Carl G. Estabrook cited:
> Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report Identifies Security Challenges in the Persian Gulf
>
> The United States should preserve the model of “lily pad” bases throughout the Gulf, which permits the rapid escalation of military force in case of emergency.
>
> Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> ...permanent" deployment of troops is just an official and meaningless number when the "temporary" deployment (including secret forces) can be much larger (rien ne dure comme le provisoire, n'est-ce pas?), with bases ready for full-scale invasion forces whenever that decision is made.
The "over the horizon" deployment of US forces ready for intervention anywhere is the Middle East and globally is well-known, but wholly beside the point in this discussion. No one disputes that the US has relied on offshore air and naval power (as well as internal subversion and the lure of its domestic market) to maintain its informal global empire.
But the specific issue raised by Carrol, which I chose to address, was whether the LAND WAR IN IRAQ was a success or not. Measured in terms of the Bush administration's objectives - a swift and relatively bloodless invasion, a brief occupation and the installation of a pro-American puppet regime in Iraq, an object lesson to Iran and other "rogue" states, permanent military bases and access to Iraqi oil, etc. - the episode was a complete failure. The overconfident Bush administration refused to heed the warnings from national security veterans of the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations that the US would become bogged down in another land war at a cost of much blood and treasure. I appreciate Shane's, Carl's and Carrol's insistence that the occupation of Iraq represented a victory for US imperialism, but the world's peoples generally saw it as the most serious setback to the US since Vietnam, and rightly so, IMO. In particular, the Iranians, Venezuelans, North Koreans, and other opponents of US imperialism were emboldened rather than demoralized by the outcome, correctly gauging that it reduced rather than increased the prospects of similar land invasions of their own territories by Rumsfeld's "New Model Army".
>>> (Me) Following the invasion, American oil companies were not given privileged access to Iraqi oil by the al-Maliki government…
>>
>> (Shane) What the oilsters wanted was not concessions but profits. Since 2003 Iraqi oil has been off the market, the price of oil soared and never came back down, and the oilsters took in hundreds of billions in excess profits.
In fact, Iraqi oil has not "been off the market since 2003". Although the country still has vast untapped reserves, its production rebounded to prewar levels and it became the second largest producer in OPEC last year. Moreover, there's no evidence the US and other Western multinationals either sought, or welcomed, a shortfall in Iraqi production. On the contrary, they keenly anticipated developing the fields in a period of sharply rising energy demand in order to augment the fat profits they were deriving from their far-flung operations everywhere else. That's why they eagerly bid for concessions. But the al-Maliki government proved not as compliant as expected and the Iraq oil bonanza for the American multinationals - which a large part of the left saw as the main motive for the invasion - never materialized.
As the FT recently noted: "When US troops invaded Iraq 10 years ago, conspiracy theorists predicted that American oil companies would immediately seize control of the country’s vast oilfields. 'People say that the Iraq war was fought over oil,' says Robin Mills of Dubai-based Manaar Energy Consulting. 'But American companies are now almost absent from the Iraqi upstream scene'...Other western companies have found Iraq tough going...But state oil companies have flourished. Of these, the Chinese are the most prominent: CNPC is a partner in the BP-led consortium developing Rumaila, one of the largest Iraqi oilfields, and also operates the Ahdab field. PetroChina operates Halfaya and Cnooc the Missan group of fields." (”Iraq’s appeal wanes for oil majors, Financial Times, March 17 2013).
>> (Shane) The destruction of Iraq as a society has been US policy ever since the Kuwait provocation. Bush completed what his daddy and Clinton had begun. How is that not a success?
US policy was not to "destroy" Iraq but to replace the Saddam Hussein regime with one fully subservient to US regional and global interests, and then to preside over a quick return to political stability and economic growth keyed to oil production. The Bush administration did not invite the subsequent political chaos and the often violent resistance from both the Shia and Sunni communities to the occupation. Iraq provided the neocons with a powerful illustration of the law of unintended consequences.