Next week, the Republicans and John McCain will tell us that Obama is crazy to want to leave Iraq. They’ll say he’s a “Defeatocrat” and suggest he’s not patriotic enough because he doesn’t want more US troops dying in a country that had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. He’ll claim we’re winning a great victory in Iraq, and that we have to “stay the course” (though to be fair, I doubt he’ll use that language).
Yet what has this “victory” he will speak of really accomplished? Thousands of dead and wounded Americans. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and millions of refugees. A civil war. Ethnic cleansing. The rise in Iran’s influence in the region. The largest Federal deficit in history even as Iraq runs a surplus of $80 billion. Rising crude oil and gasoline prices. A resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan. A military at the breaking point. Fractured alliances and the worst reputation America has ever had overseas.
But, perhaps this story encapsulates everything that is wrong with the Bush/McCain Iraq policy. It seems our soldiers are now in Iraq, fighting and dying, to protect China’s access to Iraqi oil:
SHANGHAI, China — China and Iraq have signed a $3 billion deal revising an earlier agreement for China’s biggest oil company to help develop the Ahdab oil field, an official at the Iraq’s Oil Ministry said today.
The deal, restoring a project canceled after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was signed last night by Chinese officials and Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani.
“The initial agreement has been signed, and we are waiting to see the approval of both governments,” said Sarhad Fatah, a spokesman at the Iraqi Embassy in Beijing. […]
If it is approved, the agreement would be the first Saddam-era oil deal to be honored by the new Iraqi government.
Repeat after me: Obama was, and is, right and McCain was, and is, wrong about Iraq. And no amount of Rovian talking points in the coming week is going to change that fundamental fact. When the only reason we really invaded Iraq, to secure its oil resources for our benefit, is no longer valid, its time to leave. Because I don’t think any more American soldiers need to die so China can lay claim to Iraq’s oil reserves. Even George Bush and John McCain, if they would be honest about it, would have to admit that’s a bad deal.
It was bad enough when Bush admitted we invaded Iraq to preserve American access to Iraq’s oil. But at least that made some modicum of sense from a purely selfish, realpolitik standpoint. But America fighting in Iraq, and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up al-Maliki’s government, so China’s economy and its oil companies can reap the benefits? That makes no sense whatsoever. Even your most diehard neoconservative advocate for an American Empire must admit that whatever the reason we went into Iraq it surely wasn’t intended to benefit the Chinese at the expense of our own people. Yet that is the reality of the situation. Those are the facts on the ground.
So, Mr. McCain,* do you really want to tell our troops they are fighting in Iraq to prop up our biggest economic rival and the likeliest candidate to replace the US of A as the next superpower in the world? Do you really want to tell them they are sacrificing their lives and their sacred honor, that they are suffering horrific wounds and damaging their mental and physical well being, so that China can lay claim to Iraq’s oil?
Well (to steal a line from Dirty Harry) do you, punk?
* I make this statement with full knowledge that the Iraqi people have suffered far more, and will continue to suffer horrendously, because of the Bush/McCain invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nonetheless, we also must realize that to many Republicans and Independents (and even some stupid Democrats) the fate of the Iraqi people means little or nothing, despite the high flown, and largely phony, rhetoric that those troops are there to extend freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. However, most of these same people who could care less about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, don’t want to see American troops fighting and dying to protect the interests of our largest economic rival, the one which holds the single largest amount of the debt issued by our federal government, the one with whom we run the largest trade deficit in our Nation’s history, and the one to whom our multinational companies have outsourced millions of formerly good paying American jobs.