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Army Not Planing to Leave
Back in April I noted:
Different parts of the U.S. public are in various phases of grief about the lost war.
The hard-core believers are still in the denial phase. Moderate Republicans have proceeded to anger. The Democrats are in the bargaining phase. The pro-war left realm is in depression and the anti-war people have long accepted the loss.
That’s pretty much still the case today. Falling for the surge in "surge" propaganda, some people even seem to have reverted to prior state.
(By the way: One can apply the ‘phases of grief’ to today’s financial markets too. Seems about everyone there is still pretty much in denial.)
But back to war. At least the military is no longer in denial and is running simulations of a retreat out of Iraq – or so it seems. Via a (terribly written) McClatchey piece we learn:
The Army staged the one-day exercise earlier this month at a Hilton hotel in suburban Springfield, Va., and invited 30 Iraq experts, among them serving and retired officers and Iraqi exiles.
Ooops – Iraqi exiles? Is Chalabi back in town? A bit further down we detect why one probably would use such stooges again. This was not a real exit exercise about leaving, but an effort to simulate and to propagandize how really, really bad the situation would become when the U.S. retreats:
The game was one of several simulations of what Iraq might look like in the 2009 time frame if U.S. troops leave, said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who participated in the Springfield exercise and several previous such games. But he said the Army hasn’t yet staged an exercise premised on an abrupt withdrawal.
That the military war games are focusing on the potential chaos in Iraq, rather than an abrupt troop withdrawal, offers some insight into how the Pentagon is planning for the next stage of the war, several of the participants told McClatchy Newspapers.
So the military is not really analyzing how to get out, but the purpose of the day at the Hilton was to develop scenarios of what might happen. There are certainly different situations possible, but the one presented is really, really terrible:
Once U.S. troops left, however, the chaos in Iraq would escalate. Shiite militias would drive Baghdad’s Sunni population into Iraq’s western Anbar province, which is almost exclusively Sunni, the war gamers concluded. There would be a power struggle within Anbar among tribes backed by outside Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Rival Shiite factions would fight one another to control much of the rest of the country, and Iran presumably would back one side, although the gamers couldn’t assess how overt Iranian interference would be. Turkey would consider entering Iraq from the north to thwart the Kurds, who desire independence and claim some of Turkey as part of their homeland.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s government would be unable to control the country. Indeed, the gamers concluded, his government could collapse unless Iran threw its support behind it.
Note how much different the situation is today: Today there is no ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia and Syria don’t support the tribes which are living peacefully in Anbar, Basra is calm, Iran is not taking sides, the Turks just love the Kurds, Maliki is in control of the government and I am a pretty 18 year old blond with nice boobs.
What’s not to love with this situation?
The army is still in denial. If they really have not run any worst case, rapid exit simulation yet, its leaders are irresponsibly neglecting their duty.
Still the talk about how the army would get out sounds very much like the cakewalk and flowers talk we heard when it went in.
Any attacks, the panel judged, would be "harassment attacks," likely by a few Sunni members of al Qaida in Iraq who wanted to attack American troops one last time.
"Why would they stop us? They have been telling us to leave," said one participant who requested anonymity to speak freely about the war game.
…
"It will be as easy to get out as it was to get in," said one senior defense official ..
Let me see: The gang that ransacked my home, raped my sister and stabbed my parents is getting into its car to flee down the road. Would I just harass them? Or would I do all I can to not let them get away on the cheap?
Indeed, some hard core believers are still in denial.
A retired Marine Colonel who took part in the excercise has a more realistic thought:
"I don’t worry about how we will get out of Iraq," Anderson concluded about the latest war game. "I am worried about the Iraqis we will kill on the way out."
Peak Oil vs. Peak Wealth
Let me repeat again two years later:
While I do believe that the concept of Peak Oil is real and will one day arrive, I see no evidence whatsoever that Peak Oil has arrived. The evidence is clear that fully 5% of world oil production is intentionally being kept off the market by the ongoing war in Iraq. The oil companies are in a win/win situation: oil off, prices high; oil laws signed, production rises, profits and control ensured.
It is pure bullshit that big oil was not in favor of invading Iraq. They are too powerful, and it would not have happened without their acquiescence; they are just too smart, and like all official secrets, they managed to keep it mum. It is like the same b.s. story of how US auto manufacturers REALLY want national health insurance to keep their costs competitive. There is simply no evidence that the big three have done any lobbying whatsoever for single payer universal coverage; it is just a cover-your-ass myth perpetuated to keep the dumb consumer thinking that the companies “care” about people. No, they don’t. They would be happy to off-shore all production, and that is the way they are moving.
Back to Big Oil: An additional 1% is kept off markets in Nigeria do to the kleptocracy not sharing with gulf locals. And what about the Falklands, whose huge reserves have yet to be tapped? What Big Oil (and the US government) wants is complete control of the amount of oil being put on the market at any time. Control of the “shortages” and the surpluses, so that the financial sharks can make money in the market both ways. At that level, it is all a rigged game.
Peak Oil is very much a function of social justice. There will be no freedom allowed in producer nations.
Peak Oil is also just another scam to squeeze the middle class. If it were a real crisis, there would be national mobilization for efficiency programs and subsidies. But the ruling elite do not want national mobilization about anything; they want a dumb, divided, easily controlled, populace — which is what they strive to create. So with the Peak Oil excuse, the middle class gets squeezed still further about something they feel is a law of nature and they have no control of, the poor stay poor, and the rich continue to build bigger and bigger houses, and buy more and more oil consuming toys and trinkets.
Peak Oil is one of a number of myth/scams to move along the process of Peak Wealth Redistribution, made easier by fear.
What Peak Oil does in the US, as proven by experience in Germany, is create a Green Party/environmental movement of educated, well-off, middle class in hysterical opposition to the dumb, dirty, underclass and how they live, and in opposition to all social justice/income equality movements.
Peak Oil is very much a function of social justice. There will now be no freedom allowed in consumer nations.
I have seen this here where I live, where well-off, upper-middle class people are hysterically proposing draconian rules which will result in the complete social control of society, especially the poor and underclass. They refuse to look at the oil consumption curve, which continues to show that oil is consumed in inordinate amounts by the ultra-wealthy, and that conservation can best be accomplished by taxing the rich, rather than penalizing the poor. Yeah, so maybe the rich wouldn’t be able to fly all over the world several times a month, boo hoo!
So yes, Peak Oil is a real phenomenon on a finite planet, and one day it will arrive. But it has not arrived yet, and right now it is being used as a form of social control. God is always in the details. Be very careful, folks, and always think deeply about the implications of all of your actions.
If we really want to conserve oil and are concerned about growth, how about a law like this: If you make over 100K you are only allowed one child,; if you make over 200K, no children. That would even out consumption a bit. You want children, you can’t be wealthy, because wealthy people burn more than their share of oil.
The poor of the world, the favelas, are not using up all the world’s oil; the rich are. The real problem is income distribution. We always pay lip service to “solving the problem of the poor,” which really means some sort of media campaign so that the middle class can ignore the poor with a clear conscience. But the problem is the opposite. If we can solve the problem of the rich, we can live on a sustainable planet.
There simply is no such thing as a rich person who is environmentally conscious. Rich people consume more resources than the poor — even those rich who live in Green houses. Solve the problem of the rich, who are destroying the world in every way possible, and you solve the problems of a sustainable life.
Don’t worry about Peak Oil; worry about Peak Wealth. If we run out of oil, we can always burn the rich. Rich people’s oil may not be of quite the quality of the whale oil used to power the last century, but it will do. It will do.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 16 2007 14:54 utc | 24
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