Yesterday I asked a quasi-rhetorical question:
… but would this administration be smart enough to accept the invitation to depart?
This obviously assumes the US has the best interests of Iraqis at heart. There are several competing assumptions:
- The Iraq invasion was actually an imperial venture. Thus the rationale for staying is the creation of “forward bases,” protection of oil/Israel/etc., containment of Iran/Syria/etc., projection of US economic influence, and so on.
- The Iraq invasion is actually part of a so-called global war on terrorism—which also happens to be an eternal war. According to Cheneythink, if we left Iraq, we’d just have to invade someplace else to keep fighting the GWOT “over there” rather than “here.”
Since I lean toward the first explanation, I don’t see the current administration leaving Iraq no matter what happens. After all, we found no WMDs—that didn’t make us pack up and leave, even though that was the stated reason for invading. Some poor fools are still trying to find evidence and, thereby, justification for the original dubious casus belli.
No, the boy king will indeed hand Iraq off to the next POTUS, whether or not the Iraqis ask us to leave.
