No Permanent Bases in Iraq
Juan Cole today posted a link to a truthout.org article where the leader of the Shiite party which won the January 30 election is quoted as laughing at the idea of permanent American military bases in Iraq:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030705I.shtml
I have long held to the belief that the Neo-Con objective of the Iraq invasion was always the establishment of permanent American military bases in Iraq from which the Neo-Con plan for the Middle East could be carried out. Outwardly, this has been backed up by Condoleeza Rice's "generational commitment" and Bush's claim that he'd rather fight the terrorists over there than fight them here in the US. The plan is for a long-term fight centered in Iraq.
Those who ask us to believe that we actually plan to remove America's military presence from Iraq ask a lot of us. They are asking us to believe that after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein because he was or perhaps could have been seeking nuclear weapons, we will be content to turn Iraq over to a group with close political and religious ties to Iran which is, in the Neo-Con view, seeking nuclear weapons to use against the US. Doesn't that seem just a little bit Orwellian? Yet here we have the leader of the majority party in Iraq, a party with political and religious ties to Iran, laughing at the notion of the Americans staying on in Iraq.
When I think about it, it seems to me that the only hope the Neo-Cons have now of carrying out their Middle East plan of stabilizing and westernizing the region using Iraq as a center of operations is if they can convince Iraqi leaders that the only way to have any kind of security in Iraq is if the Americans can stay on there. In other words, the Neo-Con hope is that the insurgency remains strong in Iraq. Everything that the US military has done in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad fits conveniently into this scenario too. The actions of the US military since the fall of Baghdad have enraged the people of Iraq, fueling the fire of the insurgency. The only explanation that makes any sense at all to me for the US taking this course is that the US military would be asked to leave Iraq if the insurgency died down. The Pentagon and White House don't have any intention of letting that happen.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030705I.shtml
I have long held to the belief that the Neo-Con objective of the Iraq invasion was always the establishment of permanent American military bases in Iraq from which the Neo-Con plan for the Middle East could be carried out. Outwardly, this has been backed up by Condoleeza Rice's "generational commitment" and Bush's claim that he'd rather fight the terrorists over there than fight them here in the US. The plan is for a long-term fight centered in Iraq.
Those who ask us to believe that we actually plan to remove America's military presence from Iraq ask a lot of us. They are asking us to believe that after spending hundreds of billions of dollars to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein because he was or perhaps could have been seeking nuclear weapons, we will be content to turn Iraq over to a group with close political and religious ties to Iran which is, in the Neo-Con view, seeking nuclear weapons to use against the US. Doesn't that seem just a little bit Orwellian? Yet here we have the leader of the majority party in Iraq, a party with political and religious ties to Iran, laughing at the notion of the Americans staying on in Iraq.
When I think about it, it seems to me that the only hope the Neo-Cons have now of carrying out their Middle East plan of stabilizing and westernizing the region using Iraq as a center of operations is if they can convince Iraqi leaders that the only way to have any kind of security in Iraq is if the Americans can stay on there. In other words, the Neo-Con hope is that the insurgency remains strong in Iraq. Everything that the US military has done in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad fits conveniently into this scenario too. The actions of the US military since the fall of Baghdad have enraged the people of Iraq, fueling the fire of the insurgency. The only explanation that makes any sense at all to me for the US taking this course is that the US military would be asked to leave Iraq if the insurgency died down. The Pentagon and White House don't have any intention of letting that happen.
posted by Bill | 9:34 AM
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