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TechnoratiUnraveling Iraq
12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq
Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here's the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the "success" of the President's surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans "say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties" and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq -- and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:
1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military's worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare -- not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into "Fortress Baghdad," as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital's poorest districts.
When American forces actually entered Baghdad in early April 2003, however, even Saddam's vaunted Republican Guard units had put away their weapons and gone home. It took five years but, as of now, American troops are indeed fighting in the warren of streets in Sadr City, the Shiite slum of two and a half million in eastern Baghdad largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. military, in fact, recently experienced its worst week of 2008 in terms of casualties, mainly in and around Baghdad. So, mission accomplished -- the worst fear of 2003 has now been realized.
2. No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave -- and still doesn't: Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an "exit strategy." In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn't "permanent base," but the more charming and euphemistic "enduring camp." (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio's defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as "one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades."
These mega-bases, like "Camp Cupcake" (al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals, that hasn't changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for "an open-ended military presence" and "no limits on numbers of U.S. forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements with other countries."
3. Yes, the United States is still occupying Iraq (just not particularly effectively): In June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), then ruling the country, officially turned over "sovereignty" to an Iraqi government largely housed in the American-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad and the occupation officially ended. However, the day before the head of the CPA, L. Paul Bremer III, slipped out of the country without fanfare, he signed, among other degrees, Order 17, which became (and, remarkably enough, remains) the law of the land. It is still a document worth reading as it essentially granted to all occupying forces and allied private companies what, in the era of colonialism, used to be called "extraterritoriality" -- the freedom not to be in any way subject to Iraqi law or jurisdiction, ever. And so the occupation ended without ever actually ending. With 160,000 troops still in Iraq, not to speak of an unknown number of hired guns and private security contractors, the U.S. continues to occupy the country, whatever the legalities might be (including a UN mandate and the claim that we are part of a "coalition"). The only catch is this: As of now, the U.S. is simply the most technologically sophisticated and potentially destructive of Iraq's proliferating militias -- and outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, it is capable of controlling only the ground that its troops actually occupy at any moment.
4. Yes, the war was about oil: Oil was hardly mentioned in the mainstream media or by the administration before the invasion was launched. The President, when he spoke of Iraq's vast petroleum reserves at all, piously referred to them as the sacred "patrimony of the people of Iraq." But an administration of former energy execs -- with a National Security Advisor who once sat on the board of Chevron and had a double-hulled oil tanker, the Condoleezza Rice, named after her (until she took office), and a Vice President who was especially aware of the globe's potentially limited energy supplies -- certainly had oil reserves and energy flows on the brain. They knew, in Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's apt phrase, that Iraq was afloat on "a sea of oil" and that it sat strategically in the midst of the oil heartlands of the planet.
It wasn't a mistake that, in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's semi-secret Energy Task Force set itself the "task" of opening up the energy sectors of various Middle Eastern countries to "foreign investment"; or that it scrutinized "a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, together with the (non-American) oil companies scheduled to develop them"; or that, according to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, the National Security Council directed its staff "to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields'"; or that the only American troops ordered to guard buildings in Iraq, after Baghdad fell, were sent to the Oil Ministry (and the Interior Ministry, which housed Saddam Hussein's dreaded secret police); or that the first "reconstruction" contract was issued to Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, for "emergency repairs" to those patrimonial oil fields. Once in charge in Baghdad, as sociologist Michael Schwartz has made clear, the administration immediately began guiding recalcitrant Iraqis toward denationalizing and opening up their oil industry, as well as bringing in the big boys.
Though rampant insecurity has kept the Western oil giants on the sidelines, the American-shaped "Iraqi" oil law quickly became a "benchmark" of "progress" in Washington and remains a constant source of prodding and advice from American officials in Baghdad. Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan put the oil matter simply and straightforwardly in his memoir in 2007: "I am saddened," he wrote, "that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." In other words, in a variation on the old Bill Clinton campaign mantra: It's the oil, stupid. Greenspan was, unsurprisingly, roundly assaulted for the obvious naiveté of his statement, from which, when it proved inconvenient, he quickly retreated. But if this administration hadn't had oil on the brain in 2002-2003, given the importance of Iraq's reserves, Congress should have impeached the President and Vice President for that.
5. No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an "embassy": When, for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a complex -- regularly described as "Vatican-sized" -- of at least 20 "blast-resistant" buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate, with "fortified working space" and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, among other things, you haven't built an "embassy" at all. What you've constructed in the heart of the heart of another country is more than a citadel, even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its adherents once liked to call "the Greater Middle East."
Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2 billion a year just to be "represented" in Iraq. The "embassy" is, in fact, the largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation. Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were... enemy-occupied territory.
6. No, the Iraqi government is not a government: The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has next to no presence in Iraq beyond the Green Zone; it delivers next to no services; it has next to no ability to spend its own oil money, reconstruct the country, or do much of anything else, and it most certainly does not hold a monopoly on the instruments of violence. It has no control over the provinces of northern Iraq which operate as a near-independent Kurdish state. Non-Kurdish Iraqi troops are not even allowed on its territory. Maliki's government cannot control the largely Sunni provinces of the country, where its officials are regularly termed "the Iranians" (a reference to the heavily Shiite government's closeness to neighboring Iran) and are considered the equivalent of representatives of a foreign occupying power; and it does not control the Shiite south, where power is fragmented among the militias of ISCI (the Badr Organization), Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the armed adherents of the Fadila Party, a Sadrist offshoot, among others.
In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has been derisively nicknamed "the mayor of Kabul" for his government's lack of control over much territory outside the national capital. It would be a step forward for Maliki if he were nicknamed "the mayor of Baghdad." Right now, his troops, heavily backed by American forces, are fighting for some modest control over Shiite cities (or parts of cities) from Basra to Baghdad.
7. No, the surge is not over: Two weeks ago, amid much hoopla, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker spent two days before Congress discussing the President's surge strategy in Iraq and whether it has been a "success." But that surge -- the ground one in which an extra 30,000-plus American troops were siphoned into Baghdad and, to a lesser extent, adjoining provinces -- was by then already so over. In fact, all but about 10,000 of those troops will be home by the end of July, not because the President has had any urge for a drawdown, but, as Fred Kaplan of Slate wrote recently, "because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the 15 months will be up in July... and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them."
On the other hand, in all those days of yak, neither the general with so much more "martial bling" on his chest than any victorious World War II commander, nor the white-haired ambassador uttered a word about the surge that is ongoing -- the air surge that began in mid-2007 and has yet to end. Explain it as you will, but, with rare exceptions, American reporters in Iraq generally don't look up or more of them would have noticed that the extra air units surged into that country and the region in the last year are now being brought to bear over Iraq's cities. Today, as fighting goes on in Sadr City, American helicopters and Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones reportedly circle overhead almost constantly and air strikes of various kinds on city neighborhoods are on the rise. Yet the air surge in Iraq remains unacknowledged here and so is not a subject for discussion, debate, or consideration when it comes to our future in Iraq.
8. No, the Iraqi army will never "stand up": It can't. It's not a national army. It's not that Iraqis can't fight -- or fight bravely. Ask the Sunni insurgents. Ask the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. It's not that Iraqis are incapable of functioning in a national army. In the bitter Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, Iraqi Shiite as well as Sunni conscripts, led by a largely Sunni officer corps, fought Iranian troops fiercely in battle after pitched battle. But from Fallujah in 2004 to today, Iraqi army (and police) units, wheeled into battle (often at the behest of the Americans), have regularly broken and run, or abandoned their posts, or gone over to the other side, or, at the very least, fought poorly. In the recent offensive launched by the Maliki government in Basra, military and police units up against a single resistant militia, the Mahdi Army, deserted in sizeable numbers, while other units, when not backed by the Americans, gave poor showings. At least 1,300 troops and police (including 37 senior police officers) were recently "fired" by Maliki for dereliction of duty, while two top commanders were removed as well.
Though American training began in 2004 and, by 2005, the President was regularly talking about us "standing down" as soon as the Iraqi Army "stood up," as Charles Hanley of the Associated Press points out, "Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has seemed to always slip further into the future." He adds, "In the latest shift, the Pentagon's new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when local units will take over security responsibility for Iraq. Last year's reports had forecast a transition in 2008." According to Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that the military will not be able to guard the country's borders effectively until 2018.
No wonder. The "Iraqi military" is not in any real sense a national military at all. Its troops generally lack heavy weaponry, and it has neither a real air force nor a real navy. Its command structures are integrated into the command structure of the U.S. military, while the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy are the real Iraqi air force and navy. It is reliant on the U.S. military for much of its logistics and resupply, even after an investment of $22 billion by the American taxpayer. It represents a non-government, is riddled with recruits from Shiite militias (especially the Badr brigades), and is riven about who its enemy is (or enemies are) and why. It cannot be a "national" army because it has, in essence, nothing to stand up for.
You can count on one thing, as long as we are "training" and "advising" the Iraqi military, however many years down the line, you will read comments like this one from an American platoon sergeant, after an Iraqi front-line unit abandoned its positions in the ongoing battle for control of parts of Sadr City: "It bugs the hell out of me. We don't see any progress being made at all. We hear these guys in firefights. We know if we are not up there helping these guys out we are making very little progress."
9. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and fragmentation: The U.S. invasion and the Bush administration's initial occupation policies decisively smashed Iraq's fragile "national" sense of self. Since then, the Bush administration, a motor for chaos and fragmentation, has destroyed the national (if dictatorial) government, allowed the capital and much of the country (as well as its true patrimony of ancient historical objects and sites) to be looted, disbanded the Iraqi military, and deconstructed the national economy. Ever since, whatever the administration rhetoric, the U.S. has only presided over the further fragmentation of the country. Its military, in fact, employs a specific policy of urban fragmentation in which it regularly builds enormous concrete walls around neighborhoods, supposedly for "security" and "reconstruction," that actually cut them off from their social and economic surroundings. And, of course, Iraq has in these years been fragmented in other staggering ways with an estimated four-plus million Iraqis driven into exile abroad or turned into internal refugees.
According to Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times, there are now at least 28 different militias in the country. The longer the U.S. remains even somewhat in control, the greater the possibility of further fragmentation. Initially, the fragmentation was sectarian -- into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regions, but each of those regions has its own potentially hostile parts and so its points of future conflict and further fragmentation. If the U.S. military spent the early years of its occupation fighting a Sunni insurgency in the name of a largely Shiite (and Kurdish) government, it is now fighting a Shiite militia, while paying and arming former Sunni insurgents, relabeled "Sons of Iraq." Iran is also clearly sending arms into a country that is, in any case, awash in weaponry. Without a real national government, Iraq has descended into a welter of militia-controlled neighborhoods, city states, and provincial or regional semi-governments. Despite all the talk of American-supported "reconciliation," Juan Cole described the present situation well at his Informed Comment blog: "Maybe the US in Iraq is not the little boy with his finger in the dike. Maybe we are workers with jackhammers instructed to make the hole in the dike much more huge."
10. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and civil war: As with fragmentation, the U.S. military's presence has, in fact, been a motor for civil war in that country. The invasion and subsequent chaos, as well as punitive acts against the Sunni minority, allowed Sunni extremists, some of whom took the name "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," to establish themselves as a force in the country for the first time. Later, U.S. military operations in both Sunni and Shiite areas regularly repressed local militias -- almost the only forces capable of bringing some semblance of security to urban neighborhoods -- opening the way for the most extreme members of the other community (Sunni suicide or car bombers and Shiite death squads) to attack. It's worth remembering that it was in the surge months of 2007, when all those extra American troops hit Baghdad neighborhoods, that many of the city's mixed or Sunni neighborhoods were most definitively "cleansed" by death squads, producing a 75-80% Shiite capital. Iraq is now embroiled in what Juan Cole has termed "three civil wars," two of which (in the south and the north) are largely beyond the reach of limited American ground forces and all of which could become far worse. The still low-level struggle between Kurds and Arabs (with the Turks hovering nearby) for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the north may be the true explosion point to come. The U.S. military sits precariously atop this mess, at best putting off to the future aspects of the present civil-war landscape, but more likely intensifying it.
11. No, al-Qaeda will not control Iraq if we leave (and neither will Iran): The latest figures tell the story. Of 658 suicide bombings globally in 2007 (more than double those of any year in the last quarter century), 542, according to the Washington Post's Robin Wright, took place in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly Iraq. In other words, the American occupation of that land has been a motor for acts of terrorism (as occupations will be). There was no al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia before the invasion and Iraq was no Afghanistan. The occupation under whatever name will continue to create "terrorists," no matter how many times the administration claims that "al-Qaeda" is on the run. With the departure of U.S. troops, it's clear that homegrown Sunni extremists (and the small number of foreign jihadis who work with them), already a minority of a minority, will more than meet their match in facing the Sunni mainstream. The Sunni Awakening Movement came into existence, in part, to deal with such self-destructive extremism (and its fantasies of a Taliban-style society) before the Americans even noticed that it was happening. When the Americans leave, "al-Qaeda" (and whatever other groups the Bush administration subsumes under that catch-all title) will undoubtedly lose much of their raison d'être or simply be crushed.
As for Iran, the moment the Bush administration finally agreed to a popular democratic vote in occupied Iraq, it ensured one thing -- that the Shiite majority would take control, which in practice meant religio-political parties that, throughout the Saddam Hussein years, had generally been close to, or in exile in, Iran. Everything the Bush administration has done since has only ensured the growth of Iranian influence among Shiite groups. This is surely meant by the Iranians as, in part, a threat/trump card, should the Bush administration launch an attack on that country. After all, crucial U.S. resupply lines from Kuwait run through areas near Iran and would assumedly be relatively easy to disrupt.
Without the U.S. military in Iraq, there can be no question that the Iranians would have real influence over the Shiite (and probably Kurdish) parts of the country. But that influence would have its distinct limits. If Iran overplayed its hand even in a rump Shiite Iraq, it would soon enough find itself facing some version of the situation that now confronts the Americans. As Robert Dreyfuss wrote in the Nation recently, "[D]espite Iran's enormous influence in Iraq, most Iraqis -- even most Iraqi Shiites -- are not pro-Iran. On the contrary, underneath the ruling alliance in Baghdad, there is a fierce undercurrent of Arab nationalism in Iraq that opposes both the U.S. occupation and Iran's support for religious parties in Iraq." The al-Qaedan and Iranian "threats" are, at one and the same time, bogeymen used by the Bush administration to scare Americans who might favor withdrawal and, paradoxically, realities that a continued military presence only encourages.
12. Yes, some Americans were right about Iraq from the beginning (and not the pundits either): One of the strangest aspects of the recent fifth anniversary (as of every other anniversary) of the invasion of Iraq was the newspaper print space reserved for those Bush administration officials and other war supporters who were dead wrong in 2002-2003 on an endless host of Iraq-related topics. Many of them were given ample opportunity to offer their views on past failures, the "success" of the surge, future withdrawals or drawdowns, and the responsibilities of a future U.S. president in Iraq.
Noticeably missing were representatives of the group of Americans who happened to have been right from the get-go. In our country, of course, it often doesn't pay to be right. (It's seen as a sign of weakness or plain dumb luck.) I'm speaking, in this case, of the millions of people who poured into the streets to demonstrate against the coming invasion with an efflorescence of placards that said things too simpleminded (as endless pundits assured American news readers at the time) to take seriously -- like "No Blood for Oil," "Don't Trade Lives for Oil," or ""How did USA's oil get under Iraq's sand?" At the time, it seemed clear to most reporters, commentators, and op-ed writers that these sign-carriers represented a crew of well-meaning know-nothings and the fact that their collective fears proved all too prescient still can't save them from that conclusion. So, in their very rightness, they were largely forgotten.
Now, as has been true for some time, a majority of Americans, another obvious bunch of know-nothings, are deluded enough to favor bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq at a reasonable pace and relatively soon. (More than 60% of them also believe "that the conflict is not integral to the success of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.") If, on the other hand, a poll were taken of pundits and the inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia (not to speak of the officials of the Bush administration), the number of them who would want a total withdrawal from Iraq (or even see that as a reasonable goal) would undoubtedly descend near the vanishing point. When it comes to American imperial interests, most of them know better, just as so many of them did before the war began. Even advisors to candidates who theoretically want out of Iraq are hinting that a full-scale withdrawal is hardly the proper way to go.
So let me ask you a question (and you answer it): Given all of the above, given the record thus far, who is likely to be right?
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
[Tomdispatch recommendations: For another numbered piece on Iraq, check out Gary Kamiya's eminently sane reprise of the Ten Commandments as applied to the launching of the 2003 invasion -- to be found at Salon.com. ("Commandment I, "Thou shalt not launch preventive wars..."; Commandment VI: "Do not allow neoconservatives anywhere near Middle East policy... Special Bill Kristol Sub-commandment VI a: Stop giving these buffoons prestigious jobs on newspaper-of-record Op-Ed pages, top magazines and television shows. They have been completely and consistently wrong about everything. Must we continue to be subjected to their pontifications?"). Also let me offer a Tomdispatch bow of thanks to Cursor.org's daily "Media Patrol" column. Someone at that site with a keen eye for the less noticed but newsworthy pieces of any day (and an always splendid set of links) makes my life so much easier, when gathering material for essays like this one.]
Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
48 Comments so far
Show AllChristianH -- I know, I know …
The Kuwaitis bought and renamed Sante Fe International (?, previously called CF BRUN, of Alhambra, CA), and that provided US Oil & Drilling Engineering TECH for "_ H O R I Z O N T A L __ D R I L L I N G _"
ANother way to explain it is, the Kuwaitis were stealing Saddam's OIL -- right out from under his feet -- and when Saddam asked the USA if it was OK for him to kick their a$$es, we said SURE GO AHEAD.
Question 13: What exactly did Saddam do to earn the invasion of 2003? What was the REAL reason for the invasion? Was he getting soft and, as Greg Palast reported, nationalizing Iraqi oil? Was he making deals with China and planning to keep the money or some such thing?
Hi gde,
Consider reading the recent essay by Mr Roberts http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts04232008.html. He also suggests that the US is obeying the Israel lobby, and as former Assistant Secretary of Treasury in Reagan Administration and former Assoc Editor of Wall St Journal, he may have insight into the halls of power.
You are right, there are always multiple reasons, and Cheney, who, in 2000, is quoted as saying that 'we want to maintain our current posture [containment] vis-avis Iraq', no doubt changed his view after 9/11 and his energy task force analysis.
But the Lobby had a ready-made war policy, had the power to push it through Congress, and Wurmser and Feith to create the veil of lies to make a case for war. It was also the Lobby that stymied implementation of the Iraq Study Groups's recommendations to develop diplomatic relations with Syria and Iran to stop the killing. This would have defeated the purpose for Israel.
So the US is bankrupting itself with this 3 trillion dollar war on Iraq (and maybe Iran) for Israel's benefit, while paying billions in aid to Israel each year.
umm...
It should have been done... The British cartographers f'd us all... Saddam had multiple priors...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33
highly entertaining, and a REALLY good idea... Why aren't we doing this...?
13. Iraq is a stepping stone to Iran. The Iranian province of Khuzestan, adjacent to Basra, has immense reserves of oil, natural gas, water, and generates significant hydroelectric power. The plan has always been to take Khuzestan, which will render the rest of Iran financially insolvent and unable to defend itself.
14. Israel is involved with the oil agenda, as the future distribution hub. The long term plan is to connect Basra/Mosul to Haifa with a corridor for oil/gas/water pipelines and electric transmission lines, draining the resources of Iraq and Iran through Israel to the Mediterranean, bypassing the hazards of the Strait of Hormuz. Israel will then control the distribution of some of the word's most precious resources, becoming vastly richer and more powerful in the process. The Israeli contingent of PNAC had this in mind from the beginning.
Elmystereo, "Why do you Americans seem to think that you have to CONTROL the global supply of oil? It's not like the oil producing countries wouldn't sell it to you willingly"
Umm, actually we panicked when Saddam started talking about switching from Oil Dollars to Euro Dollars. Then we panicked when Iran struck deals with China to build a pipeline through Afghanistan... of all places what a coincidence. And we've been stuttering "Bad Chavez! Bad Chavez!" when he followed suit and also struck some deals with China.
You see, we don't like buying oil from communists. It makes it too expensive to beat them in WWIII. And we (well the neocons at least) still want to make sure Russia has had a good kick in the ass since Clinton never finished Reagan's legacy according to them. So we're trying to get Latvia, Georgia and all those former Soviet states to join up and come party with the NATO missile boys. Hey did you see the video yesterday of Russia shooting down a Georgian UAV spyplane? Hmmmm..... I wonder if that was an American made Preditor drone we sent over to take some close-ups of the commie's backyard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4ZD2iQ1aI
markbinoz -
Siouxrose is correct about multiple causes for the war. While you are correct about the power of the pro-Israel lobby, the Cheney energy task force was more important.
Siouxrose -
Please use more precise language. Antisemitism is a word that has many definitions, some of them opposed. Zionism is strongly antisemitic, in that it calls for the ethnic cleansing of people who are Semitic by descent, language, religion, and culture, by a people of whom the majority are not Semitic by race, are recent to a fully Semitic language, have rejected the Covenant of their Semitic religion and kept only ritual, and are as much or more European than Semitic in culture.
Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.)
Siouxrose
Don't call me an antisemite. What do you understand to be the Israel Lobby?
Tell me what other nation lobbied the US congress to invade Iraq, and had their own right-wing consultants advising the White House?
The clarity of Tom E. essay deserves better than your obfuscation about ""DARK"" power.
And I never said there was one reason for the Iraq invasion.
It's not really a war, it is really an occupation. It's not really about oil, it's about money. There is no way that the amount of oil under Iraq is worth the money that has been or will be spent on the occupation. The occupation is not an actuarially sound (if vastly immoral) investment in energy security. It's way way way bigger than that.
Tumbleweed makes an important point. If dozens of millions of Americans were not champing at the bit for the "end of the world" and "the rapture", this caper may not have ever even been pulled off. And, were it not for them, the next caper would not be such a worrying possibility.
That being said, the MBA's running the show don't really give a flying darn about the rapture. But they are keenly aware that the rapturists are key to their political survival.
And you know what? The rapturists are as amazed that people like CD readers could actually exist and have influence, as we are that they could.
The type of people currently running the Bush Administration are also die hard 'End of timers'! A group of people that believes wholeheartedly in Biblical Revelations and proficies that involve the end of the world. I suspect a lot of them are trying their best to bring on the mythical Armageddon with this war. That's why religion should never be part of the political system. There is to much chance of the wrong kind running amok.
Siouxrose and everyone else: It narrows down to three words> Money and Power. For every conceivable reason under the sun. Since time immomorial. When you have both, you call the shots. We on the left (progressives/liberals) spend enough time criticizing each other, a dissapation of energy in my opinion, while the rightwing consolidates its energies toward goal achievment. Guess who's winning?
Before I croak, I hope to see progressives come together, rejoicing in victory over the tyrants ruling the planet.
You're all teachers of a sort, and presummably know the battle starts from within ourselves.
Doom & Gloom...here is a quote for you...
It is pleasant, when the sea is high and the winds are dashing the waves about, to watch from the shores the struggles of another - Lucretius
Unfortunately, in this global age, we cannot merely watch dispassionately ... because when the Americans go down - which they will - they will make damn sure that we all go down with them.
I am not speaking of the American people, per se. But when the US runs out of oil they go for Iraq, when they run out of water they will come for Canada, when they run out of food???
The US (and most of the West) will continue their unsustainable society until all available world resources are consumed.
demosthenes: "But they would make us pay in Euros or even Rubles."
And, when a country has moved all of its manufacturing offshore where it can pay people a dollar a day and ignore environmental damage and health, it has nothing to trade for Euros or Rubles. You are right. This is going to be a spectacular meltdown of that "shining city on a hill" and its all due to the greed of a few. I should have noted the source and didn't, but it is said that 200 people on this earth own wealth equivalent to that held by 40% of the rest of the world population. This is the end game of capitalism. One person owns it all.
MARK BINOZ: First of all, there are always MULTIPLE reasons for any nation's foreign policy. Second, a conservative wave has rolled over a number of nations and allotted leadership in support of policies of aggression. Israel's right wing's objectives dovetail with those of high-placed persons of similar mentality in the U.S. To think that US "leaders" would be altruistic enough to consider another small nation's interests above or beyond their own in ludicrous. To the extent Israel provides backing for US interests, a strategic location, some good brain power, AND access to oil... the plan works. There is also the matter of seducing a sizable number of naive fundamentalist Christians who see in Israel the fulfillment of their rapture myth; and as others have related in this forum, policy that sets things like war and oil prices appears to be set up by a covert group of world bankers and financiers. Blaming Israel for all that's going on is just a more updated policy of antisemitism. AND I do NOT agree with Israel's policies of aggression or injustice against the Palestinians. NO nation is immune to the LAW of karma. Casting blame without recognizing the cabal behind much that is underway in my view constitutes prejudicial thinking.
It's about oil. It's about control of US citizens and increasingly as the World Trade Organization over-runs the laws of sovereign nations, the opportunity of the new robber barons to seize assets anywhere and EVERY where. It's about manipulating the US dollar. It's about raw power corrupting absolutely, it's about a DARK power ovecoming America's brilliant government design structure that all but guaranteed this subduction of power would not occur. In other words, it's never just ONE thing however enticing the premise might seem.
Witnessing the decline of America is interesting if viewed from a dispassionate perspective. The dynamics are clear and understandable yet the American People are frozen in fear thus unable or unwilling to change things for the better. The downward cycle is fueled by the aggressive ignorance of immature and wrong-headed national leadership. It's as if someone pressed the self destruct button and we're all awaiting the end.
Galen:
For perceptive individuals like me, Hillary's Butch hairstyle was the clue that symbolized her inner Martial Hillary
David Grayling:
In re: "America was born to rule..." Nah, not really. It was never about rule, but about manipulating the global purse strings. U.S. Americans aren't very good at ruling anyone, including themselves.
However, when it comes to Opportunism, FUBARing and screwing things up, we are Numero Uno-the best there is!
Elmysterio says: "...Why do you Americans seem to think that you have to CONTROL the global supply of oil? It's not like the oil producing countries wouldn't sell it to you willingly. ..."
Yes. They would gladly sell it to us. But they would make us pay in Euros or even Rubles. And the instant dollars are no longer convertible into oil or gas, our colossal credit-card economy will crumble like a sand castle in the surf. It will be human history's most spectacular collapse. It's not the oil we have to control. It's the dollar-based, world economy.
Good article. While it may repeat much of what many people have already learned about, it still good for a quick refresher or for having uninformed people read. I had learned of most of what the article says, but picked up a few things; while the only one coming to mind is that Pepe Escobar reports that there are 28 militias in Iraq now.
It'd be interesting to know the sizes of these 28 militias.
" SpaceElevator April 21st, 2008 11:32 am
The Big Question no one seems to be asking is: What do the Iraqi people want?"
We don't need to ask when we already know the answer, and we have known this one for years. MOST Iraqis want the occupation, etc., ended, the U.S. et al OUT; saying, f.e., "bye-bye and don't look back for we aren't going to be needing you, lastmost of all, if ever possible at all".
They want the essentials they are lacking and the U.S. has kept them lacking for five years, and know that the U.S. has proven that they, Iraqis need the occupation ended and the U.S. et al gone. Far more of them want this, than those who want the U.S. et al to stay. I believe Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail recently had an article in which they stated these poll or survey statistics.
Hillary just said that if she was President, and Iran attacked Israel she would 'obliterate Iran'.
How's that for peaceful dialog?
She's not even elected and she's off to Armageddon in the Middle east.
A terrific essay by Tom E., as usual and, until recently, I agreed with him that the conquest of Iraq was about oil. But since reading Mearsheimer and Walts' book on the Israel Lobby, I am persuaded that the initiative came from The Lobby.
Before the Iraq invasion was proposed by neocons (including some Israeli citizens) under the auspices of the Project for the New American Century in January 1998, Perle, Feith and Wurmser wrote the 'Clean Break' report for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in June 1996 under the auspices of a right-wing Israeli think tank. This advocated that Netayahu "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq-an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right". Netanyahu did not implement this advice but was in Washington early 2002 advocating that the US invade Iraq instead. At the same time, those same Israeli advisers, Perle, Feith and Wurmser, were now senior advisers to the post-9/11 Bush administration and had not changed their message except that it was dressed as the 'New American Century', rather than the Israeli national interest (or the Project for the New Israeli Century?).
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that "Feith and Perle are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments... and Israeli interests." The Assassins' Gate author, George Packer also noted that "For Feith and Wurmser, the security of Israel was probably the prime mover" behind their support for the war.
In a position of influence, Feith was Pentagon Policy Chief who created the lies, dressed as 'intelligence', that attempted to justify the invasion. Feith has also been the focus for FBI investigations into leaking of confidential information to Israel, via the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60497-2004Sep3.html).
In addition, the executive director of AIPAC, Howard Kohr, stated in Jan 2003 that "quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq" was one of "AIPACs successes over the past year". And now they are pushing for the US to attack Iran and Syria in the "US national interest".
Look, I think that folk who ask questions about America and its policies are ill-bred, dumb even.
America was born to rule. That's the reality that the world just won't accept. Are they just thick or what? The sooner America makes every country in the world another one of the United States the better. Then the confusion will stop and so will these irritating questions.
I've just had a thought. If every country is a member of the United States, who will America fight?
Let's hope there's life on other planets.
Dangerous Creation
Noticeably missing were representatives of the group of Americans who happened to have been right from the get-go. In our country, of course, it often doesn't pay to be right. (It's seen as a sign of weakness or plain dumb luck.)
That's us, my fellow blundering outsiders. Dumb luck.
Competence of thought has been marginalized in the U.S. Intelligence and education are considered faults or handicaps. What a miserable and retrogressive future our leaders create for us by spurning reason, denying reality and appealing always to ignorance and bigotry in deciding on national issues. Nation of Pigs.
May 1st: California chapters of the ILWU (international longshore and warehouse union) are closing down the ports all along the west coast in protest of the war.
more info at: maydayilwu.googlepages.com
"Al Qaeda is on the run..."
Unfortunately, they are running TOWARDS you.
After reading about the "embassy in Iraq", described above, is there any question where Presidential Directive 51 is leading us? Forget the election...More Bush on the way.
John Ellis wrote: "Impeachment with intent to prosecute everyone of them to the full extent of the law can be the only sane response by a democratic nation that proclaims itself a nation of laws. Bush treated this nation like a car thief does a stolen car, he drove the wheels off it. We should treat him and the others like every other criminal."
I couldn't agree more. The president and his key subordinates are liers and in my opinion war criminals. Their use of the 9-11 attack/tragedy to further their personal, political and economic interests under the guise of patriotism is unconscionable...and I would agrue, a "high crime." It has diminished this country in every way, domestically and globally. Congress must set the precedent that no one...NO ONE...is above the law by holding the Administration accountable for its actions. To do anything less would be to put one more nail in the coffin of our constitution and everything it stands for.
To me that "embassy" is the biggest giveaway to the US intentions in Iraq. Part theme park, part Mall of America, and all Trojan Horse. I Sure hope they got their own air supply because poison gas does not need a direct hit to be lethal.
Any bets when the REAL US economic crunch hits that the US command will do the same thing to US troops that the Russians did to theirs in Afghanistan, i.e. abandon them?
This illegal invasion of Iraq, and the empire building foreign occupation are two Military Disasters........
Our Military is now broken and the U.S. Economy is facing bankruptcy and depression...........
Our troops are TRAPPED....in the center of ancient Guerrilla Ambush Theatres. .Bush is a stupid and insane leader, surrounded by 2nd-rate Generals, who have no idea how to turn this military disaster around......
IMPEACH both BUSH and CHENEY............TODAY !!!!!!!!!!
The war criminals running the United States of Zionism are still in charge and appear to think that everything is going to plan, and can do so for another one hundred years if necessary. All the above remarks are well known to the occupiers of the US government offices. The occupation continues. The US public are daily bombarded with media trivia while their lives are drained of means of subsistence and independence. The corporations are continuing to loot both the US and Iraq.
13. Iraq is the first Middle Eastern US colony. Syria is probably next. Iran is wishful thinking that will blow up in the faces of Bushco like a firecracker up a frog's ass (something George Jr. is quite familiar with).
I don't understand the logic of so many in supporting the democrats who were voted in to power in 2006 to get us out of Iraq and have kept us entrenched, voted to continue the monetary support for this illegal and sick occupation; and they have had the nerve to TAKE IMPEACHMENT "OFF THE TABLE" because it is "too divisive" (read: the mainstream media would destroy their careers) - logically, we voters have to say to them we aren't going to vote for you! We are going to support other parties (green, progressive, etc.) and will only support you when you start supporting us!
On the April 19th front page of the Seattle Times is a story, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2004359738_iraqoil19.html
titled, Pressure mounts on Iraq to pay its share.
"Senators say end U.S. 'blank check.'"
Apparently the US wants Iraq to use its oil to rebuild the country, while we keep knocking it down. (I imagine the bottom line is, "Just give Big Oil your oil and we'll leave (except for a huge military "police force")
Let's try a little analogy here. Suppose there was a home where the husband was an abusive person, mistreating his wife and kids. A neighbor decides to help, so he opens fire on the house, leaving it a smoking wreck, but the husband is dead. As the survivors of the family try to scavenge something from the wreckage to live on, the neighbor keeps shooting at anything that moves, and if any of the kids shoots back in self defense, the shelling intensifies. He then tells the widow that she must sell any heirlooms, or anything of value left, or give it to the neighbor, to pay for rebuilding her home, while the neighbor keeps on shelling it.
What is a good name for this? Hubris? Chutzpah? Stupidity? Cruelty?
We are the moral equivalent of Vlad the Impaler!
Unknown_Unknownable said: "American economy can produce everything, except crude oil that must come from somewhere. By maintaining military bases in that occupied territory, President Bush II has ensured American control of crude oil in world market for decades to come."
Why do you Americans seem to think that you have to CONTROL the global supply of oil? It's not like the oil producing countries wouldn't sell it to you willingly. For all the free-market bullshit that you guys impose on the rest of the world, you sure don't like it when it applies to yourselves.
Oh! We also quit producing things when China does it so well. I'm sure China will buy from US when the dollar falls to new lows. Then we will again compete with the rest of the third world countries for the most GDP.
Gasoline is yet extremely cheaper in America than that is in Europe.
Not Anymore! The DOLLAR buys a lot less!
Tom's review was spot on and it gets to the root of my discontent. For far too long knowing the truth has made me appear unpatriotic by mainstream standards, and this, during a time of war. The march of time has clearly vindicated those of us who connected Cheney's secret oil policy meetings with the purposeful destabilization of the region as the main reason for war. These guys weren't chasing terrorists, they never were, they were capping oil wells and driving oil prices into the stratosphere . . . $117.00 a barrel and climbing. Not only are we vindicated about the war, but we were right about Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld, too. They're criminals. We paraded that little nugget of truth through the streets, too. So, I'm not surprised to see our jobs, our homes and our economy getting stolen out from under us along with our right to privacy by these self-same crooks. Instead, I am just plain furious. Impeachment with intent to prosecute everyone of them to the full extent of the law can be the only sane response by a democratic nation that proclaims itself a nation of laws. Bush treated this nation like a car thief does a stolen car, he drove the wheels off it. We should treat him and the others like every other criminal. We have the right to demand that the laws of the land work for us rather than against us. If not now, when?
John Thomas Ellis
For two groups of people, these questions have never required to be asked. For BushCo. the answers have always been nothing more or less than the plan of action. For we in the streets in 2003 (and prior) the scenario was so obvious as to require no confirmation, but only revelation. Group 1 stonewalled and lied and reinvented the English language and history itself to maintain its brobdingnagian secret, and did so successfully until they discovered, perhaps even to their own surprise, that nobody had the will or the courage or the power to stop them anyway. Group 2 shouted the truth on placards and blogs and op eds hoping that as prediction after prediction was revealed to be the case the "American People" would see that they had been duped and soiled and discredited and ruined. The American People are in fact Group 3, a great, torpid herd long ago hammered into drooling submission by the relentless action of work cubicles by day and brainless television by night. Group 3 does not ask questions or care about answers. Group 3 "rules" in America, in some grotesque way. They consent to be told what is real by a standing wave of ravenous oligarchs who claim, following every sham election, to be the peoples' choice. And on it goes. Some of us prefer the mental freedom of Group 2, and we should be content with that since it is the only prize we are apt to win on this planet here in the Kali Yuga.
American voters knew everything. American voters know everything. But, they are not interested to do anything. Because, they are happy making money -- a lot of money.
America is a land where one can make a lot of money if s/he is clever enough!
President Bush II made an age-old intelligent decision in invading and occupying Iraq to control Greater Middle East.
American economy can produce everything, except crude oil that must come from somewhere.
By maintaining military bases in that occupied territory, President Bush II has ensured American control of crude oil in world market for decades to come.
Gasoline is yet extremely cheaper in America than that is in Europe.
About 5000 deaths of Americans since the invasion of Iraq is relatively a very small price to pay for long-term economic benefits of America.
American government prints greenbacks that are not worth the papers they are printed on if Uncle Sam cannot control other nations' wealth as collaterals to back them up.
If a seller refuses to give you things you want in exchange of whatever you have, one of the two next steps you can take: Just go home; or, buy a gun and hold it on the head of the poor seller and, believe me on this, you will get whatever you want.
American government has a lot of guns.
"who is likely to be right?".
We answer with our votes. We did that in 2006. See #2 - Bush never intended to leave. From the history of 11/2006 - 4/2008 looks like nobody intends for us to leave.
So if those of us who opposed from the beginning and oppose now, call and write and fax and march and vote again, and we see nothing change, what does being right have to do with this sin we are in?
Occupations always end, but so do lives. How many more dead to end this occupation? Right/wrong is way over.
A big part of Bush`s "legacy" is his nearly billion dollar bomb proof military complex (embassy ha ha). He should be sent there to live out his life since he enjoyed spending our money so much for the construction of it.
Interesting that many projects in our country are too costly for Bush, but in Iraq, the sky is the limit. I suppose the Iraqi people are demanding the tennis and volleyball courts and swimming pools for the 1000 bureacrats and generals.
The Big Question no one seems to be asking is: What do the Iraqi people want?
8. No, the Iraqi army will never "stand up"
Well, Tom, you're right but you forgot to mention that the Iraqi army is made up of Iraqi's who joined the invaders. What would we think of our fellow Americans who suited up in American Army uniforms issued by an invading Chinese, Russian, or some other army? A Chinese, Russian, or whatever-trained American Army designed to fight Americans? Most of us real Americans would enjoy tossing hand grenades at them. Good grief, if we are waiting for the traitors to stand-up it's going to be a long wait. I wonder if Hitler told the French traitors who formed France's Vichy government that the Nazi forces would stand down as soon as the Vichy forces stood up?
Tom Englehardt's assessment merely reinforces what any clear-headed student of history knows well: the Iraq fiasco is an ill-considered colonial adventure who's aim is the gooey black stuff, OIL! Of course, the American public would never go for another colonial misadventure after their last one, Vietnam, turned out so badly. Therefore, the PR machine, fresh off their brilliant bait-and-switch job during the 2000 selection (remember "compassionate conservative" and "wiping away the stain from the White House?"), went into high gear and used a national tragedy in the same way the Nazi's used the Reichstag fire to get their way. I expect this will be used as a case study in PR for years.
Tom Engelhardt makes some good points, though many of them are somewhat self-evident.
It does seem that the plan all along was to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq and that reasons would need to be found to justify keeping U.S. troops there.
The odd steps in the early days of U.S. occupation that destablized Iraq further (disbanding the Iraqi Army, allowing looting and chaos, etc.) might even have been steps that created such a justification.
It is about oil ... and protection for U.S. "allies" in the region.
The government and military of the current Iraq is in some ways similar to the government and military of South Vietnam, prior to the U.S. disengaging and redeploying out of Vietnam.
Other common threads between Iraq and Vietnam are explored in the artice:
"Going in Circles: Vietnam, Iraq, Calls for Impeachment"
Truthout.org
16 January 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011607D.shtml
Author's blog site:
http://jointreconstudygroup.blogspot.com/