Going through some back posts the other day, I came across this post, written in the first few days of the war on Iraq, that seems eerily prescient. OK, I’m not really a genius (well, not based on this, anyway) — the thing is, it was so very easy for right-minded folks to see exactly where the invasion of Iraq would take us, making the surprise expressed by our media and co-Americans seem all too unlikely. Listen:
What is the objective of military intervention? The administration says “regime change” but hasn’t given anything but the fuzziest idea of what to change the regime to. They’d like “democracy” but have assured the Turks it won’t be too democratic. The big question is, how will we know when we’ve won? It was my understanding that the rise of Powell in the administration signaled an acceptance of his admonition to have clear military objectives and a clear exit strategy, but I don’t see how military tactics in Iraq relate to the goal of establishing “democracy” in the region. Will we be done when Saddam’s head is on a pike outside the Presidential Palace? The administration has been indicating that this is, indeed, the goal, but even they must see that we won’t have created anything but chaos at that point. Will we be done when an interim government is put in place in Baghdad, as was done earlier in Kabul? We don’t seem to be done in Afghanistan, at least as far as military action is concerned (our resolve to establish “democracy” there seems to have flagged, however). Will we be done when contracts for rebuilding are issued to American corporations? Given the amount of tension this is likely to create among Iraqis cut out of the rebuilding process, I imagine they’ll have to work in the protective involvement of the American military. Will we be done when we’ve conclusively demonstrated the existence of the so-far-invisible Iraqi WMD development efforts? What if it turns out, as seems likely, that we were wrong, and there simply aren’t any WMDs? Will we be done when we bring our troops home? Trust me, we will never be bringing our troops home. (emphasis added; corrected for typos)
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