It would appear that we’ll be hearing a lot more about how well things are going in Iraq, and how we have to give Petraeus more time. The latest is to give him till next spring, and then it will be to give him till the fall, and then even assuming a Democrat takes the presidency in Jan ’09, we’ll have to stay for several more years. It’s not that the Democrats are painted into a corner for fear of being forever branded as the party who lost Iraq; the problem is much deeper than that. The Democrats are complicit in and dependent on the military industrial complex, and they do their part in serving their Master when asked to do so. This kind of thing is exemplified by Washington State’s so-called anti-war Democrat, Brian Baird:
He sounds so reasonable, so grown-up, so serious, but it is complete b.s. and either Baird has been hoodwiinked or he is complicit in the complex’s propaganda offensive to setup the orchestration of the so-called Petraeus report. The choreography and the manipulation is so predictable, as is Carlson’s finding this so-called anti-war Democrat to give credibility to the campaign. How many times have we seen and heard this before?
So count me among those "extremists" who think Baird has either been conned or is a willing accomplice in the con. If Tucker Carlson were to ask me why it’s so hard to admit that progress is being made in Iraq, I would respond: Progress toward what? What kind of structural progress has been made or is possible to make? Do you really believe any Baghdad-centered government has any relevance in a country that has devolved into a patchwork of city states led by sectarian warlord-led militias? Do you really believe that Iraq in the next decade can be anything more than that? Do you really think that the U.S cares about Iraqi chaos for any other reason than that it threatens the U.S. capability to maintain its bases? Do you think that if Iraq were suddenly pacified, that the U.S. would evacuate all the troops and shut down all its bases?
Or doesn’t it make more sense to see that the primary military objective in Iraq is quell any military threats to the long-term maintenance of those bases? The bases are all that matters because they are essential for the achievement of the U.S.’s goal to establish hegemonic control of this oil-rich region. This has
been from the beginning the neocon objective, and the neocons and the M/I complex they represent are not going to give up on that goal unless as in Vietnam they are forced
to do so.
So then, isn’t it clear that troop levels will not come down until enough stability is established to insure the security of those bases? And isn’t the corollary also obvious that so long as things go poorly the troop levels will stay up? And is it not also obvious that the complex will come up with any smokescreen rationale
to justify maintaining troop levels necessary to sustain those bases? And shouldn’t we therefore expect that so long as things go poorly, as they are likely to continue to do, the American public will be told that things are getting better? And isn’t that really all we are hearing from Rep. Brian Baird, anti-war Democrat from Washington?
Bush is right: this is Vietnam all over again, but we’re making the same stupid mistakes following the same stupid logic. The public will be strung along for as long as it takes by the so-called moderate common sense of people like Baird, and it will not matter how long it takes, how much money is spent, or how many lives are lost. It’s so depressingly predictable.
Update: The news that Pace will be calling to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half is an interesting development, which points to an important difference between Vietnam and Iraq: the lack of a draft. For all the money we spend on the military, it depends on people volunteering to join the army, which for obvious reasons they are reluctant to do. It will be interesting to see how the tension created by this reality in conflict with the Iraq strategic objectives described above will be resolved. The LA Times sums it up:
According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military’s ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
Pace is expected to offer his advice privately instead of issuing a formal report. Still, the position of Pace and the Joint Chiefs could add weight to that of Bush administration critics, including Democratic presidential candidates, that the U.S. force should be reduced.
Those critics include Republican Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, who on Thursday called on Bush to begin withdrawing troops in September to pressure the Iraqi government to move toward political compromise.
Any discord among the top U.S. generals could be awkward for Bush, who professes to rely heavily on advice from military leaders. But there also is tremendous pressure for military officers to speak with one voice and defer to Petraeus and other field commanders. It remains possible that the Joint Chiefs may opt to weaken their stance before approaching Bush.
According to a senior administration official, the Joint Chiefs in recent weeks have pressed concerns that the Iraq war has degraded the U.S. military’s ability to respond, if needed, to other threats, such as Iran.
The chiefs are pushing for a significant decrease in troop levels once the current buildup comes to an end — perhaps to about half of the 20 combat brigades now in Iraq. Along with support units, that would lower the U.S. presence to fewer than 100,000 troops from the current 162,000.
But military leaders in Iraq, as well as senior officials in the White House, are pushing for troop levels to return to the prior level of about 15 brigades, or about 134,000 troops, once the current buildup is over.
ut military leaders in Iraq, as well as senior officials in the White House, are pushing for troop levels to return to the prior level of about 15 brigades, or about 134,000 troops, once the current buildup is over.
Despite signs of progress in some locales, the Iraqi government has failed at national reconciliation, a new National Intelligence Estimate reported Thursday. White House policymakers argue that such weakness means they cannot dramatically reduce U.S. troop levels, at least through the end of the Bush presidency.
Who do you think will win this one? I hope I’ll be surprised. But then I was suckered into believing that McCain, Graham, and Warner were going to stand up against the President on the Military Commissions Act.
Second Update: Kevin Drum shows that the overall metrics to measure progress are negative whatever selective evidence the adminsitration orchestrates to suggest otherwise.
Third Update: Gary Kamiya in Salon:
The inescapable truth is that Bush’s war of choice has destroyed an entire nation — and there is no way for the United States or anyone else to control what happens next. The increasingly shaky plight of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shows just how unstable Iraq’s cobbled-together political system is. U.S. dreams of replacing him with a secular strongman like Ayad Allawi are delusional. The war is not winnable, and there is thus only one possible rationale for continuing it, the one Bush raised: preventing an even more apocalyptic blood bath than we have already caused.
If we knew that by staying we could avert such a blood bath, we would owe it to the Iraqi people, whom we have harmed so grievously, to remain. But the fact is that no one can really predict whether our departure will cause such a blood bath. Moreover, it is now obvious that the political and sectarian schisms that could lead to it will not heal themselves. As Gen. Petraeus has admitted, it might take a decade to achieve real stability in Iraq. In other words, Bush is asking the U.S. to keep troops in Iraq, possibly indefinitely, in an attempt to forestall an outcome that might never happen — precisely what he argues we should have done in Vietnam.
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