Friday, February 02, 2007

Motivations...

A few thoughts that I have been having lately...

Bush's escalation plan for Iraq is very instructive as to the true motivations of Bush and the neocons who ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Let me explain what I mean...

Let's think back to the justifications for the invasion four and five years ago. Obviously, there were a series of differnt justifications offered by the Bush Administration, but they essentially came down to these four:

~Link between Iraq and Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11
~Weapons of Mass Destruction
~Sadaam Hussein was a really bad dictator
~Bring democracy to Iraq

Each of these justification broke down and forced Bush to scramble to the next one, but these were the basic ideas of why we had to invade.

Now, I have always opposed the invasion. Having said that - look at what happened after we did invade:

~We swept to a quick and decisive military victory over Iraq
~We toppled the government of Sadaam Hussein
~We confirmed there were no WMDs
~We killed, arrested, and/or convicted the leadership of Hussein's government
~We oversaw democratic peaceful elections in Iraq

In short - we won. Look at the (admittedly trumped up) justifications for the invasion that the neocons listed above. Are there ANY of those reasons/goals/justifications that were not met? Clearly not. We won.

But we're still there - now in the midst of a civil war that was easily foreseen, but completely unplanned for. Not only are we still there, but Bush and his neocons are actually escalating our presence there. Why?

Because the justifications that Bush and his administration spouted were never the reasons why we invaded Iraq. If ANY of those were genuine, we would be out by now. No - those were never the motivations for the invasion. So, what is the real motivation?

Well, to answer that, let's look at why we still have our military there, and why we are escalating our involvement in a tribal civil war...

The only answer is empire.

The neocons wanted Iraq as a foothold - as an extenstion of American Empire into the middle east. They wanted a puppet government to use. They wanted expansive military bases to use. They wanted access to Iraqi oil assets. They wanted to use these "assets" in any future instability/conflict in the middle east. In short - they wanted Empire. That is why we are still in Iraq. That is why we are esclating our involvement.

There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There were no WMDs. Sadaam is gone. Democracy - at least a primative form of it - has been established. And yet we are still building military bases, we're still sending more troops over.

Bush and the neocons who have supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq have never been truthful about their real designs for Iraq - and they are not being truthful now.

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