archived: 13 - 19 Jul, 2008         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  JUL 16, 2008 

“THE CENTRALITY OF IRAQ FOR THE
2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN” 

   This column is the introduction to a new series of re-runs of columns of mine that will be appearing in the is space on an occasional basis through the election campaign and possibly, depending upon which way the winner goes with the issue after the election, right up to Inauguration Day.  (Don’t worry.  There will also be Bush re-runs appearing from time-to-time.  For August, as of now, I am planning to re-run my 2004 two-parter on the ugly duckling who just refuses to grow up and become a swan, Ralph Nader.  But anyway, here we turn back, and forward, to Iraq.

   George W. Bush, as many observers have told us, came into office with six major goals:

1.         Invade Iraq to take over its oil production and establish permanent bases there so as to project American military power into the oil-producing Middle East region an on a permanent basis, with an independent operation status for the bases not provided by the existing bases in Saudi Arabia.  (It is unclear whether the goal of creating Permanent War in Iraq, which became quite apparent after the US was about two years into the war, was a goal from the beginning.  It surely is now.)

2.         To the extent possible, destroy the separation of power between the three branches of    the Federal government.  Under the Constitution they are to be more or les co-equal.  The unique concept of the “Unitary Executive,” (which most observers would call “dictatorship,”) is nowhere to be found in either Article II, which describes and defines the powers of the Presidency, or anywhere else in the document.

3.         Shift an increasing amount of the wealth of the country further to the wealthy, who were already pretty wealthy when they got together to put Bush into power.

4.         To the extent possible destroy or seriously limit the power/efficiency of the several Federal government departments other than those devoted to the military and domestic repression.

5.         Secure the power of the petroleum industry in the domestic economy and increase its profitability to the extent possible.  (This all likely being spelled out in the minutes of that energy policy meeting that Cheney has so jealously guarded.)

6.         Destroy the Social Security System, which Bush in particular has hated ever since before he was a student at the Harvard Business School.

7.         Create Permanent Republican Governance, and failing that a Permanent Republican Presidency.

There were others, of course, but these were the main ones.  He has succeeded in achieving the first five.  Six he didn’t make.  Seven is still open.

   So why list the War on Iraq as first on the list?  Because it is central either causally or symbolically, directly or indirectly, to the achievement of the other major goals. At the beginning, in order to do for the Georgites what they wanted it to do; it had to be very visible.  And it was, in the way that the Regime wanted it presented.  Then, once the Georgites achieved their primary goals, especially on the domestic side (e.g., establishing their national security apparatus against us the citizens of the United States, not against the “terrorists,” and providing the false basis for establishing the Unitary Presidency), they needed to tamp it down, to get it out of public view.  (They also needed to do for political reasons for it has become so unpopular.)  And thus the war has become rather invisible.  The “Surge” has indeed worked, for the Georgites.  They have gotten the Main Stream Media to say that.  What the Government Accountability Office has had to say about its broad-based failure to achieve most of the supposed primary goals of the “Surge” for Iraq itself came and went as quickly as you could say “raising McCain” (USGAO: “Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq,” GAO-08-837, June, 2008). 

   Further, significant progress has been made in negotiations between the Bush Regime and its hand-picked Iraqi government on the non-treaty treaty that would ensure the permanent US presence in Iraq, including those permanent bases, that was one of the original PNAC/Georgite goals.  These are (and apparently numbers of them are under construction and some completed) within striking distance of Iran, although not Eastern Afghanistan or Pakistan where al Qaeda is based.  They could be reached only by flying either over or around Iranian and Pakistani airspace (geographical facts unknown to a former Republican candidate for President and possible future McCain cabinet member, the jokester Mike Huckabee).  So there is lots of “stuff” actually going on that involves Iraq, but it is generally off the front pages and off both network and cable TV.  Politically, for the Georgites, the “Surge” has worked.

   But since it is and has been at the heart of Georgite political, governmental, and electoral policy, and it is politically so unpopular with the vast majority of the American electorate, it should be central to the Obama Campaign.  Whether it will be or not remains to be seen.  However, the more “DLC” Obama becomes, the less it will be (see Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 30, 2008, and my upcoming “No Obamallusions I and II,” right here on TPJ, on July 2 and 9.  By the way, I wrote my columns before Krugman’s appeared.  I am delighted that he and I are talking the same position.)

   So, how is the Iraq War central to virtually everything the Georgites have done in office?  Well, first he did manage to invade Iraq using whatever justifications, true or false, and whatever diplomatic initiatives (the UN was ignored) that could be ginned up.  Second, it was the invasion of Iraq, not the response to the direct al Qaeda threat coming from Afghanistan, that permitted
Bush to, among other things, create the domestic spying/repression so-called “national security” apparatus that he wanted all along.  He has used Iraq as the excuse for every attack that he has made on the Constitution, all of them, one can be sure, contemplated all along.  For example, Article VI, among other things, makes treaties part of the “supreme law of the land.”  The invasion itself violated Article 51 of the UN Charter, which prohibits “preventive war.” 

   The adoption of torture as national policy violates the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is bound by treaty (Article VI again).  Bush has essentially used the War on Iraq to justify torture, and on a larger scale get the Congress to pass legislation, such as the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, which already give him the power to declare the establishment of a dictatorship in circumstances which he would declare as justifying such an act, on his own initiative.  And, just as Hitler did when he declared his dictatorship, Bush could declare that he was doing everything constitutionally.  The “Signing Statements” that he has invoked to over-ride a variety of Congressional actions and passed bills, violate Article II, which defines Presidential power, and Article I which defines Congresses’.  Again, he has justified them on the “grounds of national security,” all related back to the War on Iraq.  Just watch out for the October or December surprise: and attempted coup d’etat under Presidential powers that are already on the books.

   The continual and monstrous borrowing to pay for the war has saddled all future Administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, with a monstrous national debt from which the US is unlikely to ever be able to dig out from under.  This will severely limit national domestic spending (which the Republicans just love to label “social spending,” as in “socialism,” dontchaknow).  This Iraq-related national debt is one part of the Grover Norquistian campaign to “reduce the size of the Federal government” (that is those parts of it ol’ Grover doesn’t like) “to the size of a bathtub and then drown it in the bathtub.”  The continual borrowing is also a major factor in the rise of the price of oil because oil sales are denominated in dollars, and the oil producers want to make sure that they still are getting proper value for their product.  Since the US oil companies make their money by charging a percentage of the price they pass on to consumers, that is a major factor in fueling the monstrous oil company profits we have observed over the past four years or so.

   And so, many Georgite initiatives and many Georgite goals can be connected with and to the War on Iraq.  As I said at the outset of this one, in future TPJ issues between now and the election, I will be revisiting columns on Iraq that I have published over the last four years.  I hope that they will be useful in helping you to understand what is going on, and not going on, this time around.

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