RollingStone.com: The Quagmire : Politics

RollingStone.com: The Quagmire : Politics: "The news from Iraq is bad and getting worse with each passing day. "



Well, duh.



The steady drumbeat of carnage ought to make an impression some day real soon now. As if. How long can the Bush Administration narrative about Iraq hold out against the reality of doing too little to accomplish their putative goals of creating a stable and democratic Iraq?



The Bush Administration chooses its public "goals" for their narrative power; their relation to the actual purpose of President Bush and his minions is solely their persuasive power in a narrative the American People will accept. The actual means applied in Iraq may be sufficient to accomplish the actual goal of President Bush, whatever that goal may be; the "Perfect Storm" expectation is based on the idea that things will spin out of control, and the actual results on the ground will deviate significantly from any conceivable, positive narrative, which Bush and the corporate right-wing media can spin out.



It is quite possible that the narrative-spinning power of the right-wing will not be significantly challenged by events in Iraq. I personally think that Bush is aiming at a weak and unstable Iraq, completely dependent on American military power. Certainly, that's what they have gotten, and I think it is fair to say that that is what they have been aiming at, despite whatever they have said about their ("our") goals.



The corporate right-wing media have been thoroughly primed for the script, which says, that the U.S. gave Iraq a fair chance at a stable, democratic regime, and the Iraqis have failed. The U.S. has generously offered its support, but the Iraqis have fallen short. This is the best that the Iraqis can do. Oh, well. The curtain is drawn across the manifest failures of the American military and occupation leadership. Oh, well.



Democrats are too stupid to carefully and consistently parse out a counter-narrative. They constantly fall into the ditch of blaming the Republicans for allowing their "ideology" to run wild. The Republicans only have an ideology, to the extent that they need one to spin out their narrative scripts. What they do is purely pragmatic, and aimed at the same goal in every case: transfer additional wealth, income and power to business corporations and the very wealthy.



Rolling Stone: " 'I talk to senior military people and combat commanders who tell me that the situation is much more precarious than admitted,' says Col. Patrick Lang, former Middle East chief for the Defense Intelligence Agency."



Rolling Stone quotes a U.S. Army officer, who knows what we are actually doing:

" 'Our policy is to make Iraq a colony,' he says. 'We won't let go.' "