Iraq 4-evah

It was a nice head fake in the Washington Post this morning, suggesting that the Bush Administration is considering a reappraisal of the Iraq Study Group report. Actually the head fake didn't even last the full article. The ISG report is a framework (a cover, really) to keep the United States intimately involved in Iraq until all of us are dead.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)... said he is looking to the study group's ideas as a way of ensuring a long-term American commitment to Iraq, albeit with a smaller troop presence. "My sense among Republican senators is we know very well that the current course is not a sustainable course over a longer period of time," he said. "If we drift into September, [the president] may not be able to find a bipartisan basis to support a long-term limited interest in Iraq."

"Long-term limited interest" is the key phrase there. That's why the only benchmark you ever hear about is the oil wealth distriubtion deal (which the Iraqi Parliament is wholesale rejecting). The current American policy is never to leave Iraq, and in fact we're laying the groundwork for the infrastructure that will keep us there forever.

This so-called “lily pad” strategy entails keeping a “series of military installations around Iraq,” with tens of thousands of U.S. troops remaining in the country for as long as a few decades:

[W]hat it essentially envisions is a series of military installations around Iraq, maybe five or six of them, a total of maybe 30-40 thousand U.S. troops in Iraq for a long period of time, lasting, maybe a few decades. And the idea is that these bases will be somewhat hermetically sealed, that U.S. military forces won’t be leaving them, they won’t be conducting presence patrols and the patrols they conduct now. Ground convoys won’t be driving into them.

Airplanes will be essentially landing in to deliver supplies and these sort of lily pads will be in various strategic areas in Iraq … And that will enable the U.S. military to maintain a presence in the country, perhaps…for a few decades.

The Pentagon’s goal with the lily pads is to preserve U.S. interests in Iraq for years to come “in the event that Congress or the administration pushes this [withdrawal plan] forward.” As NPR details, those interests are at least three-fold: 1) Training Iraq forces, 2) Preserving economic interests, as “Iraq obviously [sits] on the second largest reserve of oil in the world,” and 3) Providing a U.S. military “presence” to deter Iran and Turkey from “getting involved” after withdrawal.

This is all coming together for me now. It appears that the Administration is just trying to hold off the critics until these "lily pad" bases are complete. Then they might pull out, although they've worked the base into such a lather that politically they probably can't even do that. But they could make a big show of "the Iraqis are now ready to take over!" and they'd shift all the combat personnel to these huge bases and "redefine the mission." Soldiers would still be at risk, but the permanent presence will be cemented. And they can make it so that it wouldn't be viable for anyone to leave. This is classic neocon crap; make it so that "American interests" supersede sanity, and establish another piece in the dominion.

When people say that the military hasn't planned for "defeat" in Iraq, you can bet your last dollar that they have. This is the plan. It's occupation under a different name.