Ellen Knickmeyer, who has emerged as the best reporter among the institutional press in Iraq, writes in tomorrow’s edition of the Washington Post that the US “no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society where the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges” in Iraq.
In other words, the adminstration, or at least some among them, are now resigned to a theocratic-leaning Iraq that threatens to become the mother of all failed states and is incapable of defending itself from internal enemies, let alone external ones.
A number of bloggers, most notably Hullabaloo’s Digby, have recently pointed out that the primary question Cindy Sheehan and many others who have lost friends and lovers and sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and brothers in Iraq want answered is “What did they die for? What’s the noble cause?”
Well, now we know: It was to create a tottering Islamic republic that can’t exploit its primary natural resource or provide its citizens with minimal physical and economic security.
That should put things into perspective for Sheehan. She can go home now. Go home, Cindy.
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the postwar chaos and escalating insurgency. “Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we’re helping Iraqis succeed,” President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad’s 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. “It happened rather gradually,” said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.
Perhaps the most frightening part of those comments is the “it happened rather gradually.” I suppose that’s unfair: No one in the administration rides a donkey so there was never a chance of some resident Saul falling off it on the road to Damascus, not that the road to Damascus was safe for donkey-riding anyway. But if it had been, there still wouldn’t have been any administration officials riding donkeys on it.
And there’s no real evidence that this slow-motion epiphany has penetrated the upper reaches of the administration. Commanders in Iraq have been gently hinting, by publicly announcing impending troop withdrawals, that the Army cannot sustain operations in Iraq at the level they are now and have been for 30 months. Less senior officers, the colonels in the field, are telling the press that they have repeatedly requested and been denied more troops. Those kinds of statements are not unprecedented but are extremely unusual: you don’t find career officers sounding off in public unless they’re desperate.
Those announcements have been firmly unannounced by the president (who once again trotted out the unspeakably offensive “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” formualtion in his radio address today); he’s still haunting the ozone amid visions of an Israel-friendly US client and military outpost pointed at Iran and Syria instead of an Israel-unfriendly military nightmare aligned with Iran and pointing at us.
Among the right-wing mantras — and a new one pops up every few weeks, it seems — is that liberals and other opponents of the war will be happy if we lose it. Well, we’ve already lost it and I’m not happy. I thought the invasion was stupid and the administration were delusional to even think about it, but I would have been happy to see that they were not delusional and indeed were at least marginally competent.
The “gradual realization” that things have gone desperately wrong in Iraq has arrived way, way too late to do anyone any good. And meanwhile, we’re still not giving our troops — that is, the administration are still not giving our troops — the equipment they need to stay alive.
On the other hand, maybe this is a hopeful development: Maybe they’ll gradually realize that Karl Rove belongs in jail for outing Valerie Plame; maybe they’ll gradually realize that it’s really, really stupid to blow the cover of a productive al Qaeda informant. Again, too late to do a lot of dead people any good, but perhaps the best we can expect from this bunch.
“We’ve said we won’t leave a day before it’s necessary. But necessary is the key word — necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us,” a U.S. official said.
Funny thing. I did a search in Google for the word “skank” and Ann Coulter’s website came up in the #1 spot. Next thing you know “olfactory disgust” will be returning Karl Rove in the search results.
It took two world wars to drag Germany out from the lingering legacies of Junker (feudal) leadership, as it faced the emergence and growing political influence of the new capitalist class within the German Empire. And to boot, Germany was located right next door to état de naissance de libération et de liberté (France).
So how on God’s little blue planet could George W. Bush and his cadre of overly simplistic neo-con philosophers ever think that they were going to transplant democracy into the minds of a historically divided, overly maligned and internationally spurned people, who have a deep devotion to their religious faiths, and who live in a society which did not experience the historically wrenching transitions from a feudal to capitalist economy, believe that they were going to succeed?
My guess is that they view the stars and stripes as the banner of limitless possibilities, enduring strength and absolute truth. Perhaps this is why the people of the United States allowed this catastrophic war to take place in the first place: because Americans, for the most part, are a homogenous society and view their place in the world in the same tint of glass. President Bush articulated thoughts and words which they all understood in common sense terms and which reinforced their self-righteous and skewed world view.
On the other hand, if we give turd blossom and his gunslinger boss the benefit of the doubt, and assume for a moment that they both realised from the beginning that there would be no lasting “victory” and peace for Iraq, then perhaps it WAS borne out a personal vendetta against Saddam, perhaps it WAS intended for the prospect of securing vast oil reserves for the American economy, and perhaps it WAS for the prospect of securing a strategic foothold in the heartland of the middle east.
Well America, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. My only question that remains is who is Laurel and who is Hardy? I already know who the keystone cop is.
R.I.P
Coulter: that’s funny.
I’m a charter subscriber to the “securing national interests in the form of dino juice” club — I mean, we’re not in this for the sand — and as a general proposition you won’t find all that many people who will argue that the US doesn’t suffer an imperative to do that.
It’s one of the things that makes getting out of Iraq damned near impossible: we’ve created a situation in which it’s unlikely that anyone will be willing to host the two or so combat divisions any president, Republican or Democrat, would like to keep in the neighborhood.
We can’t put ‘em back in Saudi Arabia; Qatar is fine for aircraft but they don’t want 30-40,000 US troops hanging around; Kuwait has been pretty accomodating but even they would probably balk at hosting a couple of divisions on a permanent basis; trying to get them into Brunei would be like trying to get Disney to build a National Guard attraction … it’s a tough one. I’m thinking the best idea would be to ask Iran if we can keep our troops there in exchange for us building them some nuclear power plants, and then when Iraq finally settles down we can try them again.
Most of us have enough trouble identifying the trees without characterizing the forest. What will history speculate was the ‘real’ cause for the Iraq War?
1) Elimination of the threat of WMD and nuclear proliferation. We know that’s not the answer from information which eventually came to light. At least it ‘sounded good’ at the time, and after all, the word ‘dogma’ comes from Greek roots meaning ‘to seem good’ not to be good.
The North Korean experience might suggest that the only way a nation is safe from attack is if they ACTUALLY have WMD and are viewed as crazy enough to use them.
2) The revitalization of the military-industrial complex. Shorter-term, Keynesian economic stimulation has worked wonders for stock prices, although who would be so crass as to suggest war as economic stimulus. We do know that war, like inflation, benefits the upper classes who profit from asset growth, while the economically-disenfranchised pay the price.
Simply, there is far less money to be made by helping people than by killing them.
3) Oil. Who doesn’t think that ensuring the supply of oil to western consumers is a good idea, especially at reasonable prices? Of course, the cost to taxpayers (a couple of hundred billion) hasn’t been met by affordable oil, or Iraq reconstruction using Iraq oil profits.
Pseudo-control of the region via a permanent military force could easily be viewed as a hidden agenda. The long-term expense (both in lives and in dollars) is a major offset against the possible societal benefit of reduction in defense budgets to cope with demographic reality (see 4).
4) Demographic reality. Western countries, the US, but particularly France, Germany, Italy, and some of the Scandinavian countries have rapidly expanding elderly populations that will require a substantial portion of GDP to support them and their medical needs. I can’t do justice to John Mauldin’s explanation (Bull’s Eye Investing) of the longer-term economic benefits from creating a world full of countries with stable, younger consumers. BUT we will face an expanding Islamic population, and it would have been ideal to have them as trading partners, not military competitors.
So far, not so good.
5) Retribution. A significant portion of Americans believe that Iraq was the architect of 9/11. Although literate Americans can’t believe that, based on the 9/11 Report and a wealth of information, if you tell a lie enough many people will believe you.
If Democracy is good for our enemies, then one must ask, isn’t it also good for our ‘friends’. Perhaps the powers that be in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan might not agree.
How will history ultimately view the Iraq War? A lot probably depends on the ultimate ‘resolution’ or ‘exit strategy’ available and who is writing the history books at the time. It certainly appears from the texture of what we are hearing that the Administrating is weaving a tapestry framed around the mid-term elections.
With anti-War sentiment possibly crystalizing around Cindy Sheehan, expect the politicians (we’re not talking one life, Terri Schiavo, but thousands) to be circling like vultures. Winners write history and losers write epitaphs.
Ten years ago, if someone had told me that the United States would go to war for reasons that would later turn out to be false, I would have thought they were kooky.
If, at that same time, someone would have said that after going to war and discovering that the justification provided for the war was false, the President would give us new reasons for the war two or three times and there would be no outrage from the general population, I would have assumed that the person talking wrongly considered us a war mongering country where waging war was something we did as a matter of course without some painstaking debate.
If, at that same time, someone would have told me that we would be attacked by terrorists flying airplanes into buildings, that the diabolical mastermind of the attack would be caught bragging about it in a video tape, and that we would consider retribution against that person as a priority secondary to waging war against a third country who never attacked us, I would have just laughed.
Now that these things have all happened, I am wondering if this is the result of some secret government where the press and Congress have either been prevented from acting as I would have expected them or, instead, have Congress and the media deliberately failed to act? How did all of this happen and how do we prevent it from happening again? Or, is the answer that we really do prefer a warlord president?
Who is this “Supreme Commander” that everyone keeps talking about? It can’t be President Bush can it?
For a man who can barely string five words into a proper sentence I don’t think he deserves the title. Does he have an extensive background in battlefield tactics and war planning? Does he have any medals of distinction? Does he have extensive training in communications and diplomacy?
I truly believe that there has been too much importance placed on the shoulders of this mere mortal. I understand that he is the executive representative for America and American values, but why did Congress grant this man the power to wage war without having signed a declaration of war? All he got from Congress was the Patriot Act.
I suppose this was all he needed to take your nation to war on unproven “slam-dunk” theories of WMD and “yellow-cake”.
Where in the hell is Congress and the people’s representatives in all of this? Hiding in the pockets of their corporate sponsors? What happened to the “check and balances” of your system? The world is watching you slide America: financially, morally and in your dwindling hegemonic distinctiveness. China will be assuming a par position with you in the upcoming decades.
Perhaps that’s a good thing.
R.I.P.