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that there was no exit contemplated. It was pure imperialism and colonialism from the start, on the part of the NeoCons--but completely lacking in the British skill (which so often reminds me of the Romans) of successfully occupying a country, so that once the initial carnage is over, the country is fairly well-run, local people are successfully involved in running it, and most people are relatively content. The British had a complete foreign service that was devoted to this task--and people were well-trained for it, in local culture and languages. They were very knowledgeable people, and often had great interest in local culture. I'm not excusing British imperialism. I'm just saying that it was very successful for a time, with a minimum of chaos, very similar to the Roman "Pax Romana."
Contrast this with the Bushites who sent young Republicans to run Iraq, and screened OUT speakers of the language because they were too sympathetic to the local culture, and didn't like having to sieg heil to Bush! I mean, it's just disgusting. And so stupid as to be beyond belief. It also suggests a fundamental disrespect toward other human beings and cultures--which must surely have struck the Iraqis, when chubby-faced young Bush worshipers told them how to run their country, in a culture that is about 5,000 years older than ours. The British--for all their faults--were not nearly as snotty as young Bushites. Many of them were genuinely interested in understanding the people they were colonizing. We have no such foreign service. We don't even require Spanish in our schools in California and Texas, where half the population is Hispanic. American multi-linguists are rare--and are usually the result of immigrants learning English in addition to their native tongue. It is not cultivated in our schools. We almost have a horror of it (for various reasons--partly the old American belief in avoiding "foreign entanglements"). And we have no such capacity (as the British) to occupy other countries. They had an entire professional class specifically trained for that purpose.
But this dunderheaded incompetence may point to the deeper motive--or perhaps a split motive. You have the war profiteers like Halliburton and Bechtel, and all the manufacturers of war materials, just in it for the quick multi-billion dollar theft. The longer the bloodshed continues, the more multi-billion thefts they can pull off, by pretending to be fixing things, and by supplying and re-supplying US soldiers with war materials and supportive goods--giving these corporations quite a lot of motive, too, to stir up trouble with their own private death squads. And you have the NeoCons, with imperial designs, combined with the oil cartel and their designs on the resource; and, behind all these you have a far rightwing political ideology that insanely combines 'christian' values with corporate greed. None of these forces has any interest in the stability of Iraq, only in exploiting the Iraqis, looting the US federal treasury, exploiting war themes back home, and exploiting the chaos that the invasion created. As Rumsfeld said of the looting of Baghdad, freedom = the freedom to loot. In the contest between NeoCon ideology and corporate war profiteer looting, corporate war profiteer looting won. The incompetent NeoCon ideologues could never had run a country anyway. What did Halliburton, or Bechtel, or Rumsfeld, Bush or Cheney care about that? Everybody was making money hand over fist. (Freedom = the freedom to loot.)
So I think, on the whole, it was a long term looting expedition, rather than a long term imperial project. The reason for the lack of an exit plan was not so much the imperial intention as it was the lack of relevance of an exit plan to the looting. They would loot until the well ran dry, then they would exit. If this cost some American lives, what did they care? US soldiers are now the cannon fodder for wars that are manufactured by war profiteers, for war profiteers. In other words, the NeoCons' ideology and imperial intentions were just a sort of policy showpiece. Yeah, this or that is why we're "going in." WMDs. Democracy. Whatever. Gimme that no-bid contract!
Some of the NeoCons might have believed that their nuttery was actually driving policy, and had their own crazy beliefs about its chances of success. And there might be considerable cross-over of groups and motives around this war (NeoCons, or rightwing 'christian' billionaires, or the corporate news monopolies--which I haven't yet mentioned, a big factor in the delusions of war-- with heavy investments in the war corporations). But, for the sake of argument, I'm thinking of them as distinct forces for war, with different main purposes for war. At the center of it all was a really stupid, uninformed President, whose main skill is swagger, and who couldn't even speak his pre-written lines very well. I think of him as a puppet, easily manipulated by more intelligent people--easily conned by the NeoCons, without power or conscience to stop his own VP from looting the government, giggly with glee at Rumsfeld's, Cheney's and Rove's foulest schemes, and neither having, nor seeking, control over the whole situation. Somewhere in his dark little soul, he knows it's all a con. But he can't be bothered with the details. It's as much as he can do to play president.
Imagine an Eisenhower or a Churchill running this war--or an intelligent, well-intentioned president like JFK or Jimmy Carter, or Clinton. Can you imagine any of them putting up with the Cheney/Halliburton situation? Cheney would have been out on his ear in a week. Or Rumsfeld, in his arrogant refusal to the listen to the advice of his own generals? Out! Or the Cheney, Libby and (I think) Rumsfeld (as mastermind) cabal that outed Valerie Plame and the entire WMD counter-proliferation network that she headed? All three would have been lucky to keep their heads on their shoulders, under the command of any of the above (or almost any president). Same with the NeoCons. Real presidents don't listen to ideologues, or, if they do, they sure as hell get a wide range of additional advice.
So Bush was easy ground for the war profiteers to plow--or anybody with their own motives, ideological, political, religious, financial. Cheney and Rumsfeld held the keys to the lucrative contracts. I don't think they were ever fooled by the NeoCons. I really don't. They are master thieves, and the immense amounts of money they now have, and the immense amounts of money they doled out, give them immense FUTURE power. I don't think they care what happens to this country--at all. They are global corporate predators, and have never considered this country to be anything other than a big bank to rob. The Great Crusade--the "clash of civilizations"--preserving western culture against the new medieval Islam? B.S. for the 'christian' right. I don't think they care a whit about western civilization, or even know what it is. (Freedom = the freedom to loot.) Immense amounts of money and the immense amount of power it gives them is all they were after. And they is all they are left with. They didn't even want an "empire"--or they would have been more careful builders of it. They did NOTHING to create an "empire"--except slaughter a lot of people, and inflict their own country with a $10 TRILLION deficit (the part we know about). What have they built? What do they have to show for all this expenditure of life and treasure? NOTHING! But they do have vast treasure built up in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, I'm sure--and a network of global corporate predators that owe them, big time.
So we are kind of shadow-boxing when we argue with NeoCon ideology or imperialism, or with rightwing 'christian' hypocrisy, or with "conservatism." None of that is on-point. All of it is more or less window dressing. Think about it. Conservatism--small government, fiscal responsibility, reverence for the Constitution, opposition to "foreign entanglements, " dislike of sudden change and of radical ideologies. They've turned conservatism on its head. 'Christian values'? The same. Christianity is unrecognizable in the Bush Junta's hands (except as a throwback to the 5th Century.) American hegemony in the world? The New Roman Empire? They couldn't even provide clean water in Iraq. And America's good name and moral power are gone, and the US military is a wreck. And think of the horror and spectacle of Katrina. Was that the legend of a great empire?
Bush strikes me as an empty man, who is moved mostly by crude, self-serving images--like the image of himself as "a war president." And around this emptiness circled the jackals, each of them getting what they wanted, which, for the chief monsters of this catastrophe was mountains and mountains of easy money, out of our pockets into their foreign accounts. We have been turned into the biggest "Banana Republic" of them all.
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