Newsflash: Republicans want US to win

One comment on “Newsflash: Republicans want US to win”

1. Posted by perspicio | Jun 9, 2008 1:14 pm

   We can’t “win” when we “lost” by going in the first place. All we can do is try to minimize our loss, which grows every day. The Iraqi parliament tells us that the surge has been largely ineffective, and that the drop in violence since the surge began is due to the new government’s cooperating with tribal leaders who understand the militias and can bring them to heel.

   Why don’t we listen to and respect what the Iraqi parliament wants?

   Specifically:

   An orderly withdrawal.
   No US military bases.
   No security agreement until after we have gotten the hell out of their country.

   They also tend to feel that we shouldn’t have invaded (which is correct), but that it does no good to dwell interminably on the past when we’re trying to move forward. “Forward”, to them, means getting our military out so they can run their own country.

   Now don’t even start the inane quibbling about “they don’t ALL want that”. There’s almost never a 100% consensus in politics, but we ought to respect what the majority want, especially since we made war in their country WITHOUT just cause (meaning, it didn’t present a threat to us).

   As for what happens after we get out, Iraq IS now in the position of needing help rebuilding what we destroyed, so they will have to enter into huge and long-term business arrangements with some of the multinational engineering firms - which, by the way, was an intended consequence of the invasion (and if Saddam Hussein had been a good little puppet and done it willingly, would likely have prevented the invasion). But since we screwed up so badly, and in ways for which there is no rug large enough to sweep the disaster under, they have more bargaining power, and may be able to accomplish the rebuilding in a way that enriches the entire nation, instead of just a few wealthy families. That will depend on their own internal processes and the character of their leaders.

   But don’t be fooled - the engineering firms want the best deal they can get, and that always means enriching the few instead of the many. This simple math is why these firms - which are de facto instruments of US foreign policy (free market, my ass!) - tend to prefer propping up and doing business with petty tyrants: They’re willing to oppress their own people while firms turn a blind eye to the practice, because it helps their bottom lines and helps recapture as many of the petro-dollars that our economy requires us to spend in the Middle East as possible. More than any other nation in the region, Saudi Arabia is a direct expression of this math. So now, even though it claims to want a democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration really wants the ILLUSION of one, patterned after its own version of democracy here at home: Virtually unlimited executive powers, a compromised judiciary, and a legislature divided against itself.

   So it should not come as a surprise that the Bush administration (and, by and large, the Republican party) continually pushes for a security agreement with Iraq before the end of this year, to bolster their own political agenda before leaving office, even though they have explicitly been told by the Iraqi government that this is not what they want. It adds grievous insult to unforgivable injury to now demand that the Iraqis place any faction’s political purposes above the stability, well-being, and self-interests of their own people and nation, especially after our nation wreaked great destruction upon them in order to meet our geopolitical ends, with neither provocation nor any genuine concern for the well-being of the people we CLAIMED (for political expediency) to be “liberating”.

   Now, if I hear any knee-jerk bleating about how “Saddam Hussein was a dictator! We were right to remove him!” I will know without any doubt that you are either an evil-minded individual in do-gooder’s clothing, or a dupe (probably a willing one - it’s really hard to be any other kind with all the iron-clad facts readily available) of the political right. Saddam Hussein, no less than Osama bin Laden, Manuel Noriega, Augusto Pinochet, Mullah Omar, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and many, many other “leaders”, including many still in power, was a tool of US imperialistic foreign policy. Only when he refused to continue to be that tool did he become an enemy. So if you’re going to blather about how bad a man he was, you need to accept responsibility for how he came to power in the first place.

   Matthew 7:5, mofo. Time to grow up.

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