Why we are there

Reuters / Sergio Moraes

Tom Stevenson in the London Review of Books:

...The developed Asian economies are heavily reliant on Persian Gulf oil and Qatari natural gas. Three-quarters of Gulf oil exports go to Asian economies, and the five largest importers of gas from Qatar are Japan, South Korea, India, China and Singapore. US dominance in the Gulf gives it decisive strategic influence over any potential Asian rival. 

The US has a huge military presence in the region: United States Central Command is based at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, the largest air force base in the world, with more than ten thousand US troops. Bahrain is the permanent dock of the Fifth Fleet, as well as having a US airbase and seven thousand US military personnel. The US has five thousand permanent troops, two naval bases and an airbase in the United Arab Emirates. In Kuwait, it has access to three army bases and an air force base. In Oman, it has four airbases and two naval bases. 

In Iraq, the US still has troops stationed at al-Asad airbase north-west of Baghdad (once nicknamed ‘Camp Cupcake’ for its luxuries). In Saudi Arabia itself, the US operates a military training mission based in Eskan village. 

Only Iran, which broke away from the US system in 1979, houses no American military bases...

...The US’s inherited mastery of the Gulf has given it a degree of leverage over both rivals and allies probably unparalleled in the history of empire. Washington has established a highly conservative regional order through alliances with successive military dictatorships in Egypt and an ethno-nationalist Israel. 

Its overwhelming military control of the region ensures that Japan, South Korea, India and even China must deal with the US in the knowledge that it could, if it wished, cut them off from their main source of energy. It is difficult to overstate the role of the Gulf in the way the world is currently run...

landinfo.com

Pseudo-moderates and the both-sides-do-it lie

Pope of Both Sides Do It church

David Brooks in a recent NY Times column:

But Trump is far from the only villain in this showdown. If the House of Representatives wants to preserve its oversight power on the executive branch, then it has to be willing to oversee. It has to be willing to use its power in positive ways to improve the governance of this country.

If Congress uses its power simply to destroy the president, then of course any president is going to clam up and refuse to cooperate. If Congress picks fights merely to gin up the political passions of the donor base, then of course the system of checks and balances is going to break down.

Rob's comment:

This is really stupid, even for Mr. pseudo-moderate, split-the-difference David Brooks. Though Donald Trump himself is the personification and immediate cause of our national crisis as he pushes the agenda of a proto-fascist Republican Party, somehow Brooks finds Democrats equally to blame for the damage this party and their despicable leader are doing to the country.

I recommend Driftglass's description of the intellectually contemptible mindset of this brand of idiocy:

...Each week for the past 15 years, the New York Times Action Zeitgeist Van has dropped Mr. David Brooks off in the middle of literally hundreds of life-or-death national issues, all laid out and easy pickings for anyone with a national media platform who is even remotely interested in, say, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general Welfare, securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity or any of the other cool stuff in that song.

Furthermore, we are now chest-deep-and-sinking-fast in the Age of Trump, so in addition to the usual perversions and crimes against democracy that Republicans have been carrying out for decades, we are now faced with a nakedly fascistic madman in the White House who is gleefully executing the Republican party's Final Solution to the impediment of constitutional checks and balances by destroying every norm that supports our democracy. 

Example: as of this writing, 375 former federal prosecutors [now over 650] have signed an open letter saying that Donald Trump has committed felony-level obstruction of justice.

And every week for the past 15 years, Mr. Brooks has ambled down the block, mentally jiggling the handles on each obscenity committed by his Republican Party...and then moving on.

Because for the past 15 years, Mr. Brooks has only had one story to tell his readers. One fairy tale he has spun over and over and over again, with grim, inhuman persistence.

See David Brooks: The Pope of the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It.

The White Man's Party

Daily Kos

Way in the back you can see a few token women in the White Man's Party. Not surprisingly, there are no people of color in the picture.