Posted by Damozel | Well, well, well. Apparently we've just signed on for a long-term very special friendship with Iraq.
The declaration calls for the current United Nations mandate to be extended one year and then replaced at the end of 2008 by a bilateral pact governing the economic, political and security aspects of the relationship.
"The basic message here should be clear: Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own," said Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, Bush's top Iraq adviser. "That's very good news. But it won't have to stand alone." (WaPo).Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all they have to do is call and we'll be there. What else, after all, are friends for?
The document in question, printed at the White House site, is called Republic"Declaration
of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship
Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America," and you can read it there. In it, each side hints at a promise of goodies to come if the other will but keep Friendship's Vows.
The document comes as violence has fallen in Iraq and the administration is eager to demonstrate progress and defuse domestic pressure to pull troops out. Bush has made it his goal to turn over to his successor in January 2009 an Iraq stable enough that even a Democratic president will not feel politically compelled to pull out rapidly.(WaPo)..
Jesus, who came up with that? "Compelled to pull out rapidly"? "Compelled to pull out rapidly" evokes an image of a very different kind of long-term relationship with Iraq than is suggested by the word "friendship." Were the words carefully chosen or not carefully chosen enough?
The nonbinding statement sets out basic parameters for talks on a formal pact. Those negotiations will address thorny issues such as what mission U.S. forces in Iraq will pursue, whether they will establish permanent bases, and what kind of immunity, if any, should be granted to private security contractors such as Blackwater Worldwide. Lute said a special negotiating team would seek to craft such an agreement by July 31.
By agreeing to extend the UN mandate "for a final time," the statement envisions Iraq emerging from under the auspices of the Security Council for the first time since Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 - just three weeks before Bush leaves office. Many Iraqi leaders still bristle that they fall under what is known as a Chapter 7 designation as a threat to international peace and security (WaPo)..
May it all come to pass, expeditiously, amicably, and with minimal further expenditure of U.S. tax dollars or American and Iraqi blood! It would make me so happy to see signs that the immense amounts of money and effort we put into that war actually brought about a positive result for the Iraqi people....but wait. Wait. Is this an example of a happy development to be welcomed by us or the first solid proof that the tail has successfully wagged the dog?
Again, read the declaration here.
Like John Coles at Balloon Juice (quoted here yesterday), Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice reads this sweet accord as proof that The Conspiracy Freaks Were Right.
I feel like the last guy in the room to get a bad joke this morning in the wake of announcements in Baghdad and Iraq that there is a quid pro quo deal in which the U.S. will babysit the Shiite-dominated Al-Maliki regime indefinitely in return for giving U.S. entrepreneurs first crack at Iraq’s riches, which lest there be any doubt are its vast untapped oil reserves and not figs or palm-frond chachkes.
The arrangement carries the weighty title of a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.” It is described as a work in progress but in reality is an all-but-done deal.
As an early if reluctant supporter of the war who became a vocal anti when it became obvious that the Bush administration’s serial rationales were cooked, I still clung to the notion that once there was a modicum of stability in Iraq the U.S. would up and leave, closing out a sad chapter in American history.....
The New York Times, for one, was slow to post anything on the deal, and when it finally did its irony-free story read like a business section piece on two major Wall Street firms dealing with an accounting error, in this case the U.S. and Iraq greasing the skids to get out from under a cumbersome U.N. resolution which has been the legal justification for the invasion and occupation. Now, according to The Times, the two nations will be able to have “a far more durable political, economic and security relationship.”
And so we can say aloha to planting the seeds of democracy, benchmarks, standing down when the Iraqis stand up and all of the other red, white and blue bushwah of the past four and a half years. The Decider and the conspiracy theorists were both right. Mission Accomplished! (Just don’t mention Afghanistan, where the situation grows more dire by the day, okay?) (The Conspiracy Freaks Were Right).
UPDATE: See also this very important posting by the same author (Shaun Muller): The U.S., Iraq & Empire Building (Or: When a War Becomes a Business Deal).
Even though I am a mere Democrat, liberal out of some doubtless (in the eyes of the rock-hard conservatives who populate the blogosphere) wimpy female affliction of empathy, lefty christianity (the weak-armed variety that turns the other cheek) and a displaced maternalism, I can see how getting a shot at rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure might benefit American businesses and the oil....well, that goes without saying, yeah?
But on the other hand: you can see, can't you, how it all looks a bit questionable to the American taxpayer who thought the war was mainly about eliminating the dire and imminent threat to Iraq and then got tricked into financing the war for a stable Iraq, right? Particularly since we recently had Mr Alan Greenspan's word for it not long ago that while it wasn't ALL about the oil, it WAS about the oil.... And though everyone I know thinks oil is a useful and desirable thing, not one of them would have agreed to go to war to get access to it...
Not that we did, of course. W wouldn't have tricked us into a war we didn't need to fight just to open a new frontier for American business. I am sure that the Bush Administration never intended anything of the kind, because to do that would be evil imperialist opportunism, and wrong. If benefits accrue to US business as a result of the war, I'm sure that was just a side effect and not the true rationale. You can follow the money if you want to; I'll cling to my belief that the Bush Administration might get things wrong sometimes, or often, or even always, but that it would never intentionally do the wrong thing....
Like I said: I'm a soppy, soppy liberal, and at least as....well, we'll say credulous, as the Bush Administration's "base."
Other discussion: Memeorandum. See: The Huffington Post, The Democratic Daily, Associated Press, Daily Kos and White House
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