--- On Fri, 8/22/08, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> It was never, in fact, the US intent to pemanently occupy
> Iraq. The invasion
> was meant to accomplish swift regime change and an early
> exit, with a
> minimum loss of blood and treasure, and the successful
> installation of a
> bourgeois puppet government under Ahmed Chalabi, which
> would proceed to sign
> a peace treaty with Israel, broker a Palestinian surrender,
> and break the
> OPEC monopoly on Mideast oil. The US, after having provided
> such a shocking
> and awesome display of military power, would give
> troublesome regimes like
> those in Iran, North Korea, and Cuba the same ultimatum to
> quickly surrender
> or die as it gave Saddam.
[WS:] I am not sure that there was one US goal behind the invasion of Iraq. I think there were multiple - and conflicting - goals pursued by different interest groups. One way of concpetulaizing it is a "camel of a war" (after an old joke "camel is a horse designed by a committee.") Thus, US hawks saw it as an opportunity to squeeze the newly emergent EU by its balls by grabbing a sizeable chunk of its oil supplies, pro-Israeli lobby saw it as an opportunity to throw a monkey wrench into Arab naionalism, the military-industrial complex saw a greenback shower looming on the horizon after the Clinton era draught, Repug party bosses saw popular support mobilized by a "war president," the "paleo-cons" perhpas saw it as an opportunity of scoring a few points against their (c)old war foes - etc.
I think that each of these groups got something out of it - perhaps not as much as expected in most cases - but something. But since they are not the ones who will pay the price of this war, it was a gain for them.
In short - special interest groups gained from the Iraq war, the 99% of the US population earning less than $1M lost. But that is the quintessence of the predatory regime instituted by the Reagan and the Bushes triumviriate, which has been raiding the US treasury for a while. The Iraq war was just the "jewel in the crown" of the looting of the US treasury by Repug gangsters. Conceptualizing this adventure in terms of unitarian interests of a nation state (the US as a whole) is inaccurate and ignores the deep class divisions and conflicts (papered over by corporate media) in the US society.
Wojtek