Monday, September 17, 2007

An 'Enduring Relationship' – Or A Perpetual Burden?

Iraq as South Korea

By Justin Raimondo

"......Andrea Mitchell, appearing on The Chris Matthews Show this [Sunday] morning, reported that the initial draft of the speech – which used the phrase "enduring strategic relationship" – caused consternation in some quarters, because it smacked too much of what it really is: an intention to establish a permanent military garrison in Iraq, just as we have maintained in South Korea for the past 56 years.

Leave it to our Orwellian war propagandists, however, to portray such a radical extension of our announced war aims as a partial withdrawal. In the Bizarro World lexicon of administration officials, the proclamation of a permanent American presence is a "drawdown" – and the court stenographers otherwise known as the mainstream media report it as such.......

As it now stands, not a single major American politician is opposing this giant step toward a permanent US military presence in Iraq. For all of the Democratic candidates' "antiwar" pretensions, none of the frontrunners have denounced this ominous turn: indeed, as we have seen, John Kerry, one of the party's major spokesmen in the Senate, has signed on to the Bush plan. Where oh where are the supposedly anti-interventionist "net-roots"? Where is Moveon.org? Where is the Democratic majority that was elected on a pledge to get out of Iraq – or, at least, an implied promise to stop Mad King George and his neocon courtiers from running completely amok?

Bush's proposed "enduring relationship" is a euphemism for a perpetual burden – and a flashpoint for war. If "realism" means anything, it must reject this permanent projection of American power as militarily, politically, and morally indefensible."

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