Surge of the Status Quo

Tonight Bush will give us another serving of his Iraq jive.

More “stay the course” garbage, more lies about Iraq being the central front in his failed “War on Terror,” more gibberish about America’s “vital interests.”

The people’s elected representatives will once again suck it up and choke it down, then wipe their chins and justify their cowardice on Fox News and CNN.

The people won’t buy it, but then, it’s clear that our opinion doesn’t make a bit of difference.

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a platinum fork up his ass, and, in addition to believing that the Almighty speaks to him and him alone, he obviously believes the American people are dolts.

Bush’s ballyhooed troop reduction next summer merely brings us back to the same fork in the road where we stood in February 2007. The United States military will still maintain a gargantuan footprint in Iraq, and will still stand between numerous armed factions fighting for hegemony in a political vacuum.

Americans and Iraqis will still be killed, maimed, wounded, and displaced.

Our chances for success – whatever the hell that means – will be the same then as they are today: slim and none.

Face it, Americans never quit an Occupation voluntarily. Sixty-two years after the end of World War II, America still maintains major military installations in Germany and Japan. More than fifty years after Korea, we’re still hunkered down in the South. And if the government of South Vietnam had been less corrupt, we’d still be there, too. Vital interests, you know?

Bush’s troop reduction shell game buys time for his two primary neocon dreams to come true: the completion of permanent American military facilities in Iraq, and the passage by the Iraqi government of legislation that will give American oil companies access to Iraq’s reserves.

Once those objectives are accomplished, we’ll have to stay in Iraq forever in order to protect our “vital” interests, not to mention the investments of American oil companies.