WHO SAYS THERE'S NO PLAN?
Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times (7/31/06) that Pakistan is building a plutonium reactor that will produce enough fuel to make 40 or 50 nuc. weapons per
year. The U. S. has made a deal with India in which we help them reach a similar capacity. (Although we have 12,000 nuc. warheads, we insist that we should control who can and can't have any.)
Pakistan is ruled by a secular Muslim military dictator supported by us, and by a secular minority from its military, and its educated business and professional class. But it's an uneasy situation. The majority of its 170 million are highly religious Sunnis, and favor a fully Islamic government, as do most of the 30 million Shia. (The latter, by the way, would leap to Iran's aid, should we attack it, as would the 16 million Shia in Iraq). The anti-U. S. pressure which is already mounting in Pakistan would reach a boiling point, and possibly result in either an overthrow of that government, or a civil war similar to the one in Iraq. This was no doubt a part of Pres. Musharraf's warning to Mr. Bush that overthrowing Saddam would destabilize the whole region.
Tom Ricks, the Washington Post reporter on Iraq who has now written the definitive post mortem on that fiasco (titled Fiasco) stated in an interview with Amazon.com: "I think the Bush administration doesn't really like "stability" in the Middle East. In its view, "stability" has been the goal of previous administrations, but pursuing it has led to 9/11, so it's not the goal, it's the target." (As Condi Rice said recently, we are witnessing the "birth pangs" of a new Middle East.) "So they are rolling the dice," Ricks continued, "both in Iraq and in Lebanon. I think the big worry
is those wars spilling over borders. Fasten your seat belts."
All of a sudden the lightbulb came on (for me): What if the Bushies never wanted order and stability in Iraq? Is it possible that Mr. B. is, as he claims, a strategic thinker? Maybe he really has always had a plan for Iraq: chaos. Maybe the real plan was not to create a genuine democracy, which wasn't possible anyway, but a fake one like we have made in Afghanistan: a dependency that will require our permanent presence there to prop it up and protect it. (Hold on now, let me finish).
Here is some evidence that I'm not completely loony, and that this is what they've been planning all along:
a. We are building large, permanent military bases for ourselves in Iraq, complete with Pizza Huts, Colonel Sanders' and car dealerships.
b. We are building there the largest U. S. embassy in the world! It is, in fact, a small city, heavily fortified, and will employ in excess of 3,000 people. Ask yourself: why would an underdeveloped country of 26 million require an embassy bigger than the ones we have in India, with a billion people, or China with a billion and a half? We must be planning to make it the power center to control that whole region! How do we bring this about? By creating chaos in the region that only we can quell! As the chaos we have brought to Iraq sucks in surrounding countries, they will finally ask us to stop it, and keep it stopped. They'll have to. We'll have to: it's about oil. Has been all along.
It wasn't incompetence, but by plan that we sent too few troops to stop the looting and seal the borders when Saddam fell. Those necessities are taught in Occupation 101 at West Point. Gen. Shinseki told us what it would take to do that and he was ridiculed out ot the service. It wasn't stupidity that caused us to disband the Iraqi army and police and send them home armed and unemployed and bitter.
No one is that stupid! It was guaranteed to bring on insurrection!
Both Mubarak (in Egypt) and Musharraf warned the chaos created in Iraq would draw and train terrorists. Bush said, "bring 'em on." He relished the thought. We'll fight 'em there instead of here! But as the Spanish say, "the devil always over-reaches." Saddam did, and now Bush has as well. When asked for a date for with-drawing out troops, he clearly stated his intention to stay on indefinitely: he said that decision would be up to a future president. Connect the dots: he has a plan. It's spelled o-i-l, and it's right on schedule. Of course, it has gotten out of hand! Can you say fiasco?
Let me know what you think: jgoodwin004@centuryTel.net
Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times (7/31/06) that Pakistan is building a plutonium reactor that will produce enough fuel to make 40 or 50 nuc. weapons per
year. The U. S. has made a deal with India in which we help them reach a similar capacity. (Although we have 12,000 nuc. warheads, we insist that we should control who can and can't have any.)
Pakistan is ruled by a secular Muslim military dictator supported by us, and by a secular minority from its military, and its educated business and professional class. But it's an uneasy situation. The majority of its 170 million are highly religious Sunnis, and favor a fully Islamic government, as do most of the 30 million Shia. (The latter, by the way, would leap to Iran's aid, should we attack it, as would the 16 million Shia in Iraq). The anti-U. S. pressure which is already mounting in Pakistan would reach a boiling point, and possibly result in either an overthrow of that government, or a civil war similar to the one in Iraq. This was no doubt a part of Pres. Musharraf's warning to Mr. Bush that overthrowing Saddam would destabilize the whole region.
Tom Ricks, the Washington Post reporter on Iraq who has now written the definitive post mortem on that fiasco (titled Fiasco) stated in an interview with Amazon.com: "I think the Bush administration doesn't really like "stability" in the Middle East. In its view, "stability" has been the goal of previous administrations, but pursuing it has led to 9/11, so it's not the goal, it's the target." (As Condi Rice said recently, we are witnessing the "birth pangs" of a new Middle East.) "So they are rolling the dice," Ricks continued, "both in Iraq and in Lebanon. I think the big worry
is those wars spilling over borders. Fasten your seat belts."
All of a sudden the lightbulb came on (for me): What if the Bushies never wanted order and stability in Iraq? Is it possible that Mr. B. is, as he claims, a strategic thinker? Maybe he really has always had a plan for Iraq: chaos. Maybe the real plan was not to create a genuine democracy, which wasn't possible anyway, but a fake one like we have made in Afghanistan: a dependency that will require our permanent presence there to prop it up and protect it. (Hold on now, let me finish).
Here is some evidence that I'm not completely loony, and that this is what they've been planning all along:
a. We are building large, permanent military bases for ourselves in Iraq, complete with Pizza Huts, Colonel Sanders' and car dealerships.
b. We are building there the largest U. S. embassy in the world! It is, in fact, a small city, heavily fortified, and will employ in excess of 3,000 people. Ask yourself: why would an underdeveloped country of 26 million require an embassy bigger than the ones we have in India, with a billion people, or China with a billion and a half? We must be planning to make it the power center to control that whole region! How do we bring this about? By creating chaos in the region that only we can quell! As the chaos we have brought to Iraq sucks in surrounding countries, they will finally ask us to stop it, and keep it stopped. They'll have to. We'll have to: it's about oil. Has been all along.
It wasn't incompetence, but by plan that we sent too few troops to stop the looting and seal the borders when Saddam fell. Those necessities are taught in Occupation 101 at West Point. Gen. Shinseki told us what it would take to do that and he was ridiculed out ot the service. It wasn't stupidity that caused us to disband the Iraqi army and police and send them home armed and unemployed and bitter.
No one is that stupid! It was guaranteed to bring on insurrection!
Both Mubarak (in Egypt) and Musharraf warned the chaos created in Iraq would draw and train terrorists. Bush said, "bring 'em on." He relished the thought. We'll fight 'em there instead of here! But as the Spanish say, "the devil always over-reaches." Saddam did, and now Bush has as well. When asked for a date for with-drawing out troops, he clearly stated his intention to stay on indefinitely: he said that decision would be up to a future president. Connect the dots: he has a plan. It's spelled o-i-l, and it's right on schedule. Of course, it has gotten out of hand! Can you say fiasco?
Let me know what you think: jgoodwin004@centuryTel.net
posted by John Goodwin at
11:07 AM
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