Mission accomplished. Really.
It's been two years since the photo-op that defined the Homeland's "War President." How's the accomplishment coming along?
Most reality-based critics don't hesitate to call it a catastrophic mistake, and so it is. But how's it measuring up for the war-makers? As they've demonstrated countless times, it's only their judgement that is supposed to matter. After all, it is their war.
No WMD? The measure of success for that MacGuffin was never meant to be their finding. It was the concentration of the American hive mind upon the urgency of "taking out" Saddam. Paul Wolfowitz admitted as much shortly after it became apparent the great stockpiles of apocalyptic weaponry were phantoms of convenience. It was a smashing success domestically, and even though many have since come around to understand they were told lies, enough have taken up the subsequent lie of "needing to finish the job" that the truth still can't find the elbow room. Washington never really put its heart into the international campaign, which was a reluctant sop to Colin Powell and Tony Blair (who has assumed the doomed stoicism of a blackmail victim, which could explain much). Powell is gone and Blair is bleeding, but what's the cost to Republicans to let a Labour Prime Minister twist in Bush's idiot wind?
Civil War? Let's put it this way: do you believe the idealogues of invasion ever intended to leave Iraq a strong, united country? Its atomization into impotent, submissive bantustans has been on the neoconservative agenda nearly as long as there have been neoconservatives. In 1982, Israeli journalist Oded Yinon wrote (and thanks to xymphora for the quote):
The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.... Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria.... So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.
One year ago, Robert Fisk wrote "Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq":
Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.
...
I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
...
We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
And just last week, Pepe Escobar wrote that "Pentagon financing of [Sunni] militias and the active involvement of Allawi in all these operations suggest that the Pentagon itself is destabilizing the country it is supposed to control. Destination: civil war." Will they get there by mistake, or by design?
It may be a cold comfort to think the Bush braintrust incompetent rather than this calculating, and I know we need to take our comforts where we can, but when they wind up with a result which is in accord with Mephistophelean calculation, what should we call them? Incredibly lucky? Again?
Casualties? To the neoconservative mind, there is even an upside here, since they seek to create a martial society out of a soft and flabby decadent republic. To get there, Americans must first become desensitized to battlefield sacrifice. Since Vietnam, the United States has known only cheap victories. But an empire worthy of global domination needs an imperial army that has tasted its own blood.
Oil? Under the occupation, Iraqi output has been reduced to a trickle. So what? The US has no immediate need for it. The objective was to steal it from potential adversaries. So again, mission acomplished. But that was secondary to the provision of bases for future aggression in the heart of the Middle East, which conveniently replaced those the US abandoned in Saudi Arabia. (Yes, the same bases which Osama bin Laden had demanded the US abandon. Talk about a quid pro quo.)
I'm not suggesting the neoconservatives are the only players, or even the most important. But they are the change agents. They see catastrophe as a necessary precursor to imperial makeover. To them, everything's going swimmingly, albeit in blood.
I suspect, and I've written, that on a deeper level the neoconservatives are themselves being played, in order to bankrupt and bleed and crash the system to effect a Global Year Zero. And those players are also working some mighty fine chaos magick.
posted by Jeff Wells at 11:15 a.m.
12 Comments:
Beautiful, Jeff. That's one of the most spot-on things you've ever written.
The mainstream Left completely misses the point when they accuse the Bush cabal of being incompetent, of poor planning, and of their supposed lack of a long-term vision for Iraq. The truth -- as is often the case with these clever, master tacticians -- is the complete opposite.
They've played us brilliantly. The chaos they've immanentized and the blood they're spilling is all part of the game. They didn't want a clean victory, or to set up a stable democracy. Rather, they wanted total and utter instability.
Instability and mayhem = victory. Chaos and rising hatred = endless war and rising profits.
I was ridiculed by lots of people when I suggested that the Abu Ghraib photos were purposely leaked. But every day I am more and more convinced that it was a brilliant piece of psyops. Those repulsive images are burned into the minds of every Muslim man, woman, and child. After all, if you want to perpetuate endless war, you have to assure yourself of endless enemies.
And those of us who paid attention to the stories of what went on behind the scenes at Abu Ghraib can't help but remember the candles, the mattress, and the circle of chairs.
http://www.charm.net/~profpan/2004/05/romantic-evening-at-abu-ghraib.html
http://www.charm.net/~profpan/2004/11/abu-ghraib-and-overlook-hotel.html
Spot on Jeff.
Which of course begs the obvious questions regarding who exactly is doing much of the bombing out there right now, As the Meiringesque intel boys wander around masquerading in any number of convenient "private contract" guises.
Meanwhile the 4th reich colonisation of the region rolls on amidst what also increasingly strikes me as this carefully co-ordinated chaos.
I suppose the only comfort for those of us who labour despairingly and all to often in vain, to make any "man in the street" (who can actually find the time or interst to listen) see it how it really is, is that such empire building endeavors have historically always ended in failure.
At least we might console ourselves on the hope borne of such fact.
It's never been simple.
The decision to ivade was a strategic decision. Nothing more, nothing less. The only relevent question is why that decision was made.
very nice piece, jeff. i follow oil and energy very closely. here are excerpts from a little-noticed article about a month ago that expresses the iraq war aims quite well.
the article is no longer at its original site. if anyone wants the whole thing, just say so.
http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/6/13108
Mar 28, 2005
Oil expert discusses high prices: Controversial theory presented at Rotary
By Patrick Burns, Intelligencer Journal
[excerpts]
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - A controversial oil industry expert speaking earlier this month at the Lancaster Rotary Club said the U.S. government is responsible for record-high gasoline prices.
James R. Norman, a former editor of Forbes magazine and a senior writer with a prominent oil industry newsletter, said high oil prices are part of a National Security Administration policy to prevent the superpower Chinese from achieving global dominance.
Norman, who also spoke at two other venues in Lancaster this month, said there is a long-term economic strategy in place to restrain Chinese growth through artificially high oil prices.
By creating "paper demand" for oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange, large U.S. oil companies, the Saudis and the Bush administration have conspired to nearly triple world oil prices from about $20 a barrel in New York at the start of 2002, according to Norman.
Norman, who worked as a reporter covering the oil industry in Houston for nine years before joining Forbes, said unknown institutional fund buyers have created a huge demand for oil and pushed the price of light sweet crude oil on the West Texas Intermediate.
The Chinese pay close to the WTI rate, which rose from $19.67 per barrel in January 2002 to its current rate of $52.78.
Evidence of a covert plan to fix prices includes massive cuts in capital spending by U.S. oil companies that essentially shut down oil exploration since 2000, a Saudi change from a market-share strategy to a price-support strategy that restricted its output and an increase in U.S. strategic oil reserves when prices are at near record highs, Norman said.
He said American oil companies no longer assist the Chinese and that Exxon, BP, Shell and others have inexplicably sold their stake in oil companies there.
China overtook Japan last year as the world's second-largest consumer of oil, and experts predicts that China's consumption will triple over the next 20 years.
The Chinese rely heavily on oil to produce electricity and are not equipped to refine sour crude oil. Norman said it's no coincidence that the sour crude is selling at discounts of up to $18 per barrel, when compared with light, sweet crude.
In perhaps his most controversial assertion, Norman suggested that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was partially motivated by Chinese interest in Iraqi oil. The war negated an agreement Saddam Hussein had signed giving China equity interest in oil rights once U.N. sanctions were lifted.
"If the sanctions were lifted and the Chinese got in there, we'd never be able to undo that situation," Norman said.
"The war was a screaming success because it kept China from acquiring in-the-ground oil reserves in the Middle East and basically put the Chinese on notice that wherever they go for oil, there will be hell to pay."
Norman said it's not surprising that the U.S. government has made things difficult for Venezuela, Yemen and Sudan, and has been especially threatening to Iran for supplying oil to the Chinese.
Overt U.S. threats to Iran have escalated since China last year signed a $100 million deal with Iran allowing Chinese investment in its oil and gas exploration and pipeline infrastructure.
Though it will take up to 10 years, Norman said very high oil prices could severely crimp the Chinese economy by knocking 3 percentage points off its annual growth rate.
"That may not sound like much, but over time when you compound that with a country that's already got problems employing its huge population, you start to create stresses in a very brittle political system," Norman said.
Norman, who writes for Platts Oilgram News in New York, said manipulated oil prices in the 1980s coerced Soviet Union capitulation.
The Reagan administration manipulated oil prices downward to limit the Soviet Union's hard currency and force it into bankruptcy, Norman said.
He pointed to a 1982 National Security Administration directive that spelled out the Reagan administration's plan to attack key elements in the Russian economy, including its oil exportation.
The Saudis overproduced oil when prices had been skidding and U.S. oil companies also had increased their oil production by 5 percent per year, said Norman.
Ironically, Norman believes the Russians, who have refused to build an oil pipeline into China, are now on board with the U.S. government in isolating the Chinese.
Norman said former Reagan administration personnel currently working in the White House had perfected oil price fixing as an economic weapon.
"Controlling oil prices is a tried-and-true method of restraining growth," Norman said. "We did it to the Russians and you have the same group in Washington who had done it back in the Reagan years."
And don't think no one caught yet another Dylan reference, Jeff! ;)
Again, spot on post. Certainly the more destabilized Iraq is, the more reason we have to stay there. And the British and the US have always pushed for a destabilized middle east-- the easier to keep the islmaic world under control.
NO actually what the Bushitlerite fascists REALLY wanted out of Iraq was a nice complacent little whore of a puppet state with a U.S.-animated oil ministry to "sell" the U.S. oil barons crude at sweetheart prices, basically as if America owned the oil. Their original fantasy of having long-term bases in Iraq corroborates that, in that they were seeking to have an amount of forces in country to protect their bloodsucking of the Iraqi oil resources.
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