Tom Engelhardt writes Premature Withdrawal: Washington’s Cult of Narcissism and Iraq:

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years.  Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad.  And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded?  In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better.  In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.    

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us.  After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they’ve done best in recent years: cut one another’s throats?    

Modesty in Washington?  Humility?  The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience?  None of the above is evidently appropriate for “the indispensable nation,” as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to “see further into the future.”  None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

An expanding crew of Washington-based opiners are now calling for the Obama administration to alter its plans, negotiated in the last months of the Bush administration, for the departure of all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.  They seem to have taken Albright’s belief in American foresight — even prophesy — to heart and so are basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future.

The problem, it seems, is that, whatever may be happening in the present, Iraq’s future prospects are terrifying, making leaving, if not inconceivable, then as massively irresponsible (as former Washington Post correspondent and bestselling author Tom Ricks wrote recently in a New York Times op-ed) as invading in the first place.  Without the U.S. military on hand, we’re told, the Iraqis will almost certainly deep-six democracy, while devolving into major civil violence and ethnic bloodletting, possibly of the sort that convulsed their country in 2005-2006 when, by the way, the U.S. military was present in force. …

In Iraq, only one thing is really known: after our invasion and with U.S. and allied troops occupying the country in significant numbers, the Iraqis did descend into the charnel house of history, into a monumental bloodbath.  It happened in our presence, on our watch, and in significant part thanks to us.

But why should the historical record — the only thing we can, in part, rely on — be taken into account when our pundits and strategists have such privileged access to an otherwise unknown future?  In the year to come, based on what we’re seeing now, such arguments may intensify.  Terrible prophesies about Iraq’s future without us may multiply.  And make no mistake, terrible things could indeed happen in Iraq.  They could happen while we are there.  They could happen with us gone.  But history delivers its surprises more regularly than we imagine — even in Iraq.

In the meantime, it’s worth keeping in mind that not even Americans can occupy the future.  It belongs to no one.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Until recently, Claude Allen was the Assistant to the President of the United States for Domestic Policy. Allen is, or was, one of the darlings of the religious right led by the likes of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family. Allen was a big abstinence only crusader and led several assaults on AIDS service organizations as well. This paragon of moral values was recruited by Karl Rove. A couple of days ago, Claude Allen was arrested in connection with a massive shoplifter and refund operation.

Brad Johnson takes note that 13 other states seek to join Utah and Alabama in passing resolutions would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.

Every resolution makes the false claim that protecting citizens from hazardous climate pollution would hurt the economy, instead of recognizing the potential of a green recovery.  Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Alaska lawmakers talk about being “dependent” on the coal and oil industries whose lobbyists are fighting climate action. Several of the resolutions, drafted early last year, call on Congress to reject the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House of Representatives in June but has languished in the Senate. The Alaska and West Virginia resolutions support Sen. Lisa Murkowski‘s (R-Alaska) effort to rewrite the Clean Air Act (S.J.Res. 26), and Alabama’s resolution calls for the passage of Rep. Earl Pomeroy’s (D-N.D.) similar effort (H.R. 4396).

The most legally bizarre resolution is Arizona state senator Sylvia Allen’s (R-Ariz.) “tenther” argument that the U.S. Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. Allen also believes the Earth is 6000 years old. The other Arizona resolution, along with the Kentucky, Virginia, and Washington resolutions, would attempt to block state enforcement of global warming rules.

These efforts to overturn the Clean Air Act and replace science with conspiracy theories are being supported by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national organization that brings conservative state lawmakers together with industry lobbyists.

The false claim made in these resolutions gets a major smackdown from a study from the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley. The study shows that California’s green policies from 1977-2007 eliminated 25,000 jobs, but created 1.5 million other jobs, improving compensation statewide by more than $44 billion. During the same period, per capita electricity usage in the state dropped by 40 percent.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Miami Dolphins cornerback Will Allen has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence in Miami Beach.

Jail records show Allen was arrested Saturday and was being held at the Pretrial Detention Center in…

If you do a nice thing for someone else knowing you’ll reap some benefit yourself, is it still a good deed? What if your primary reason for doing it is because of the benefits it’ll bring you?

Via BTD, Politico heavyweights Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei have a long justification for why Dick Cheney gets to do what he would have called treason just 13 short months ago–criticizing the President in a time of war. Or maybe it’s just a long justification for why Politico has chosen to become Cheney’s pet megaphone.

It is because, VandeHei and Allen tell us, he has such a deep conviction that Obama’s policies are making the country more vulnerable. It’s essentially what you’d expect, until you come to this, as highlighted by BTD.

Obama has pulled back on what he sees as the most inexplicable overreaches of the Bush-Cheney years — the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (“torture,” to critics)…

They’ve been spending too much time hanging out with Cheney, apparently. BTD:

You can have any opinion you want about waterboarding, but it is a fact that it is defined as “torture” under the relevant international treaties and federal law. That is a fact. In short, it is not “torture” to critics, it is “torture” under the law. And there is no dispute that the Bush Administration sanctioned waterboarding. If a news organization is too frightened to publish a factual statement, then what value does it have as a news organization? None.