More Thoughts on Iraq III

Now that Bush & Co. have poisoned people's minds against the U.S. by our militarism and torture tactics, they're horrified over what kind of anti-American leader might rise to power in Iraq--and take over the oil. And so they insist on keeping our troops there, exposing them to the most dangerous elements of the now largely disaffected, anti-American populace, while over a million Iraqis, including professionals, have fled the country.

At this point, Bush & Co. would be lucky to find someone like Saddam Hussein to take over Iraq. At least Saddam was a secularist and promoted a progressive social agenda, e.g., giving women equality, and resisted Islamist extremism. In his own brutal* way, Saddam had a vision of bringing Iraq into the modern world and was, at the time of the U.S. invasion, succeeding.

The rank ineptitude of the Bush administration vis-a-vis the Middle East has thus far succeeded only in turning back the clock and making the threat of Islamist extremism more dangerous than ever before.
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*At this point, I don't know whether he was more brutal than the invaders, and I'll wager the Iraqis are asking the same question, especially now that in addition to our militarism and torture, we destroyed the country's infrastructure and have proven ourselves inept at rebuilding it, while American corporations like Halliburton and other war profiteers are reaping huge profits at the American taxpayers' expense. (Iraqis get less electricity now than they did under Saddam's regime, and their oil is being stolen to the tune of between $5 million to $15 million daily.)