Bush: We'll be in Iraq forever and ever, amen and fuck you

Click to magnify the problem

Tomgram. Take a lunch. Long informative article, but here's the crux of the biscuit:

Finally there is that unresolved question of developing Iraqi oil reserves. For four years, Iraqis of all sectarian and political persuasions have (successfully) resisted American attempts to activate the plan first developed by Cheney's Energy Task Force. They have wielded sabotage of pipelines, strikes by oil workers, and parliamentary maneuvering, among other acts. The vast majority of the population -- including a large minority of Kurds and both the Sunni and Shia insurgencies -- believes that Iraqi oil should be tightly controlled by the government and therefore support every effort -- including in many cases violent resistance -- to prevent the activation of any American plan to transfer control of significant aspects of the Iraqi energy industry to foreign companies. Implementation of the U.S. oil proposal therefore will require the long-term suppression of violent and non-violent local resistance, as well as strenuous maneuvering at all levels of government.

Shorter: We're trying to loot their oil and they want to keep it so we must shoot them or bribe them until there's no one left who doesn't see it our way.

Market forces, peak oil, competition? Bah! We're the baddest motherfucker on the block, so we'll just take it. We're bullies for the bottom line.

That's what America has become under Cheney/Bush. I don't like it one bit.

So surge "success" doesn't mean withdrawal -- yes, some troops will come home slowly -- but the rest will have to embed themselves in Iraqi communities for the long haul. This situation was summarized well by Captain Jon Brooks, the commander of Joint Security Station Thrasher in Western Baghdad, one of the small outposts that represent the front lines of the surge strategy. When asked by New Yorker reporter Jon Lee Anderson how long he thought the U.S. would remain in Iraq, he replied, "I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass, but it really depends on what the U.S. civilian-controlled government decides its goals are and what it tells the military to do."

As long as that government is determined to install a friendly, anti-Iranian regime in Baghdad, one that is hostile to "foreigners," including all jihadists, but welcomes an ongoing American military presence as well as multinational development of Iraqi oil, the American armed forces aren't going anywhere, not for a long, long time; and no relative lull in the fighting -- temporary or not -- will change that reality. This is the Catch-22 of Bush administration policy in Iraq. The worse things go, the more our military is needed; the better they go, the more our military is needed.

Don't expect this to change if Hillary or Obama are elected, either.