The article at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,8094978,00.html puts it in terms I just can't find fault with. Can anyone else?

While I mostly agree with him, I think Jenkins gives the strategists running US foreign policy far too much credit. At every turn, they have either disregarded or misinterpreted the most basic political facts about Iraq. As a result, we are not seeing a shifting of tactics to adjust to reality; we are instead witnessing a chain of compounding errors.

These mistakes have now placed the United States in a clear position of culpability and vulnerability regarding an Iraq that has quite predictably failed to respond as the neocons expected in their private preparations. The fact is that Iraq continues to disintegrate, becoming less governable and more fractious.

The Bush administraton began this adventure with the goals of securing a friendly government and permanent US military bases in Iraq, in order to increase regional US influence, specifically as applicable to Israel and the petroleum industry. Their gambit is instead initiating a civil war, increasing regional instability, inciting unprecedented international political isolation for the US, and accelerating losses of state and corporate capital. As these problems come home to roost, the Bush administration and successors, regardless of motivations, will have immense difficulty looking out for the interests of Iraqis, who will be left to a truly tragic fate.

From the outset, the US foolishly robbed Iraqis of the one thing they needed most in order to go forward as a unified nation without Saddam: To be a part of the demise of his regime.

After the British realized the impossibility (and atrocity) (http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/britishindex.htm) of overtly ruling Iraq they installed King Faisal, who couldn't keep things together for all his best intentions. Iraqi unity was unravelling but overshadowed by events of WW2 and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through the following turbulent years British kept pulling the strings with decreasing success, then the Soviets, then the US, culminating with Saddam's consolidation of power, effectively putting his own Tikrit tribe in charge to the persecution of any rivals. Like his predecessors, Saddam got in a lot of trouble when disregarding his foreign benefactors. Iraqis understand and resent many milestones of their modern history.

At present, there is a lull as the various tribes and factions in Iraq are preparing to assert themselves: The United States propelled Iraq into a new situation that no alternative political movements were prepared for in such a short term. To avoid the unpredictable, the US can not find and install a king as the British did, and we cannot install a dictator under the unblinking scrutiny that technology, international oil interests, and political tension have brought: The American intervention caused a disconnect in continuity that makes an indigenous and viable government of national Iraqi unity more unlikely than it has been at any time in Iraq's history.

When the agony of civil war becomes hideously apparent in Iraq, it will reflect significantly upon the Bush administration, and on succeeding US leadership. US Iraq policy will not be salvaged with tweaks like Jenkins describes: This is a political and economic Bouncing Betty. After the smoke clears, the US will be compelled to tread more openly and carefully internationally.

In the mean time, a lot of people are going to have their lives torn apart. We've got to stop doing this- it benefits noone in the long term- not American voters, and not even Halliburton.

Hypewaders:

I don't read Jenkins' article as giving U.S. administrators any credit at all; he doesn't believe any of the "tweaks" will be successful, nor does he believe that any transfer of power to any governing group in Iraq will last it's first 24 hours. He is describing what he sees as an inevitable sequence of events in the decomposition of Iraq.

I agree with pretty much everything else you wrote, but some of it has given me pause for thought -

You wrote that "The Bush administraton began this adventure with the goals of securing a friendly government and permanent US military bases in Iraq, in order to increase regional US influence, specifically as applicable to Israel and the petroleum industry.".

I still am having trouble believing that this is what the neocons really thought would happen. No one could possibly be that stupid. They might have hoped it would happen - gave it maybe a 5% chance of success, but I simply can't imagine that a bunch of guys who spent ten years planning this didn't come to the conclusion that a more likely course would be the one we are actually witnessing.

So, what if they did anticipate the results that seem so obvious to us? What if instead of double-crossing the American people with all the dreck about WMDs and terrorists, they were actually triple-crossing the petroleum industry and the rest of their corporate base with rosy dreams of a docile Iraq and Afghanistan?

If they knew that this is what would happen, it begs the questions: What possible motive would they have for turning Iraq into a seething cauldron of Islamic fundamentalism? What advantage is there in destabilising the whole Islamic world, from Marrakech to Jakarta? Why would they want to create a situation that would take decades and cost trillions of dollars to get under control?

I wonder if the real objective isn't actually chaos instead of stability - to ensure that the Islamic world is trapped in third-world status, to open a wound in the side of a vibrant and ascendant European Union, to create a permanent war economy (which was threatened after the collapse of the USSR) and to create a simmering World War 4 that makes things so much easier for the fascists currently running our country.

I doubt that any power structure would take such risks with its own domestic and international credibility. Assuming the primary goal is generating conflict in and with the Islamic world, and assuming success in that pursuit, there comes a point at which results become irreconcileable with public expectation, resulting in an erosion of domestic power base, both at the polls and on Wall Street.

The "War on Terror" will never fuel a military-industrial complex like the Cold War did, because it is not a war: It will become increasingly apparent that transnational enemies with ever-changing tactics are not deterred by the rebuilding or revamping of a vast arsenal by a superpower such as the US. Pushed to the extreme, a WWII or cold-war footing during an era when battlefield victories lack any imperial payoff will quickly expend US political and economic capital.

Regarding international power base, a unilateralist, chaos-fomenting policy is stimulating a downturn in the desireability and value of association with the US in both public and private sectors, and this will result in severe economic consequences if it continues.

Mucking up the Mideast, running up huge deficits, and alienating trading partners does not add up to a profitable set of goals for an empire. We are witnessing the awkward silence with which theatrical and imperial failures are met. Shock and Awe have flopped.

I see no evidence in US policy of any coherent plan for the future. In the rare glimpses we occasionally get deep inside the inner machinery of power, we often can see beads of sweat on furrowed brows of ordinary men uncertainly wielding extraordinary influence.

The mere, backbiting mortals presently in power have frittered away America's clout with amazing speed. The less sudden, but inexorable result is that there is going to be hell to pay from top to bottom.

To be an evil emporer, it is best to start with a less-than-hegemonic country, and propel it to "greatness" through whatever Machiavellian means. Starting with a pre-existing empire, there is not much credit to take, but a very long way to fall.