What was this war about? (re: Iraq)

[Occhidiangela]

Moldran:

How is it that you feel a need to demonstrate complete cluelessness as to why Mid East stability is in America's stratgeic interests? Its impact on the global economy. Gee, a sad day when such a simple principle needs to be spelled out, not to mention how many threads that linkage has been raised here. Your implication is that 'war is about oil' and presents a useless bit of reductionism of the sort that I mentioned earlier. Mid East stability is the issue, and it is an issue due to its impact on the entire global economy: oil addiction is a universal sin of every nation in the global economy.

Take your singleminded obsession with oil as a root cause, and answer me this: how has the world gotten along for 12 years with Iraqi production at a fraction of its potential? Just fine, and a whole lot of folks elsewhere made plenty of money by the supply-demand curve being bumped up slightly.

Your dog will not hunt.

As to Saudi Arabia and bases: take it a step further, don't confine yourself to a soundbyte. You raise an interesting point.

If a wave of 'democratization' sweeps the Mid East, which it may, then it is reasonable to believe that some of the nations will change to Islamic Republics, and will likely take a position vis a vis America analgous to Iran's: Yankee Go Home. This is consistent with their cultures still being about 2-300 years behind the West, socially, as regards the relationships between Church/Mosque and State. Catching up won't be an Overnight Express delivery.

Is that necessarily a bad thing?

Reducing the American footprint in Saudi strikes me as a sound short term political goal anyway. From a purely political perspective, it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many Arabs due to 'Holy Land' issues related to Mecca and Medinah.

Why put up bases in Iraq? The only reason I can come up with is to 'guarantee their security/ vis a vis Iran. I don't think that dog hunts. The international oil market, and the UN, and everyone else, has such an interest in Iraqi oil that I am pretty sure that Iraq, in one form or another, will be the benificiary of its own natural resources. That detail will, I suspect and hope, get massive public scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic.

If not invited to, as was the case in Saudi Arabia (the King wants us there for his own security reasons, not due to his love for democratic forms of government) how do you craft the host nation relationships that go with overseas basing? Quite simply, you don't. I suspect that internal to the US the aversion to supporting a base in Iraq would be considerable.

That whole piece will take the next year or two to sort out, but I predict that with a 'less dangerous' Iraq, Saudi Arabia will feel less desire for Americans to back up their security. That will lead to the US being asked to leave.

Risk: Iraq evolves into an Islami Republic.

King of Saudi Arabia gets paranoid, begs for Americans to stay. His problem, however, becomes a matter of internal reform/revolt, which Americans stationed on his soil can't resolve for him. Also, in that case, I see the Kurds splitting off completely, to open a whole new can of worms that impacts NATO. :P Now, what my brain cannot see is how US bases in Iraq would prevent that: Viet Nam taught us a few lessons about messing about in civil wars that I think were learned well enough not to go down that road.