As the bloodshed in Iraq seems to have slowed down, either temporarily or permanently, it becomes time to ask about the future. As has been said many times before, (and repeated below) the occupation will continue for many years, until the Iraq oil fields are exhausted, an American President and Congress become sufficiently frightened of popular revolt to accede to the demands of the citizens, or until a combination of Iraqi resistance and the insistence of world opinion force the removal of American forces from the Middle East.

It is estimated that the oil fields have at least 40 years of production at current levels. I’m not at all confident that the nation will stand for investing blood and money into the Middle East for the same period of time. So far they haven’t figured out just how long a project they are in for. Overseas occupations were acceptable when the country was faced by the bogeyman of the World Threat of International Communism™. It seems unlikely the ridiculous danger of a fraudulent “Islamofascism” can be carried on for that long, although a continued American military presence in the Middle East will continue to provide unrest and plenty of fodder for the Long War demanded by the Likud Party.

The declining value of the US dollar on the world market, coupled to a weakened economy that produces little in the way of manufactures as a measure of creating wealth will make foreign adventures more and more expensive in the coming decades.

Americans have had a long tradition of entitlement based upon the geographic good fortune of a large continent occupied by a group of indigenous societies ill-equipped to fight back against a technologically superior culture. An amplitude of raw materials and cheap energy enabled an industrially powerful society to expand well beyond its own shores, fed by an unending stream of immigration from less fortunate countries.

Something will break, and the chances are good it will be the American middle class. Long a bastion of political stability, the disappearance of this economic group would presage a truly bifurcated society: a small ultra-wealthy group of elites and a vast under-educated, under-fed pool of serfs.

At some point in the next four or five years the penny will drop and people will slowly awaken to the looming destruction of their lifestyles. They will quite properly realize that the political leadership has betrayed them and they will rise up to make changes.

Some Americans have already figured out that the current national course is a dead end for the country. Mr Bu$h’s kleptocratic dictatorship has become far less trustworthy; they’re figuring out that the game has been rigged and they’re unhappy.

Dissatisfaction with his fumbling and dishonest stewardship of our nation is evident in a slowly rising tide of dissatisfaction with the symbol of his despotism: the ego-war in Iraq.

The war has been declared a failure on Main Street America. Four years is too long.

Despite the best efforts of the agile propagandists of the Bu$h malAdministration and its corporate whores in Big Media, Americans have had enough of George Bu$h and all his works.

Poll figures expressing unhappiness have been rising steadily over the last two years. We now find almost 75% of Americans want him out of our Oval Office, and our sons, daughters, husbands, and wives brought home from Iraq.

Interestingly enough someone on the scene agrees with 75% of Americans who can actually think for themselves.

AGENCIES, WASHINGTON, BAGHDAD AND NAJAF, IRAQ Wednesday, Dec 05, 2007, Page 6

The radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Monday [Dec 3] blasted US President George W. Bush for signing a deal with Baghdad agreeing to a longer-term US military presence in Iraq.

"I say this to the evil Bush -- leave my country," Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

"We do not need you and your army of darkness," he said. "We don't need your planes and tanks. We don't need your policy and your interference. We don't want your democracy and fake freedom. Get out of our land."

Sadr's salvo comes a week after the US president and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced a deal ensuring a long-term presence of US forces in the country.

Bush and Maliki decided to end the UN mandate for foreign troops' presence in Iraq next year and replace it with a bilateral pact between the two countries for a US military presence beyond next year.

The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite party on Monday said he hoped an expected security agreement with the US would ultimately leave the country free of foreign troops.

I’ve often been curious why Moqtada al-Sadr is always termed a “radical” cleric. Apparently that’s because he thinks George Bu$h and the American armed forces have wreaked enough havoc in his country, unlike his main political opponent:

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, described the proposed agreement as part of a larger effort to return Iraq to "complete sovereignty."

"For me, personally, I'm looking forward to seeing Iraq as not having any presence of foreign troops just like all the free people around the world," he said through an interpreter at a forum in Washington hosted by the United States Institute of Peace.

"I don't think that any [free people] will have the desire to see foreign troops on their soil," said Hakim, whose political party is a cornerstone of the Shiite alliance behind Maliki.

Perhaps Mr Hakim was out of the country, conferring with his controllers in Iran during the purple fingers moment. It’s certain enough he was in Washington DC on December 5th, 2006 when he shook hands with Mr Bu$h on a deal to sit still for a permanent occupation of his country.

But of course that was last year, when the world still believed Mr Hakim’s handlers in Tehran were in danger of imminent attack because Mr Bu$h and Mr Cheney had harried and bullied the national intelligence community into prostituting themselves and agreeing with Israel’s demand that Iran be destroyed in much the way Iraq has been rendered impotent.

The issues of Iraq and Iran are intrinsically tied to the fortunes and future of another Middle Eastern country, and my country has suffered greatly over the years because of this. While it is essential to support one’s allies, it is also vital to understand that the fate of the United States is more important to us than the fate of an ally.

As many familiar with the intelligence community have revealed, more realistic opinions have forced a change in the public view of the Iranian threat. COL Pat Lang noted recently,

The chimera of Iran as deadly menace is a product of Israeli paranoia and debilitating fear of the "other." This fear saturates Israeli strategic thinking making impossible for them a rational contemplation of the odds against Iranian suicide attacks against Israel. Israel rejects the concept of deterrence of nuclear attack through creation of MAD (mutual assured destruction).

Evidence that this change in NIE judgment about Iran has turned Tel Aviv semi-hysterical abounds all over the net. Yossi Klein Halavi has attacked it in Marty Peretz’s New Republic, and Danielle Pletka has derided it the WaPo, both with no facts, merely anguished denunciations. I eagerly await the smiling face and gleaming teeth of the most bloodthirsty warmonger of all, William Kristol, on today’s Fox Noise programs as he howls his rage and hysteria at this betrayal of Eretz Yisroel’s dream of assimilable land across half the Middle East.

So far, despite the best efforts of the vast AIPAC-funded support network, VADM Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence is standing firm in support of the Intelligence Community.

At some point the United States must decide whether it is proper for our military and foreign policy to be made in Washington or in some other country.