I continue to be undecided on Iraq. I'm know I'm not an expert and even the experts are fiercely partisan and contradictory. That said, I want to write a little on how I frame the question. I want to be a peacenik, but the picture is very complicated and I may be straying off the DailyKos reservation with this entry. Bear with me.
1: 50,000+ have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war. This is awful.
The only part of the story that complicates the picture is .. that many thousands of Iraqis were being killed by Saddam, either directly or more likely through sanctions-related shortages of medical supplies and food over the previous decade. Does an infant-mortality death count as much as someone shot at a checkpoint? One is a quiet tragedy while the other is a loud tragedy which causes chaos and destroys society. More below the fold.
2: All of the reasons we went to war - WMD's. Oil. Democracy. Of course Bush is a lying bastard about all three of these things, putting out the first as a red-herring when oil is the only real priority. But here's the thing. They're not mutually exclusive - they're complimentary. So Bush might be lying, but we do need the oil and democracy over there would be a good thing. It's hard to discount that.
I don't want to espouse peace on the premise that we don't need that oil, or that the 'lives-for-oil' equation must be avoided at all costs. Of course every life is precious beyond words, but I don't want to have my head in the sand. Energy is life, just as water is life. We surely have a much clearer reason to be in Iraq than we ever did for Vietnam.
The next question: Whose life? This has to do with the draft. We don't have one. The risk is thus concentrated in the volunteer military, i.e. the poor - thereby destroying the army by cutting re-enlistments, and destroying it as a diplomatic / deterrent tool because other countries know we can't use it because we're stuck in Iraq. The budget is spent - North Korea has a free hand. Bush will never skip a chance to screw the poor, or to take advantage of the non-draft tradition to jam through a bad policy. If everyone's kids were at risk, he would never have been able to start this foolish adventure.
But still, It's not necessarily just the cost of the oil itself that's at issue and it's also not just Iraq's oil that's at stake. OPEC is a worldwide price-fixing cartel which controls oil prices through restraint on production. The price is in-elastic. By controling one major producer, we diffuse the power of the cartel. Being able to keep Iraq's tap of oil running would (in theory) mean the return of <$50 prices.
That would be the best possible scenario that Bush might be putting forward. It's amoral and he's lying that he gives a shit about the Iraqis - he doesn't even care about most of America. But it's not a 100% evil plan.
There is, however, another, even more evil version of this scenario which Greg Pallast - Radical Rogue Journalist - put forward the other day. Basically: We didn't invade to keep the Oil-Spigot ON, and thereby lower the cost for America. We invaded to turn the oil-spigot OFF, and thus to raise the price for American oil companies, which are really dearest to his heart and his true patrons. With the head of Exxon retiring with a $400M golden parachute last in April, anything is possible. Cheney is such a lying bullshitter - that this actually sounds possible. It's an evil conspiracy. He's an evil man, so it's possible.
In any case, they clearly bit off more than they could finish. Success would have require a WWII-style mobilization, which they never even attempted, so failure was almost guaranteed. What is happening now is a departure negotiation. The question is whether we can leave with any shred of control of Iraq in the future.
It was always a fantasy that a real Iraqi democracy would be Pro-American or that the population would behave like sheep. Democracy is a mechanism for conferring legitimacy on a government. But if the population is against the US, it will elect a legitimate anti-US government - look at HAMAS. Bush's easy and simplified use of Freedom(TM) as a universal buzzword is a joke which has backfired on them and which the U.S. military is paying for in blood.
So.. Can we escape with even a shred of dignity left? Back in 2003 we de-activated our bases in Saudi Arabia and moved everything to Iraq, so leaving will mean we'll have a net loss (We'll still have Qatar and Kuwait - but they're small).
And of course Iraq might explode into Civil war. Most of the oil is on Shia land. The Sunni's know they live in a miserable desert - and they'll fight to prevent being abandoned. Condi is a monster for not having forseen this.
I don't know if I'm against the war in principle. They've certainly failed to execute the thing - Rumsfeld should have been fired in 2003. And maybe it would have been worth 2500 soldier's for a complete success - although I admit that's a hard # for me to judge, since my life isn't on the line. In any case, now it's 2+ Americans per day, with no end in sight to the bloodshed, and no real prospects for success for controlling or stabilizing the oil market. It's a disaster. All of the other oil-producers are reaping a vast benefit of our failure in higher prices.
But in this huge failure for America, there is a huge windfall nearby. Cheney's friends are laughing all the way to the bank. The man becomes more of a Dr. Evil / James Bond villain every day.
Any thoughts?