by Editors

	Realism about Iraq- The Doughnut versus The Hole Part One

By: DW In-House Historian and Philosopher, Len Carrier, with an addendum by DW Foreign Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch.

 

            George Packer’s “Talk of the Town” piece in the November 27 New Yorker decries the lack of realism shown by both Republicans and Democrats concerning what to do about Iraq.  He scoffs at those of us who want to begin removing our military forces now by saying that if we leave we will be unable to compel the Iraqi government to do anything to stop the escalation of violence.  He also points out the obvious by saying that the fading neoconservative hope of eventual “victory” in Iraq is just a pipe dream.  So what is Packer’s only hope of not losing in Iraq?  He says we ought to get all the various warring factions together around the table to work out some means of sharing power and decreasing the level of violence.  If that doesn’t work, nothing will.

How is this supposed to inject a note of realism into the picture?  He would have more success in forcing the Bloods and the Crips to sit down and talk things over.  It just isn’t going to happen.  There is no way, as an occupying force, we are going to get anyone to do anything in Iraq.  Iraq is a shambles.  Its government, hiding in the Green Zone and propped up by our military forces, would fall instantly if we withdrew that support.  Packer apparently thinks this is a bad thing.  He thinks that the ensuing violence will spill over into other countries in the Middle East, and he thinks we must try to prevent it.  This is a pleasant thought, but so was King Canute’s thought that he should try to prevent the tide from rising.

Packer’s mistake lies in thinking that it is up to us to “do something” to make Iraq, and the entire Middle East, a better place—not only for Iraqis but also for ourselves.  But the hard truth is that any more meddling on our part is only likely to make matters worse for all parties concerned.  Would there be an escalation of violence if we left? In the short run, probably.  But how can it be any better to stand watch over the killing of a thousand people each month for two more years (the length of Bush’s tenure), than to have even as many as ten thousand killed in the aftermath of our leaving? 

What the do-gooders forget is that these Arab tribes who are now warring against one another used to live together in relative peace.  They knew their territories and the limits of their powers.  It is we who lit the fires of sectarian war, and we only pour gasoline on the flames by trying to manage the blaze we created.  Perhaps it is time to squelch our paternalistic instincts and leave people alone to work out their own destinies.  Oh, yes, as a token of our sincere regret for killing so many of their citizens, we can bequeath all those billion-dollar military bases we constructed to protect our claim on Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. Maybe they can make better use of them than we did.

                                                                                                           

Leonard Carrier

 

DUSTY’S ADDENDUM

 

Leonard, as always I have nothing to dispute about your astute observations, except one thing- You’re ruing the hole and missing altogether the doughnut.  This artesian brouhaha  about what’s going to happen while we’re there in Iraq and how awful things are apt to get when we’re gone…it’s all Canute’s naïve struggles about the inevitably returning tide.  The point (of REALITY) is the Neo-Cons knew all along that there was no exit from Iraq…at least no non-chaotic exit.  Bush’s own father turned down the same Wolfowitz/Perle/Wurmser “A Clean Break”- inspired call for ousting Saddam after Kuwait as a mission rendered impossible by lessons taught the French and English on earlier occasions, and the Russians more recently in Afghanistan. No Western nation will ever successfully occupy and/or forcefully democratize an Islamic nation.

The doughnut all along was and remains the oil. The doughnut was that the Bush-led Neo-cons have totally won the war because it was never a war against terrorism in the first place; it was a war to control 20 percent of Middle Eastern oil reserves and in this-the  true reality about American meddling in Iraq—it’s truly a matter of “mission accomplished”.  Bush was telling the truth that day he landed on the carrier in his cute little pretend aviator’s jacket.

 

I urge you and the rest of the DW readership to re-read Chris Floyd’s piece I published on November 7 (hit the “articles” link on this site), entitled “Why Bush Smiles”.  Here’s a “reality-relevant” excerpt:

 

 

 

“Yes, victory. You wonder why Bush and his minions maintain the seemingly irrational belief that “things are going well” in Iraq, that “we’re making progress,” etc.? That’s because things are going well in the war they are fighting: the war for money and power. What happens to the human beings caught up in this war ­ Iraqi civilians, or American citizens at ever-greater risk from the terrorism spawned by the war ­ is, again, no concern of the Bush gang. In fact, the worse things are from that standpoint, the better it is for the Bushists. The war profits (and stolen swag) they and their corporate cronies have accrued from the Iraq War (and the “War on Terror” as well) have given them unimaginable wealth with which to continue their overall dominance of American society ­ no matter who wins the elections in 2006 or 2008, or for decades beyond. As I’ve stated often before, no matter what happens, Bush and his cronies have already won the war .

They’ve won even if Iraq collapses into perpetual anarchy, or becomes an extremist religious state; they’ve won even if the whole region goes up in flames, and terrorism flares to unprecedented heights ­ because this will just mean more war-profiteering, more fear-profiteering. And yes, they’ve won even if they lose their majority next month or the presidency in 2008, because war and fear will still fill their coffers, buying them continuing influence and power as they bide their time through another interregnum of a Democratic “centrist” ­ who will, at best, only nibble at the edges of the militarist state  ­ until they are back in the saddle again. The only way they can lose the Iraq War is if they are actually arrested and imprisoned for their war crimes. And you know and I know that’s not going to happen.”

 

Click here and read the whole article —again and again – until the hole disappears and you see the doughnut - http://democratswrite.com/the_democratic_opinion/page231.htm

 

 

 So, as I said, Leonard—I have no fault to take with your analysis of the flaws inherent in all the armchair quarterbacking in the on-going  Iraq games, the political pragmatisms, posturings, polemics  and pretensions;  I simply want to remind you that all scenarios (exit and staying put)  are going to be disastrous with the exception that Bush’s victory is in either case complete and absolute.  The oil is pouring; we’re in control; we’ll continue to exert that control to protect the flow of oil and dollars so long as the oil is there and our corporate lobbyists can con their  Congressional puppets into funding the military costs of assuring the oil’s security and flow.

 

There is absolutely nothing we can do to alter the fact that Halliburton, and the oily Houses of Bush and Saud have won this war. But let’s not add degrading insult to our nationally-disabling and demeaning injury by letting the sleazy neo-con oil magicians trick us into watching their diversions (tails wagging dogs) instead of paying attention to the legerdemain going on in reality—The oil flows on.  The oil fields were the first assets seized and placed under protective guard after our armed forces landed–you remember, while vandals were emptying the Holy Land (theirs and ours) of irreplaceable historic art and iconic religious treasures in the smoke screen provided by American “shock and awe”.

 

 And the oil fields will remain protected by–Bush has already promised it–American armed forces…indefinitely. 

 

This, my friends,  is the doughnut reality in the case of Iraq. All the rest is–quite wholly— the hole.

 

So, let’s pull our eye away from the hole and put it back on the doughnut. When we do it’ll be plain as a glazed Krispy Cream  that getting out of Iraq ASAP is the only rational option. The mayhem isn’t going to get any worse, and America’s presence in Iraq is clearly the reason it’s as bad as it is. This oily nightmare has now lasted longer than WWII.  Between a 500,000 and a million Iraqis have died because of Bush’s insane declaration of war against a figment of neoconartistry…a tactic (as opposed to a national enemy). So let’s get on with the redemption of America and get out of there now, bring our troops home and impeach the bastard war criminal who sent them there to die…for that god forsaken oily doughnut.

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