Our man Bush is making the rounds of his usual haunts in Washington, gathering information and opinions on the findings of the Iraq Study Group from such diverse players as Vice President Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, and a bunch of generals. Judging by the various trial balloons they’ve released in their usual subtle fashion, I’m going to go way out 
on a limb here and predict that Dubya’s dramatic conclusion will be — wait for it! — send more troops. Yes, the “surge” strategy so beloved of John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Just what the voters so clearly demanded, eh? This makes sense, I’m sure, in Bush’s tiny mind for several reasons. 1.) He’s the decider. Nobody’s going to tell him (and Cheney) what to do in Iraq, especially not a bunch of aging minders (sent by poppa Bush) whose opinions differ from the original pair of aging minders Dubya brought with him to Washington nearly six long years ago. 2.) Sending more troops makes the Democrats look bad, since they were sent to Washington to do just the opposite, and I’m sure Bush assumes they don’t have the spine to force him into withdrawal. 3.) It’s like “stay the course”… only better, so he gets to cling to his thread of consistency while looking like he’s doing something new and being “tough”, all at the same time — a win / win / win.
Where does this leave the rest of us? Well, unless we kick up a fuss (i.e. call, write, e-mail, and lobby the White House and Congress) we’ll be up shit creek, though not half so much as those poor bastards who have to stay and fight a hopeless war of uncertain outcome and shifting objectives, none of which are worth the loss of a single life or limb. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that ending a war is as simple as casting a vote for someone who says s/he will work in that direction. Recall that in 1964, Lyndon Johnson was cast as the “peace” candidate (like Wilson in 1916). Though we are not the same nation today as we were back in the early 60s, it is best to recall that it took near insurrection at home and mutiny overseas to turn that bloody ship around, and even then the end came in a hysterical flurry of military force that left an entire region devastated and many, many thousands dead. I don’t think ending the war in Iraq would require massive civil disobedience, but the sucker certainly isn’t going to end itself.
One thing that is clearly indicated by the Iraq Study Group plan and the “Extension and Acceleration” (i.e. escalation) plan for which Bush now has a boner is that those at the center of power have not abandoned their core goals in Iraq, most significantly that of maintaining a long-term (perhaps permanent) military presence in that country, as well as substantial influence over its political and economic affairs. Among the ISG’s 79 recommendations (all of which the group claims must be implemented) is one that focuses on privatization of Iraq’s oil industry. Just this week the Iraqi parliament introduced legislation to allow exploration and development of petroleum resources by foreign contractors, an unprecedented move towards the kind of neoliberal economic model now being rejected in South America. I think that, once again, people are missing the central story here. The objective of the Iraq project is not to produce a democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors as the administration suggests; it is to secure an Iraq that is amenable to U.S. military, political, and economic penetration. If that can be accomplished through the establishment of a secure democracy, it’s fine by Bush and company, but that’s by no means a requirement (see: Pakistan).
So Rumsfeld departs with the pirate ship still steady on course. Goodness gracious me.
luv u,
jp
Hasta la vista, whatever that means. Let’s see you daaaaance, sucka! No? Okay, how about, put your hands together! All the girls. Now all the guys. Now just the left side of the room. Now the right! Okay, now just the one-armed Methodists with gingivitis. Great, great….
What was the outcome of Mitch’s grand experiment, you ask? The experiment that deprived us of essential personnel during one of the most critical points in the production of our new album? The experiment that necessitated gross extensions of our own menial responsibilities in and around the mill? That experiment??? Well, let me tell you. It was a success… a screaming success… if the intention was to make it rain incessantly for the past week and a half. I’m not at all sure that was the mission when the Zamboola-powered balloon left the ground, but it morphed into that somewhere just above the troposphere. And Marvin, good soldier that he is, refused to leave until the mission was accomplished. No cutting and running for him, my friend. (Also, he had no idea how to land that sucker, so that contributed to his stick-to-it-iveness. )
So now the rain is pouring in, filling up every crack and cranny in this creaky old mill, turning the streets into rivers and the rivers into moving lakes. Yesterday our replica J-2 spacecraft just floated away, its makeshift mast still crammed through the glass globe on the top of its hull. The basement is flooded, and the man-sized tuber has begun to resemble something recently yanked out of a mangrove swamp. (He’s growing knees, like a cypress tree. Very odd.) Trevor James Constable has secured some sort of floatation device for his patented orgone generating machine — god forbid that should ever get waterlogged. Why, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Time itself might become unglued. We could find ourselves running backwards through days, months, years, even decades before that contraption dries out. Want to shed years off your face, figure, physique, etc.? Pray for rain. Beat the drum like war. ‘Nuff said.
and diplomatic experts of every stripe are hitting the airwaves talking about “phased redeployment” and “force protection”, but, perhaps most remarkably, there is now a broad acknowledgement that a) this war is a disaster growing worse by the day, and b) we are losing. Like the 9-11 commission, though, this group was tasked with focusing on the “what the hell do we do now?” more than the “wha’ hoppen?” of Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. There is no accountability assessment in this charge, and with good reason. Many of the people who cooked up this splendid little war are still in office and are unwilling to play the “blame game”… especially since they are, well, to blame.
Now Baker, Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds (whoops — wrong group) have submitted a recommendation to begin what looks like a pullout but is actually a relatively long-term commitment to leave behind thousands of U.S. troops as military trainers and special strike forces in a country where they are almost universally despised. This is basically “Vietnamization” — getting Iraqis to do our hopeless fighting for us, while we work on salvaging some part of the actual American project in Iraq — that of establishing a permanent U.S. presence in the heart of the world’s most productive oil-producing region. Not quite the same as “stealing their oil” (though we’re happy to help favored firms do that via privatization of Iraqi oil fields), this has been a central goal of U.S. planners since our expulsion from Iran. Saudi Arabia is too sensitive to support a large-scale U.S. military presence, and though we’ve got staging areas in Kuwait and Qatar, the plan is to secure Iraq as a political-military client state — crucially, one that possesses massive oil reserves relied upon by our major economic competitors in Europe and the Far East. So I guess the message to our troops is, “Sorry, folks — it wouldn’t be a rapture if someone didn’t get left behind.”