26 February 2007 - 11:22am
For Bush, "victory" means staying in Iraq, Redux
I see via Amanda that Atrios has picked up on something I posted about a month ago:
The assumption behind all of the Bush and neocon rhetoric seems to be that any kind of withdrawal means defeat. The corollary of that is this:
Victory in Iraq = Staying in Iraq Indefinitely
It's the only thing that adds up. It's the only explanation that accounts for the dozen and one different reasons why we invaded, and why they call any and all alternative plans that provide for withdrawal as being "defeat."So now it all makes sense. Now we know why we must stay in Iraq. Because staying means victory, according to The Decider. Now we know why we must have a troop surge. Because it makes staying more likely and that means victory is in hand. Now we know why "Mission Accomplished" was announced by the Bush Administration years ago.
Because it already was.
We saw, we came, we occupied. Victory. QED.
Atrios has come to that conclusion, too:
I think, probably, people have mostly come around to my way of thinking. Leaving is losing. The Bush administration will not leave Iraq unless they are forced, at best, and at worst will leave their successor with a regional war with Iran and who knows who else.
Amanda writes:
I haven’t heard a single pundit or politician realistically entertain the idea of getting out of Iraq while Bush is President, and that Congress and the entire nation don’t really have the power to stop him shows how this country has veered dangerously close to a dictatorship, and definitely far away from the vision of shared power in the Constitution.
Well, that and the fact that it’s becoming quickly clear that the second we pull out of Iraq is the second that we basically give up controlling the oil there, which no one wants. But we made our bed, so we have to lie in it on that issue.
It's been glaringly obvious -- perhaps too obvious for people to realize. Can't see the forest for all the trees -- can't see the real Bush goal for all the rhetoric and equivocating and prevaricating.
media girl also blogs at other places.
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Comments
Staying = conquest. The same as when Julius Caesar's armies went to France, Germany, Britain and stayed there. Obviously the goal here is to control the oil, as you point out. I've assumed that to be the case since the beginning, but certainly it has become confusing as to exactly what the motives have been. (Cindy Sheehan: "What noble cause?")
The second goal of staying is to establish bases from which the U.S. can threaten other countries in the region, so it can control their oil, too.
I believe what happened was that the Neocons realized that oil was going to become scarce over the next ten to fifteen years (estimates vary). At that point, they figured, all the major powers -- Russia, China, India, maybe Japan -- would rush to the Middle East and try to take over. Bush just wanted to get a jump on the others.
Aside from niceties like international law, morality, the U.S.'s reputation, etc., etc., the big problem with the Neocon approach is that the U.S. isn't capable of accomplishing it. The Persian Gulf region is too far away from the U.S. for even the world's most high-tech military to conquer and hold.
It wouldn't help to use nukes, either, because the area would be left dangerously radioactive. Nevertheless I think the next component of their plan is to use a nuclear weapon somewhere (but not near any important oil field) in order to show the oil countries that he is serious about using his nukes. Then, so goes the concept, they will have to bow down and cede control of the oil to the U.S.
I don't think their plan has any chance of working, but it will sure make a horrible mess of, well, almost everything.
There's no question that oil is a vital interest not just to the US but to the world, and a major disruption in oil extraction could toss the world into a great depression like no other. It's the way they're going about it that disturbs me, for it embraces the idea that it's better to be the neighborhood bully than the neighborhood leader, better to have people fear you than like you. That's a total corruption of the American ideals that we as people at least strive for (even as our government has failed in various regions again and again, especially in the Middle East).
And then there's all the Armageddon talk from the religious fundamentalists who make up Bush's political base as well as Osama bin Laden's political base. That's scary.