Something dark and scary has been eating at my subconscious for a while now and it became clearer during the SOTU address. My concern is that there has been a cynical game of rope-a-dope played at the peril and destruction of the Iraqi people and to an end as of yet little discussed when considering the motivations for conducting the Iraq war in the manner it has been:
Lemme restate the Iraqi storyline a tiny bit to explain:
For YEARS, the ‘incompetence’ of the war was unfathomable unless you believed that chaos was it’s end. Chaos was profitable, so those of us who saw that for the most part assumed that greed and securing natural resource access were the ultimate motivations for the parts of the policy that so plainly made little sense. But perhaps there was another enemy in the Repug’s sights; perhaps the chaos was maintained through failure to lure the Democrats into a strong anti-war stance, knowing they would only do so if the effort seemed doomed. And so the non-stop deaths and kidnappings and rapes painted such a picture in the sanguine hues of civil war.
But hold on a second: We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Is it outlandish to think that the military has essentially been relaxing in the ropes, buying those Friedman Units, softening the opposition at home, if not abroad? Is it impossible to think the most powerful military the world has ever seen can turn on the taps to achieve statistically justifiable ‘success’ when it is so directed?
[IMHO, it seems to me that we’ve slowly turned Iraqi cities into giant prisons and set lose gangs of thugs as the guards. Reminds me of home.]
I don’t buy that the surge has accomplished anything durable yet, but perception is everything. Now that Bush is changing the vision of success (see SOTU address) he can effectively time bringing the boys home ‘victoriously’ periodically during the election season. That’s gonna win back a lot of Repug defectors. There is a real potential that the story-arc of his presidency will ultimately and successfully mimic his successful bid for the White House (or at least make it close enough to steal): lowered expectations and mis-under-estimation feeding the elitist belief that he is just a dolt – lowering their guard and drawing them close – when in fact he was effectively rigging everything where it counted.
If he’s been capable of all the heinous crap he’s pulled so far, then letting Iraqis die while playing rope-a-dope until the Dems tired of the war and committed themselves to going out on the anti-War limb is not beyond this man.
I think anyone paying attention could imagine a world where Iraq is indeed pacified but the endless backlash and missteps everywhere else drowns even the rosiest of outcomes. Problem is so few are really paying attention.
