Why There Was No Exit Plan

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/30/853/

Why There Was No Exit Plan
by Dan Hamburg

snip//

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, “One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave.”

snip//

The people of the United States have indicated, in the national election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer support the Bush administration’s war. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that top administration officials, including the vice president, “cherry-picked” and distorted intelligence in order to sell a “pre-emptive” war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into “black-ops” programs being run out of Cheney’s office (a stunning redux of Iran-Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the patience and credulity of the American people.

Another betrayal is the “contracting out” of “war-related activities” to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney’s previous employer, calls itself an “energy services company” but has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies realized that “OIL” might not be the best handle for this venture). Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction at the national embarrassment known as “Gitmo,” and most recently, from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for some (or it wouldn’t go on).

The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world’s nations combined, continues skyward, even without all the “supplementals” passed regularly by Congress to fight the “war on terror.”

The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it’s not possible to be both.

[Kashka-Kat]

1. FINALLY. Someone gets it.

No exit plan, becuase the plan was --and is--to never exit.

Now, if the democrats could only start talking/ framing issue in this context maybe we could get somewhere. Has nothing to do with "winning", or "losing". It never was about anything more than holding territory and privatizing assets (aka pillaging). Bush and neocons really aren't as stupid and incompetent as they look- they have succeeded in doing precisely what they set out to do.

[valerief]

2. 500 billion and counting. nt

[indepat]

3. We are not the former and are failing as the latter as all empires have

[CGowen]

4. hard to say

[pocoloco]

5. Remember when.....

the sun never set on the British Empire.

[Lobster Martini]

6. Plans for permanent US, UK military bases were known in 2003

“One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave.”

True, and old news. Plans for permanent US and UK military bases in Iraq were known in 2003, within a few months of the "Mission Accomplished" speech, so there was plainly no intention to withdraw from Iraq completely.

[BeFree]

7. So

Imagine that you are an Iraqi and have this sense that America will never leave.

Then one day you read that the congress of the US has passed a bill saying that US troops will one day be leaving Iraq.

[TheWraith]

8. I disagree.

And in doing so, I need to repeat something another poster said in response to this article the other day, and my additional comment. As igil wrote:

There *was* an exit plan.

But it collapsed shortly before day 1 of the occupation. And you had to listen carefully to hear it. It was mentioned, and seldom disputed. The main debate was not about after the war, but the motivation for the war and the war itself. WMD, yes or no? Terrorist ties, yes or no? Others debated casualty figures, time-lines, and the rest, with some folk saying 'cakewalk' and some saying casualties would surpass 50k.

The little bally-hooed plan was that they would remove the top few folk in each branch of the Iraqi government: Saddam, and one or two layers down. The top military folk would go, the top security folk, etc., etc. Everybody else would stay. There would, in effect, be a brain transplant, with the top-most Baathists replaced by non-Baathists. It would be smooth, it would be orderly, and the US military would be vestigial within a month or two.

If you assume this idyllic and utopian scenario, there was no need for further planning. The police would maintain order. The oil ministry would continue with oil. Whoever was in charge of electricity would continue to run the plants. There would be time to do an assessment on how to upgrade the infrastructure, a brief time for political parties to organize and campaign, etc., etc.

It was so unrealistic that fairly quickly people stopped talking about it. It was not serious post-war planning, and prevented such planning.

My response to igil was as follows:

Bing!

It's not that there wasn't an exit plan, or that the intention going in was "war without end." It's just that their idea of what would happen afterwards was as grossly unrealistic as every other aspect of their "plans." They really thought it would be a cakewalk, and that they'd be through Iraq in a few months, and on their way to Syria.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x787632

[katty]

9. exactly--never intended to leave-ever.

[jazzjunkysue]

10. Why there was a Monika Lewinsky scandal: To install the oil infrastucture.

So that the west could steal the oil.

We won't be there forever: We'll suddenly "prevail" over the "enemy" when the oil dries up.

The GOP knew about Clinton's skirt chasing, and knew they'd get evidence sooner or later. So, even though we're catching GOP leadership at the prostitute's door, it doesn't matter because the dems aren't trying to impeach a president and take illegal control of all 3 branches of government, in order to occupy a country rich in oil.