[Vision2020] Iraq & Big News: PNAC Website Suspended

Fri Jun 6 12:21:47 PDT 2008

Sunil and others-

If guaranteeing control of Middle East oil in the long term (10-50 years or
more) was even a partial motive to invade Iraq and establish military bases
there (even Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, and economic
conservative, asserted protecting oil was a motivation) semi-permanent
occupation was assumed from the beginning.  Unless the "Utopian" alternative
energy revolution becomes widespread globally, more oil resources wars are
almost inevitable.

I used the word "Utopian" in the context of John Grey's book, "Black Mass:
Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia," where he argues that the Iraq
invasion was Utopian, an expression of a right wing Utopian belief that
global market capitalism was poised to democratise the world.  We still hear
that China will democratise due to adoption of capitalism, while the
Communist Party still maintains dominance.  Chinese can't even talk without
fear about the Tienanmen Square massacre, mention of which is censored by
Google in China.  We now see that Russia had adopted a new authoritarianism,
moving away from the democracy some assumed would grow with adoption of
capitalism and the collapse of communism.  In an ironic manner, a Utopian
ideal of global dominance of a superior model of human society, was promoted
by communism, also justifying use of force (like the Iraq invasion) to
accelerate adoption of the model.  This is Grey's thinking I am
paraphrasing.

I agree that the choice of "Utopian" to describe such massive civilian death
and injury is disturbing.  Grey was describing the belief that Iraq could
be, via an invasion and use of force, turned into a stable coherent
democracy, as a unrealistic Utopian goal.

He did not think the Iraq invasion wise.  Nor does Grey think the Utopian
Green Revolution of alternative energy will stop anthropogenic climate
change or fossil fuel resource wars.  Grey is one cheery guy, but his
realism is well argued.

Ted Moffett

On 6/5/08, Sunil Ramalingam <sunilramalingam at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ted,
>
> I don't think it's a surprise, nor much of a secret.  I think it's
> consistent with everything the Administration has done and with the total
> lack of an exit strategy.  They never had one because they never planned to
> leave.
>
> I think Washington will be surprised much the way the crowd was in the
> story of the Emperor's New Clothes.  It seems to me that the Establishment
> and mainstream media have always accepted the bs rationales for this war as
> the truth, and now they're going to pretend to be shocked, shocked, that
> there's gambling at Rick's. [Yes, I'm trying to get as many lowbrow cultural
> references as possible into this post.]
>
> I have trouble identifying a plan that involves the slaughter of civilians
> as utopian; 'unrealistic' or 'unfounded' or 'lacking in precedent' all seem
> like better choices to me.
>
> Sunil
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 14:00:45 -0700
> From: starbliss at gmail.com
> To: sunilramalingam at hotmail.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Iraq & Big News: PNAC Website Suspended!
> CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
>
> Sunil et. al.
>
> Secret plan?
>
> Many of the details regarding long term US plans in Iraq in this article
> are old news, though this exact "deal" may be an attempt to enshrine the
> plans for a long term "occupation" into a more definite form.
>
> I've been saying for years that the US will be occupying Iraq 50 years from
> now... John McCain pushes the occupation potentially out to 100 years.
>
> Any president in power who pushes for a major pull out from Iraq will have
> to face the possibility of Iran gaining even more influence over Iraq, a
> rather problematic foreign policy outcome that will discourage pulling out.
> Saddam was an enemy of Iran, and kept Iranian influence away.  This was of
> course part of the reason we gave Saddam military aid during the Iraq/Iran
> war.
>
> The US overthrow of Saddam empowered Iran, a nation that was probably more
> of a long term threat to US interests than Iraq.  It was expected the US
> could, after invading Iraq, somehow bring about regime change in Iran.  This
> point was made clearly in military think tank analysis of US foreign policy
> aims in regards to the Middle East, in articles presented by the Project for
> a New American Century, infamous neo-con think tank. The fact the Iraq "war"
> (it is now not a war but an occupation) had been such a disaster, in terms
> of bringing a coherent stable democracy to Iraq, has impeded the long term
> goals of regime change in Iran, a more important goal than bringing down
> Saddam.
>
> I just discovered the PNAC website was "suspended" on May 20, 2008.  This
> is perhaps an expression of the utter failure of the neo-con agenda, now
> viewed perhaps as a major political burden for the Republican party!
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
> ------------------------------
> Consider John Grey's (from the London School of Economics) analysis.
> The Iraq invasion was perhaps Utopian, as Grey argues, an expression of the
> Utopian idealism of "global market capitalism:"
>
> http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/213/features/10975/paradise_lost.html
>
> From URL above:
>
> Instead, the right followed Fukuyama by envisaging global market capitalism
> as an unstoppable force of nature and panacea. "The characteristics which
> had been features of communist thinking came about on the right – the
> militant progressivism, indifference to the casualties of progress, and the
> belief that the whole world was moving towards some single model and that it
> should be accelerated by force," says Gray.
> --------------------------
>
> The attempt to bring democracy to Iraq was utopian, Gray believes, because
> even with better planning it would still have failed. "The Kurds would still
> have broken away. There would still have been a conflict between the Sunni,
> who had been ruling the country, and the Shia – and a fairly strong Islamist
> force emerging through the Shia."
>
> ------------------
>
> Gray thinks war should be only a last resort for self-defence. "The Second
> World War was justified. But war shouldn't be used as an instrument for
> improving the human condition. That's where I differ from the theories of
> pre-emptive war and revolution from the neoconservative right, which to me
> exhibits the same kind of thinking as communism did."
>
> He conjectures that the invasion of Iraq sounded the death knell for
> secular
> utopianism. "Iraq practically precludes another large-scale experiment
> along those lines. No one now, except a few post-Trotskyite neoconservatives
> in bunkers, talks about overturning all the regimes in the Middle East and
> replacing them with democracy."
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
> On 6/5/08, *Sunil Ramalingam* <sunilramalingam at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.truthout.org/article/revealed-secret-plan-keep-iraq-under-us-control
>
> When do we come out and say it's a colony?
>
> Sunil
>
>
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