Zar

I always suspected this, as many here will know, but it certainly looks to be bearing out that way in the aftermath.

To wit, notice Paul Wolfowitz's recent comments in the foreign press about Iraq's "sea of oil" and WMDs as a "bureaucratic reason" for the war. Also witness Matt Simmons, an energy advisor to the current Bush Administration who is very concerned that we may already have arrived at world peak oil output, which is likely a driving pillar of policy now, and will be in the future. See also Cheney's energy studies that intimate that U.S. dependence on foreign oil will increase dramatically in the coming years, regardless of ANWR, etc. Note also that the administration is basically an administration of oil magnates and executives.

lunachick

Yep. He even writes funny Poetry.

Danya

I also see the negative attitudes between our forces and Iraqi's. They seem to perceive them all as criminals, lazy bums, or just ignorant. None could possibly be trusted to elect their own representatives or above all to handle their oil or contracts and profits. Bush may have said the oil belongs to the Iraqi people but he never said they were capable of running it all by themselves. It's much too complicated for such people but they're lucky because we have so many experts in the Whitehouse graciously willing to help..

I've always believed that the Bush administration would not be able to handle reconstruction because they lacked the necessary respect, empathy, or progressive ideas it would take. These are things that they've never shown people that are needy or different from them before. They might as well be from a another planet when it comes to interpreting their needs and priorities. They think pressure, force, or bribary is the answer to any of lifes problems.

It's hard to tell if this quote is by Saddam (oppresive dictator) or Bremer (compassionate liberator) at first:

"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country."

Bremer probably never noticed the irony of his statement. This is how clueless they all are and why to win they will have to bring in UN or NATO peacekeepers to help fill in the missing parts of their collective soul.

lunachick

Yep. But that's the psychology of war and patriotism/nationalism. It's very hard to get troops to really wanna fight and kill, outside of self defence, without dehumanising the "enemy" in their collective minds. It's the key to effective human aggression - the kind of aggression that "wins". And I use the term "win" loosely.
The dehumanising of the enemy is, I imagine, done along similar lines to sales seminars and the like. You gotta get juiced. Get hungry. In war, the winning "hunger" is hate, anger and viewing your opponent as complete and utter scum. And a "get 'em before the slimy, evil bums get you".

Danya

This is why they need someone else to come in and do everything but the security end of things. If they think they can build a democracy using our military to do it they're nut's.

They also don't need to hire contractors to do everything when there is 60% unemployment in Iraq. My brother in law is a Marine who just returned from there. He made a comment about how they have a completely different work ethic there. They will work for 20 minutes and then talk for two hours. (lazy)

For humanitarian work they need to bring in actual humanitarians instead of expecting a bunch of warriors fresh from battle to handle everything that isn't being done by contractors.

Bush wanted to reward his buddies with big jobs paid for by US middle and lower class taxpayers while he strangles our schools and un-necessary social programs like Social Security. The longer we take in Iraq the more money they make. They are saying the electricity will still be running below what they need going into next year. They can expect their first elections in about two years at the earliest. In the meantime the oil profits will be mortgaged off to pay for all these reconstruction contracts that Iraqi's themselves had no part of negotiating or settling. With a plan like this we're definitley going to need a lot more troops for protection.

And he has the nerve to wonder why people are already calling it a quagmire.

Ron Garrett

This will not be another Vietnam. More like Lebanon or Ethiopia I think.

Hubble head

It's certainly not Vietnam. Its something much much worse, especially if the 'armed robbery theory' begins to unfold more. Without any evidence or truth to back their claims that Iraq was training terrorists and had WMD, it sure looks more that way every day.

In Vietnam, troops at least had a good population of friendly's to lean on and fairly safe cities to chill out in. I'd say with virtually NO friendly's in Iraq (the ones who do cooperate with the US all end up dead) and nowhere to let your gaurd down, (except for leaving Iraq and going to Kuwait for R&R) Iraq is 100 times more stressful. Be prepared for a new generation of soldiers returning from combat that are not in the best frame of mind again. I saw it happen after DS1 on a small scale in my own unit and that really was a cakewalk compared to this conflict.

Our troops are fighting armed civilians. As an ex-soldier, I can swear to you, this is the most uncomfortable and undesired position to be in. Especially while being designated as a peacekeeper.

The whole rebuilding shpeel also makes my stomach turn. Iraq owes something like 400 billion in war reparations and if that's not forgiven (as it should be-after all Saddam's Govt is no longer in power) it will be a long, long time before normalcy returns to Iraq and its citizens can benefit from that ocean of oil under their feet.

Ron Garrett

Surely all can see that benefiting the Iraqis should not be a goal here.

After all... they're brown men.

Add to that, they are infidel brown men who are at war with sweet baby Jesus.

Add to that, they are are infidel brown men who are at war with sweet baby Jesus, and they want our smooth-skinned, sand- free white women, as well as all our Camaros, Trans Ams, Firebirds and 7-11 franchises.

And worst of all.....

They have the precious oil. Bad Arabs stole the precious oil from us. The precious oil was ours, AND WE WANTS IT!!!!!

snoiduspoitus

http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1315703

This (from NPR) is good listening as it relates to the combat stress of these guys. From Hubble head:

They refer to the 113th Medical Company treating 'combat stress reaction'. The numbers of soldiers they were treating in May was 1 - 2 per day. They are now treating 18 per day, after 'major operations' are over. They're suddenly finding that standing in an Iraqi street 'keeping the peace' is a hell of a lot more stressful than the war was. At least then they had targets.

I feel for the poor soldiers over there who must endure Bush's perception of good vs evil.