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October 24, 2007
Spencer Ackerman In Iraq Forever in American Prospect argues that the construction of permanent U.S. bases along with long-term plans for troop presence continues apace:
The war in Iraq can sometimes feel like a military commitment in search of a rationale. Yet there has never been any doubt among insiders that the Bush administration intended Iraq to become an outpost of U.S. power projection throughout the Middle East.....The assumption made by advocates of an enduring U.S. presence in Iraq is that the U.S. can improve security to the point where a reduced American presence would no longer be provocative to Iraqis.
It is similar to the British in Egypt says John B. Judis. The Bush Republican Washington view is that Iraqi leaders who owe their positions to the U.S. occupation want the Americans to stay indefinitely, and Bush is ready to oblige them, albeit with a smaller force. What Bush has done in Iraq, rather than what he says he has done, is to revive an imperialist foreign policy, reminiscent of the British and French in the Middle East. It's called an enduring relationship.
Judis says that:
Indeed, this brand of imperialism, as practiced by the Bush administration, is remarkably similar to the older European variety. Its outward veneer is optimistic and even triumphalist, when articulated by a neo-conservative like Max Boot or William Kristol, and is usually accompanied by a vision of global moral-religious-social transformation. The British boasted of bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathens; America's neo-conservatives trumpet the virtues of free-market capitalism and democracy. And like the older imperialism, Bush's policy toward Iraq and the Middle East has been driven by a fear of losing out on scarce natural resources. Ultimately, his policy is as much a product of the relative decline of American power brought about by the increasingly fierce international competition for resources and markets as it is of America's "unipolar moment."
Even if waging a imperial war in the post-imperial age is self-defeating, Bush and Cheney continue to beat the drums of war with Iran ever louder. An all-out attack against Iran's nuclear sites is what I assume Bush and Cheney are after. Hence all the chest-thumping and belligerent bellowing.
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Gary,
there is a history between the US Iran. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew Iran's democratically elected Iranian president, Mohammad Mosaddeq, installing for the next 27 years the brutal regime of the Shah.
President Reagan and his Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush urged, funded and equipped Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran-a war that took around 700,000 Iranian lives.