American Fortress in Iraq

In July, 2007 there is much posturing and positioning on the part of American politicians about what to do about Iraq.

About the only thing they can all agree on is that politically the situation is no better in Iraq than before the troop surge and perhaps it is even worse.

Those in Washington who may have some idea of the hidden purpose of the Iraq war, to establish an American Fortress in the Mid East as a cornerstone of the American Empire, are not talking about it.  Perhaps they fear that the American public can not accept such a truth.

Perhaps they are right. 

It really is not fair for the US to put the blame for the current sad state of affairs entirely on the back of the Maliki government. We are asking them to solve the ethic and religious problems of the past 1,300 plus years within a few months. No one can accomplish a job that is impossible to accomplish. The curse of religious divisions, strife, and hate run deep in Iraq.

Maliki is not a strong enough leader to come even close to bringing Iraq together and to defuse and control the insurgency. We killed the only man who had been able to control the many different factions in Iraq since Iraq was cobbled together as a nation.

No doubt Saddam was a brutal unsavory guy. But it was his ruthlessness and brutality that kept Iraq together during his time as President. For many of the Saddam years he was our ally in the Mid East, the man who replaced The Shah of Iran as our policeman.

We are now finding out that Iraq is not a country that is easy to control. Even without the gross war management mistakes made early on by the Bush administration that would be true.  With the mistakes, like disbanding the Iraqi Army and putting 450,000 angry, unemployed, disenfranchised, armed men on the streets, we put ourselves into an impossible position right from the start.

The huge question now is what to do about it. How can we salvage if not victory at least our pride from Iraq?

American politicians are basically divided into three camps. The first camp contains folks like Barack Obama who want to bring the troops home as quickly as possible with a timetable established for withdrawal. Let’s call that camp “A”.

The second camp, camp “B”, is headed by Senator John McCain, who still supports President Bush and who speaks of a tremendous defeat for the US should we withdraw. They want to give the current plan more time to work.

The third camp, camp “C”, seems to be gaining the most traction among congressman, including Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton. They are proposing a middle ground where combat troops are drawn down rather quickly but where support troops and trainers remain in Iraq to continue training Iraqi army and police units.

In my opinion all three camps are building their arguments on verbal quicksand instead of military reality.

Camp A folks talk of bringing all of the troops home ASAP. But we can not bring all of our troops home unless we close our brand new more than one billion Dollar American Embassy and spook center facility and the billions of Dollars spend on four permanent bases already built and operating in Iraq. These folks really don’t understand the complexity or depth of our involvement in Iraq.

Military analysis estimate that it would take from eight to ten thousand marines just to defend the huge Embassy. 

Camp “B” folks are basically calling for more of the same but even more of it. One definition of being crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Our friends in camp “C” miss one very important point. Our troops are having a very tough time of it with 160,000 of them in Iraq. What happens to the remaining troops if we withdraw, say, 80,000 combat troops?

In 1989 the Soviets learned in Afghanistan a bit about the difficulty of withdrawing from combat hot spots. After the first draw downs the remaining troops came under increasing attack by the US supported “insurgents”.

The remaining Soviet troops had to fight for their lives to get out of Afghanistan. The Soviets had to run airlift operations to withdraw troops from Kandahar. Many of the last to leave Soviet troops didn’t make it out. At least not in a live condition.

Withdrawal without at least a truce being signed is not as simple as many think.

The mix of regional strife and ambitions, religious wars, ethic cleansing, the divisions between Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite interests, and the United States government’s continued unbelievable ignorance and arrogance about Mid Eastern culture make the future impossible to predict. Probably we will be in for a few more nasty developments over the next year or two.

For one thing the Turks are reportedly massing up to 200,000 troops, along with heavy weapons, along their border with Northern Iraq in the Kurdish region. The Turks are very nervous about the possibility that the Kurds go their separate way and that their campaign to establish an independent Kurdistan is eventually successful.

For another thing George W. Bush and his neocon friends can not stomach the fact that the clear winner in the spoils of Iraq thus far is Iran. Whether the US stays in Iraq or not Iran has and will expand its influence in the region.

That is one reason that a conflict between the US and Iran may still take place during the reign of King George. The Bush administration may scream about Iran having nuclear ambitions and of providing IEDs to Iraqi insurgents but I expect that really they just can’t accept the prospect of an Iranian “victory” and a US defeat in Iraq.

I have one more point to stress and it may surprise you. Those of you who have visited Article Discovery Politics for some time know how opposed I have been to this war.

I still am opposed to the Iraq war although in the neocon goal of furthering the interests of the American Empire I understand why we are there.

I do wish the Iraq war had been better planned and fought by the Generals, not the amateurs in Washington who have no combat experience. If we are to invade other countries to secure our future oil and commodity supplies let’s at least do it well.

In my opinion, the war is a classic over reach of empire. Even though the US spends nearly as much on its military as the rest of the world combined, fairly small in number, rag tag insurgent forces living in two low tech, poor nations have been more than a match for our high tech military strike force.

How can that be? How could we have fared so badly in a conflict against a rag tag bunch of desert tribesmen?

The answer in part is that the US under Rumsfield built a high powered strike force that relied on massive fire and air power to prevail. We are great at destroying targets and nations. But we lack the manpower and resources to occupy them. Once the fireworks and “shock and awe” shows are over with we are not trained or prepared to deal with the aftermath.

While the US has a skilled and potent military force we do not have skilled administrators of Empire. In other words once our military takes it we do not have the capacity to manage it, at least not manage it well.

Now comes my “shock and awe” part of this posting. But I repeat myself so you shouldn’t be too shocked. The Iraq war was planned to set up a Fortress America in the heart of the most strategic commodity resource region of the world.

America now has a presense in Iraq with a huge American “Embassy” intelligence gathering organization and facility in Baghdad and four huge permanent bases. I’m quite sure that the US NEVER plans to give up these fortress American Empire facilities. They will be part of our permanent overseas deployment garrisons, kind of like the bases we still maintain in Okinawa more than 60 years after the end of WW Two.

So camps A, B, and C can talk about plans for Iraq withdrawal or continuing with the war until they all drop. It’s basically all meaningless rhetoric that will be overruled by the executive branch of government.

President Bush has in fact achieved his “mission accomplished”. He just can’t reveal how successful he has been to the American Congress or people. Most of these folks still don’t understand the meaning of empire.

For those few who do understand the meaning of empire the establishment of an American fortress in the Mid East is considered one hell of an accomplishment. We will fight to the end to preserve it even if it brings us to our end.

After all that is what empires do. They keep on fighting and expanding  until eventually the whole empire collapses from its inability to manage the empire’s vastly expanded complicated interests. 

One other risk of empire is that at some point the rest of the world gangs up on the empire to help bring them down. For the American Empire that process is probably just getting under way. Keep your eyes pealed for further Russian, Chinese cooperation on a wide range of issues, especially military ones.

But for now the American Fortress in Iraq looks to be secure, even if the country of Iraq is not.

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