Defining Victory in Iraq:Liberal Blogger Admits That We Are Winning

I almost turned off my computer and went to bed, after reading through some news articles and liberal blog posts, many of which discuss the question of whether we are winning in Iraq.  I though about visiting some of the right-leaning blogs to see what they had to say, but decided it wasn't worth it.  That's when I almost went to bed.  Instead, I am simply going to say: everyone is wrong.  Even I was wrong.  

I never thought the war was about WMD, or about terrorism, or about getting rid of a brutal dictator, or about spreading democracy; nor did I ever think we wanted to go in and take their oil.  If we simply had wanted to take their oil, we would have done that already.  No, I thought the war was about oil company contracts.  We would not take the oil; we would buy it.  Or rather, oil companies friendly with the Administration would buy it, and sell it to us, and make a handsome profit in the process.  (See Judicial Watch page on Iraq Oil Foreign Suitors.)  

That was short-sighted of me.  If that were the measure of winning, I would have to say we are loosing the war.  It does not appear that Iraq will have sufficient political stability for any large-scale oil projects anytime soon.  But -- and this is where I went wrong -- oil companies are still making record profits, as is Halliburton.  

By that measure, we are winning.  In fact, if the objective was profit, we couldn't loose!  It was/is a brilliant strategy.  In one scenario, we start the war, bring peace to Iraq, and Exxon/Mobil, Halliburton, and the rest, all get lucrative oil and oil field development contracts.  In the other scenario, we go to war, make a royal mess of things, the price of oil goes through the roof,  Exxon-Mobil makes a ton of money, and Halliburton keeps getting lucrative mercenary contracts.  

So the left-leaning folks, the ones who say we are loosing, are wrong.  The right-leaning folks, those who insist we are winning, are sort of right, but for the wrong reason: it is not We (as in We the People) who are winning; it is Bush's "we" (the haves and the have-yachts) who are winning.

This, by the way, is why the Administration is not particularly concerned about the Downing Street Memo, nor about Cindy Sheehan, nor even about Carl Rove and the outing of Valerie Plame.  None of that matters.  The Administration does not care if we learn the whole thing was based on lies.  They do not care, because they win the war no matter what happens.

Categories: rants, politics
Tags: Iraq, Downing Street Memo, Valerie Plame, Cindy Sheehan, Karl Rove