Things That Make You Go Hmmmm: US Troops in Iraq for a Decade?

The most significant story you won't find in your paper today:

Adam Ashton, writing for McClatchy News Service, reports, "[Iraq's] government spokesman, Ali al Dabbagh said...in Washington that the U.S. might be needed in Iraq for another 10 years." Dabbagh told journalists:

We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years.

Juan Cole is taking a charitable view of the statement. From the Iraqi Government's viewpoint, as it still does not have a navy or Air Force, some American presence may be necessary to rebuild an indigenous military both for internal security and to maintain Iraqi sovereignty in the region.

How convenient, however, for the United States, which needs a pretext for its own policy of remaining the leading power in the Persian Gulf and beyond. Under the guise of "training", it can maintain its large bases in Iraq.

Sceptical of my scepticism? Have a look at the near-disgraceful puff piece for the Pentagon in The New York Times this morning. Eric Schmitt gets a free trip to Mali to trumpet, "U.S. Helps African States Fend Off Militants". Somehow Schmitt forgets to mention that the "counterterrorism training and assistance" is part of a much-wider strategy of the new US Africa Command to establish a prevailing US military presence across part of the continent.

In the 1960s, trying both to "win" Vietnam and to maintain US global power and to cut the costs of doing so, it was called "Vietnamization". Welcome to the 21st-century update.