PAUL KRUGMAN: A Surge, and Then a Stab

To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.

Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”

Near the top of his list was the promise that “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq’s G.D.P. and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.

Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/09/paul-krugman-surge-and-then-stab.html

K&R

a great read from PK.

some of the sharper inner-circle players realize that the "war" is lost. (Just like I have few doubts that some realized there would be exploitable chaos post-invasion.) There's plenty of data to indicate that:
* A huge amount of ethnic/sectarian/class cleansing has happened -- and continues;
* The urban educated, the professionals, the people who keep things running, (etc) have been decimated;
* There's nothing resembling the rule-of-law or civil-order;
* There's only a fig-leaf of government, and this is corrupt, divided, incompetent;
* Both in government and in the larger society , it's largely "rule" by warlords -- and this at a (fairly) early, turbulent stage;
* Out-and-out criminality is widespread -- and largely beyond government control, even if the "government" wasn't part of the problem;
* Civilization is sliding backwards;
* Overall, things are getting worse;
* It's beyond our power to dictate the course of events, or even, with our most potent weapon, withdrawal, off the table, steer them very much.

But there's money to be made, and "sentimentality" about the wellbeing of our nation (the world, whatever) is only a handicap in the struggle for the almighty -- the almighty dollar.

...

What the various players themselves recognize (ie, recognize to varying degrees consciously and otherwise: especially where this latter can be seen driving their acts with little or no conscious recognition/admission, only form-giving and rationalization) -- and can bring themselves to admit, would make a fine existential tragedy.

Destiny/individual behavior as the hand of the "invisibles" -- the "invisibles" within and without.

...

There's also the (apparent) driver of foreign (crony) control of Iraqi oil. Kurdistan is better than nothing.

...

Hell (really) is other people.

{Sometimes, a piece of heaven can be found there too.}

...

I think that protecting the dollar is the overriding consideration. "Market" jitters are one thing. Dollar-market jitters are another.

"What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures."

-snip-

And for that matter, if the administration had any real intention of turning public opinion around, as opposed to merely shoring up the base enough to keep Republican members of Congress on board, it would have sent Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, to as many news media outlets as possible — not granted an exclusive appearance to Fox News on Monday night.

All in all, Mr. Bush’s actions have not been those of a leader seriously trying to win a war. They have, however, been what you’d expect from a man whose plan is to keep up appearances for the next 16 months, never mind the cost in lives and money, then shift the blame for failure onto his successor.

-snip-

He's right- the Bush Administration is not acting as if they actually want to win this war. They're acting like they just want to pass it off.