A Compelling Explanation of Iraq

I'm still mulling it over... but yesterday, I solicited opinions on the current state of Iraq over at Slate's Fray, which is still haunted on occasion by a lot of really bright people who know how to make you think. The question, as I put it: "Is withdrawal the right thing to do at this point? Why or why not?"

The response, from one "Fritz Gerlich" is so strong, offering a plausible scenario which fits the facts that I'd never quite seen before, and I'd like to share it in full:

It wasn't about threat--

military threat, anyway. That was mere pretext, opportunistically based on September 11. We didn't have to wait until after the invasion to know that. Everything necessary to divest Saddam Hussein of unconventional weapons and to ensure that he didn't and wouldn't help al Qaeda was well in process before March 16, 2003. Yet Bush told the U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq and ordered the invasion, because the phase of the moon was changing and Franks didn't want to wait another month, what with the summer heat coming on. At that point, tactical, not political, considerations drove events. The policy decision to invade Iraq had been made long before. I think the final decision was made shortly after the 2002 midterm elections, when a decisive Republican victory convinced Rove that Bush had a virtually limitless mandate on "terrorism." It was in late November that we first heard about movements of large units and their equipment to Kuwait. But serious planning at all levels had by that time already been in the works for almost two years.

The administration's failure to plan for the occupation is another clue as to its thinking. That there was no significant prewar planning for internal security, basic services, or restoration of Iraqi government (the plans now being, allegedly, carried out were all formed afterward) suggests that the invasion had nothing to do with the interests of the Iraqi people. Those were invoked only as a last-minute moral justification. Instead, we were after something which might be assisted by a stable, friendly Iraqi government but which did not depend upon it.

That "something" was the permanent presence of a large, experienced American force in the Gulf, so that there would never again be any doubt that the United States is the single most powerful player in the region. Global demand for oil will only continue to increase, yet with the peak of the Hubbert curve very near, supplies will not. As is well-known, the Gulf contains by far the largest remaining proven reserves of petroleum on the planet. This administration has no energy plan except to maintain access to dependable supplies of oil.

The plan isn't as crude as simply seizing Iraqi crude. Bush and Cheney aren't thieves, for heaven's sake. It's a matter of maintaining uninterrupted supply at something like reasonable prices. We can lose Venezuelan and Nigerian oil and still function. But if an Islamic revolution were to sweep the Gulf, imposing unfriendly regimes in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the United States would be in a truly difficult situation. The deepest intent of the invasion of Iraq was to attempt to head off such a development by demonstrating what was supposed to be an awesome ability to unmake and make governments there. If the revolution occurred anyway, then the backup plan was to have an experienced army in place to keep critical oilfields out of the hands of unfriendly governments.

For these purposes, the minimum the United States must accomplish in Iraq is merely to keep its army in place and able to fight. Stabilizing Iraq politically under a friendly government would be very nice, very helpful--but it isn't crucial. We always have the option of withdrawing our forces to the 13 or 14 bases we've already established--and, indeed, show some signs of doing that already--witness Falluja. A chaotic situation in-country actually helps, insofar as it gives the U.S. a perfect argument for staying ("if we left all hell would break loose"), and with chaos nobody can definitively say that the will of the Iraqi people is for the U.S. to leave. Although we presented Iraqi "sovereignty" as an exercise in morality and legality, its political usefulness was that it created room for us to distance ourselves from the fighting. We can now claim it's an Iraqi problem, not ours (except to the extent we choose to make it ours, on a case-by-case basis).

The worst state of affairs for us would be an unquestionably legitimate, elected government which told the U.S. to get out--for then we really would have fought for no lasting gain. But that is unlikely in the near term, for two reasons. One is simply that orderly national elections are still quite a long way off, as I believe the article you link mentions. The other is that any national government which has a chance of emerging from a fair election and actually getting going any time soon will be totally dependent on American military, economic and technical support. (Local and regional governments are another matter--some of them may well be Islamic and hostile to the Americans.)

Bush can take the political heat of the conflict at its present level. People kvetch, but nobody sees much of an alternative, Kerry isn't providing any leadership, and a death or two every day is relatively easy to get used to. (Note that stories of Americans killed have steadily dropped in prominence over the last three or four months.) If the fighting gets much worse, Bush will quietly order a partial withdrawal to secure bases. And, of course, in a second term he will have a freer hand than he does now--he might even begin to speak openly about what he thinks our occupation of Iraq accomplishes.

There are, of course, other goals also putatively served by the American occupation of Iraq. Supposedly, it makes Israel more secure (although I'm not seeing exactly how--Israel seems to be doing well enough on its own, and is just waiting for Arafat to die). Another is Rumsfeld's transformation of DOD and the military. Rumsfeld has made himself the apostle of new military concepts, and it usually takes a war to make new concepts about fighting stick.

But oil remains what the war is really about--which is true of our whole Middle Eastern policy, and has been for over a quarter of a century. Without lessening our dependence on Persian Gulf oil, no administration could really draw any other conclusion.