Strategic miscalculations

Strategic miscalculations
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The coalition of Bush administration hawks that was empowered by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon agreed on three main strategic objectives. First, the neo-conservatives and Christian Right wanted to shift the balance of power decisively in the Middle East in favor of Israel, so that it could in effect impose peace terms on the Palestinians and Syria and anyone else who resisted US regional hegemony or Israel's legitimacy and territorial claims.

Second, the more globally oriented strategists - sometimes called "assertive nationalists" or Machtpolitikers - wanted to show "rogue states", particularly those with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), such as North Korea, that the United States could and, more important, would take preemptive military action either to change their regimes or crush them. And third, they also wanted to demonstrate to any possible future rival powers that Washington could, and would, intervene militarily in the Persian Gulf region to deny them essential energy supplies as a way of reminding nations of the indispensability of friendly ties with the United States.

All three objectives, it was swiftly agreed by the ascendant hawks, could be achieved by invading and then "transforming" Iraq into a pro-Western, if not democratic, Arab state.

Moreover, the likely acquisition of more or less permanent access to military bases in Iraq that would fit into a larger, global network of scores of military facilities stretching from East Asia through Central Asia, and from Arabia and the Caucasus through the Mediterranean and the Horn all the way to West Africa, would make it even clearer to all that breaking "Pax Americana" would risk economic or military ruin........

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE21Ak02.html

"thinking" many times, it is the standard form and you can get
fired for not going along in too loud a manner. That just happens
to be what happened to the wiser heads in the Pentagon and armed
forces planning branches. What a coincidence. The real problem
is that these people are not merely skilled bureaucrats, they
actually believe their own bullshit, i.e. they are actively
ignorant and stupid.