But the neocons are even more fanatical about this than their paleo cousins. I really think they would prefer to see Iraq sink into complete chaos, and pay the price of another 1,700 American deaths, rather than pass even nominal military control to the United Nations.
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June 20, 2005
Dreaming of Blue Helmets
Comments
I do think Mr Billmon has forgotten about the coalition of the willing. We don’t need the UN, we’ve got POLAND!
Posted by: Greg | Jun 20 2005 19:56 utc | 1
US Hawks Try Preemptive Strike on Iran Vote
A familiar clutch of hardline U.S. hawks who led the march to war against Iraq have tried to carry out yet another preemptive strike. But this time it wasn’t military. As millions of Iranians prepared to vote for the successor to President Mohammed Khatami Friday, the group, helped along by a strong denunciation by Bush himself, mounted what could only be described as an orchestrated public-relations campaign to discredit the elections even before they took place.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 20 2005 20:11 utc | 2
Another superb post. I wonder, Mr. Bilmon, if you wouldn’t consider collecting your better essays into a collection. I am reminded of James Reston’s book of the essays he penned in the 1960s at the Times. They were published, I believe, towards the end, or shortly after the Vietnam War. What’s the purpose? To show in retrospect the evolution of your (and our) thinking about this horrible tragedy, which as you and others have abundantly pointed out, was predictable and predicted.
As to the matter at hand, I see no short-term solution to our dilemma. The long run solution requires a repudiation of the damnable enterprise by the American public, hopefully sealed by Impeachment, and ultimately by a War Crimes trial for the parties most responsible. I believe the odds of any of these things happening are low, but they are not zero and seem to be rising.
We live in hope.
Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Jun 20 2005 20:49 utc | 4
One would imagine there is only one country that can and would be willing to send massive amounts of troops to Iraq. That’s China. The current US administration won’t consider it at the moment because the payoff (all that oil) would be too high. A future administration might though as oil China gets from Iraq, it doesn’t get elsewhere (eg Venezuela, Saudi) plus of course by the time this is considered the chances of the US gaining any of the oil will be recognised to be nil even by the blind greedheads.
The Chinese would also find a use for surplus population that currently have the gall to resent being chased off their ancestral farms to make way for industry. Plus given the correct circumstances China would be able to ‘sell’ a patriotic ‘intervention’ to its population.
Even the Iraqis may not find the concept too unpalatable. Most Chinese aren’t Muslims but they aren’t Christians either and any US evacuation would feel like a victory provided some concessions to local adminsitration were made and the average Iraqi believed that the lights might go back on.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 20 2005 23:12 utc | 5
Knut Wicksell : ” Mr. Bilmon, if you wouldn’t consider collecting your better essays into a collection.”
I also think that is a good idea. Not “just” because the essays are so worthy, but also because the exposure on paper, in print, of work of this calibre created in the “blogosphere” would drive a very large spike into the coffin bearing the cadaver of the MSM. There are not only lots of internet literate folks who have never read this consistent high level of analysis, there are very many off the wire who have no clue it’s available.
Debs is Dead : China is a natural. Make a player out of them, it’s gotta happen sooner or later. Idle hands do the devil’s work, or something like that. They can provide most of the UN force that forms the buffer between Israel and Palestine as well. And the United States, broke and exhausted, can forget about its role as the one ann only superpower.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jun 21 2005 4:40 utc | 6
Juan Cole has posted a reasoned response to Billmon’s Blue Helmet post. But, there is more going on than corporate control of media and the lack of an opposition party to point out alternatives to the ongoing disaster in Iraq.
Straussians and Neo-Conservatives have at their base ideology the belief that they are the bearers of true wisdom of power and that knowledge cannot be shared with the hoi polloi. James Wolcott’s Monday Is Funday and James Kunstler’s Turning Point come closest to explaining why 130,000 troops are in Iraq. To secure future sources of oil so the real estate economy can continue to boom in the USA.
The problem is USA’s Imperial Hubris which failed to acknowledge that Haji’s were willing and able to defend their homeland from foreign invaders. A Holy War being fought on the cheap.
The costs are about to explode. Either millions of American’s sons and daughters fly off to Arabia to control the oil supplies or the USA faces collapse of the housing bubble. There is possible middle way of UN and Arab League take over of Iraq under European and China’s sponsorship. However, the USA then becomes dependent on UN benevolence to sell oil to the USA.
Even realist Imperial Democrats like Joe Biden would rather spill blood than become a second class world power.
Posted by: Jim S | Jun 21 2005 15:33 utc | 7