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SugarMyChurro -> 12 Reasons to Get Out of Iraq (4/24/2008 8:11:14 AM)
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Tomgram: 12 Reasons to Get Out of Iraq
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174921/12_reasons_to_get_out_of_iraq
2. No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave -- and still doesn't: Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an "exit strategy." In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn't "permanent base," but the more charming and euphemistic "enduring camp." (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio's defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as "one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades."
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"It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist." - George Orwell, 1984
I'd like to take a moment to introduce the class structure you may have noticed already exists in the U.S.:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/75/1984_Social_Classes_alt.svg
Politically speaking, things are not good. And the first category of damage is being by the concept of perpetual war. War is not good business, it is terminal business.
This is how empires end.
With a whimper...
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