• by Tom Siebert , Op-Ed Contributor, December 7, 2006

The Iraq Study Group has finally come out with its report, and after weeks of speculation about what it would or wouldn’t say, you can read the thing in its entirety yourself (kudos to CNN for actually providing the document for all Americans to read and decide for themselves – not that many will, of course). 

 

The report includes 79 recommendations, but the key one to me is recommendation No. 22, upon which the entire future for American occupation of Iraq hangs, which reads:

 

“The President should state that the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq.”

 

This is completely unlikely to happen, of course.  And that’s why all this coverage about the debate between the dwindling number of administration supporters who want to “stay the course,” er, uh, “complete the mission,” and the “cut and run,” uh, er, “bring them home” revisionists is a disservice to the American people.

 

While there will likely be some kind of troop reduction sometime over the next two years, we’ve got no plans on actually ever leaving Iraq, even when the Bush administration finally hands the reigns of the country over to somebody else.  With all the real estate we’ve invested in over there, forget it.

 

The truth – which you rarely hear – is that we’ve built a series of huge permanent military bases, bigger than many U.S. towns, with movie theaters, swimming pools, fast food joints, grocery stores and the like.  The total number of these “enduring bases,” as the term evolved to be known, has been variously reported by the Pentagon as anywhere between four and fourteen.

 

These “enduring bases” were part of the reason we invaded Iraq to begin with. The U.S. needed new bases to keep a presence in the heart of the Middle East and protect the oil.  And the reason America needs new permanent military bases in the Middle East is because Osama bin Laden successfully strategized to get our old ones tossed out of Saudi Arabia. 

 

That’s another area where the media hasn’t done a good job informing the American people.  Though in the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush administration simplified the motivation for bin Laden and al Qaeda’s horrific and profane attack upon innocent civilians – “They hate our freedoms” --  bin Laden has set out the reasons for his declared war upon America pretty clearly in numerous statements.  One of the big ones was the presence of American soldiers on what he believes is “holy land” inside Saudi Arabia, where two of Islam’s most sacred sites are located.

 

As an aside, I’d like to also mention that bin Laden wasn’t really the driving force behind the 9/11 attacks. The chief strategist for 9/11 was another murderous dirt bag named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the 9/11 panel describes as “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.”  Bin Laden may have financed the operation and help organize it, but most of all he was the leader who declared the war to begin with. Still, crediting bin Laden for the attacks is along the lines of solely crediting George Steinbrenner for the Yankees’ success under Joe Torre.  Or something like that.

 

The original military bases were placed in Saudi Arabia after the first Iraq war under the first President Bush.  They were placed there to protect that country’s oil.  As the second Iraq war churned the region again, recall that Saudi Arabia began to experience attacks inside its borders in May and November 2003 from militants with the expressed purpose of overthrowing the royal family – even the CIA’s own site calls them “the first major terrorist attacks inside Saudi Arabia in several years.”  It was also in 2003 that the US announced it would be removing its bases from the country. 

 

Score one for Osama bin Laden. 

 

Another big strategy for bin Laden is to use the war on terror to bankrupt the United States, and he’s doing a pretty good job on that one, too.  In his videotaped message to the country in the days prior to the 2004 election, bin Laden laid out his motivations for the continuing war against the US, as well as his strategy.  If you read the entire transcript, he gloats about how al Qaeda is winning, because things like the Patriot Act are reducing American freedoms. Companies like Halliburton are making huge profits while the American people pay; how the deficit is going to sink the country.

 

Score two for Osama bin Laden. 

 

The war is, indeed, staggering the economy.  The war has now cost ten times what President Bush originally estimated it would cost, and is more expensive than the Vietnam War (and that’s inflation-adjusted, incidentally).  Recall that a large part of the Soviet Union’s ultimate downfall was a mistaken occupation of Afghanistan, and the drain it took on the country’s economy and military.

 

Moreover, the war has made a few companies and its people very rich.  If you have any doubts about the level of war profiteering that’s taken place over the last six years, please rent or buy the heavily researched “Iraq for Sale,” the sickening documentary from muckraker Robert Greenwald.  

 

The Iraq Study Group concludes we are not winning in Iraq.  That’s terrible for us and it’s tragic for the Iraqi people, most of whom are surely not murderous anarchists but a broken nation that suffered for decades under a despot and now resent the incompetently managed invading force that they believe does not have their best interest at heart.

 

But what’s worse is that we’re losing the war on terror.  Many of the Bush Administration’s strategies have played exactly into the hands of bin Laden’s tactics:  We’re out of Saudi Arabia.  The economy is hurting.  The Arab world hates us more than ever.  The rest of the world doesn’t trust us.  We torture people.  Our freedoms inside the country are increasingly limited.   We’re not really united states anymore.

 

And that’s not even getting into how we’ve blown it in Afghanistan.