We need to stay in the Middle East for oil. Oil and gas. That’s it. That’s the only reason we need to stay in the Middle East with airbases, and naval ports, and aircraft carriers, and huge arms depots, and the rest. The Washington Establishment is desperate to convince you we have other reasons.
Those Republicans [up for reelection in ’08], plus a few in slightly safer seats and a smattering of others, will hold the key to either partisan unity or bipartisan compromise on Iraq War policy.
“My answer is, let’s have a change in mission as rapidly as we can,” said Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who next year will defend a seat rated by CQ as “Republican favored.”
Alexander and Ken Salazar, D-Colo., have jointly proposed changing the mission of troops from combat to support, to reduce the presence long-term and to increase political and diplomatic efforts.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., embraced Alexander’s proposal Monday as a model for bipartisan compromise because it calls for a long-term military presence in the Middle East.
“I think it’s pretty clear we need some kind of long-term deployment in the Middle East for two reasons: al Qaeda and Iran,” McConnell said. “I hope we’ll be able to get a broad bipartisan support for that kind of endgame strategy at some point here, if not next week, some time in the near future.”
Al Qaeda and Iran. Why are they a problem? For one simple reason. They oppose and resist our presence and influence in the Middle East. To argue that we have to stay in the Middle East because those two entities oppose our presence in the Middle East is nonsensical. But that is the argument the Establishment makes over and over again. They simply refuse to acknowledge (Ron Paul excepted) that we have a terrorism threat because of our presence in the Middle East, and not because radicals oppose our eroding freedoms.
America needs to transition from the sole superpower, responsible for the stability of the world energy supply and for all major humanitarian and peace keeping efforts, to some sort of power sharing arrangement. The people never signed on for an empire. They might like being the biggest boy on the block, but they must be constantly deceived and terrified in order for them to maintain support for our imperial policies.
This is a Republic…a fine and outstanding Republic. And we are rapidly losing our Republic in favor of some kind of Pax Americana that has no pax in sight.
Someone should look around and realize that we’ve got a Caligula running things, not a Senate. We need to fundamentally reassess our foreign policy. We do not need to stay in the Middle East to fight al-Qaeda and Iran. We’re fighting al-Qaeda and Iran because we are in the Middle East. At least, let’s understand cause and effect here.
A forward looking foreign policy should aim to make this country less dependent on Middle Eastern oil and gas, while also making sure that other democratic nations develop the air and naval assets they need to help us move away from our role as the ‘indispensable nation’ for all humanitarian and peacekeeping missions. We can’t afford it. Our rights are more important than our hegemony.
