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"the same intelligence"...,
2005-11-23 11:53:22
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haiti's past and present futures...,
2005-11-23 20:12:36
a 'free' iraq:
the Financial Times helpfully notes that:
Ensuring a friendly government in Baghdad is an essential part of US security policy, even if this requires a permanent US military presence, because long-term access to oil from the region is essential to the US, given its increasing dependence on imported oil, says the report.
A "friendly government" is not needed to "ensure access" but elements of control, and it's utterly contradictory to platitudes about democratic, let alone representative, governance. Diplomacy can ensure mere access: an Iraqi government could not employ the "oil weapon" against the West for long without committing suicide itself, and were we to finally take a realistic policy towards Israel there would be little reason to worry about the oil weapon to begin with.
Those who imagine that a US government driven by institutional necessity is capable of "redeploying" from Iraq in a fashion intended to mitigate civil conflict - rather than interfering in its intenral affairs and picking sides in a civil war, fighting by proxy and from the air in order to ensure a friendly outcome - are living in a bizarre alternate reality where the governance of US foreign policy is flipped completely on its ass and run by capable people who know the region and are guided by the mass public's sympathies for their aspirations and the assurance of an energy market that will sustain our way of life. We have had under both parties for over half a century a Middle East policy run by imbeciles who know little about the region, guided by desires to limit independence and assure the economic security of US oil cartels.
Discussing the opposition's alternative strategies in this context is virtually meaningless without the barest semblance of honesty regarding the shared desire between the Parties for a friendly government in Baghdad. What does Murtha intend to do with his "quick reaction force"? Would their mission be to prevent Iraq's neighbors from interfering in the conflict - to prevent what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, when every neighbor sharing a border covertly funnelled support past a UN embargo to the conflicting parties - or would they be there to continue escalating the conflict themselves? Why does Murtha put scare quotes around "the good of a 'free' Iraq".
:: posted by buermann @ 2005-11-23 18:43:24 CST |
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