Little King’s blather about freedom. Once the Kurds turn on us, coming soon, we’re gone.
“What’s next? A war on dandruff?”
That war has been won by T-Gel — frequent ‘liberal’ applications will render you flake-free.
tetti_tatti
“Chaos was the intention and chaos is what he’s got.”
I agree up to a point. Whether Cole has picked the right moment or not, even for these highly talented and trained control freaks there comes a time when true chaos takes over - chaos beyond comprehension. For Nixon, for example, that was the rather mild Watergate. Mild by today’s standards.
What is lacking is any kind of real faith, but that requires a depth of human experience not evidenced in the ruling parties who spend most of their lives avoiding real experiences, and so their consequences, and so wisdom.
Just as you have “chaos,” and “created chaos” we have an idealized version of “faith” where “man” is the sole determining factor in nature and destiny.
I don’t think that’s ever really worked out.
James Baldwin quotes Blake at the beginning of The Evidence of Things Not Seen:
“A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.”
War on Poverty… War on Drugs… Don’t forget War on Organized Crime — Should have invaded Sicily!!!
It’s time to wash our hands of the entire region… put our trillions into developing energy that makes crude oil obsolete and let all of those people in the Middle East kill each other off over sand and rocks.
The Bush apologists call that “protectionist”, but we are way beyond needing a whole LOT of protectionism in this country!
If you ask me, “protectionist” is the word of the future… a damn GOOD word!
The elite of various contries are always trying to destabilize other countries. It is being done to the US too, in case you did not notice. It is a two-way street.
Plan B(ush)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IJ24Df01.html
I laughed and laughed and laughed and still cant seem to stop. Fazlur Rahman is a sworn enemy of the U.S. (who isnt) and now we are courting him ?!! At this rate we should directly jump to Plan Z … make Osama the combined President of Afghanistan and Pakistan, hand over Iraq to Muqtada Al Sadr and be done with it. And knowing these imbeciles (bush and his dick) thats probably the only thing they wont screw up !! My 16 yr old niece is better informed than these dimwits …
Bush/Cheney on foreign policy are like Midas in reverse. Everything they touch turns to– what was that phrase?–”a pile of sun-blackened feces”(thanks Mordechai). When they leave a thing alone or leave it to the career diplomats, it heals over, viz. Libya, North Korea. Now they’re starting up on Cuba again. Bush makes a speech subtly suggesting the Cubans should rebel and the police and army should stand aside and not resist. Not that I wouldn’t mind the idea, but it’s out of line for a head of state to make such a remark. Also note that when they advocate “freedom” it’s not like, voting, free speech, civil rights and all that liberal nonsense. It’s about free MARKETS! Cheap labor, low taxes–freedom for business.
Once upon a time, blowback took a decade or two to materialize; now, it happens in real time. As for Busco’s motive being chaos and nothing more, I respectfully disagree. Big business–Death Party backers–need stability–even that of a dictator–to make the ROI% they covet. What they’ve gotten so far is peanuts compared to what was expected, and the future presents very little upside, aside from stealing money from US taxayers.
Umlaut is right - Turks were killed with US weapons. and Turk mafia turned up with’em too. Traced serial numbers - Blackwater and US armories.
This is why the current Kurd situation is the final straw.
Again - the PKK are marxist terrorists , not ‘rebels’, ‘guerrillas’, ‘etc.’
When was the last time an American cowboy knew about world history and international diplomacy?
frank1569 October 24th, 2007 5:03 pm
absolutely spot on…correct
Karlof1, I’d just like to point out that up until recently, oil was being moved out of Iraq and no one knows by who or in what quantity — there were no meters operating on the pipeline. Someone, and I suspect a Friend of Bush, has God-knows-how-many tankers of Iraqi oil stored up somewhere. Aside from that, the chaos has served Bush’s other favorite corporations as well: Billions have been lost due to ‘the confusion of wartime’ and the tender mercenaries of Blackwater, et al, would hardly be necessary if the Iraqis had a stable government and could provide their own security.
Please read Naomi Klein’s great articles on Disaster Capitalism here at Common Dreams to understand what they’re doing — it’s a new paradigm for control, different from that of the old empires which prized installing stability.
Gyptian, I laughed pretty hard too last night at an airing of PBS’ ‘Frontline,’ about the coming war with Iran. One Bushite idiot said with a straight-face that they hadn’t anticipated the linking of the Shia Iranians with the Shia Iraqis. Some neocon dimwit who ‘makes his own reality’ no doubt wouldn’t predict this, but plenty of sane people with experience in the Middle East knew this would happen. Those people were fired by Bush, I believe, and the evidence suggests, to lay the groundwork for utter chaos over there.
“If you ask me, ‘protectionist’ is the word of the future… a damn GOOD word!”
Absolutely. The only group that hates protectionism are global corporatists who are loyal to no state. They may wave the flag in America, but they hide the profits they make here overseas where they don’t have to pay US taxes on them. You’ve probably heard that patriotic all-American Houston-based Halliburton, who has all those no-bid contracts in Iraq, is moving its headquarters to Dubai. Might have something to do with the fact that Dubai doesn’t extradite for white-collar crimes and that they have no corporate income tax.
BTW, good quote, Geoff; in Iraq, the gates to the Green Zone look like a pet cemetary, metaphorically speaking.
I heard the war would spread throughout the region, How true. Syria was bombed last week, Turkey is about to invade northern Iraq, The President wants to attack Iran. Russia is not going to let this happen. When will this disaster end? Or will it end us all?
Bush and his rich buddies started this war and expect that the American public should pay for it.
Tax the rich and ruling elite of most of their money and assets to pay for it. They took the risk, failed; now like in any “free” market, the rich should loose their money.
I used to think the war was about oil, then about Israeli lebensraum, then about post-colonial Empire maintenance.
I’m now thinking it’s more like an elaborate Viking raid. Just go in, loot whatever you can, then leave when the leaving’s good. Your cadre will make out well, you get both whatever resources you can loot out — plus the black-hole budgets courtesy of the taxpayer.
There couldn’t be a sweeter deal imagineable to any gangster-era kingpin, mafia godfather, etc.
Saila…..Please don’t tell me you think bush is a cowboy. bush is as much a cowboy as Britney Spears is an intellectual. I KNOW you are being facetious. Yes?
Paul Bramscher, I think you hit the nail on the head. Just look at Texas post-Bush — as governor, he plundered the state budget, gave the fat to his wealthy cronies and moved on, leaving a massive debt — just like a plague.
WillyBill, Bush is the farthest you can get from a real cowboy — he’s even afraid of horses. Texans I’ve talked to laugh at his ‘brush-clearing’ photo-ops — real Texas ranchers hire teenage kids to do that work, and it only takes a few hours usually. You also don’t do that kind of work in 106-degree August heat, unless you’re crazy. Just think, it would take a member of the Big Media (BM) about fifteen minutes to find that out, but none ever have, to my knowledge.
What can one expect when the government is run by two sociopaths who haven’t been in touch with reality in years, and who are enabled by a Republican party engaged in the treason of destroying the Constitution and the rule of law, and whose diplomatic instrument is a woman who has shown herself to be clearly incompetent and incapable, as well as out of touch with the real world?
willybill,
I thought Bush was a cowboy based on the way he talks, such as: Bring ‘em on; smoke ‘em out; dead or alive.
Saila, like John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, he just PLAYS a cowboy for financial gain.
True story: I was once having an exchange with a neocon Bush supporter and, rather than answer me, he directed me to a site called “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Without a hint of irony, it named as cowboys Wayne as well as Tex Ritter, Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon, Hoss & Li’l Joe Cartwright, Paladin, and TV’s Maverick. All actors or fictitous characters. If you ever wonder what went wrong in the neocon mind, this is a good place to start — they can’t distinguish reality from fantasy. BTW, don’t miss the Ten Cowboy Commandments by Gene Autry at the bottom of the page — count how many Bush has violated in his six years as president [sic].
Here, see for yourself, but make sure you’ve swallowed your beverage first:
“My Heroes Have Always been Cowboys”:
http://www.goodolddogs.com/cowboy_wh.html