WEBDIARY OBSERVATIONS – THE REAL REASONS FOR THE IRAQ WAR?

There seems to be one or two people at Webdiary who are completely unable to understand what the Iraq war has been all about. The one commentator there that has any sense of what it really is all about is Roslyn Ross.
Ross argues:

“The US has acted in ways in Iraq which are either utterly and completely incompetent or designed to create as much chaos as possible and tip the country into civil war or a semblance of civil war.
The litany of 'errors' or maybe not errors committed by the US in the handling of its invasion and occupation are legion. Either they are thoroughly incompetent, and that is certainly possible, or the 'plan' was to make Iraq so unstable that an occupying presence could be justified in the long term.” Ross goes on to assert: “…an army plan to divide Iraq – remember the line divide and conquer – was seen as the best way to control the region.”[1]

Ross is correct in her assumption; the name of the game is indeed divide and rule. Shortly after the war got under way John Howard inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he said that there “…may well be a case for a federation, with the Kurdish elements, the Sunni and the Shia.”[2] Fortunately, for Howard anyway, nobody paid much attention. Nonetheless, it’s certainly looking as though that may well be the only alternative. It certainly would be the one that would best suit the coalition because it would then allow the US to remain in Iraq at the behest of any one of the three groupings that would form such a federation – the Kurds, the Shia’s and the Sunni’s.

The US has no intention of leaving Iraq and certainly not at any time soon. Ross is right. The Americans have built up an infrastructure within Iraq that is designed specifically for the long term. The US government has no interest in what the world thinks of its role in Iraq. The methods used to gain its foothold of hegemony is fait accompli and the US has set up a very sophisticated propaganda machine that is able – at least so far – to have just been able to keep on top of the worlds negative public opinion over the current state of affairs in Iraq.

Hamish Alcorn has demonstrated yet again his childish naiveté and knowledge of Middle East affairs when he states thus: “….a f**k up it is in Iraq, from the beginning, and yeah, there's been lies and cover-ups all along too, mostly from the hip otherwise they wouldn't have been so clumsy and obvious. Let's keep exposing these as we spot them. But a grand conspiracy to f**k up on purpose? I really don't think so. For me it was clear that it was merely a f**k up when they did not find WMDs, despite everything riding on it politically.”[3] The statement is, of course, an absurdity. How can one ‘f**k up' not finding WMDs if one knew they didn’t exist in the first place and stating that they did was merely lie to create a casus belli to invade Iraq? There now exists plenty of evidence to suggest that the entire war was based exclusively on deliberately constructed lies designed to gain the support of US public opinion. There is even now a massive 36% of the American people who now suspect “…that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”[4]

The real aims of US Middle East foreign policy have nowhere near been met. The three main aims are to project US hegemony to the region, to secure, at least, influence over the natural resources of the region and to secure the interests and long term goals of Israel – and each and all of these aims are mutually contingent upon the other.

The entire project of bringing Israeli/US dominance into the Middle East has been planned by an alliance of Jewish-American neoconservatives who have Israeli interests as a priority in their policy plans, and non-Jewish American neoconservative pragmatists who have as their priorities the energy and economic interests that can be derived from a successful alliance of US-Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East. Part of that policy is to maintain a major foothold in Iraq for the long term by whatever means is most convenient given any set of international/regional/domestic prevailing agential conditions at any given time. For the Israelis and their pro right-wing Zionist neoconservative allies both in the US and around the world, the aim is to create a Greater Israel that is inclusive of an at least pacified West Bank, but preferably with a non-existent Palestinian population, and a similarly Palestinian-less Gaza Strip. A pacified and powerless Syria would allow Israel to maintain control of the Golan Heights and may even allow the Israelis to yet again think about including south Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of a Greater Israel particularly if Hizbollah were neutralised.

Much of this, of course, very much depends on a subdued and ineffectual Iraq and a toothless or even benign Iran.

For any one to believe that the US has simply blundered ahead with plans for the Middle East that have not been thought out is a really big mistake.


ENDNOTE
[1] Roslyn Ross, ‘Ridiculous It May Be But Right It May Also Be’, Webdiary, 5 September 2006. Available online: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1599#comment-54588 Accessed 5 September 2006.
[2] ‘Aussie system could suit Iraqis: PM’, ABC Lateline, 14 April 2003. Available online: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/s832152.htm Accessed 5 September 2006.
[3] Hamish Alcorn, ‘I’m With Jenny On This’, Webdiary, 5 September 2006. Available online: http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1599#comment-54590 Accessed 5 September 2006.
[4] Thomas Hargrove, ‘Third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy’, Scrippsnews.com, 1 August 2006. Available online: http://www.scrippsnews.com/911poll Accessed 5 September 2006.