Quote:
Originally posted by Cletus Miller
Sure, I probably am. But that's not a place to be wrong. And, wouldn't a non-US-occupied Iraq need an air force base? And isn't one thing we're supposed to be doing over there rebuilding stuff we broke?
In any case, does anyone really believe that maintaining an airbase hasn't always been part of the plan? Even if we had been greeted as liberators, the oil revenue had been enough to pay for US costs AND completely rebuild the entire country into a modern Garden of Eden and the Iraqi Republican party won a free and open election with over 90% of the vote and established a pro-Western, pro-Israeli, perfect libertarian government and their shining example lead the rest of the mid-east (and Pakistan) to follow their lead and even OBL saw the light and turned himself in? Of course there would still be a US AFB on Iraqi soil--in that neo-con fantasy, tho, the Iraqis would have insisted on our staying and paid us to stay to thank us for freeing them from tyranny.
|
The article starts with the airbase thing to try to make concrete -- no pun intended -- the fact that we're going to be there for a long time, the subject of everything after the first paragraph, not least because we don't seem to have any hope of fighting or diplomacizing our way out of the quagmire. I agree that the first paragraph isn't the best way to get at this issue, for a few reasons, but I suspect that the stylistic demands of writing for a periodical like Newsweek drove that decision.
eta: fwiw, I initially copied everything in the article except for that first paragraph, and then decided I might as well include it too.
