by C. M. Weston

Created on: August 17, 2007

The neocon vision of the world has America with a mission to be the world's policeman. This presumes that not only can the USA play this role, but also America need not feel obligated to justify or defend its actions. America's mission puts the US in the driver's seat. When others fail to act to US satisfaction, the US believes it has the right and responsibility to act, including with pre-emptive strikes. Among the family of nations, only the USA has "superhero" status, enabling it to show its special powers. If another country acted so unilaterally, it would be called a "lone ranger".

The American "mission" has been shown to be naively over-confident and foolish. Neo-con pundits claimed that the invasion of Iraq would be a slam dunk. In fact, deposing the Sadam regime was accomplished fairly quickly, but its replacement by a local government of liking to America has been problematic. (The south of Iraq is controlled by Shia militias tied to Iran; the Sunni areas are controlled by Sunni militias and al-Qaeda and the Kurdish areas are controlled by the Kurds.) The US sponsored Iraqi government has had limited credibility outside its own chambers and the great majority of the Iraqi military remains unable to act alone.

Iraq is divided into many spheres of control, without any central control. Where the government is in control, there are virtual fiefdoms, where the ruling party or family doles out all the available jobs to their members. Thus, Iraq is a patchwork quilt of militias and violence against others. It is the continuing American occupation that props up the teetering regime and enables the current dysfunctional, unnatural situation to continue.

The American mission, whether it is claimed to be the promotion of democracy and freedom or enabling the emergence of cooperative governments in areas that previously were hostile, can only be claimed to be successful by stretching the truth and qualifying the opinion. Only if the mission is narrowly defined as merely "taking the fight to the enemy" can it be convincingly claimed to be effective. And that requires one to forget the terrorist anthrax poisoning in the US and the fact that the opposition in Iraq and Afganistan has grown stronger and more brazen day by day.

The endless war has no realistic plan for making American troops unnecessary, while the US military is stretched beyond capacity. US deployments overseas have been extended and time outside of conflict zones has been minimized. Another front could

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