[Originally published at Corrente.]
I woke this morning to NPR and the deep, deep voice of Beltway Conventional Wisdom, in the person of Ted Koppel, proclaiming the official Beltway Consensus that we'll be in Iraq "for years to come," and that now both parties "owned the war." (Koppel's reasoning was that the Iraqi Army could not maintain the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, and therefore our permanent presence was needed.)
Remarkably, or not, the consensus Koppel describes, or announces, has emerged even before "General Petraeus deliver[ed] his report," leaving at least this DFH awed, though alas not shocked, at the multiple layers of kabuki involved: The report, which, as the commentariat never fails to fail to mention, will be in fact be written by White House operatives, no doubt black-clad in the best tradition of kabuki stagehands; the kabuki of the process by which we "waited" for the report, so that all necessary decisions could be made by fait accompli; and the kabuki of the "surge" itself, which everyone can see, though many are well paid to deny, has made no meaningful difference whatever in Iraq, but which has made all the difference in the world inside the Beltway, thus elegantly fulfilling the real strategic purpose for which it was designed. And so what about the dead, the wounded, the amputees, the tortured, the looted billions, and the death of the Republic? Let's not be childish.
Harry, Nancy: Nice work. You were the schwerpunkt for the surge--and "punkt" is indeed the word that I want.
Assuming the Beltway consensus is allowed to stand, the implications of placing an imperial garrison--the permanent bases; the billion dollar embassy complete with obesity-inducing Krispy Kreme donut shop--in the deserts of Iraq are reasonably obvious:
Iff* the Beltway Consensus for a permanent presence in Iraq is allowed to stand:
1. Our forces will be there until the mercs and the arms industry, and the military-industrial complex can't make any more money, or until the United States government undergoes some sort of fiscal meltdown, whichever comes first.
2. More terror attacks will come, as Iraq continues to be a breeding ground for "terror." This will not be a problem for some (see #1, supra), but it will be a problem for others; does anyone know what the insurance and re-insurance industries think of the likelihood of losing another American city? For myself, I think NOLA was no accident, but a model. The forthcoming OBL video, so conveniently timed, will reinforce all this, whether it is real or not.
3. Such constitutional protections as remain to us will continue to erode (see #2, supra), and even the outward forms of Constitutional governance will begin to decay; they get in the way when there's money to be made, and power to be grabbed, as the Romans disovered in their day.
And let's not even talk about the oil; Henry Kissinger already told us all we need to know.
Or that we need Iraq as a platform for other wars in the Middle East, notably against Iraq, but always on behalf of our client states, prominent among them Israel.
Welcome to the Great Game, America.
NOTE *There are plenty of reasons why the Beltway Consensus will not stand. "Events, dear boy, events." Among them: (1) the Consensus doesn't view the Iraqis as independent actors. Arming the Sunnis as part of a Beltway kabuki drama is one thing; actually maintaining an imperial presence is quite another. (2) the Consensus involves retreating to bases, as the Brits just did in Basra. As many commentators have pointed out, this is the best option from the standpoint of domestic politics, but the worse from a military standpoint; basically, we're there a force in being to prevent an Iranian attack, but our very presence prevents a genuine Iraqi government from arising. (3) We shouldn't confuse the ability of the ruling elites in the Beltway to wage internecine political war with competence in any other field. (4) the American people have made their decision on the war, and on the people who are waging it. They may have more to say, and do, than Our Betters imagine.