Trying to make sense of Iraq

Matt Yglesias writes:

Max Boot makes an important and neglected point in his column today -- the bulk of what the US military presence in Iraq is doing is . . . maintaining the continued viability of the US military presence in Iraq. Which is to say that the largest part of our activities there are dedicated to maintaining and defending bases, the supply lines to those bases, and so-called "force protection" (i.e. preventing our troops from getting killed). This is important because I think a lot of the people warning of the dire consequences of an American withdrawal (civil war, whatever, etc.) tend to drastically overstate the extent to which our troops are actually helping Iraqis with the dire situation they face. In practice, as Boot says, they're (understandably, in my view) mostly trying to protect themselves in a very dangerous situation.

So why would this be the case? Why would you keep troops in Iraq, if all they're doing is trying to stay alive? When one tries to infer motive from behaviour, one tends to assume that the
"behaver" is behaving rationally i.e. that, if they are doing A, and A leads logically to B, then we can infer that B was the goal. Based on their behaviour, it's clear to me that BushCo has no plan to leave Iraq. Permanent bases are the giveaway... and the plan. As I have said before, they are there for the long haul and what appears to be a colossal failure may well be part of the plan. A conventional "success" -- a strong Iraqi government -- would not prove conducive to what may be BushCo's real goals.

As commenter BruceW07 said:

What's the objective of the Iraq War?

If it is a permanent American presence in Iraq, then that objective requires a very, weak Iraqi government, or, at least, a very weak Shia core.

The American goal has been a coalition or unity government, including Kurds and Sunnis, who would, for their own reasons, want to keep the U.S. there, as a counterbalance to Shia ambition. Finding Sunnis, who have any stomach for the Americans, is increasingly hard, since all of their passion leans in another direction. The Shia, unfortunately for U.S. policy, appear to be eager to turn to Iran for support. Even a moderately strong Shia-led government would probably be willing to gamble on expelling the Americans, assured that Iran would prevent a Sunni restoration, and that a threat of Iranian and Turkish intervention would keep the Kurds quiet.

Consequently, the U.S. has had no interest in a successful reconstruction. To keep permanent bases, Iraq has to be kept so weak, as to be in serious danger of spinning completely out of control.

A U.S. withdrawal will be the culminating disaster of the catastrophic policy, which led Bush into Iraq. Boot, like all the traitorous Republican pukes building a fascist State, want to be able to blame the Democrats for failure in Iraq. That's his only goal at this point.

Democrats would be well-advised to draw as much attention as possible to the failure of the Reconstruction, as the key factor dooming the American intervention, and the reasons why that failure was a deliberate, intended one.

Trying to be re-assuring about the consequences of withdrawal is just a set-up for the Right to blame Democrats for failure in Iraq. Everywhere the spokes-morons of the Right, of the Bush Administration, and the military speak as if "winning" in Iraq is just a matter of "staying the course" for 10 years or more.

Of course, staying in Iraq for 10 years would be winning in the limited sense that staying in Iraq, indefinitely, was always a key aspect of the Bush agenda in Iraq.

But, a strong Iraq is incompatible with that objective, because the Iraqis do not want us there.

That's the strategic vulnerability of the Bush policy, which Democrats appear too stupid to exploit. Bush has acted to keep Iraq weak, as a means to an end. Accuse him of keeping Iraq weak, and point out how: the failure of the Reconstruction, the failure to produce oil (and a secure financial footing for the government), the failure to train and adequately equip an Iraqi Army and Police. And, then connect the how with the why: the desire for permanent bases.