Cheney's Empire

Matt Yglesias is finally saying what I've been hoping someone would say for years now: there never was a plan to leave Iraq. We're stay-ers:

...here we are, over four years after the invasion, and it's time to face up to the possibility that the Bush administration's policies in occupied Iraq haven't been driven exclusively by a sincere and idealistic commitment to the well-being of the Iraqi people and the principles of liberty and democracy. Shocking, yes. But not to put too fine a point on it, it's the imperialism, stupid.

Bush won't adopt a bargaining strategy that involves walking away as an option, because he's not willing to walk away. The objective is to retain Iraq as a platform for the projection of American military power in the region, to continue a larger regional struggle against Iran and Syria, to maintain physical control over Iraq's oil resources, etc.

That's right, it's the imperialism, stupid. We wanted a permanent base in the Middle East, just like we have in Germany, Japan, and Korea. The snag is that it wasn't a very good plan from strategic or logistical points of view. It leaves troops on the ground in a hostile environment (unlike those other places) and we don't have enough of them to accomplish our goals.

To defeat the insurgency we need more troops (more than even the surge could provide). More troops that we can't have without a draft. And if we have a draft, the public will revolt and demand withdrawal. So now we're stuck, trying to complete the same job with fewer resources. Can't move forward, can't move backward. Instead of Empire, we have Quagmire.