Some humble predictions on the coming course

Tomorrow “Our president” – the president of the world, and Canadians by default – will outline his future plan for Iraq. The media has been abuzz with talk about the coming “surge.” Of course I have my misgivings; flagrantly increasing the number of troops, and setting off into the quagmire, last I heard, has little chance of success. Let’s compare it to pilling on a couple more sweaters and jumping headlong (that is to say with no exit strategy) into a burning building. But all this pessimism lacks constitution – and what’s punditry without constitution? … Well I suppose that’s just what punditry is, but let’s suppose we knew a thing or two about history and events, and such and such, and hence possessed the wisdom to talk about what might likely happen. That is to say, I will try and outline a series of events that will give form, or context, to the coming slaughter of innocent Iraqis, malignant Iraqis, and duped American troops.

First, the surge will occur. There will be an increase in the number of American troops in Baghdad, and a coercive attempt to subdue the civil war there. This will fail. But this will not happen over night: it will need to be put into action, it will need to fail, and then we will need to endure the several months of rhetorical denial that tradition dictates. This should take at the very least a year, and perhaps even two. This will bring us precariously close to the next presidential election. Immediately prior to the grand spectacle of democracy, one of two scenarios may play out, but I doubt this will effect very greatly what is to come. Either the Republican Party will start another war, or create some other ridiculous patriotic solidarity building event, or they will not. For some reason, I doubt that they will – as the troops have been by this time completely run thin, and the Democrats control the other two branches of government. Instead I think they will try and run a presidential candidate that deliberately differentiates himself (his white penis wielding self) from Bush and his legacy. Perhaps McCain. Someone will win the 2008 election (maybe a black man or even a woman), embroiled in controversy, as usual. Finally the inevitable will occur: conscription. It does not matter which party is in power, their line will be as follows: “We are a new authority. We represent a radical break with the past. Bush made many mistakes, but we are in a new world now – one that we must negotiate. We must seek the best course of action. We cannot allow the middle east, home of the world’s largest oil reserves to disintegrate into chaos.” There will be an illusion of frankness and honesty: “Bush was in it for the oil all along, but these reserves have to be protected at all costs. The American way of life depends on the stability of this region. Yes it was foolish of past presidents to allow such dependencies to occur, but we must make due with the situation that history has allotted us.” All this will of course be true. Stability in this region is necessary for the current geo-political order – an order that I doubt will go down without a fight. Queue the rhetoric: “We must band together and fight for our way of life, our future, and our children’s future. For Democracy, against all evil!” And so the seeds of a potential global conflict will be sown. There are many more ensuing insanities that I humor as I write this, but unfortunately after this point all we can do is speculate on what is to come. Perhaps China will not appreciate a direct and coercive American military presence in the middle east, etc…