Chimeras

Anyone who thinks BushCheney actually plans to withdraw from Iraq should read Tom Englhardt's post at TomDispatch. Whatever else the administration says about US troops leaving Iraq is belied by the vast construction now underway at four large bases and the new US embassy in Baghdad.

"In a country in such startling disarray, these bases, with some of the most expensive and advanced communications systems on the planet, are like vast spaceships that have landed from another solar system. Representing a staggering investment of resources, effort, and geostrategic dreaming, they are the unlikeliest places for the Bush administration to hand over willingly to even the friendliest of Iraqi governments."

Of course, permanance is a relative thing. Englehardt refers to the huge American bases at Danang and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. Those, too, seemed like permanent American presence in that country only to be abandoned. Another reference also comes to mind:

"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822

Perhaps in some future an Iraqi will gaze at the remains of vast American hubris. But for the near term, these bases show that America has no plans to withdraw from Iraq. The war will continue.