Will the US get out of Iraq? 18 comments

24 May 2004 @ 12:11, by Paul Quintanilla **************************** First of all, I don’t believe the US wants to get out of Iraq. The US didn’t go in there merely to liberate the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator. If our leaders truly detested ruthless and cruel dictators then Uzbekistan wouldn’t have been allowed to join the “Coalition of the Willing.” For the so-called president of Uzbekistan is just as cruel and ruthless as Saddam Hussein was, and seems to delight in dipping his political opponents into tubs of boiling water. [link] So the US didn’t go into Iraq out of any form of moral indignation. Unless, of course, our leaders are very foolish and cannot detect those allies who are despots: those who treat their people cruelly and don’t believe in accountability or democratic institutions. No, the US went into Iraq because it wanted to conquer it. Some say this isn’t imperialism or hegemony. Some still claim that the US went in out of the pureness of its heart. And now that WMD has been discounted we did it for the sake of the world, and to spread our democratic values. The noblest system on earth. And that oil had nothing to do with it. Oil. Now there is a huge dark lurking shadow behind all the rhetoric regarding the West’s historic policies towards the Middle East. For oil only happens to be there, beneath all that Arabic sand. It is only a coincidence that oil is located in that vast area Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States historically took such a keen interest in. The oil had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it was the search for papyrus that brought so many westerners there? But certainly not oil. How rude to even make such a suggestion. No, Iraq possessed no strategic interests to the United States, and the politics of that region never influenced our administration’s world view. There was no global planning, or design, or any thoughts of a “new American century” involved in the Neoconservative war plans for that region. We did it out of the pureness of our hearts. We are Americans, after all. We’re the good guys. Good. Evil. And anyone who ever questions any of this risks a great deal of serious disfavor. The Bush administration doesn’t want to pull out of Iraq. They never invaded Iraq with the intention to ever do so. The US is there for the long hall - or else why construct fourteen (14) military bases? [link] The US wants to stay in iraq and to pull out would be a major defeat for the Bush administration. For in the Neoconservative world view the United States is the stabilizing force in that region: the great cop on the block, who keeps everyone under control. Who brings democracy and world trade to the region. Who makes the Arabs dance to our tune. We have already seen the kind of democracy the Bush administration wants. If the Iraqis choose leaders we like, leaders we favor, then they may have them. If they choose people who don’t like us, who want us to leave, then of course the Iraqis require our continued guidance. For we will not allow them to retroactively elect, even in free elections, representatives who do not uphold American values, who want us to leave. For why should the US support a government which doesn’t advance and protect its strategic interests? This is known as democracy at the point of a bayonet. And because the US wants to stay in Iraq, with its fourteen military bases, it has been reluctant about allowing the United Nations or neighboring Arabic nations to become involved in restoring a central government in Iraq. For why go to all the trouble, spend all the hundreds of billions of dollars, use up so much political capital, waste so many American lives, merely to leave at the end of it all? Unless, of course, we did it out of the pureness of our heart. [link] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx So why did we invade Iraq? I think there are still many Americans who don’t truly know why, including myself. And attempting to find an answer becomes our challenge whenever we have an administration in Washington which is as deceitful as our current one. This has happened before. I don’t think oil was the overriding cause for the invasion. But oil is certainly one of the major reasons why that region is so important to much of the world. (Didn’t the United States nearly go to war in the late forties with the Soviet Union over Iranian oil?) If, as some folks have suggested, the Middle East were the world’s leading producer of Brussels sprouts the West’s interest in that region would be quite different. But “stealing” Iraqi oil wasn’t, I think, the cause of the current war. So what may have the reasons been? Certainly not the lurid and pious explanations the president has offered us for nearly two years. I can still vividly see President Bush reciting the long list of WMD Iraq purportedly possessed in the 2002 State of the Union address. It was like listening to someone read from Sax Rohmer, the “Insidious Doctor Fu Man Chu.” (Those of you who listened to Jean Sheperd many years ago might be familiar with this classic of lurid and atmospheric intrigue. Though today such a characterization of the Chinese might be considered racist.) Did the president believe his own propaganda? Did he come to accept Paul Wolfowitz’s theory that if Iraq were democratized democracy would spread throughout the region? This seems so fanciful, at least to me, that it is hard to believe. But while the president was launching his propaganda campaign over WMD more than a year ago many of us were reading what the Neocons had written. And it appears that they enjoy playing vast theoretical geopolitical games based upon American economic and military power. For they appear to truly believe that if the United States is the world’s only great super power it is imperative that it employ its power. And that they genuinely believed they could redraw the political, cultural, and religious map of the Middle East by invading Iraq. Would this have seemed untoward to most Americans? Probably not, since, as Vaxen reminds us, the US has been an empire at least since the Mexican American war. Ideologues, fundamentalists, people who want to exert their power over others while claiming to be superior - is there anything new about this? Sometimes they are simply school yard bullies.

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24 May 2004 @ 14:16 by martha : Welcome to NCN quinty
I know a bit about you from Jazzy's log and any friend of his is a friend of mine! (I think!)

and I certainly agree with you about the article you posted.
Seems ironic that we want to bring democracy to a tribal country. You would have thought Bubba might have learned something from Afghanistan. Oh I get it, some republicans have a loooooong learning curve despite the fact they went to YALE!  

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