In fact, Iraq is the brittle point that the entire generational policy of borrow and squander economics has been tripping over again and again. In Bush Sr's day, we could not overthrow Saddam because we were too far in hoc from all the Reagan-Bush deficit spending. Today we couldn't spend the money to do nation building in Iraq, because we were busy bailing out everyone who lost a ton of money in the stock market.
The goal was to have big tax breaks for big Bush donors. But how to generate economic activity, if the money we were supposed to be using for a stimulus package was, instead, being sunk into Klimt paintings? The obvious answer was a war. But it had to be a war that would generate both jobs and oil. Greedy eyes turned towards Iraq, and saw a place that could be a lot like Texas - no water, lots of oil.
The neo-conservatives were rather late on to this particular bus, but they were, as the old expression goes, useful idiots. By prattling about Democracy they made it look as if this was an argument between unreconstructed pale-conservative imperialism, and a kinder gentler imperialism.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
It was never about Democracy
Stirling Newberry effectively demolishes the pretexts for the Iraq invasion in Rebooting the Dictator Software:
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1 comment:
I'm still having trouble sorting this all out. That evil Bush didn't care about those who lost money from Enron, and then a year later needs to make up all the money he gave away to the people who lost money from Enron. Then Bush passed a bunch of tax cuts for the rich. Only Bush had to declare war on Iraq to make up for the fact that he didn't pass any tax cuts for the rich. Then Bush lied about WMDs, going so far as to doctor up newspaper reports and Bill Clinton speeches to make it look like the weapons have always been there. Then based on this lie about WMDs, Bush concocted a grand elaborate scheme involving Jewish bombs in the WTC to trick the American people into going to war with Iraq to provide cheap oil for all of his big money contributors. But then it turns out there was "no plan" for Iraq. But the whole war was for oil.
Look, its about time every leftist on the planet got together and made sure the story was straight. Hell, if guys coming home from a week in Vegas can do it, you can all certainly try. Either Bush is an evil master planner or he's an idiot, he can't be both (there is a 3rd "neither" option for all of these, but that sensible course isn't covered at Soros-Nader pot smoking sessions and have to be ignored for now). There was either a huge intricate plan to go into Iraq and secure the U.S. with cheap oil, or there was no plan at all, there can't be both. Eventually somebody has to break down and come up with a coherent platform, because this hodgepodge is starting to get ridiculous. (I forget now: Are demeaning remarks about hair still okay when its for a Conservative minister? And is it still a foreign policy faux pas to meddle in internal affairs when the French do it to Rona, or is it only when Evil Harper angers the Chinese?). Likewise, either Bush is going after an ill-conceived strategy of democratizing a bunch of primitive camel jockeys or else he's part of a neo-conservative cabal intent on world domination.
Now its true that in a lot of ways Bush brought this on himself: after all, he's greatly concerned (rightly so) with dangerous immigration without full cultural assimilation from a bunch of people wearing turbans. Then the next day dangerous immigration without full cultural assimilation happens by people wearing a luchador masks, and its all hunky dorey. But at the very worst this is a classification error -- meanwhile you're dealing with internal inconsistencies built into the system from the getgo.
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