Recently, Cliff May, a highly respected scholar, public servant, talk-show pundit, and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, made some remarks about the presidential candidates’ positions on Iraq.
Here are the three bases of success in Iraq:
we need to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq
we need to block Iran’s influence in the Middle East
we need to delegate control of Iraq to the Iraqis
Given the history of these guys in the present administration, we can safely say these positions entail the following:
Since al-Qaeda was not in Iraq until we invaded that country, we can safely say this means that we oppose any force that opposes our invasion of other countries. Our invasions will probably be more corporate than anything, but a military presence will definitely be a part of any incursion, just to add muscle to the enterprise. If al-Qaeda doesn’t like it, we have more than muscles, we have missiles.
Blocking Iran’s influence in the Middle East will prove difficult since Iran is a Middle Eastern country and we are not. But leave it to the neocons to use their sense of outrage over human rights abuses (a change from their positions during the Cold War when our buddy-dictators could torture, rape, and murder anyone they wanted as long as they pinned a “communist” label on them) to justify our massive support of rebel forces in any Mid-East country. We have alread allocated and are spending millions to destabilize Iran. Imagine Iran funding right-wing militias or Black Panthers in the U.S. Imagine China stating she wanted to liberate Latin-American countries like Cuba from our grip, to “block our influence” in Latin-America.
Once the Iraqis are ready, we’ll turn everything over to them e.g. the management of contracts with Halliburton and Black Water, with proper supervision and oversight by highly qualified (Christian Evangelical Republicans) American experts on compliance. The Iraqis will be in charge as long as they do what we say. After all, no one has greater moral authority in Iraq than Americans. They’ll need an army for us to sell to, and an oil industry for us to sell to, and an infra-structure (and how!) for us to sell to, and a bureaucracy for us to sell to, and….. maybe even their religion is something we could sell to them. A mosque attached to each Wal-Mart.
Thanks to the neocons, all this is possible. Just a few more dead people and we’ll have it.