So why are we still there, 5 ½ years later;  4155 American military men and women dead; 30, 568 wounded, many catastrophically and irreversibly wounded; and $14 million dollars per hour going down the rat hole, while the Iraqis pile up billions of oil dollars in New York banks?  You remember—the oil dollars the Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld said would pay for their  “war on the cheap.” 

Well, there was an insurgency, or was it al Qaeda in Iraq, or Iranian troublemakers, or Shia militia, or Sunni militia?  Or just a response to what was clearly a planned, permanent occupation of Iraq? 

Those who know the foreign policy fixations of the neo-conservative movement are not surprised to find out that there are hundreds of military bases in Iraq, some of them mega-bases that resemble small cities.  Here is Tom Englehardt, in “The Greatest Story Never Told”:

In fact, in the last five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those bases. When asked back in the fall of 2003, only months after Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer then "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, proudly indicated that "several billion dollars" had already been invested in those fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, commenting that "the numbers are staggering." Imagine what he might have said, barely two and a half years later, when the U.S. reportedly had 106 bases, mega to micro, all across the country.

By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the U.S. air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. It's a "16-square-mile fortress," housing perhaps 40,000 U.S. troops, contractors, special ops types, and Defense Department employees. As the Washington Post's Tom Ricks, who visited Balad back in 2006, pointed out -- in a rare piece on one of our mega-bases -- it's essentially "a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." Back then, air traffic at the base was already being compared to Chicago's O'Hare International or London's Heathrow -- and keep in mind that Balad has been steadily upgraded ever since to support an "air surge" that, unlike the President's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.

www.tomdispatch.com/?month=2008-6

So if you are looking for an answer to the question, “Why can’t the troops come home if the surge worked?”, at least part of the answer is that Bush, Cheney and the neo-cons never intended to end the occupation.  Why else would they spend billions on bases in Iraq?  Englehardt’s story offers a sobering look at the size and scope of those bases, as well as the extraordinary secrecy surrounding them.  We don’t see those bases because the Bush administration doesn’t want us to think about them, or about the policy that they inevitably point to:  a permanent occupation of Iraq.

That’s why John McCain can be so flippant about staying in Iraq a hundred years.  For once, he wasn’t lying.  He knows that staying in Iraq, to maintain control of the oil and to use the country as a permanent staging ground for control of the Middle East, is the neo-conservative plan.  And he’s on board.  For once, John McCain told us the truth:  if he and his ilk have their way, the United States will be in Iraq just as we are in Korea:  permanently.

Thus:  the first reason to vote for Barack Obama:  he never wanted to invade Iraq in the first place.  Barack Obama is not a neo-conservative dreaming of American Empire.  That is George Bush (and his brother Jeb), Dick Cheney, and John McCain.  Barack Obama will end the war, the occupation and bring most troops home.  From the Obama website: 

Obama believes any Status of Forces Agreement, or any strategic framework agreement, should be negotiated in the context of a broader commitment by the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops and forswearing permanent bases.   http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/#status-of-forces

But Obama goes further than just calling for troops to come home.  He reminds us that we can’t afford to stay in Iraq.  On March 20, 2008, he spoke to a crowd in West Virginia: 

Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia. For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students. 

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGBH8j

The truth is, we can’t afford to spend money on the Iraq occupation.  Here are the facts.  According to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in Vanity Fair, “The war will likely cost this country three trillion dollars."

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/stiglitz200804

That three trillion is an abstract figure for most of us; here’s how it breaks down in more graspable terms.  In Iraq, we spend:

Per Month - $10.3 billion

Per Week - $2.4 billion

Per Day - $343 million

Per Hour - $14 million

Per Minute - $238,425

Per Second - $3,973

http:// theiraqinsider.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-much-does-iraq-war-cost-per-month.html

Data from Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11,” Congressional Research Service (updated February 8, 2008).

So it is a clear choice.  A vote for John McCain is a vote for permanent occupation.  For $10.3 billion dollars down the rat hole, month after month.  For more dead and wounded American men and women, for higher and higher costs for taking care of our veterans—because in spite of the fact that John McCain would not support Jim Webb’s bipartisan New G.I. bill, Barack Obama did.

A vote for Barack Obama is a vote to end the occupation, to “foreswear” permanent bases, and to use that $10.3 billion a month to help our own people and rebuild our own country.  Case closed.

1. Iraq and the Economy

2. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Crumbling Military

3. Middle-Class Tax Relief

4. Climate Change 

5. Fair Trade

6. “Homeland” Security, formerly known as Civil Defense

7.  Rebuilding American Infrastructure

8. Eliminating Karl Rove Politics

9. Cleaning up the Justice Department and Protecting the Constitution

10. Veterans

Each alone is a reason to vote for Barack Obama. Taken together, they represent a clear vision of what Obama means by “the change we need.” These issues give us a clear picture of how we can turn the page after eight years of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. These issues show us why this country will be better off with a Democrat, Barack Obama, in the White House.

Over the next few weeks, I will post an analysis of why each issue is enough reason to vote Republicans out, and Democrat Barack Obama in. 

1. Iraq and the Economy

2. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Crumbling Military

3. Middle-Class Tax Relief

4. Climate Change 

5. Fair Trade

6. “Homeland” Security, formerly known as Civil Defense

7.  Rebuilding American Infrastructure

8. Eliminating Karl Rove Politics

9. Cleaning up the Justice Department and Protecting the Constitution

10. Veterans

Each alone is a reason to vote for Barack Obama. Taken together, they represent a clear vision of what Obama means by “the change we need.” These issues give us a clear picture of how we can turn the page after eight years of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. These issues show us why this country will be better off with a Democrat, Barack Obama, in the White House.

Over the next few weeks, I will post an analysis of why each issue is enough reason to vote Republicans out, and Democrat Barack Obama in. 

But the problem is not just that Democrats need to work harder and smarter at pushing their agenda in the media.  The more worrisome problem for Democrats and citizens in general is that these so-called media refs don’t seem to understand what referees are supposed to do.

I’ve spent most of my life on the fringes of the world of basketball, as a season-ticket-holder of a major league baseball team, as an NFL fan. I’ve seen good referees (or umpires), bad ones, and one or two that I thought were cheating.  I’ve also seen coaches and managers work the refs.  For those of us who have invested big parts of our lives in the world of sports, the give-and-take between refs and coaches is intrinsic to the games, part of a balance that keeps everyone more or less honest, that keeps the games fair even in hostile environments or emotionally-charged circumstances.

For example, most games have some kind of built-in imbalance that has nothing to do with talent, preparation or performance: home-field advantage, stirring Cinderella narratives, poignant comebacks, players or teams on the verge of making history.  The job of the ref is to push aside the drama and passion and partisanship and focus on fairness, defined as “playing by the rules.”  In these situations, “working the refs” serves to remind them what’s at stake, to remind them that it is their responsibility to be fair, to make judgments that, in the end, added up collectively, give each team a chance to win the game on its own merits, within the rules.  That is what makes the outcome of a game meaningful:  fair competition inside the rules.

The main work of the referee, then, is to protect the integrity of the game itself.

Imagine, then, the biggest game in our lifetime, in the most important sport.  Imagine that the referees in this game believe their job is to give good calls to the team whose coach “works” them faster and harder. For these refs, it doesn’t matter when the party in power claims to be the party of change.  Or when a clearly unqualified candidate is presented as more qualified than her opponents. It doesn’t matter that a man who votes 90% of the time with the unpopular incumbent claims to be a maverick.  It doesn’t matter that we are involved in two wars, that the economy is in terrible trouble, that a major American city was destroyed because the government did not fix the levees or care for the wetlands, that our dependence on foreign oil makes us vulnerable to our enemies, or that global climate change threatens the whole globe.  One team wants the refs to focus on lipstick on a pig. So they cover lipstick on a pig.

That isn’t working the refs.   Even crooked refs still know what the game is, what the rules are, and why they matter.  The mainstream media has forgotten that what is at stake in an election is our democracy.  What is at stake is the future of our children and the planet.  That the job of a free press is to protect the democracy, in this case, to protect the system of free and fair elections from those who would trivialize them, disrupt them, manipulate them or steal them.

Nobody’s working the refs.  The refs left the building long ago.