[Sethomas]

Do any of you remember how I used to always post how the answer I got for "why we went to Iraq" is totally separate from the reasons made public? That is, it wasn't about the WMD, it wasn't about Saddam being a nasty fellow, and it wasn't about his non-existent ties to al-Qaeda. It was about starting a decade-spanning motion in the middle east at large to turn it into a viable social and economic market in a plan that was ethically unsound and tactically impossible. Go in, brutally rape Iraq and rebuild it in a couple of months, then hope that other Middle Eastern regimes get the message and clean up their act autonomously. This is the explanation I heard from two different, very educated Neo-cons (although they for some reason thought it would work). This was corroborated by a guy I talked to with multiple doctorates on Middle East policy, who flatly denounced the war.

I always believed that this is what the Neo-cons were after, but I had the comfort of denying it consciously because nothing in our policy made it distinct from the three public reasons for war.

Now, between the three public reasons for war and the Pax Americana version of the war, which explanation better supports why the president refuses to set any time-tables or withdraw troops?