As Nancy Pelosi makes history by becoming the first female Speaker of the US House and Democrats take control of both chambers, Bush, as I wrote yesterday, faces formidable political obstacles to his plans for a surge in troop strength in Iraq. But he also faces the ultimate obstacle – no strategy will be able to deliver the “victory” which he believes will redeem his legacy.
Why doesn’t Bush then cut his losses? He can’t. His entire presidency revolves around the Iraq war. If he tries to cut his losses, he admits that he is responsible for a national disaster. So he has no choice but to try to bluff his way into 2009 and turn over the disaster to someone else. That is, he has no choice acceptable to him. But Bush is going to learn something in the next eighteen months. The situation is out of control and even the president of the United States can be forced to do things he finds abhorrent.
Wallerstein also observes that the real purpose of the Baker Study Group report was to legitimate criticism from the traditional bipartisan Washington foreign policy/military establishment. While Bush fans have spent much energy decrying “realism” in foreign policy (and there’s no necessary reason why it should be the only paradigm from a liberal point of view), it’s Bush’s own unrealism which dooms him to defeat on his own terms.
The Independent reports:
Although a 30,000 increase to the existing deployment of 145,000 troops is feasible, by delaying rotation of units and lengthening tours of duty, many senior generals say it could only be temporary, given the existing overstretch of the military. At some point the troops would have to leave, irrespective of the level of violence at the time.
New figures show that 1,930 Iraqi civilians died in December, which was also the deadliest month in two years for US servicemen, taking the lives of 111 soldiers. Since the 2003 invasion, more than 3,000 have been killed and about 25,000 injured. More American troops would merely invite more casualties, critics contend.
The President’s new approach also would signal the abandonment, at least temporarily, of the strategy of turning security over to Iraqi forces. This was the policy favoured by General George Casey, the highest-ranked US general in Iraq.
All the insurgents have to do is wait the Americans out, while causing the maximum amount of damage, death and destruction in the process.
The same strategic objections which were made in opposition to a date certain for troop withdrawal apply as forcefully to a surge which the US cannot sustain.
It’s also very difficult to see how the strategy of pacifying Baghdad can possibly work when the US doesn’t have one “enemy” but rather is caught in the middle of a sectarian civil war, which is only going to intensify as Saddam’s execution marks the limits of Al-Sistani’s game. The end of “Iraqification” begs the question, too, of whether Iraq’s enfeebled government and militia ridden army and police become recognised for what they are in reality already – forces contending for power and legitimacy through violence rather than arms of the state.
James A. Baker once dismissed the break up of Yugoslavia as unworthy of American intervention because “we don’t have a dog in this fight?”. Who is the American dog in the Iraqi fight?
As Wallerstein argues, after six months or less of surge, Bush will be forced to realise what most everyone else already knows – he has thoroughly lost control of this mess.
Elsewhere: At Blogocracy, Tim Dunlop critiques the “silence of the chickenhawks”. At Slate, an interesting piece by Fred Kaplan on Bush’s belief that he’s channelling Truman.
Mark
Given the usual quality of your commentary, I am stunned you would cite a tedious Trotskyist has-been like Wallerstein!! On Leftwrites, we would absolutely expect this sentiemntal tip-of-the-hat to those halcyon days of The International, but I am sure we can do better here.
I kind of thought IW was Mark’s guru.
John, I’m not in the habit of judgeing the quality of analysis by the politics of the analyst. Yesterday I quoted Bob Novak with approbation, and he’s a conservative Republican.
And I very much doubt Wallerstein currently sees himself as a “Trotskyist”.
Whatever people might think about world systems theory (and as with a lot of macro theorising, it has its pluses and minuses), Wallerstein is an extremely acute analyst of US and international politics, as I think people can see from the archive of his commentaries:
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/cmpg.htm
He’s been proved right on quite a number of occasions.
But I don’t want to focus this debate on the politics of people I quote, but on the issues, please.
No doubt JG has at his fingertips a definitive refutation of the points Wallerstein makes that don’t rely upon ad hominem jibes.
Here’s a start JG.
1. Is Bush in a losing situation? (Wallerstein thinks so. Do you?)
2. Can he cut his losses? (Wallerstein thinks he can, but at great personal cost. Do you?)
3. If so how? (Wallerstein thinks it requires him to accept responsibility for a national disaster. Do you?)
4. Can he do it without accepting responsibility for a national disaster? (Wallerstein doesn’t so. How would you argue against that proposition?)
5. If so, where is Wallerstein’s analysis flawed?
And don’t forget that the “enemy”, or potential enemy, now extends to every household in Baghdad. As has been widely reported, it’s anticipated that the new strategy will require house to house searches in every neighbourhood, seizing ‘weapons caches’ (and what sane household in Baghdad wouldn’t possess an AK47?) and making arrests.
To quote Fred Barnes in the Oz recently http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20942691-7583,00.html
In other words after the house-to-house certain families will be evicted to make way for the troops remaining behind. And how do these
targetsprotectors choose who to ‘reward’ for their ‘co-operation’, and how?It’s folly piled upon folly stacked upon folly. This administration knows nothing, learns nothing, and cares nothing.
How many more people are going to have to die for this mistake?
The desperate need to re-align foreign policy, after 60 years of propping up tyrants (AKA ‘moderate Arab leaders’) in the Middle East is the USA’s strategic interest in Iraq.
That is, overturning the policy that was supported by ‘realists’ like Baker III, and that led directly to September 11 2001.
Even those who don’t agree with me that the Iraq invasion was justified should be asking:
“What do we do about the fascist regimes in the Middle East like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and so on?”
and
“Should tyrants like Sadaam be toppled or not?”
David, I think you’ve mistaken my meaning. I wasn’t asking what America’s strategic interest was, but which of the parties/militias/factions/sects/gangs/thugs/governments in the civil war they are supporting?
The “Iraqi Government” is basically a vehicle for putting in place Al-Sistani’s game plan.
The US seem to have belatedly realised that.
If there’s to be a victory, who are the US backing to be the winner?
Presumably it’s no longer “the government” since they’ve finally woken up to the fact that it’s partly a front for Moqtada al-Sadr. If he’s now the “enemy”, who are they supporting?
There’s not even any candidate as the “party of order” so to speak.
And Saddam’s execution appears to be the final nail in the coffin for a lot of Sunnis. As well as revealing the “state” to be basically a gang of murderous amateur hour thugs.
I’m surprised you think the invasion justified. You’re the only person self identified as “far left” I’ve seen taking that position!
My answer to the second question is – no. It would have been better to continue to apply pressure externally – as the Indonesian example shows, dictatorships tend to collapse eventually and allowing the people of the country themselves to sort out what comes next produces superior results (if not perfect ones, or ones perfectly to “our” liking) to armed and illegal intervention with no game plan for what comes next.
As to the first, Lord only knows. But why is it “we” who have to decide what to do? Doesn’t the whole history of imperialism in the Middle East show that it’s very often “we” who create and exacerbate the problems?
Paulus, in regard to your remarks on another thread.
1. Just because you can by Marighella’s book is no proof that the book isn’t banned in the US (indeed it is). all it proves is that the US Govt has been less vigilant than it might have been to police its own laws.
2. John Keegan hasn’t tired of making a prat of himself over Iraq. Here’s a gem hilariously entitled “The American Triumph”, vintage 2003. (Ah yes, it’s like returning to another universe, where RWDBs were fuelled by hope, not denial.)
I think IW’s completely on the money with this:
Christine Keeler: I know little about Fred Barnes, but I think he is an idiot. To quote a little later:
Utter nonsense on two counts. The first thing about the South Vietnamese “control” is that they basically retreated themselves to the cities and larger townships, leaving the countryside behind. While the VC were not what they werre pre-1968, they still survived, and supplied intel to the NVA. The VC had a presence in the Delta, and the highlands. The Keane-Kagan plan didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.
The second is that the South Vietnamese actually had the funding and the arsenal to keep them going to 1976. It’s just that a lot of the cash was either wasted, stolen from, or lost in the files. (The U.S. sent some auditors there around 1974. About $500 million worth of weapons and money was “unaccounted for”, I believe.)
Personally, I think the Dolchstosslegende theory of “How the US lost Việt Nam” needs to be taken out the back and shot. Otherwise, they’re going to mutate into “How the US lost Iraq”. (It was those eeevil Democrats!)
Well, David, you have your answer on the pages of this blog. Assuming that Bush’s new policy is to no avail, the old style realists will triumph. The minority on the left who thought it was a good idea to actively attack tyrants, as exemplified by Christopher Hitchens, will go back into their shell; the right will turn isolationist; and tyrants will have many happy decades of ruling in peace.
Sanctions too have been discredited over the last decade, and will join military means on the list of unavailable options. So the left will revert to the old tried and true methods of tackling dictators, such as writing letters through Amnesty International, and calling for resolutions at the UN.
Paulus, come on. I think there’s a fair bit of evidence that Saddam’s regime was on its last legs because of the approach Clinton had adopted.
Surely you’re not saying “we got rid of the tyrant, but we disclaim responsibility for what comes after”…
That appears to be the last ditch justification in US (mad) right wing circles – it’s all the Iraqis’ fault that the place is in such a godawful mess. We gave them “liberty” and they stuffed it up horribly.
“as the Indonesian example shows, dictatorships tend to collapse eventually”
As the North Korean example shows, “eventually” can be a mighty long time. Half a century and counting …
As Hitchens argued, Saddam had survived so many uprising and assassination attempts, and was clearly preparing dynastic succession for his sons, so it was amazingly wishful thinking to believe he would have collapsed any time soon.
My lesson out of all of this is not to abandon the concept of ‘regime change’ — just make sure you do it right and have a ‘Plan B’ for reconstruction in case things don’t go quite as smoothly as you hoped.
The North Korean regime would be in significantly more trouble if China hadn’t decided to prop it up because they don’t want to contemplate what will happen if it falls, Paulus.
Anyway, diverting as this is, I don’t know that David’s questions really go to the theme of the post – what would victory look like? And can Bush achieve it?
Is “the approach Clinton had adopted” a euphemistic way of referring to the sanction regime? One might alternatively call it a “Final Solution” for the Iraqi problem. According to critics, those sanctions killed more than a million Iraqis — even more than the recent Lancet figures for the post-war death toll. Mark, you are a heartless beast!
Interestingly I read the other day that they also sent Army Chief of staff Frederick Weyand there in 1975. He concluded that even if the US increased aid South Vietnams chances of survival were “marginal at best.”
And Paulus I don’t think you have to worry about Hitchens crawling back into his shell any time soon.
The first thing “we” should do is to define who “we” are.
Having decided who is who, and who is likely to “stay the course”, then the next thing to do is to match ends with means.
The next thing to do is to set a time frame. The West, for example, sat out the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union over almost 40 years after the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine.
If 40 years seems time enough, then the vast power of western ideas and lifestyle might be sufficient to weaken ME fascist states. (and yes, as a libertarian leftie, I’d love to see the last priest, imam and rabbi shack up in a happy threesome in some location where the pink dollar is very welcome.)
If that seems too long or too uncertain, at least do the people “we” are trying to save the courtesy of understanding their cultures at least to the extent of not turning the objects of our benevolent attentions into enemies when “we” turn up to “shock and awe” them.
Looks like Chimpo flubbed all these tests.
There are also the Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War!, and of course Last Superpower, which is based around people who also supported the 1991 Gulf War.
While the Alliance for Workers Liberty (UK) opposed the war, they also oppose the attitude of the Stop The War Coalition in calling for troops to leave immediately, and so are worth looking at for dissenting far-left views.
But yes, it is a minority position among those who identify as far left.
I haven’t studied this enough to know who the USA is supporting at the moment, but I would imagine they are hoping (more than planning) that an Iraqi government will emerge that can defeat and control all the militias, and get back to non-gun-driven politics.
I’d also suggest that Baker III’s comment was meant to imply that the USA had no need to intervene in Yugoslavia, and was a concise statement of the ‘realist’ idea that democracy is not that important.
We may indeed decide that it is only our place to support and not take the lead, but we certainly have to decide for ourselves what our position is.
We should take a concious decision that either (for instance) the Saudi regime deserves to be overthrown, or that it does not. (In my opinion it does deserve to be overthrown).
I would disagree, and suggest that assuming as a norm that dictatorships collapse eventually is (in my opinion) a too passive approach.
I think that the issue of ‘illegality’ is not that relevant in the Iraq war, for two reasons, one practical, and one deeper.
Practically: What does ‘illegality’ mean in a world where there are over 200 sovereign countries? Very little, IMO.
Deeper: A course of action should be judged on its merits first of all, not the law. Laws can be wrong. As is detailed here, people in the 1960s in Australia (and much more importantly, the USA) broke the law to help defeat the US and Australian Government’s war aims in Vietnam, and were successful.
I’d wager that the prevailing feeling among the core people at this site is that the US defeat in Vietnam was not a bad thing. I’d also wager that at least some at this site could see their way clear to morally accepting an illegal action if it would end the US occupation of Iraq.
I would agree with this quote from Paulus:
Paulus, there are very few options which don’t involve violence and death when countries attempt to impose their will on others. I’m not supporting Clinton’s policy, just pointing out that I think it had a better chance of achieving the downfall of Saddam with a relatively better outcome afterwards. Though many mistakes were undoubtedly made, I doubt that what was always a foreign occupation would have ever delivered optimum results no matter how well organised.
I’m always suspicious of violence launched in the name of humanitarian ends.
And, yes, Chris, I don’t anticipate a renivention of Hitchens as a shrinking violet.
His latest on Iraq is interesting:
http://www.slate.com/id/2156776/
Victory would be a strong central Iraqi government bringing an end to sectarian violence.
It is not up to Bush to achieve this, it is up to those in the elected Iraqi Government who are democratically inclined to make this happen. Bush can only ever be a spectator in this endgame, so it is not he who will achieve it.
But the USA should keep enough troops in Iraq to stop those who attack Iraqi civilians. Unlike attacks on the US forces (which 6 in 10 now support), a vast majority of Iraqis utterly reject attacks on Iraqi government facilities, or civilians, according to this recent poll (pdf link)
Katz, I wish that people who oppose Bush’s policies would stop referring to him by insulting nicknames such as ‘Chimpo’.
It’s very irritating, and it makes it harder for people who support the war, (or those who generally support Bush, which I do not) to agree with you on the merits of your argument.
I happen to agree that Bush has made many mistakes indeed, while I agree with the original decision to invade.
I didn’t know that, David.
Intervention to “overthrow tyrants” or to “prevent a humanitarian disaster” in practice never occurs unless there’s national interest involved and/or hubris. Hence Darfur. And no one, as far as I can tell, was advocating that the recently deceased dictator of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, be overthrown. Yet his human rights record doesn’t bear much examination.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003489922_turkmen22.html
That’s the reason that there’s no plausible circumstances under which the Saudi regime gets overthrown from without. The only threat against it is internal – from Jihadists.
But there aren’t any such people. That’s the problem. The secular and non-ethnic parties got about 2% of the vote.
I think Roy Hattersley summed up the dilemma well:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1978708,00.html
There are, however, people in the Iraqi governing coalition who do not want to see Iraq tear itself apart, and who may be able to bring the militias to heel.
I would suggest reading this post and also this one from the Iraq the Model blog, where Iraqi bloggers Omar and Mohammed discuss the political situation and how Moqtada al-Sadr in particular might be brought to heel by manoeuverings inside the governing coalition.
comment spamilated
Ah but it is not that simple David Jackmanson. There are always going to be a limited number of factions able to form a viable government in any given country. The idea of a foreign power simply conjuring up their own substantial political force is extremely fanciful given how much an intervention on the scale required is liable to antagonize much of the population. What this means is that when dealing with foreign powers western governments must choose one of the existing powers to support. Indeed one of the biggest problems with the whole Iraq enterprise is that there is no nice, peaceful, secular force that can form a viable Government.
Sometimes (actually often) none of the viable options are at all nice. I would suggest that this is the case throughout most of the Middle East.
DJ,
You are free to agree or disagree with my arguments on their merits.
You are also free to agree or disagree with my arguments on any other basis you choose.
It’s completely immaterial to me if your assessment of my argument is influenced in one way or another by what I choose to call Chimpo.
And sometimes, as the US has found with Lebanon, supporting one mob in one country is pointless when you support the other mob in Israel more…
Chris, you are broadly correct in what you say. I was suggesting that first of all we need to decide what our attitude to a given government is.
If you were to decide that intervention is waranted, then the factors you talk about must be dealt with.
There is no secular force in Iraq capable of forming a government and imposing a democratic peace, but the links I provided above argue that some current members of the Islamist (different to Islamo-facist) Government may be willing to do that.
Katz, you are free to to reduce the effectiveness of your arguments by using unnecessary insults.
As far as Israel goes, this thread at Last Superpower suggests that the USA is doing its best to force Israel to settle the issue of the Palestinians.
It’s also been pointed out there that Bush is the first ever US President to use the words “Palestinian State” – Clinton never did. It is possible that those who condemn the US over its support for Israel are misreading the situation.
Now, would President Pelosi kindly take the necessary step of sacking those two born losers who are hindering her formal swearing-in as President of the United States …. and getting on with solving the Iraq Conflict.
DownAndOutInSa\iGo\n [at 6:38pm]:
Yes. Get ready for Bush, Cheney, Blair, Howard and the rest of those “surrender monkeys” to start trying to hoodwink people with their own 2007 version of der DolchdstoB. I’m not too sure exactly how it is that the Gold Star Mothers and suchlike folk could be in league with Saddam Hussein (isn’t he a bit dead these days?) and alQuaeda but no doubt we’ll have it all explained so we can understand … and believe.
Mark [at 6:49pm]
Right. And wasn’t there quiet concern back then that Turkey and Iran might be tempted to send troops across their respective borders to ensure some stability on their own frontiers WHEN the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq did collapse?
You sure you’re not preparing for a shift from the far left to the far right, David?
Clinton almost negotiated an agreement between Barak and Arafat which would have been far better than anything that’s on offer from Bush’s farcical road map.
I think you need to be a bit more discriminating about what you read on the net.
Just sayin…
Hmmm…the link in my above comment looks like a link…but it doesn’t work like a link…
Now when I try it again, either using the command in the comments box, or typing it in manually, the ” at the end of the URL somehow gets read as part of the URL, and you get a ‘page not found’ error.
So, cut and paste this URL for the LS thread:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/805094250462
Graham, yep, what we’re seeing is essentially close to what was feared when Bush overruled Cheney and didn’t push on to Baghdad. But it could get worse. And probably will.
The agreement that Clinton almost brokered has been widely condemned as one that would lead to Palestinian ‘Bantustans’ – certainly the Palestinians, judging by their actions of the last few years, did not appear to regard it as satisfactory.
The argument advanced at Last Superpower – that the Bush faction of the Republicans knows that US support for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is the US’ biggest strategic liability, and wants the issue resolved – is argued there in a reasonable amount of detail.
I’d suggest that what is on offer in Palestine has more to do with the fact that the Palestinians can continue to make Israel pay more than it is willing to, to hold down the West Bank.
Bush can’t force the Palestinians to accept something they don’t want to – if the US could do that, they would have done so at some stage since 1948 – but he can refuse to help Israel keep hold of what their expansionists want, and so help to move things along.
All I get when I hit that link is a catalogue of atrocities continuing from both sides, David. Probably somewhere on that bulletin board is the bit you’re talking about, but I can’t be bothered looking for it as the contention that Bush wants to usher in some amazing peace deal is absurd – he’s had six years, and all we’ve had is rhetoric and support for the Israeli government all the way.
Yes indeed, DJ.
And one of those political forces is Moqtada al-Sadr himself.
According to information posted by Juan Cole Moqtada has played a very clever game twin-tracking a strategy of building a coalition with Sunni political leaders. By one means or another Moqtada wants to form a coalition in the Iraq Parliament controlling the majority of votes. With that majority he wants to demand that the US withdraw from Iraq. This is Moqtada’s great aim.
Meanwhile, he is negotiating with the Shiite parties agreeing to return his members to the Parliament on condition that they merely agree to set a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq.
(By the way, the Iraq Parliament has not met for some time because a quorum has not been achievded Moqtada’s supporters now hold the power to prevent parliament from sitting.)
Don’t you see the genius of Moqtada’s political manoeuvres? By absolutely legal means he has jammed the cogs of constitutional government. In order to save constitutional government, the US must destroy it.
One way or another he’ll get his parliamentary resolution to remove the US fom Iraq.
And here’s an interesting rumour sweeping Iraq. It is alleged that Moqtada himself, under a ski mask, was Saddam’s executioner!!
âChris, you are broadly correct in what you say. I was suggesting that first of all we need to decide what our attitude to a given government is.â?
Then it is hear that we differ Mr Jackmanson. I take the view that in assessing wether or not we should support a particular government we must take a good hard look at the alternatives. Is the force most likely to take the governments place if we work for that governments downfall rather than its preservation likely to be better, or worse?
Or will instability be the result, in which case we no longer have the luxury of deliberating what the most likely and best outcomes will be. This, incidentally, is the reason many realists hate instability so much.
Assessing our position towards a government in this manner, rather than on an exclusively moral basis can make a big difference. Looking at things morally you would have a hard time finding even one Arab government worth saving. However if you look at the alternatives you will find that in pretty much every Arab state (except Iraq) the bad nationalist regimes and the bad absolute monarchyâs have their main opposition in the form of worse Islamist groups.
It seems to me like the Bush administration never bothered to carry out this sort of deliberation, simply assuming that something like a western style democracy would emerge in Iraq.
Had Bush not been so idealistic and naive he may have realized that most sources of institutional authority in Iraq outside Saddamâs regime (eg the Shiite Clergy and tribal leaders) were basically sectarian in character.
Katz, I don’t see how “In order to save constitutional government, the US must destroy it.” follows from the Cole article and your comments, which are interesting.
If al-Sadr obtains such a majority and the legitimate Government of Iraq then asks the US to leave, then I predict they will.
If I am wrong and they refuse, they will really find out what having a whole country fight them is like, instead of rejectionists and Islamofascists. Instead of losing 3000 soldiers in 3 1/2 years, they will lose over 500-1 000 a month, like in Vietnam.
The US has very little control in Iraq, and has to depend on the Iraqis working it out for themselves. All they can do is hold the ring as long as the Iraqi Government wills it, which they still do.
Mark, as I said previously, what Bush wants is not that relevant. The Israelis cannot continue to hold the West Bank. Bush has to accept reality. But even if you are right, and Bush is in fact following the old policies of unquestioning support for Israel (which I do not think is true), those policies are not going to work no matter what Bush and the Israeli expansionists want.
This comment at Last Superpower helps to sum up the take there on the Israel/Palestine question:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/964511009702?b_start:int=0#311764395319
The theme of the LS argument is “the collapse of US and Israeli policy over the last few decades”.
Other key assertions are:
The key assertion of US intentions is a few comments further down:
Katz: from the same link, there are also rumours that “claiming that an image of Saddam in his military outfit and beret can be seen on the moon.”
Even in death, he’s a cunning bastard.
Chris, I very much hope that the Islamists in Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood, who are closely related to Hamas) are able to take a place in the government based on the level of their popular support.
The argument you make is similar to the one made by realists: that Mid East dictators are better than Islamists, because of the fear that Islamism will result in ‘one person, one vote, one time’.
Islamists have a right to be in government if they have public support – that is the price of democracy and as a secular atheist I defend that right.
Of course, in the case of Egypt I would also want the secular ‘Kifaya’ (Enough!) movement to fight to defend modernity if/when an Islamist government became reactionary.
But reactionary Islamists with genuine popular support being in government is better than fascist dictatorships with no support IMO.
Right now in Egypt the Government is busy manipulating the electoral law to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of politics. Is this justified, or not, in your opinion?
Interesting thread rehashing the circle jerk history of intellectuals stroking themselves that peace comes from diplomacy and appeasement of warring factions. Whatever happened to the plain old logic that justifies killing the murderers before they bomb or torture/murder more innocents. Killing those who fund, harbor and pull the strings on those who’s only daily job is planning murdering their local tribal rivals is totally justified. Therefore in Iraq the plan should be obvious to GWB. His soldiers will never ever be able to police that populist, hell bent on murdering their way into power.
Use the troop surge numbers to whack the death squads of both the Shia and Sunni with no mercy, or regard, to their respective puppet masters. Pull cell phones from all Iraqi troop commanders as the phone calls only go to their Mullah/Cleric factional politician masters to determine which side that days targeted murderers take orders from….
Then buildout fortified MaxMax type encampments for our Soldiers well outside the major Iraq cities. (5-7 bases) Only rapid response soldiers and support personel needed. If the Iraq gov’t calls on them to put down some live firing insurgent group they coming in shooting to kill till the firing stops. No prisoners taken and it’s up to the Iraquis to worry about the wounded. If they don’t like the results… don’t call.
Let the Iraq civil war take place as the world watches the true nature of the ME populous. One step backwards from just being African tribal cannibals. Meanwhile GWB knows only one mission OF ANY IMPORT,since 9/11. DISARM ISLAM. All news worthy of print screams out for this as the only road to world peace for all of humanity since 9/11.
GWB should immediately poor money and arms into Ethopia and any AU forces whacking the Islamists in Somelia. Back them up with US special forces and coastal patrols to make sure every gun toting Somolia Warlord and Al-Quada Jehadi gets killed or disarmed in the next 30 days. Make that hell hole terrorist breading Semolia (Thanks to Clinton’s whimpy cur-n-run move) be the model the Muzzie tyrants and liberal press have to look at daily. Disarm Islam starting with Somilia and trun it from a hopeless failed state into a self sufficent neighbor friendly country.
Then Bomb the crap out of Iran’s nuke plants, while making the Syria/Iraq/Iran border a shoot on site closed border area. Give the USA flyboys that job.
Yes. That should fix things up nicely Mike. How many troops would that take do you think?
I like the way that Mike suggests that Iraqis are almost cannibals while simultaneously advocating that US soldiers kill indiscriminately in order to sort out the Iraq mess. I mean, they could just nuke the whole region, it would be a lot cheaper…
By the way, I hope people picked up the sarcasm in my last comment.
“Make that hell hole terrorist breading Semolia (Thanks to Clinton’s whimpy cur-n-run move) …”
Yes! I agree! The crisis in Semolia threatens the world semolina crop! Something must be done, OR WE WILL HAVE NO PORRIDGE! And then the terrorists will have truly won.
In fairness to Clinton, he wanted to keep US forces in Somalia even after the Battle of Mogadishu, but Congressional Republicans were demanding that the US pull out, and they got their way.
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/who-wanted-to-cut-and-run-from-somalia.html
Mark: “You sure you’re not preparing for a shift from the far left to the far right, David?”
Look out, DJ, Mark’s apparently about to revoke your left-wing membership card over your views on Iraq.
It’s curious to me that, while the centre-left seems otherwise a reasonably tolerant broad church, Iraq seems to have become an acid test, and if you fail — i.e. by supporting the invasion — lefties start muttering that you no longer belong.
I’m thinking of the people writing how Christopher Hitchens should no longer be regarded as on the left, notwithstanding that on just about every other international issue he takes a position that no progressive would argue with (eg, on Pinochet, Kissinger, Palestinian self-determination, etc. etc.)
Mike,
As Clint Eastwood once said “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” It’s a pretty wise saying in all circumstances. (Even his, just after blowing up his boss in a car.) It also holds true for nations as well as people. Nations have their limits – even the United States.
So, Mike, in your extremely long and unhinged rant – did it occur to you that the US doesn’t have the resources any more? Or the manpower. You are aware that soldiers – even the national guard – are being stoplossed and sent back for their third or fourth term of duty. Or that military precruiters are so desperate that they’re now allowing the Category IV types – criminals and the less mentally well endowned. Or if the US decided to attack Iran, they’d retaliate by sealing up the Straits of Hormuz like a mosquitos bottom, send torpedos (really good Russian based ones, I hear) into the US Fleet, and hold American’s oil addiction to ransom?
Geez, man. Get a grip.
I am not well read enough to offer a quantitative opinion on this issue. Conceptually, however, the world trade centre event did not constitute an act of war. It was a very dramatic act of vandalism. Three thousand lives, two buildings and some planes lost to a nation the size of the US is as bee sting is to a person. The Titanic sinking was very as catastrophic.
The “war on terrorism” (that is really getting on my wick) and the The Iraq war (the Afghanistan war is different) amount to anihilating all sharks because of one shark attack at a beach. This whole horror show is about the egos of a few very immoral men.
There is an argument that says given 80% literacy in a population, freedom of speech, and 20 years or so and you get democracy. I think that events in Africa would require “and good will amoungst men” be added to the argument. Saddam Hussein would have eventually either died of old age Castro style, been deposed internally, or come of age Gadaffi style. Given his execution rantings “Iraq is nothing without me” I suspect the internal deposement was the only probable outcome. Regardless, America had no place being militarily involved. The external influence option is what should have happened. Given time Iraq will become truly democratic, for all of the right reasons.
The son of a friend of mine has done two tours to Iraq. His opinion is that the west does not have the moral (or rather immoral) structure to fight in this type of war. The opponent is absolutely ruthless. The only way to win is to be more ruthless. I agree with him. But this is not what the west does, so don’t be there. Nobody will win this war. It is a lose, lose, lose situation. So no matter what the US does the outcome will be the same. As Mark has suggested (I think).
You are probably correct in your assumption that the US would leave under those circumstances. But, as Wallerstein implies, Bush must ensure that those circumstances never arise.
What you don’t seem to appreciate is that the departure of US forces would entail the almost immediate termination of the political settlement (that is, constitutiional government) imposed by the COW on Iraq in the wake of the defeat of Saddam. In other words, the departure of the US would be the signal for the creation of an Islamist state dominated by the Shiites.
In other words, the US will have spent perhaps 2 trillion dollars and terminated thousands of lives in the cause of islamism.
The context of this discussion is the comments made by Immanuel Wallerstein:
Bush is now looking to his “legacy”. That is, Bush is worrying about what students will read about is presidency in their history textbooks. To leave Iraq under the circumstances outlined above is the ultimate humiliation. The American right have invested tremendous physical, psychological, emotional and political resources into laying the “ghost of Vietnam”. If Bush withdraws under the circumstances outlined above, not only are the Right not laying the “ghost of Vietnam”, they are giving that ghost a companion: the “ghost of Iraq”.
Therefore, if Bush wants to stay in Iraq in order to protect his “legacy”, he cannot tolerate Moqtada using the constitutional structures imposed by the US. Bush must therefore find some way of short-circuiting the Iraq constitution.
In other words, Bush must “destroy the constitution in order to save it.”
_________________
Albert Langer’s “Last Superpower Website” pushes a line which quite internally consistent: that the US has an historic mission to bring the world to a point where it is ripe for world anti-capitalist revolution. This is a return to the Menshevist line in Russia in 1917. From the point of view of the history of Marxist micro-splinter groups it is interesting that an old-line Leninist would return to a theoretical position of an anti-Leninist group.
But let’s face it folks. This whole dialectic thing is a museum piece. No one’s buying their product. In the meantime Langer gets his jollies embracing the occasional RWDB keyboard warrior who checks in for a chat about how great the US is doing in its historic mission. It’s comical.
I do not agree with your assumption that an Islamist government will terminate democracy or constitutional government.
And despite what Wallerstein thinks Bush must ensure, Iraq is simply not in Bush’s hands to decide. It is in the hand of the Iraqi people, where it should be.
Mike Hyland, on the other hand, indulges in a reactionary right-wing fantasy that the the USA could in some way impose its will in Iraq by killing many people. This strikes me as the sort of misanthropic argument that comes from people who advocating nuking Israel/Palestine into glass, so ‘neither of them can have it’, as though that conflict was two naughty children fighting over an ice cream.
BillB said:
Which is simply incorrect. Vandalism is painting ‘No War’ on the side of the Opera House and killing…um…that’s right, NO people.
War, on the other hand, consists of a deliberate attack designed to kill people and damage major facilities.
However, the ‘war on terror’ is a silly idea, as BillB suggests and it should be replaced with the idea of a war on tyrants:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/40790030864
I’m not sure which part of Last Superpower Katz read to get the idea that we think the USA has a ‘historic mission’ to get the world ready for revolution.
It is fairly standard Marxism that the way capitalism operates helps to make people aware of their own power and therefore brings a revolution closer (I would say ‘more likely’ rather than fall into the vulgar assumption that it is inevitable).
What LS does say is that, since 9-11, the ruling faction of the USA realises that it is no longer in the interests of the USA to suppress democracy around the world:
I’d also suggest that we would be living up to the worst stereotypes of sectarian far-leftists if we rejected an analysis that we thought was correct, simply because a different faction of the far left once believed it.
The fiercely expressed differences between Last Superpower, and the sort of right-wingers who have debated us can be seen here:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/372345705269/615058455005
where a right-winger angrily disagreed with our contention that the USA is weak and getting weaker, and also tried to justify the US policy of suppressing democracy over the last 60 years
and here:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/733832040553
Where the issue of capitalism vs socialism is being argued (quite poorly on my part)
As those two links demonstrate, LS goes far beyond “embracing the occasional RWDB keyboard warrior who checks in for a chat about how great the US is doing in its historic mission”, and actively seeks out those who differ so that our arguments do not get smug or stagnant.
Also, long comment is waiting moderation.
Bush has refused to accept that he’s in a losing position, and nothing will or can convince him otherwise. But he doesn’t matter.
What matters is the unity of American (and to a large extent, Australian) conservatism behind this case. Nobody currently involved in right-of-centre politics can convincingly distance themselves from this war. It is one thing to send troops to die in a war that can conceivably be won and will advance the interests of one’s nation, but now that it is clear this war is folly, it is a crime to send anyone else to die. While withdrawal would encourage terrorist attacks on the US (and not just from Islamists), the same may equally be said of persisting with the status quo.
But isn’t that the only choice we have? Maintain-the-rage Trotskyites on the left vs ex-Trotskyites like McGuinness or Windschuttle? Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right …
DJ, you’ve misunderstood the topic of conversation.
It’s not my assumption that’s being discussed here. It’s Bush’s assumption. If Bush’s advisors were able to convince Bush that after the US withdraws its troops, Iraq would take on the appearance of a working constitutional government more or less along the lines, then Bush, attentive to his “legacy”, might accept this supposition as an adequate grounds upon which to declare “victory” and then bug out. Wallerstein is arguing, and i’m inclined to agree with him, that Bush does not believe that this will be the outcome. Rather, the Islamists will quickly take over and the Bush “legacy” will be in the toilet.
There is another possible interpretation of Bush’s actions. It could be argued that he actually believes that Iraq will turn out OK, and that constitutional fors will be maintained. However, this argument goes, he must pretend to far the opposite in order to justify pursuing a continued geo-political presence in the region. Something similar happened in the case of the aborted handover of the Panama Canal Zone back in the 1980s. (FWIW, I don’t think this is guiding Bush’s thinking at the moment, but it may be guiding the thinking of some of is advisors, notably Cheney. It might be argued, though I have absolutely no evidence to support the proostion, that Cheney views his task to be to link these two views to cement a US military presence in Iraq.)
The Iraqi people have the capability of ensuring that Bush’s bellicosity fails. But they can’t stop him from trying, even if Moqtada gets his resolution through the Parliament.
(Earlier post spaminated.)
Katz:
Muqtada al-Sadr as Saddam Hussein’s hangman? Unlikely but not abso;lutely impossible (especially because of the death of his father)…. Wow! That’s one story that would keep conspiracy theorists busy for years ….
Mike Hyland [at 1:09am]
Even better are tactics that make terrorists/murderers forget all about their plans and find something more legal to do instead …..
From Tom’s Dispatch:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=153798
Listen to Iron Mike Hyland. He knows how to think like conqueror when conquering those who deserve to be conquered. By conquerors.
You must use all at your disposal – duodec, supermaulers, raving beams of energy, the boot and whip – without mercy when extending benevolent rule of Boskone to lesser beings. Any weakness would be sign of weakness.
But why oh Iron Mike are you wasting your wisdom on these soft juicy foolish Tellurians here? Your insights of penetration should relayed instead perforce on communication override beam to those who really need your strategy and tactical like CentCom, Pentagon and SecDef.
Mark
Of course he would not. There is no tenure in that pose anymore. We are all âprogressivesâ? now! Oh yes, the occasional humanities academic on the make might whisper sweet-Trotskyisms into a colleagueâs ear as they crank up Dylanâs âBlowinâ in the Windâ? and share another joint, but by Monday morning, it will be back to âOrientalism,â? âthe other,â? âthe genocidal aim of European colonialism,â? âethnic cleaning on âOccupied Palestine,â? and so on.
Indeed the last person to declare proudly his Insternational Socialist and Trot-cred was probably Isaac Deutscher and the bloke before that ended up with an ice-pick in the back of his head during a vacation in Acapulco. Oh, and I suspect that David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens might also have exchanged sweet-Trotskyisms circa 1962, and maybe Eric Hobsbawm and Tariq Ali still plot and plan.. So, yes, I concede that point that Wallerstein might not describe himself as a Trot nowadays, but how he âseesâ? himself is another matter. Iâve read him. And if it walks like a Trot and talks like a Trotâ¦â¦
Katz
Yes, I agree. I would find it difficult, even in a paid debate, to argue the contrary. However, on the question of whether or not the U.S. itself is in a losing situation, I remain agnostic. I know that puts me at odds with 99.95% of those with IQs above 85, but I have come over all Chairman Mao-like and think it is âtoo soon to tell.â?
On the domestic political-front Wallerstein argues âthe Iraq policy has caused serious inroads on the Republican party’s electoral strength.â? I think this is an oversimplification.. I would argue there was not much âelectoral strengthâ to start with.
Remember, 2004 was won by means foul not fair. 2006 merely saw a drop in the anti-Michael Moore vote (as he sensibly stayed in his Upper West Side penthouse eating cheeseburgers from November 2004 until now) and a drop in the fundy-vote, as Xians have come to realize the Republicans have only been using the fundies all along.
Wallerstein continues
Wallersteinâs riff could have come straight from Comintern circa 1925: You know capitalism = imperialism = genocide. Trotsky, Deutscher, John Docker, and Dirk Moses would be pleased as punch with that quote. In fact, the real ethnic cleansing will begin after the U.S. withdraws. Just as it did in Vietnam, Rwanda, etc.
James Baker asks âWho is the American dog in the Iraqi fight?â? The âAmerican dogâ? in the Iraq fight is the same one it always has been; the continuation of a cheap and stable flow of O-I-L. And that means locking in Iraqâs oilfields, Saudi oilfields, and the Gulf states.
Letâs face it, if the U.S. does not, somebody else will! And through all this where does the fact that Baker is one of the Saudisâ oil-bitches fit into the picture?
This is a hard one. Later down you quote that even Wallerstein agrees that an extra 300,000 troops could probably defeat both the civil war and the insurgency. I think this bit of whimsy actually holds the key to any salvaging that Bush might be able to achieve.
Wallerstein is surely right to point to the current political climate (especially with a Bolshie, hungry, and invigorated Dems taking the reigns of Congress for the first time in 12 years). But does this extra 300,000 troops have to come from the parents of U.S. citizens??? Hmmmâ¦..
A couple of weeks ago, the Saudis warned the U.S. that if they were to withdraw from Iraq, the Saudis would flood the Sunni insurgents with money and arms. Now, that threat must be largely chutzpah! I mean, what have they been doing up until now? Keeping their petrodollars under the mattress and withholding pocket money from Suicide Bombers R Us?
What this highlights is my greatest criticism of Wallerstein and all his fellow Trotskyist and Leninist vanguards whether they are Green Left Weekly types, Edward Said-sprouting tenured radicals, Tariq Ali, Hobsbawm, Miliband, or Chrsitopher Hitchens and David Horowitz circa 1965. And that is the presumption that expansionist capitalism, driven spatially by the contradictions inherent in the labour theory of value, that enmesh the entire globe and produces âhistoryâ? is located solely in western Europe and the United States. As though only white Xians can be imperialists, .res ipsa loquitur
They all conveniently ignore that imperialism was born in the middle east – Persia, Egypt, Assyria, and on to the Umayyad (both Damascus and al-andalus), Abbasid, Mughal, and finally Ottoman. And let us not forget putative usurpers such as the Mamluks. Now, of course none of this denies the imperial imprint of the Phoenecians, Greeks, Hellenes, Carthaginians, Romans, Han Chinese, Spanish, French, and British empires on the world today.
And of course, it goes without saying that the imperial heirs of various combinations and permutations of the aforementioned in the form of Soviet Communist and U.S. capitalist imperialism irradiate the globe most forcefully at present; including the Middle East itself. (And yes, I know the Soviet empire has been dead for nearly two decades!)
BUT, anybody who thinks the heirs of Abu Bakr and Ali picked up their tent pegs and went home to sulk after the signing of Sykes-Picot, Balfour, the Treaty of Versailles, and the takeover of Turkey by secularist gangsters banning the public-wearing of hijabs has got rocks in his/her head.
Indeed, throughout the post-Ottoman period the disparate pretenders to be the next Saladin riding a white Arab-charger into Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus, and Cordoba cheering âAllah Akbar, Jews, Crusaders, infidels and Shia begoneâ? OR ââ¦â¦â¦.and Sunnis begone) have been jousting and blowing everything up they possibly can.
But now, with the U.S. having dissolved the glue of terror that Saddam had used to keep all this jousting largely from view, we see what has actually been happening. The Wallerstein system is all âsurplus value,â? âtendency for the average rate of profit to fall,â? âincreasing concentration and centralization of capital,â? âcurrent crisis of capitalism,â? âimperialism is the highest form of late finance capitalismâ? and not enough Weber for my liking.
The Wallerstein-setâs mindset cannot and does not factor in the possibility of transcendent motivations and energies such as you know, religion? Weber did well on this point, but we have yet to see the emergence of a prophet who might be able to âsystematizeâ? the power of the words of Allah spoken through his archangel Gabriel and remembered and recited by his prophet Muhammad (peace be on him
)
This threat of the Saudis to the Americans really requires a systematic historiography, if not a punditry that can âgetâ? this. My take is a looming global Sunni-Shia showdown over who gets to rule the new Caliphate. Now, things have clearly changed since those halcyon days in Damascus, Bagdad, and Istanbul.
For one, the Shia have merged with the proud imperial tradition of the Persians, and they have upped-sticks to Tehran.. The Shia now has modern-style hierarchy and governance appropriate for any budding 21st empire. The governance of the ayatollahs is not exactly what you or I might want in Canberra or Washington (please spare us the jokes about Xian ayatollahs on Howardâs front-bench and in the Capitol!). By contrast, the Sunnis have never been able, or have never wanted to. They still prefer to talk of the waqf, âThe Muslim nationâ? and such.
While Farouq, Abdallah, al-Husseini, the Brotherhood, and Faisal fiddled, Palestine burned. The KGBâs tutorials in Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and The Protocols of the Elder Zion to Nasser, Michel Aflaq, the Assads, Qaddafi, and their star pupil Yasser Arafat, certainly provided the world with some fireworks, but basically sent the Empire of Islam back to the stone-age.
The current Lenin-meets-Trotsky-meets-Muhammad vanguardists of Al-Quada, Hamas, JI, Islamic Jihad, and the various caliphs-in-short-pants from al-Sadr to al-Sistani simply have not evolved the necessary structures to run even Gaza, let alone âthe Arab nation.â? And let us not even mention the Kurds!
Of course, this reality is very well appreciated by the Saladin-in-short-pants du jour. Moqtada al-Sadr. If he can succeed in creating anarchy, it provides an environment for him to emerge as Saladin and perhaps even Muhammad! In a fight between Saudi money, Sunni foot soldiers, Al-Quada, etc. versus Iranâ¦my money is on Iran, and so would wise greenbacks!
Now this analysis by no means precludes the mind-boggling calculation of where alliances might fall once lines in the sand (pun intended) are drawn. Will Iraqi Shia join forces with Iraqi and extra-Iraqi Sunnis and fight against Iranian Shia? Who knows? Will Al-Quada and Hamas support a Saudi-financed war?
This brings up the next player in the Imperial chess board – the âmoderateâ? Muslim states of Jordan and Egypt. Jordan, Egypt, S. Arabiaâs support of the west-backed Abbas has pushed Hamas into the arms of Hizbollah and Iran. Now, this alliance could not surely survive an all-out intra-Islam civil war fight for the caliphate, but for now, it sure does muddy the waters.
The U.S. might be able to pacify significantly one enemy by supporting it against the other enemy. The diplomacy with Iran still has a way to go before even the Americans can decide that one. If I were Josh or Toby or CJ in White House? I would advise Bush âto do a Nixonâ? and to hitch a ride on the next flight to the Peking of 2007 – Tehran. This is a wild-card, I know. But I think it would throw such a spanner in the whole emerging geopolitical square-off that it could pay incalculable dividends.
That is, turn Iran into an ALLY. Cut out the middle-pests of Russia, France, and China! Imagine how stroppy the Saudis would be. Oh, and for those who foolishly think the âPalestinian issueâ? is even a real player in all this, this alliance would defuse that one real quick. But hey, what I would know?
p.s. I enjoyed the Albert langer link! In the grand tradition of Marxist anti-Semitism from Marx himself to Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, and many of the current microwaved Trots strutting about in Foucault-drag wearing Said-stilettos!
Christine Keeler
It is hard to separate where the grievances and hatreds of âordinaryâ? Iraqis lies. With the U.S. for inflaming the civil war? Or with actual dudes who are blowing their friends and family to smithereens?
Me suspects that if the Iraqi people could feel confident that a stronger U.S. presence could rid them of the insurgents, they would probably opt for the Americans. BUT, the Americans have promised much both in 1991 and 2003, and delivered little. So who knows?
David Jackmanson
Bingo David! This has been disastrous for the U.S. But given the dynamics of the Cold War, it is doubtful the U.S had any other choice. Unfortunately trying to reverse this Cold War strategy and âlet the democracy flowâ? is proving to be no walk-in-the-park.
Egypt is small fry and is so dependent on U.S. aid (all the rabid Israel-haters are forever silent on the fact that Egypt has been getting almost as much as Israel since 1978) it will do as it is told; which at the moment is to keep the lid on Hamas and support anti-Hizbollah policies. This is proving a nightmare for Mabarak, especially with a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood.
Hallelujah!!! If there has been one drag on improving geopolitics over the past generation it is this phoney banging on about âinternational law.â? As if the PLO, China, Russia, Hamas, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistanâ¦â¦has ever given a tinkerâs cuss about âinternational law.â? The Arab League does not even recognize the UNDHR. It has its very own Muhammad-inspired version!
I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. This constant claim that America must âsolve the Palestinian issue if we are ever to have peace in the Middle Eastâ? would have to be the biggest con since pet rocks! The Palestinians are irrelevant to the oil and imperialism politics taking place in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States. The solving of the âPalestinian issueâ? has always been in the hands of the Palestinians themselves followed by the Arab League, and of course up until 1990, the Soviet Union.
Each party has wilfully chosen to throw kerosene up the âissueâ? so they continue committing their atrocities and pillage unnoticed. (See discussion on uslim imperial brawls above) It is high time the rest of the world moved this issue to page 14. The issue will not receive any sincere attention until the imperial showdown pans out. Where the West Bank and Gaza will fit in is anybodyâs guess. As part of a Greater Syria? An expanded Jordan? Some sort of Saudi, Jordan, Syrian, Lebanon confederation? Who knows?
Mark
Yes, and often are replaced with even more hideous regimes. Look how many lives Yasser Arafat had The Kim Jon-Ils Stalin. Mao. Castro.
Hmmmmâ¦such pro-American outcomes as say the fall of the Shah? Nasserâs coup? The election of Hamas? Chavez? For the U.S. to have sat back and waited would basically have handed over Iraqâs opened oil fields and reconstruction contracts to the French, Germans, Chinese, and Russians. You donât think they vetoed the U.S. invasion for âhumanitarianâ? reasons, do you?
It would have handed the oil-trading fiat over to the euro, and sent the U.S. into lows so scary, I donât think any of us want to imagine. A frightened impoverished U.S. with enough bombs, gun, and military aircraft to pacify Jupiter is not something I would like to see agitated in my life time thank you very much.
Actually no. See my analysis above on imperialism. Also what your analysis does is to commit the same somewhat âracistâ error of Wallerstein and others. The sin of âOccidentalismâ? which sees the white Xian west as uniquely diabolical and capable of imperialist meddling.
Once again it totally strips the Islamic world of any agency and either discounts or misunderstands the strength of the Islamic imperial imagination and the reality of its history. One huge and decisive actor all these analyses mischievously sweep under the carpet is a little player known as the Soviet Union.
A fact of human social life is that once you take that first step away from autarky all bets are offâ¦Eggs and omelettesâ¦
Mark, the inaction in Darfur is due to your good pal, âinternational law.â? The newly constituted Human Rights Council has had 8 Resolutions before it thus far. It passed 6, all condemning Israel, it rejected one condemning Sudan! Who was behind this rejection? China, the Arab League, and other African states. And who is the biggest provider of aid and capital to develop Sudanâs oil fields? China And people wonder why Israel is cynical about UN Resolutions and so-called âinternational law.â?
Katz
Oh please Katz, leave Derrida and Chomsky in the seminar room.
Interesting that you are comfortable identifying a âthemâ? and âtheir culturesâ? but are bamboozled by who âweâ? are. And why the constant scare quotes?
Sat out? Hmmmâ¦tell that to the millions of dead Vietnamese, 50,000 U.S. and 500 Australian troops. Tell that to the Iranian people, the Indonesians, the East Timorese, North Koreans, Chileans, the Lebanese, the Cambodians, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the poor under Reaganomicsâ¦
Huh? You seem rather obsessed, John, with hunting out overtones of TEH EVIL POST-STRUCTURALISM (not that Chomsky has any theoretical affinity with Derrida, but that’s another story). Hence the bizarre over-analysing of Wallerstein’s straightforward argument – which you contend is in some way reminiscent of the “Comintern circa 1925″.
You seem to have missed the irony that the only person on this thread who actually believes in revolutionary Marxism, David Jackmanson, is someone with whom you substantially agree.
But let’s please stop with the ideological policing and stick to the strategic arguments.
But JG,
It’s easy to tell when you’ve run out of actual argument:
1.
2.
3
This is when you have no valid criticism of Wallerstein and then start banging on about his supposed theoretical starting points. You have not demonstrated any necessary (or even casual!) connection between Wallerstein’s observations and analysis of Bush’s predicament and any theoretical framework that may or may not underpin his thinking on this or other issues.
And point 3. Oh dear … what on earth does it have to do with Bush’s predicament and how he may attempt to retrieve himself?
Note how throughout you’ve conflated the fate of Bush with the fate of the United States. Fortunately for the United States, with some intelligent policy making, after Bush’s departure, much of the damage done by Bush can be repaired, in time.
And then there’s this one:
Perhaps you should try to get away from the shadow world of critical theory a little more often.
The “we” I was referring to was a very practical question: who is prepared to support any project (like for example the invasion of Iraq), with what level of commitment, and for how long? As we have seen, the much vaunted Coalition of the Willing was in fact a the biggest assemblage of dwarfs since they filmed the Wizard of Oz. Bush has discovered to his cost that he simply doesn’t have the throw-weight to get his way in Iraq. Derrida has nothing to do with it.
Thus, the “them” is also a practical issue. “We” wish to change “their” society without being forced to accept changes to “our” own. That is the essence of regime change. If the project of regime change is successful, then the victor powers enjoy a moment of success that may fuel hubris, but nothing much else changes. If on the other hand the project of regime change fails, then all sorts of political, social, cultural and spiritual consequences arise. The most famous of these, I suppose, is the dreaded Vietnam Syndrome.
As for your comments about the Soviet Union, they’re just too silly.
Mark (on Tomgram):
That’s what we used to call the Sadim Touch – the Midas Touch in reverse – should we now call it the Saddam Touch?
John Greenfield:
These people have a very long history of being double-crossed and of having been promised so much so many times and getting nothing.
Just over an hour ago, ABC Radio National re-broadcast (and maybe podcast too?) its short history of archaelogist and political officer, Miss Gertrude Bell, whose excellent advice, based on her thorough knowledge of these people, their languages and their aspirations, was repeatedly ignored in London. The inevitable result of this haughty stupidity was armed uprising and the deaths of thousands of Arabs as well as heavy casualties on the British side.
Sound familiar?
Re my arguments on which “dog” the U.S. has in this fight.
Sorry, URL didn’t link.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece
One suspects that the sectarian violence, courtesy of sectarian death squads is part of the US strategy of managing the internal politics of Iraq by other means. It seems that some of the death squads and militias are kept in existence by supply of arms, money, equipment and training by the US. A.K. Gupta makes a good case:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/gupta0505.html
Apart from making the public pronouncements by J. Howard, T. Blair and G.W. Bush grossly hypocritical, the policy makes perfect sense if you want to destabilise the country to the extent that no one strong faction gains ascendance. Very democratic.
BTW. Whom are Australians actually training in Iraq?
Sir Henry, you demonstrate touching faith in the suppleness of the Bush Clique mind.
If your argument were true, did the Bush Clique also factor in the very unfortunate domestic political consequences of their allegedly macchiavellian manipulation of Iraq?
I think not.
P.S. Australian taxpayers are training an arm of the Shiite militia.
Let’s face it, “victory” in Iraq is a piñata on a bungee cord and the Bushistas are not only blindfolded but in the wrong room, waving a cheap plastic flyswatter about, while myopic pundits shout “Warmer! Warmer! No! Colder! Warmer!”.
Katz, it’s a Hydra or perhaps even a Typhon. And they (it) will try anything.
If we’re referencing mythical beasties here Sir Henry, I would have red penned and underlined “Chimera!” in the margin of all the memorandums and dispatches crossing my desk about this issue.
Or “Scylla and Charybdis” if I had any faith in how the current generation of FCO sprogs were being exposed to all the Greek they could eat.
As far as I can tell from a breathless report(er) on George Negus’ show last year, they’d given up training anyone at all and were pointlessly driving around in circles in the desert waiting for people to shoot at them.
“they’d given up training anyone at all and were pointlessly driving around in circles in the desert waiting for people to shoot at them.”
Their last officially announced raison d’etre for being there was to defend the descendents of the Japanese that fought to the bloody death with their ancestors, as they (the JDF) built a bridge. And as Graham Bell pointed out, where’s the pics of this bloody bridge anyway on the ADF or DFAT sites?
And while Jack Strocchi and I may have a slight and querulous divergence of views from time to time, I do agree with his observation that Howard has played the matter of ADF engagement in Iraq very cleverly. High profile, big kudos from Bush, low danger and excelllent C4I/logistics training and material testing for patrolling and securing a big hot dusty remote frontier.
There is method in their madness dept: Before we get too superior and smug, consider the Mark Steyn (the Canadian lunar right columnist) thesis: the idea is NOT to stabilise the country and build a democracy – that is just ideological agit-prop – but to destabilise the polity so that no-one strongman or faction or theocracy emerges. The idea is that this will make the factions perpetually in flux and at war with each other. See Palestine, see Lebanon. It is not as if the US has not attempted a policy of destabilisation before.
Sir Henry has a point that is too easily misrepresented. I find it very likely that the US wants a weak and divided Iraq. However this does not mean I believe that Bush is ecstatic that Baghdad is over-run with death squads. There is a happy median the US is trying to reach. But I cannot see why the US would be bed-wetting that things are taking longer than expected to get to a satisfactory level. Sure, it’s costing a tad more now, than they would have liked, but the long-term is where it’s at. Well according to them, anyway.
The ironic thing is that for the sake of the Iraqis, I hope the US does prevail. The alternative is misery for a very long time – given my pessimism the US will ever leave of its own accord (and obviously, the inability of Iraqis to unify and resist the siren-calls of internecine bloodshed and revenge).
Everyone:
After Bush and his courtiers have got themselves into a catastrophic defeat through their own foolishness comes R & R.
No, not Rest and Recreation …. Retribution and Reparations.
We should be able to pay for all that through a continuing Levy on our cheap petrol. How does six dollars a litre sound? Adjusted for inflation (or hyperinflation), of course. Naturally, politicians will still be able to claim that we have cheap petrol …. pity about the levy though.
wbb: There ought to be nothing ironic in you wishing, for the sake of the Iraqi people, further success to the Bush Administration in their efforts to liberate the peoples of Iraq. I say further success because what is seen by pseudo-leftists and open right wingers as a disaster has been the launching of the bourgeois revolution that while fought out first in Iraq must now inevitably spread to the entire region and far beyond.
Think of how we watched as the police states of Eastern Europe collapsed over as little as fifteen years and you will get the point. This country is having a revolution and it will be less bloody the more the forces of reaction (islamo-fascists either Sunni Baathists or Jihadists or Shia death squad varieties) are suppressed and intimidated as the forces for democracy (note mostly islamists but also the minority secularists and other minorities) grow in number training and equipment. The Coalition facilitates that force development.
This revolution is a fantastic undertaking and is now rolling (note that a further 20,000 battle hardened peshmerga are on their way to Baghdad, to match an equal number of US troops to take the fight right up to the three enemies of modernity that are attacking the peoples of Iraq who so bravely voted for a constitution and representatives in their new proportionally representative democracy).
Coalition forces destroying the Baathist led regime from the Sunni minority, (20% ruling 80%), and disbanding the Baathists very powerful armed forces was always going to be the best way forward for this revolution. Those who think that the unarmed Iraqi masses from the 80% would have liberated themselves ‘cheaper’ can not possibly grasp what it means to have twice as many killed in one day of gas attacks against the Kurds than the Coalition has suffered in almost 4 years.
Now there is a Sunni insurgency because they are upset about being overthrown but there is no way back for them to rule over the 80% so they will have to adjust! The new oil arrangement will guarantee them their fair share of the nation’s wealth.
The Jihadists from throughout the region (that have been fighting everything to do with the revolutions that stem from the Enlightenment) are committing little 9/11s every day on the Iraqi peoples in order to foment civil war and kill the hated Shia; they are to be expected as the typical mosquitoes from the swamp. The people of the region must drain the swamp that breeds them.
That leaves the Shia death squads that have shown a healthy respect for avoiding US fire power so more of that power being placed before them as the Iraqi army and police gets built and then rebuilt and rebuilt to root out the sectarians is a good thing well overdue.
The project at this point is to make a start on the modernization project. It will not look like the advanced western democracies for perhaps a hundred years. Think of Australia the US and Britain 100 years ago and think of yourself as a black, homosexual woman and you will get the drift. But ‘all political power grows out the barrel of a gun’ and the enemy is slaughtering the Iraqi masses on a daily basis so it is no time to withdraw any Coalition forces.
The properly elected government of Iraq is requesting assistance and in the interests of progressives the world over ought to get it. The Iraqi leadership and Bush are learning to make the revolution by making revolution. The Coalition will go home in a few years but the Iraqi masses have nowhere else to go and they deserve our full support after western imperialist governments backed their oppressors for the last 80 years.
BTW; the oil nonsense is about to be dragged out again as the government of Iraq has decided to do deals with western firms that are identical to the deals done by Lenin in his day! The pseudo left is about to run around telling everyone prepared to listen that they told us it was a war for oil etc. Yet they could never explain (after the Iraqi elections) how you can nick oil without installing puppets. Now they think that deals such that Lenin was also prepared to do, somehow explain the trick! Perhaps they will start their explanations with why Lenin was a puppet of western capitalists. I’m looking forward to that.
patrickm
That’s fairly bizarre, patrickm, because once Iraq had a substantial bourgeoisie but now most middle class educated people are dead or have fled.
But I’m not entirely sure whether you’re trying to be ironic or not.
Well all this tea-leaf reading about the USA’s cunning Machiavellian strategies simply underlines the fact that There Was No Fucking Plan In The First Place And We Are Now Just Making It Up As We Go Along.
Yep, agreed.
Whatever the Baath were running was not a democracy. 2005 saw a democracy emerge, and those millions of purple fingers shame all that would claim to be of the left who would yet abandon those peoples. Their democracy will develop and though it has enemies from within, it cannot possibly be progressive to turn your back on a fight with the worlds most virulent reactionaries leaving the democratic minded peoples of Iraq to their fate.
And the idea that ‘There Was No Fucking Plan In The First Place And We Are Now Just Making It Up As We Go Along.’ ‘Yep, agreed.’, is a total admission that you both are unable to work out what the Bush administration were doing in the interests of their class and their country at all. You may as well say as others do that they are crazies etc. This is not analysis so it’s no wonder that you have never heard of leftists defending the liberation of Iraq. You are not really into analysis. From my POV Local and foreign racists and sectarians of the most vicious kinds from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and so forth together with residual Baathists (with a shockingly racist history) are now waging their vicious racist war against the Iraqi peoples’ who are trying to build a country based on their non-racist constitution.
Anti-racist activists, irrespective of what our stance has been up-to-date, now have to come to terms with the new reality. It is as profound a turnaround for some as was the ending of the America First movement after 07/12/1942.
The Iraqi peoples had three elections in 2005, ending in a very good result for them and leaving the Western anti war movement in a shambles.
Your problem is that you are blind to the real reason the U.S. ruling elite decided to go to war.
Bush is no lefty because he is waging this war in the interests of his class, and it is only incidentally in the interests of the oppressed peoples’ in the Middle East. He has become a progressive-right-winger because history thrust greatness upon him. He asked the big questions that had to be asked, after 9/11. What more can they do to us? …Well, Mr. President they will, if not stopped, eventually get hold of a nuke and destroy Washington or some other city. What strategy must we adopt to defeat them? Mr. President we must set down policies to turn every country in the world into a modern (bourgeois) democracy. If all countries look, and smell like Sweden and France, we will have won. The world needs sewerage systems for the smell, and industrialization for the sewerage systems; it needs education for the industrialization, and it needs basic bourgeois political freedoms to permit the education… We must stop doing what we have been doing for the whole post WW2 period. We must reverse all our old policies. These mosquitoes are attacking us because we caused a swamp in the Middle East which breeds them! We must drain that swamp, and then there will be no more mosquitoes. Mr. President there is no other way of winning this war…. (At least that is what I would tell him if I was in the war cabinet).
Without a doubt there needed to be a war cabinet formed after 9/11 and all the old junk US policies dumped! They have been and good riddance.
patrickm
Correction:
I misread the figures on the numbers of peshmerga being deployed to Baghdad. There will be about 2,400 (not 20,000) and about another 1,200 troops from the south of Iraq.
patrickm
Bush as incarnation of some world historical progressive reverse Hegelian geist?
So have you Marxist stay the coursers signed the Euston Manifesto yet?
http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=1
This war has certainly produced some bizarre alignments.
No, because it is a left-liberal movement, not a revolutionary one.
And herein we begin the descent into fantasyland. Please do enlighten us of the plan whereby a weak, divided, sectarian government will deliver victory for the Iraqi working class.
And patrickm, where do you get the idea that your post passes as ‘analysis’?
No. The Eustonites are pretty well apologists for Zionism (look at how they mostly went to water during Israel’s latest mass murder episode in Lebanon).
But why dodge the genuinely big question of the need for Bush to call a war cabinet? Why run from the requirement to speak to that cabinet in the terms that I spoke (and that you would so clearly agree with I think)? Why doubt that that type of reasoning (that is the essence of what Chomsky was on about as well) could also be understood and accepted by the Bushies as representatives of that other great class of modernity (you remember them they are the ruling class the bourgeois)? Why have the Bushies made the speeches along the lines of ‘we are abandoning our old policies of tolerating tyrannies that have not made us safe’? (note they can’t tell the truth that they installed and propped them up!) Why are the so called realists all fuming that their lives work has been dumped like the garbage that it always was?
It appears you have been hiding from these elephantine dilemmas long enough and the issues have had time to really mature.
And tell me why are people dragging up the oil issues that are being handled by the Iraqi government in identical terms to the way that Lenin handled them and you as a leftist go quiet and instead resort to some comforting chatter about how stupid the Bushies are because they have no plan. Obviously that war cabinet that you agree ought to be called together after 9/11 came up with a plan. What do you say that plan was? It can’t have been let’s go to the Midddle East and start a war to nick oil by allowing the peoples of the country we invade to choose their own political leaders! Are the Iraqi government the result of a free and fair election process driven by the Iraqi people themselves?
patrickm
Sorry patrickm, I think I get it now. So the idea is to go for global democratic revolution?
Ludicrous. How difficult is it to oppose a dumb-arse, counterproductive occupation? Only the Marxians would turn such a simple matter into a knock-down battle between themselves.
I won’t be satisfied until I hear someone accused of deviationism.
I denounce Liam as a Deviationist Lackey who must be purged from the party organs!
I am not sure what Christine Keeler’s and Liam’s sneers above are meant to be saying.
I don’t understand why explaining that revolutionary leftists don’t join left-liberal organisations or movements, even if they are allied on certain points, is a “descent into fantasyland”.
And given that I just explained that the Euston Manifesto is a left-liberal project that supports the Iraq war, I don’t understand why Liam appears to assert that ‘only the Marxians’ are divided on the issue.
It’s fairly difficult to oppose something you support, especially if you disagree that it is ‘dumb-arse’ and ‘counterproductive’.
Actual arguments that can be engaged with, as opposed to sneers and cheap shots, would be welcome.
Irony overload.
No Christine I don’t think you get it at all. If you did you would put yourself at the war cabinet table and offer your solution. You would acknowledge that 9/11 required such a war cabinet response and you would acknowledge that the war required a strategy for victory; endless killing of individual mosquitoes will not do it, we must drain the swamp that produces the Jihadies. The US have had so called ‘realist’ policies since WW2 that have kept that swamp going and that delivered 9/11. Those old policies failed as the left always said they would. Reversing those old policies was essential. Getting behind the people of the region instead of standing in their way is the key.
The US has done a 180 that is what causes the cognitive dissonance.
So the idea is for the pseudo-left to get with the global democratic revolution that is happening either with you or without you. Some pseudo-leftists are now clearly on the side with the Baathists, Jihadies and Shia death squads hoping for the defeat of the current Iraqi government and their Coalition allies!
Abandoning the Iraqi government when they require assistance in fighting the enemy of all modernity is no way to go and the masses will not take to the streets to demand it.
In the Vietnam War we were proud to chant ‘one sides right the others wrong victory to the Viet Cong’ we wanted the defeat of our government that was preventing democratic elections because they did not want Ho to be victorious in those elections.
They are now in the position of launching a war where the only outcome would be the election of anti American islamist parties BUT they know that it is those islamists developing their own societies through the struggle for democracy that will defeat the Jihadies.
Looked at from this perspective this war has Clausewitz blessing!
The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander must make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.
—Carl von Clausewitz, On War
The war I am describing is the only war that has any prospect of victory.
patrickm
Well it wasn’t so much your refusal to sign onto the Euston Manifesto, as the discredited hankering after some form of world revolution.
– http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/gupta0505.html
It may be useful for particpants in this discussion to take a moment to read Gupta’s report by going to the link above.
The US is not ‘In the U.S. war against Iraq’! The US is in a war against Baathists Jihadists and Shia death squads as allies with the elected Iraqi government! When that government asks them to go home in a few years time they will. To think that they could defy the will of the Iraqi peoples as expressed through their government is to profoundly not understand the limit of US power in this era.
Avoid this foolish thinking that ignores the election where millions of brave Iraqi peoples defied the orders of the bombers and voted. Those elections sunk Z net types see my article
Chomsky – drowning not waving
Arn’t some of those Shia death squads associated with the elected Iraqi Government.
Yes they are. Some have been playing democrat by day and death squad sectarian by night as it were. They have to be exposed, broken with and defeated. That is what the current realignment of forces is all about. That is what the Baghdad focus is all about. That is why the peshmerga troops are also coming into the city. They bolster the reliable part of the army and police (who have been heavily infiltrated). Nobody ought to think that draining a swamp is not hard.
What is it with some of these ultra-left ‘revolutionaries’ that they have such a loose grasp on reality?
Good god, the Iraqi government survives with the support of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shia death squads. Who do you think those people were screaming abuse at Saddam during his recent botched
lynchinghanging?I might also remind you that the police force is a by-word for Shia militias, to the extent that the British blew up Basra police station before Christmas.
Mate, your bloke was topped about seventy years ago. The Fourth International is no more. The Soviet Union has collapsed. The project has run its course. World revolution has passed its use by date.
Just give it up.
‘…a loose grasp on reality?’ So you are not prepared to sit at the war cabinet table and tell them what is to be done, and you think I have a loose grasp. Hmm.
The Iraqi government does not survive ‘with the support of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shia death squads.’ The forces involved are being realigned and there is a big struggle involved and unfolding as we speak (Google Maliki). As to ‘Who do you think those people were screaming abuse at Saddam during his recent botched lynching hanging?’ Well it is my understanding that you have been taken in a by appearances. Fat boy Sadr did not drop from the sky he is the son of the most important Shia Cleric that Saddam excecuted and that was what the couple of Shia guards were reminding him of. But this Tyrant got what was coming to him and the other tyrants ought to take note.
As for your ideas about the end of history, you are just diverting attention from the issues that you are quite unable to deal with (by attempts to shoot the messenger ie who was my ‘bloke was topped about seventy years ago.’)? It is you who has to give up the notion that the US has not dumped it’s old discredited policies and changed direction.
I’m surprised there isn’t a revival of the Spanish Civil War Red Brigades where revolutionaries around the world rush to volunteer to fight in Iraq? Good luck working out which side to fight on.
Oh, and who should we be clubbing together to buy a train ticket for?
Patrickm [1249pm 9th Jan]:
Lenin’s hypocrisy was quite consistent …. the analogy doesn’t quite work with oil today because way back then, although there were rival “imperialist” powers (And the Bolsheviks weren’t? Come on now!) there was nothing like China in 2007 on the world stage. Not even the rich, influential USA of the ‘Twenties had such an impact.
Speaking of China, wonder what tangle of convoluted deals and what outrageous costs (and not just in money either) would get several divisions of the Chinese PLA to pop over into Iraq and save Mr H W Bush from eternal damnation with their own unique version of The Surge?
What a bizarre Trotskyist remnant: A Dead Parrot in Sheep’s Clothing.
Mark says;
‘John, I’m not in the habit of judgeing the quality of analysis by the politics of the analyst.’
Oh yes you are, as a review of your comments in reply to me shows. You just don’t care when they agree with you!
Now rather than debate that rather common problem and diversion tactic when people can’t deal with the issue, why not try the more novel approach of placing yourself at the war cabinet table that Christine couldn’t manage either?
I have openly stated the argument that I would put to that cabinet why not try to defeat my argument with your own? The US has changed course!
Graham Bell; I honestly can’t make sense of your post.
Do you think that the war was about oil and that the US intended to hold free and fair election that everyone knew would see anti US political forces win a majority in, in order to get these non puppets to sell out their countries interests, by doing the same deals that Lenin did? Do you think this because rival imperialisms now exist as they did in the 1920s?
If you do then just slow down long enough to doubt that a countries resources can be stolen in this manner and that a more rational explanation of how the world works should be sought.
patrickm
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/
Your analysis doesn’t make much sense to me, patrickm. Perhaps that is because its starting point is a whole lot of premises which I think are fundamentally wrong. So it’s difficult to engage with. You keep repeating some point about a war cabinet. I really don’t know what you mean by that.
Insofar as I can make sense of what you’re arguing, you seem to be suggesting that the US spread some sort of bourgeois democratic revolution worldwide. That’s identical to the neocon position, I guess (see “End Tyranny” as one of the US’ stated goals in its national defence strategy of 2006), which I suppose isn’t surprising as they started out as Trotskyists.
If the US goal is to spread middle-class freedom, at the rate they’re going about it, Zimbabwe will be terra nullius by the time its turn comes around.
I’d take War Cabinet to mean that we should start debating what action we would take if we were responsibile for helping to strengthen democracy, and also helping people who are prepared to act democratically in the Mid-East – the ones who are struggling to weaken the influence of the more medieaval-minded clerics and their influence on society.
Well I’ve taken up the challenge and popped over to lastsuperpower and stumbled across some of the strangest stuff I’ve seen in many a long day. It seems what we have here is some sort of authoritarian-ultra-left-neo-con-death-cult.
We’ll begin with the site’s patron, Albert Langer, who describes himself as an “unreconstructed Maoist (anarcho-Stalinist).” In 2003 he wrote:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10635/20050402/www.onlineopinion.com.au/view4a40.html
Killing people and blowing things up. A Good Thing, apparently.
Another from a lastsuperpower poster:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/37990252869?b_start:int=0#129571813907
Well obviously that’s the only way to deal with generals who cause embarrassment. We learnt that in the ’30′s. One can only imagine what that might mean for those who actually disagree with the party-line.
Some weird shit about “Nazi-Zionist collaboration” http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/396988887943/forum_topic
And finally some ‘analysis’ about waverers being forced into staying the course by the brilliant strategic interventions of the neo-cons:
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/372345705269/forum_topic
It’s too out there for me. I think the marketing plan and branding campaign could do with a bit of tweaking.
Mark you say:
Iâll spell it out a little more clearly then.
Here is the relevant paragraph that you claim not to be able to properly respond to.
This part you responded to with an snide attack on the political provenance of the idea that the US could be acting in the interests of the oppressed (try to remember WW2; and for everyone jabbering on about Trotsky remember that Troskyites have always been wreckers of united front strategies calling for the defeat of their own governments in fact they have been collaborators with fascism as they are in this war in Iraq, so I would appreciate if people would stop calling me one).
Here is what you said while avoiding the rest of the apparently unintelligible paragraph.
This indicates you know that other people claiming to stand on the left of politics have made arguments for waging war against the Baathist tyranny in Iraq and continuing that fight against the Jihadists and Shia death squads just as you are also familiar with the work of Christopher Hitchens.
Anyway, I continue with my speculated US war cabinet meeting with a question from the President.
Now this cannot be know for certain, but any President dealing with the reality of 9/11 would have to consider this worst case scenario a distinct possibility and would be obliged to ask the following question.
Note this is not saying that the US must go from country to country overthrowing the local tyrants but rather establish policies different to the rotten ones that they were following in the past of propping up the tyrants and opposing the democratic development of peoples throughout the world.
I also said something I consider just a statement of fact together with two assertions.
Now given that you oppose the attacks of 9/11 undertaken by Saudis, Egyptians and others from various countries in the Middle East what would you have told Bush? Would you have said âyou canât accept that logic Mr. President because I think it is what a Trotskyite might say.â
The old policies of the US were to keep the Sunni minority under Saddam in power rather than risk the Shia 60% majority and the 20% Kurds running their own lives in a federal democratic republic where islamists would be the largest political parties for a long time to come. So though they were encouraged to revolt they were sold out to be slaughtered by the Baathists when the Baathists were appropriately driven out of Kuwait.
Mark you say
What I am saying is that the biggest opponent of the real trend to bourgeois democratic revolution worldwide has been since WW2 the USA. They have all this time under the so called ârealistâ policies of the likes of that untried war criminal Kissinger been blocking progress and consequently built hatred against them globally. The honorable US soldiers of WW2 gave way to the hated oppressors of Indochina and everywhere else they trampled.
you say
Now even if it were identical to the neocon position that would not be an argument against it.
So given you claim to be some sort of leftist yourself. You tell me whatâs wrong with what I have said and then I will tell you why Iraq was and remains with Palestine, the key to kicking of this revolution that is being suppressed across the whole region.
I am saying the goal is nothing less than region change and that is a 180 reversal of former US policies that was about stability and the suppression of communists and other democrats.
Now perhaps that is clear enough for a reasoned response.
patrick
I’ll get back to you when I have more time, perhaps, patrickm. But I don’t believe in any political theory which claims that history has a singular meaning or logic or that people need to be led towards that logic by a vanguard. Just so as you know…
I think you need to ponder whether the rule of the numerically strongest is democratic. And also the fact that yesterday’s oppressed can be today’s oppressors.
I don’t think class analysis can tell us much about Iraq except that Saddam’s secular Arab nationalism led to a certain increase in educational, health and living standards which produced a professional middle class. Many of those actually engaged in trade were Christians, and there was a Shi’a middle class as well. What has happened now is the effective impoverishment of almost everyone bar some criminal sectarians and thugs.
Patrickm:
I’ll spell it out. You mentioned Lenin: Lenin did indeed do business, in a wide range of materials and products, with his Capitalist enemies …. that was in a world that was far less dependent on petroleum than it is today. The whole world has changed since the Nineteen-Twenties. Iraq now, unlike the fledgling Bolshevik dictatorship back then, has only one important material that others want and that is petroleum …. and for that material there is one country on earth that has both an unquenchable thirst for the stuff and the long-term means to get its hands on it: China.
Since the topic of this thread is the magical Surge that would deliver Victory on a dinnerplate and I had mentioned China …. I merely threw the two together as a possibility. Now do you understand?
From, âWatching The Presidentâs Iraq Speech: A Diagnostic Guide.â? Homepage HuffPo
âIt’s one thing to believe you’re Napoleon. It’s quite another to send more young people to die in your Waterloo.â?
The Imbecile holds court tomorrow morning(Oz EST).
It’s getting exciting isn’t it? Less than 24 hours to go till the big announcement and already the scent of victory floats tantalisingly on the breeze.
If this former Marine corporal, speaking about his part in the assault on Fallujah, is any guide I’d say we’ve finally got the right balance in the hearts and minds campaign and the militias should just pack up and go home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja8kuAHQaWQ
Christine Keeler
appears to believe that the readers of this site are stupid and unable to follow a simple thread as she once more attempts to shoot the messenger rather than debate the issues. She was of course never challenged to pop over to Lastsuperpower and gather her grab bag of feeble excuses not to deal with the message. No Christine you have not taken up ‘the challenge’ and everybody who has followed this thread knows it. You have simply run screaming hysterically from the debate that you were challenged to provide your side to.
Nobody cares where the messenger is from. People would like to think about the issues. If you are unable to put yourself in the position of proffering advice, to the president of the US after 9/11 so be it. Mine stands unchalenged. (Now you can attack me for not being a Trotskyite I suppose:-)
Christine later posts a link that is almost content free once you analyze it. For example I never met a bomber pilot from WW2 that didn’t express hatred of war and sadness at what he had done. I have even met some soldiers who having been through the horror of it all became committed pacifists, not many mind you, and none that liberated Belsen. But I’ll bet that Christine is not a pacifist and would support the effort of allied soldiers in WW2.
If I am wrong then I have nothing to say to her. She would be entitled to that view but I just don’t share it and I do not believe many here would either. I am simply not a pacifist. However anyone who promotes phony pacifism when it is deemed to suit their interests will easily be seen through just as Christine pretending to take up the non existent challenge rather than debate the actual challenge is easily exposed.
That being said what ought we make of the very sad soldier telling his story from the battle of Fallujah?
He says that they dropped 500lb bombs on obviously civilian areas. Now that is quite true. The whole town is pretty well obviously civilian areas. What is left out (and I say nothing of intent his or anyone else) is that the US forces did their best having surrounded the city to get everyone out without a shot being fired. They wanted every woman and child out of there and every insurgent to lay down their arms and surrender. Slaughtering civilians was not what that soldier believed he was there to do and nor did his command. There was nothing in it for the US troops. The leaflets were dropped the loud speakers played and the time given.
He speaks about how his enemy actually tried to keep the civilians in the city and would kill those who tried to leave. Easily missed but that is how rotten this enemy is. They were deliberately using civilians. Deliberately seeking civilian deaths and we have this on the word of a now committed anti Iraq war soldier who was there and wants the US to leave.
We ought to know by now just how rotten this enemy is.
To help defeat these three enemies, Bush will commit more troops. The democrats will not stop the funding of this war. The ISG report was organized to make it clear to everyone that it is now bi-partisan policy that this war is vital to US strategic interests and must be fought until the Iraqi government say ‘thank you we’ll take it from here’ and everyone ought to know by now that this war can only be won by the Iraqi people themselves so the war will go on for as long as it takes the Iraqi people to win it.
As for the western troops endlessly roaming around the mountains of Afghanistan trying to kill Saudis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Jordanians, Yemenis even the odd Australian etc this is clearly not the way to win the war that was declared ready or not on 9/11. The whole region is a swamp producing these mosquitoes. The swamp must be drained. The enemy is all the former ‘moderate Arab states’ all the autocracies and Tyrannies. The US is simple not strong enough to go from country to country overthrowing them. But the stage is now set for the people of the region to do the job and they will get western help where before they got western hindrance.
gregM, you’re binary thought that reduces everything to the good guys and the bad guys is unhelpful.
Can you not conceive that military invasion (whether by good guys or bad guys) which violently overthrows a regime and puts nothing in its place produces anarchy and mayhem where the brutal rise to the top.
The slaughter in Fallujah was a result of the initial invasion. The conditions there did not prevail until the US assault brought them into being. Of course the vicious ended up in control. But what created the conditions that lead to that situation?
Everything is swamps and mosquitos? You suffer from crass consciousness.
I think you mean patrickm, wbb.
Who exactly does he imagine would replace the Saudi or Egyptian regimes if they were overthrown? Bourgeois liberals? Or Wahabbist nuts…
Yeah I did, thanks Mark.
For a Marxist of whatever stripe he claims to be, he certainly doesn’t spend too much time worrying about the necessary conditions for revolution. It’s either fascism or utopia. And nowt betwixt.
The Egyptian regime would be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, who are basically the same organisation as Hamas.
As far as I know there is far less organised opposition to the Saudi government, but since ‘Wahabist nuts’ are already running the Government there, do you support them staying in power?
I am often told by opponents of the liberation of the Iraqi people that the unarmed Iraqi masses ought to have been left alone to do it themselves. I say if the Iraqi peoples had to overthrow the Baathist tyranny themselves (while it remained armed to the teeth with tanks, artillery, helicopter gun ships, intact command and control etc then the casualties would have been gigantic, and you must face up to those casualties as well as the casualties of doing nothing, so spread the numbers of casualties and share the moral high ground because you don’t have one to yourself.
Static thinking is the problem.
Iraq was always going to change. The vicious didn’t end up in control of Iraq; under the Saddam Baathists they were in control of not just Fallujah but the whole of Iraq.
After the no fly zones were established by the US, the Kurds through their own on the ground armed struggle against the weakened Baathists, got a substantial measure of freedom. Now the Shia and democratically minded Sunni Arabs are also breathing freedom; but they are also under attack from the ‘Wahabbist nuts’ of Al Qaeda and remnant Baathists. That attack, was always going to be the case! Al Qaeda hates the Shia and would and do slaughter them like animals. This has provoked the worse reactionaries from the Shia and that was always going to happen as well.
So IMV we are back to the situation where western outside forces help, they do not hinder as you so naively suppose.
you say
‘…puts nothing in its place produces anarchy and mayhem where the brutal rise to the top.’
This is arse about the most brutal was already on top. Yet you are so afraid of islamists that you would prefer the Baathists to rule over the Sunnie Arab 20% that were lording it over the other 80%. Is it not plain that this was not going to last forever?
The question is what was the best way to bring about the liberation of the vast majority of the Iraqi people and start them down the modernization road? I say despite how bad this is it could have been worse as Rwanda testifies to. Either way the question now before us is ought we withdraw or surge. Ought the Iraqi Government be listened to when they request more troops? I say they ought to be. Bush is about to send more and I’m glad of it. Ought Baghdad be the focus? I have always believed it ought to be.
Iraqi elections were put in place and the Iraqis are now developing their democratic revolution. They have a hard row to hoe. The Baathists can not win; nor can the Sunni insurgency (which amounts to the same thing). A tiny minority through the most ruthless murderous violence (as was show when they forced civilians to stay in Fallujah) cannot defeat the armed masses.
Given that I consider Islamists and western progressives to be at war with reactionaries and Islamo-fascists, I think it important to divide the world into who are our friends and who are our enemies. That is the sort of thinking that I think you would approve of in every other war. For example who were friends and who were enemies in WW2 and Vietnam would see the USA swap places!
As for Mark;
The Egyptian regime will be replaced by the Muslin Brotherhood, as Hamas has come to power in Palestine and Hezbollah is beginning to take its rightful place in proportion in Lebanon. But why do you say ‘if they were overthrown?’ It is a question of when they are overthrown.
Bourgeois liberals can not be the majority in these countries for many years to come and islamists must come to power as the US leadership knew they would. Only a fool would think you could hold free and fair elections in any of these countries without islamist parties winning.
Now the question of Saudi Arabia is interesting because social development is so bad there. But one thing is certain. The current regime is doomed. As is the Syrians and Iranians. The region is heading for change and propping up tyrants has only made things far worse. I do not know enough about Saudi Arabia to comment yet but I do know that millions of guest workers feature in the equation as does the fact that the oil is mostly in the Shia region of Saudi Arabia as well. Anyway we probably have a few years for that problem to fully develop and by then there will be sufficient progress throughout the region such that all current analysis would be rendered hopelessly premature.
However of more immediate concern; the next cab of the rank has got to be an Israeli withdrawal from its failed war for the conquest of greater Israel. A West Bank pull out can not be put of much longer.
patrick
Not particularly, but they’d be replaced by even nuttier Wahabbists.
As to patrickm, it’s difficult to engage with you because your comments are clearly driven by ideology rather than reality.
“The liberation of the Iraqi people” – only if you accept your teleological premises. For the great majority (with the possible exception of the Kurds), freedom is the last thing they’ve gained. Christians and Jews have been driven out, Sharia largely enforced in large areas, etc, etc.
How this is a path to modernisation is beyond me, particularly since as I’ve already pointed out much of the educational and health infrastructure has been destroyed, and most of the professionals fled or killed.
Iraq (and Iran) if you want to use the classic sociological concept of modernisation was probably way up there in the region before its “liberation” to use your term.
I don’t even know what this means:
Please set our for me, clearly, who the “Islamists” are and who the “Islamo-fascists” are with reference to real groupings not imaginary categorisations.
If the sort of mess, and massive human suffering going on at the moment is your idea of a necessary step on the way to revolution, or something, please vote me off the Utopian house immediately.
Tell it to riverbend, patrickm, and all the other Iraqis who have to live thru the process. Ends. Means. Too much and too quick.
Says it all really. Friends are people who agree with you and everybody else gets shoved up before a wall and shot.
Well, if I read him correctly, Christine, patrickm considers Bush to be a “Western progressive” and on his side. I think that says it all really.
it gives the old “you’ll just get fleas” warning some real bite
Christine; Your stock in trade distortion is pathetic. I consider Islamists and western progressives not people who agree with each other. Do try to keap up.
Do learn how to spell, use commas correctly, and construct sentences that make sense.
Islamism versus Islamo-Fascism:
Islamism is an essential stage in the modernisation of Middle Eastern economies and political structures. It’s playing the same part fundamental Protestantism played in the 16th century in reforming the decadent and corrupt Catholic establishment, thus facilitating the advance of capitalism. Calvin’s fundamentalist government in Geneva imposed strict social, legal and religious codes. With this psychological security blanket for the people in place, Calvin then wrote his famous Letter justifying usury (interest). Significantly this is occurring in the same timeline … it took 15 centuries for Christianity to start to modernise; Islam is now about the same age.
I think the distinction between Islamist and Islamo-fascist movements is this: the former have an egalitarian component providing for direct elections (eg Iran); the latter do not (eg Wahhabiism). The former is therefore progressive, the latter reactionary. Needless to say the Left should not be supporting the latter!
The Bush Administrations enforced reversal of decades of US foreign policy propping up totalitarian regimes like the Baath in Iraq to one of insisting/imposing democratic reform in the Middle East is hastening an already inevitable historical process. In the space of only a couple of years (!), we have the electoral gains of Hamas in Palestine, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Shiites in Bahrain, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite Islamists in Iraq. All these movements are responsive to the social needs/aspirations of the people and each is forcing reform on their respective ancien regimes.
Can you cite any sources with links for this view?
I guess Weber is the source for the stuff about Calvinism, but I fail to see the parallels myself.
I would have thought it simpler myself to avoid sweeping historical narrative and say that Islamism is a belief in living according to the dictates of Islam, while Islamo-fascism is an insistence thereon. On pain of torture, beheadings, explosions and such like.
“All these movements are responsive to the social needs/aspirations of the people and each is forcing reform on their respective ancien (sic) regimes.”
What a howler! “Fundamentalist sectarians in power – this season’s must-have democratic accessory!”
Well just go easy. I’m keen to hear more about Islamarxism.
Yes, and it’s ironic that the actually existing Marxists were largely wiped out by the Islamists who are now carrying history’s torch forward, or whatever.
Until you can engage with the dialectic between religious fundamentalism and progressive social democracy, you’ve not got a chance of understanding it, C.K.
Us pseudo-leftists simply don’t get it.
Make sure you take your dialectic inverted with your lattes, comrades!
Mine’s with a dash of honey and rosewater from now on.
Based on what I know about Islamism (which admittedly is not that much) isnât it the case that Islamist government would simply make most of the problems of the Middle East worse.
I believe Islamists hold a very traditionalist attitude towards women, and so are likely to prohibit them from participating in the workforce. The Middle East is going to have a hard time modernizing and competing with Asia and the west if 50% of the population canât work.
I also believe that Islamists tend to take a dim view of western culture, viewing it as decadent and morally bankrupt. As such I canât help but suspect that Islamist Governments would impose economic restrictions aimed at excluding western influence from the nations they govern.
If I am right, wont Islamist government hinder modernization in the Middle East rather than accelerate it.
Many Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, believe in âreclaiming Islamâs manifest destiny; an empire, founded in the seventh century, that stretched from Spain to Indonesia.â?
Is this belief not likely to lead to Islamist governments interfering in their nieghbours affairs and becoming fixated on Israel more so than the current crop of Middle Eastern governments, again to the detriment of modernization?
Very sound. We have to trim our sails to the fast moving Zeitgeist.
Tishtosh to your pathetic Menshevik pisstaking, tovarich. Allow Barbara to speak. Citoiens Robespierre and Marat shall decide.
BTW, just watch it.
And yet, taking the historical analogies further, Cromwell’s fundamentalist sectarians helped to destroy the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, and thus laid the way for the development of English democracy.
If people in democracies vote for Islamists, Islamists will be in power.
It’s then the job of people in those countries who don’t want conservative Islamists running things to form secular parties that can win elections.
But if Islamists are fighting Islamo-fascists, the Islamists should be supported until that fight is over.
Of course it is. Doesn’t, in itself, make the argument less, or more, true.
So David, in the event that ‘people in those countries’ vote for ‘conservative Islamists’, who do you recommend we blow up?
Iran? Syria? What’s the game plan here? How many troops for how long? Do we have enough forces? What does ‘winning’ look like?
Any thoughts?
No-one, assuming that the elected governments are not fighting Islamo-fascist insurgencies that, like the one in Iraq, are largely rejected by ordinary people.
I hope the priests in Tehran and the fascists in Damascus are overthrown by people there, and I hope the West will help in that overthrow if we are asked to.
Military action by the USA in either country is highly unlikely.
As far as what victory might look like, I started to answer that question here, in this thread in fact.
“No-one, assuming that the elected governments are not fighting Islamo-fascist insurgencies that, like the one in Iraq, are largely rejected by ordinary people.”
Well don’t you think that ordinary people, for a multitude of reasons (payback, blackmail, kidnappings, unemployment, threats, easy access to arms, dislike of occupation etc), might easily get caught up in insurgencies against their will without necessarily being ‘Islamo-fascist’ idealogues?
How would you react if a bunch of soldiers who don’t speak your language burst into your house one night, turned the place upside down, traumatised the kids, arrested people for vague reasons, and for good measure call in an airstrike on the next block?
You might as well grapple with it because that’s what’s happening.
Or do you subscribe to the view that that just about any dead Iraqi is a “suspected terrorist?”
Ridiculous. Are you trying to discuss policy here, or denounce me for not agreeing with you? It’s pretty ironic that you’re making fun of sterotypical leftists.
I’ve been discussing a recent poll by World Public Opinion.org which shows that, while 61% of people in Iraq support attacks on US troops (page 8), 77% of them want a strong central government that can control the militias (p 12), 96% of them reject attacks on Iraqi government security forces (p 16), and 100% of them reject attacks on Iraqi civilians (p 16).
Just because the Iraqi people resent and distrust the USA doesn’t mean they support the Islamo-fascists and other factions that are at war with the Iraqi government. They are two separate issues
That would be page 8, not page wearing sunglasses.
“Ridiculous. Are you trying to discuss policy here, or denounce me for not agreeing with you? It’s pretty ironic that you’re making fun of stereotypical leftists.”
Settle down. I’m happy to discuss both policy and practice and, no, I’m not making fun of you as a stereotypical anything in view of the fact that you engage in real world arguments.
In terms of the survey you’ve cited above, what’s surprising? If I was in that situation I’d like the US to leave, would love militias to leave me alone, would like a strong central government to control same, and with an unemployment rate of 70% would be happy for the opportunity to join the police force without being branded a collaborator.
But the fact remains that this was a mad adventure embarked upon with little forethought, against the advice of many in the Pentagon, with no regard for the history of the joint or the likely consequences, and for pretty half-baked doctrinaire reasons.
If Iraq was supposed to be the model for blossoming democracy in the ME, it’s fairly evident it hasn’t worked.
I pointed out that the vast majority of Iraqis reject Islamofascists. You (irrelevantly) said:
which implied that US brutality has caused Islamofascism, and made people more likely to support it.
I brought up the poll to demonstrate that that is wrong. Despite every stupid error that the USA has made, Iraqis do not support the aims of Islamofascists.
I don’t understand why commenters on a left-of-centre website say things like ‘against the advice of many in the Pentagon’. The people at policy-advising level in the Pentagon have spent their entire careers practising the sort of cynical ‘realpolitik’ that leftists are supposed to hate. They are the sort of people who advised Bush 41 to sell out the Marsh Arabs when they rebelled.
There have been three elections, a government that represents a majority of the people, and a fighting chance to defeat the people at war with that government – a goal the people of Iraq clearly support.
That sounds to me like democracy is starting to work.
The next important hurdle is for the government to stop the death squads of both sides. If they can do that, democracy in Iraq will have a real chance to blossom.
Weber. Curses. Did someone come up with the theory before me?
Ah well. Firstly the good news, you don’t have to be a LastSuperPower unreconstructed maoist to come my conclusion – I am just a modest bourgois social democrat like most of you seem to be. My personal views are derived from a keen interest in all history but especially renaissance/reformation, ( My source here, Christine, is R.H.Tawney’s essays on “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism”, published sometime in the 50s I think, widely available on the net’s second hand book distributors). Also intense fascination with the Iranian revolution from 1979 onwards and its development thereafter. But so much for my eccentricities/personal obsessions.
Now, Mark, as I understand Weber his essay was to do with the Protestant ethic? My thesis in contrast is that fundamental protestantism was a revolution not a reformation and erupted as result of severe external pressures on Christian societies to modernise driven by unstoppable economic imperatives. (ie I would argue the Protestant “ethic” was a cultural/social component which had more to do with the application of the revolution rather than its genesis.)
The major polarising issue in those days was usury (ethics of) and the establishment Christian world was being torn apart by it. The Protestants saw the ruling church/establishment as archaic, decadent, corrupt but worst of all susceptible to secularisation.
This is almost identical to the situation the Muslim world found itself in the 30 years post WW2 -1979. Relentless pressure to modernise, economic imperatives, the big issue tearing them apart being the Zionist state. (ie usury revisited)
As in Calvin’s day the most crucial, unsettling component to believers was visible creeping secularisation. This was inevitably occurring in response to the pressures outlined above: Nasser’s Egypt, Gadhafi’s Libya, Arafat’s PLO, Baath Syria, Baath Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Shah’s Iran etc etc. Just about everywhere really, except Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis, Sunnis, were clearly a willing sellout to US/Zionist capitalist imperialism, nothng more than agents of modernisation.
So. Lo. A fundamentalist Shiite Islamic revolution takes place in Iran, just as Calvin’s did in Geneva. Quelle surprise.
Since then, 1979 onwards, what has interested me about the Iranian revolution is this:
Calvin’s fundamentalist revolution demonstrated that a retreat to simple verities then allows for people/societies under external existential stress to psychologically accept change.
Revolutions are initially purist, as result they tend to make major breakthroughs – Calvin’s was no exception. His Letter justifying usury powered the advance of capitalism and also, ironically for him, completed the process of secularisation with the Enlightenment a couple of hundred years later.
Islam has only today reached the stage of evolution (15 centuries) that Christianity was when Protestantism evolved. Why should the third great monotheistic religion not be following the same historical path to modernisation and eventual reconciliation with secularisation the other two have? Why wouldn’t the Shiites lead this? After all, they have always been the opposition.
Another comparison: When Calvin took over Geneva he basically injected a power-shot of theocracy into an existing (for its time) democratic system, based on a pyramid or tier system of “councils”. Each descending council was slightly larger and therefore more representative than the last. Each stage was also incrementally more egalitarian – subject to direct vote, albeit on a restricted franchise – (typical of the day as democractic universal franchise was only in early stage of evolvion). At the bottom was the “general assembly” – in our day Parliament – but which was in turn accountable to the smallest council that was at the top of the pyramid. A perpetual loop, in other words. This was how Calvin tried to control the purity of the revolution while maintaining the fiction of “consent” of the people.
If you look at the structure of government of Iran it is so uncannily similar, even to the acceptance of forms of direct elections – that you have to wonder if Khomeini spent most of his time when in exile in France reading up on Calvin.
As result I maintain (a) there was nothing ever mysterious about the appearance of Islamism (b)it should never have been demonised but recognised as legitimate – and particularly so by the Left (c) that as long as some form of direct elections/empowerment of the people remains part of its government structure/ or declared policy then it should be vigorously supported by the Left and held to account if it lapses into fascism after gaining power (d) that the reactionary, totalitarian, Islamofascist wing of “Islamism” – again, no mystery in Christian development-just recall Savanarola, German National Socialism etc – should be clearly labelled for what it is by the Left and vehemently opposed at all times. That’s what demonstrations should be about, imo. In fact I can’t understand why they are not.
Chris: modernisation of the Christian world took several hundred years. You seem to think it should happen in the Middle East Muslim world overnight just because it seems so obvious and logical to you. The attitude towards women is similar to that which prevailed in Christian west in 15th century, and most Christian women internalised/defended/accepted it then just as many Muslim women do today. But the economic imperative will change this over time.
Christine: Your Robespierre jibe was delicious. However, I have to remind you that was 1793/94. Nearly 200 years BEFORE that the Calvinists had exported their revolution to neighbouring states, much like the Iranian revolution has with Hezbollah in Lebanon and elsewhere. The Calvinist Huguenots fought a 36 year civil war with the ancien regime of France, ending when Louis 1V revoked the Edict of Nantes, whereupon the Huguenots were expelled/fled/exiled.
Had this not happened then it is obvious in hindsight France would have gone the same way as England – ie – got their struggle between people and monarchy over within 50 years instead of 200 (!) and Robespierre might well have ended his days as an unremarked provincial solicitor
Not at all. I take the view that modernisation in the Middle East, if it happens at all, will take a long time. I just believe that Islamist Governments would set that process back rather than advance it.
So democratically elected Islamist governments are a step backwards from unelected fascist tyrannies?
That all depends on what your objective is. If it is economic modernization then yes. If it is stability for the region then also yes. If it is political freedom then, assuming that Islamist governments do not suspend democracy upon gaining power (and given that many consider their system of government to be divinely ordained I am not altogether convinced that they wont) then no.
I would suggest that you increase the long term survival prospects of democracies in the Middle East by pursuing some economic development first.
So you would stop Islamist governments taking power until a sufficient economic level has been achieved?
How is that related to political freedom?
It’s simple. Modernity cannot exist without governments that reflect the decision of people.
If people choose to be governed by Islamists, then Islamists will take power.
If those Islamists abuse power, they need to be struggled against. In fact, even if they don’t abuse power, I would hope that secular activists and parties would try to defeat them in elections.
But you can’t have modernity and political freedom by stopping those Islamists taking power where a majority of people want them to do so.
There is no evidence that democracy wouldn’t have or wouldn’t work in Iraq. But the Americans’ first idea of democracy was to put in a puppet regime headed by Chalabi. Then that was scotched when the penny dropped that Chalabi was a flake hated by the Iraqis. Then Bremer downgraded the Iraqi Governing Council.
Consider the real death blow to any idea of democracy, Executive Order No. 2. The order from Rumsfeld for “deep” de-Bathification. It led General Jay Garner, the first post-Saddam “governor” of Iraq, to reflect on the order: “the US now has at least 350,000 more enemies than it had the day before…”.
The de-Baathification that led to the sacking of the rank and file public servants, police, infrastructure professionals, was a signal to the Sunnis of an open warefare against them, yet they felt they facilitated American entry into Iraq by not putting much resistance – in other words, they gave the Americans implicit approval for regime chnage. Butr then Sunnis saw that they would be judged NOT by their conduct but by who they were as a group. And in a society as riven by tribal alliances and doctrinal differences this was fatal blow to democracy. That is when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall.
Let me quote a bit from Mark Danner’s piece in dec 21 NYRoB – Iraq: The War of Imagination:
“By blithely purging tens of thousands of the country’s Baathist elite, whatever their deeds, and by establishing a muscle-bound and inept American occupation without an Iraqi face, they created an increasing resentment among Iraqis that fostered the insurgency and encouraged people to shelter it.”
I’d suggest that de-Baathificiation, no matter how ineptly handled, closed off any idea that a Baathist puppet dictatorship without Saddam could be installed, and made democracy the only possible option in Iraq.
This is because de-Baathification destroyed the basis of Saddam’s regime, and the basis of the centuries-old Sunni domination of Iraq.
Since the USA destroyed the basis of Iraqi dictatorship, the only real choice was to then elect a government broadly representing the people of Iraq, which is what happened.
There’s way too much generalisation in some of these comments, and largely unsupported generalisation.
No, it ensured that large parts of the middle class would be impoverished, that “economic modernisation” would suffer a huge set back, and there’d be a massive insurgency.
Most educated people working in public institutions – ie university teachers, public servants, health workers were Ba’ath party members as a matter of course. Dismissing everyone and abolishing the army led to the results outlined above. The process did not parallel deNazification in Germany which was a process that took several years, involved the making of individual judgements and investigations, and paid attention to the requirements of rebuilding/maintaining a functioning society.
You seem to have a very weak conception of democracy, David. I’d suggest you read some democratic theory. Democracy is not simply the rule of a numerical majority, and particularly not one whereby the majority seeks to eliminate/discriminate against minorities which it would see as being a permanent minority.
The Neocons thought that a secular democracy would result in Iraq.
I’d refer you to my article from last year where I made this point:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3480
Does anyone believe seriously that Islamist governments in the M/E would willingly hand over power if they lost an election? Again, the experience of Algeria in the 90s is relevant. David wants people to “struggle against” them if they don’t rule in the interests of the people. What about freedom of speech and a formal opposition, which are fundamental requirements of electoral democracy?
I don’t see Hamas meekly surrendering power. The current conflicts with Fatah demonstrate the momentum of this sort of Islamist democracy – civil war.
In addition, it’s untrue to suggest that democracy is a prerequisite for economic modernisation. This is Fukuyama’s argument and it’s wrong.
As to Barbara’s invocation of Calvin, Tawney and Weber. Tawney was writing in the 20s. There is very little historical scholarship now (including by Marxists) which gives any credence to the “elective affinity” between the reformation and capitalism. European capitalism had its origins prior to the reformation – in Northern Italy among other places. The prohibition on usury and its abolition were both pretty meaningless. This is another example of an idealist conception of history which, I might add, is completely opposed to Marxist historical materialism. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it’s wrong anyway.
Majority rule is, however, an absolute precondition of democracy. Or do you suggest otherwise? De-Baathification in Iraq made the previous Sunni-minority dictatorship impossible, thus clearing the way for a majority government, the only sort of government that even has a chance of being democratic.
Which ones, when and in what articles? ‘Cause apparently, there is a lot of undue generalisation in this thread.
If they don’t then they will have turned into the dictators, and will deserve to be overthrown.
What alternative do you offer? Using force to keep an Islamist party elected by the majority out of power? Supporting the current dictators in the Mid-East, whose fears of Islamist movements you echo?
For instance, do you support or oppose the current moves by the Egyptian dictatorship to ‘curb the influence’ of the Muslim Brotherhood, by making it harder for their candidates to run as independents in Egyptian elections?
Which are won by struggle, not by waiting for governments to be nice.
Just google if you want some citations of particular people enunciating the goal of a secular democracy, David, but as Matthew Yglesias notes, it was the US’ official policy:
http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/01/incompetence_again_1/
I’ll repeat what I said about majoritarianism not being democratic. If the Shi’a majority (or political and religious leaders and militias) want to permanently hold down the Sunni majority and use the state as a vehicle for doing that, it’s not democratic. Democracy, as I argued, and as almost any democratic theorist worth their salt would agree, requires agreements to disagree, more than formal equality, and electoral choices based on disagreement over public issues, not quasi-genocidal wills to power.
As to what should take place in the ME, who are we to say, quite frankly? You’re the person who seemingly wants to dictate through armed intervention how their societies should be constituted. But I’d say support for democratisation initiatives aimed at establishing civil society capabilities and freedoms – for instance of expression – would be a start. As in the Ukraine. But as Joshua Kurlantzick argues, this project has diminished support precisely through the distortion of Washington’s “democratisation” project.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12372
The sponsors of which – people like Condi Rice – have no idea of how to retrieve by the way from the disasters it’s fostered.
The democratisation project died in the bum, once Bush decided to cut Chalabi loose. There was no plan or project after that.
As for Rice, you’re making a rather specious point, Mark. She appears to have been cut out of the project altogether, from the start:
- Mark Danner op. cit. See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19720
Moreover, there would be nothing to retrieve.
Still, you have to admire DJ’s determination to stick-up for the PNEC http://www.newamericancentury.org/ . It’s almost touching.
If an Islamist government took power (as Hamas did in the Palestinian territories) I would not try and get rid of it, however I would be pretty nervous. What I would not do is expend blood and treasure trying to put one into power.
Mark is right to say that âitâs untrue to suggest that democracy is a prerequisite for economic modernisation.â?
I think saying things to the effect of âif the people want Islamists let them have Islamistsâ? is rather to simplistic. We have to consider what effects an Islamist triumph will have on the Middle East and then what effect these effects will have on us.
In my previous post I argued that the implementation of certain Islamist ideas (economic exclusion of women, exclusion of western influence and interference in neighbouring states) will make the situation in the Middle East worse and result in further harm to the west, especially if the Islamists also decide to change their mind about democracy. That is, to borrow patrickmâs formulation, that it would leave the Middle East smelling less, not more, like France and Sweden. If I have misunderstood Islamist ideology I am happy to be corrected, but nobody has yet said that I have.
I also canât see much evidence that Islam and Christianity, two very different faiths, are following similar historical trajectories and thus that Islamism is a step towards modernisation. On the contray I see a fair bit of evidence that they are not. Look at the two religions positions 1000 years after their founding. The Christian world was just coming out of the Dark Ages during the 11th century. By contrast the 17th century saw the defeat of the Turks at Vienna and the beginning of the decline of Islamic power in Europe.
PNAC http://supak.com/simpsons/wavs/homer_simpson_32dohs.wav
Yes, Sir Henry, but I was referring to her role as the shuttle diplomat in prodding Egyptians and others to join the democratisation offensive. Woodward’s no doubt right about her earlier sidelining, but she bounced back big time by the beginning of the second term at the latest.
This one did.
The January 30 elections will do for the people of Iraq, and after them, in all likelihood, the rest of the Arab world, what the end of the European imperial period did not: show the way to sovereignty without tyranny. For the first time really in Arab history, people power has expressed itself democratically. Say whatever you want about the coverage of the Arabic-language satellite channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabia, they relayed quite well stunning democratic imagery–the repeated shots of entire families voting together, from pregnant mothers with babies to grandparents in wheelchairs.The rulers of the Middle East will no doubt try to depict Iraq’s democratic experiment as a vehicle of anti-Sunni Shiite extremism, but the U.S. government–parts of which (the State Department and the CIA) have a tendency to project the rulers’ views onto their people–would be well advised to turn a deaf ear.
link
And a link to the PNAC? Dated February 2005. There have been no updates to the PNAC website since 2005, so I’d pretty much they’ve given up the ghost.
Can you do better than that? Few in the US seem to be buying it any more, certainly not the voters.
Oh, and haven’t you heard? The architects have all pissed off.
Yes, but by that time it was much too late. In any case, democracy was kind of down the list, a sop to the pointy heads in the PNAC.
Democracy, smocracy as long as Uncle Sam loves you. Yes, “spreading democracy” was sort of there, but way down the list.
National Security Presidential Directive titled Iraq: Goals, Objectives and Strategy said:
“US goal:
1. Free Iraq in order to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and associated programs, to prevent Iraq from breaking out of containment and become a more dangerous…blah blah blah
2. End Iraqi threats to its neighbors
3. Stop Iraqi government tyrannizing of its own population
4. Cut Iraqi links to and sponsorship of international terrorism
5. To maintain Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity
6. …And assist them in creating a society based on moderation, pluralism and democracy…
Objectives: To conduct policy to minimize the chance of a WMD attack against the United States, US field forces, our allies and friends. To minimize the danger of regional instabilities. To deter Iran and Syria from helping Iraq. And to minimize disruption in international oil markets.”
Apart from a temporary stop to no.2 and the dubious distinction between the Iraqi government tyrannising its own population and factions/warlords/militias tyrannising the population, it’s as complete and utter a fuckup of your own policy as we’re likely to see.
Anyhow, I am truly moved by Uncle Sam’s newfound enthusiasm for democracy. It must have been Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith’s influence. Because within my living memory it was “we don’t mind if he’s a mass murderering dictator as long as he’s our mass murderering dictator”. Pinochet, Chun, Marcos (personally overseen by Wolfowitz in his previous guise as a Realpolitik realist), Suharto, Yahya Khan, Jorge Rafael Videla, Hissène Habré, Efraín Ríos Montt, Papa Doc Duvalier… I must have missed a few.
BTW, that naughty General Jacky Gowon, he of the Biafran mass murder, went into exile at Warwick University, where he completed a PhD. (Don’t get me started on those PhDs! Mass murderer, pervert and SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger had two.)
Christine Keeler I am afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick regarding my previous post. David Jackmanson asked for an example of an example of a neo-conservative who had suggested that a secular type democracy was going to develop in Iraq rather than a sectarian Shiite one. I provided such an article.
I am not trying to suggest that the articles author is correct, in fact my point is quite the opposite, although I may not have made that clear.
D’oh! Apologies.
Mark said:
However, you appear to have been arguing in this thread that denying government to Islamist movements, even if they are democratically elected, is a good thing:
You cannot have any of the things that democracy requires without first having a commitment to majority rule, even if that means an Islamist government.
That does not make majority rule in itself democratic. But minority rule is always undemocratic.
That is a decision to ignore my question about what the Egyptian dictatorship is doing, right now, to suppress an Islamist movement with a great deal of popular support.
In my opinion, what the Egyptian government is doing is wrong and undemocratic, and anyone who supports democracy should oppose it.
Christine Keeler, it’s a shame you mistake my asking for references (from the person who complained about this thread having too much generalisation) as ‘sticking up’ for anyone.
Chris, thank you for the link, and your argument in the post before it.
First of all, thanks for taking a clear stand on an important issue.
I belive that the blood and treasure spent on installing an Islamist government in Iraq was necessary, because the previous US policy – propping up dictators – led directly to September 11, 2001. The US needed to change that policy, fast.
I broadly agree with your take on Islamist ideology. The only reason that an elected Islamist government would be a step forward in MidEast countries is that it would be the first time that a government elected by the majority of the people would take power.
As soon as that democratic result happened, it would then be time to support people who were promoting a modernist, secular agenda. If the Islamists did in fact change their mind about democracy, then democrats would have to fight them too.
To get the MidEast smelling like France and Sweeden (and I’m glad that you are able to respond to patrickm without sneering), I think that you first have to accept that governments are chosen by the majority at elections (or, since PR will probably be used, as it is in Iraq, the coalition with the most votes in Parliament).
The Gerecht article that you link to from February 2005 certainly shows a lot of unfounded short-term optimism about Sunni-Shia relations in Iraq.
Democracy in Iraq will not be possible unless militias are either defeated, or agree to become politicians.
That is unlikely unless the Sunnis are confident that there is a place for them in Iraq, and unless the Shia are confident that Sunnis who reject the overthrow of Sunni minority rule can be defeated by disciplined State forces rather than death squads.
One hopeful sign is that the vast majority of Iraqis reject sectarian attacks on State or civilian targets.
I’m not obliged to take a position on anything and everything. Let alone sort out the Middle East.
It’s particularly frustrating because you don’t recognise some basic flaws in your argument – which is what I was getting at with regard to my comment about generalisations. Perhaps “abstractions” would have been a better way of expressing it. Whenever you come closer to the concrete, you also come closer to the truth of the matter:
Unfortunately both scenarios are highly unlikely.
All this is the moral responsibility of the COW warriors. There’s a very simple ethical principle here: you shouldn’t go to war, particularly not if you have some alleged humanitarian justification for doing so, unless there is a clear political strategy to create peace and achieve your objectives. That was always lacking in the case of Iraq. Some of the US decision makers undoubtedly did not believe any of the rhetoric about “spreading freedom and democracy”. Those who did were fools because they failed in every way to even think about how to bring it about. Because they ignored the concrete material situation in Iraq and sacrificed the lives of Iraqis – and Americans – to bloody (literally) abstractions.
Well, it’s easy for you to say that. That’s an ethically facile position. It rests on some sort of vain belief that if there is this condition (let’s say majority rule), then this result will necessarily follow (democracy or modernisation or whatever). It is a position which ignores the evidence, and fails even as a statement of causal regularity in any social scientific sense. It can be nothing else than a belief, and beliefs are not worth the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
I’m sorry – they’re just not.
This sort of stuff really gets my goat:
There are virtually no such people! Both Marx and Weber – much as they might have disagreed about the role of material conditions versus ideas in bringing about social and political change – recognised that ideas need instantiation – they need “carriers” – they don’t come about because of inexorable laws.
To see history in these terms is to obliterate the real in favour of a position which might seem coherent but lacks all ethical sense.
Now, does anyone else have anything new to add to this debate? Unless it begins to start to operate other than at total cross-purposes, I think it’s reached its end.
.
Tawney is dismissed because “he wrote in the 20s”?
Did I suggest that capitalism ORIGINATED with the fundamentalist protestant revolution?
Could you elaborate a little on the assertion that the prohibition on usury and its abolition were “meaningless”?
Also, I’m not quite sure what you mean by being totally opposed to Marxist historical materialism? This is possibly because I am not a Marxist, but I would have thought my “idealist conception” and historical materialism were not mutually exclusive. However I may well be misunderstanding the latter.
Finally, earlier you asked Patrickm to define Islamism and Islamofascism. I gave an example, but you have not commented on it and I would be interested in your view before you close the thread.
ps This thread has been a very interesting discussion.
Is there anyone left standing?
In Egypt, Kifaya (Enough!) is a secular movement struggling for democracy.
And the Regime Change Iran blog lists a number of blogs and news sites that can tell you about democratic secular activists who are oppressed at the moment by the Islamist regime.
Saying that after I have clearly said, twice, that majority rule does not necessarily lead to democracy is a dishonest way to argue.
Why? Why is it ‘highly unlikely’ that the current sectarian violence in Iraq can be stopped and a peace deal brokered?
Because there’s a civil war underway and it’s getting worse, not better.
And your analysis that leads you to conclude that is?
It’s called “reading the news”.
What is this thread? The new branch office of Lefties for Bonzo?
So much fatuous piffle – and it keeps on coming. I download the page for a leisurely peruse of the comments off-line and what do I find? Yet another tendentious comment from our local envoy from the happiest kingdom of them all.
Is there nothing this man isn’t willing to express an opinion on? Even if his opinion is based only on a set of questionable "key assertions" (give me propositions or even better facts), macho intellectual posturing of the “I’m tough enough to contemplate the sacrifice of human lives if it leads to democracy”.
You want analysis DJ? Start with a little work on your own analytical skills. Try acquainting yourself with the philosophical tradition of just war theory before you next repeat fatuous statements like this:
As Mark said, that’s an ethically facile position. The only way you can maintain it is by ignoring the complete collapse of Iraqi society since the occupation and the flagrant mismangement of the occupation which has included abuses such as Abu Ghraib. No analysis is needed to recognise facts.
What leads you to belive that Iraqi society has ‘completely collapsed’?
Mismanagement (which has happened many times over in the Iraq war) does not, in itself, affect whether the war was justified or not.
Of course, if you’d like this thread to simply repeat your own opinions over and over, rather than being a place to debate people who disagree with you, just say so.
David – mismanagement does indeed affect whether or not the war was justified.
When the mismanagement is so bad as to cause terrible death tolls, then it shows the war was conducted without regard for the real welfare of the population.
But no-one here can force you to dismount your noble but legless nag, Teleological Tilting (2001 out of Fearmonger and Hegemonic Design).
When the promise of utopian futures justifies any degree of transitional bloodshed, then argument is hopeless.
Sorry, I said that where?
The war wasn’t justified. The ostensible grounds for going to war – Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction – was a lie.
Not only was the war not justified, but its conduct, and the continuing conduct of the occupation – as at Abu Ghraib – the mismanagement – is in breach of combatants obligations to conduct war in a just way. It was obvious from the beginning, when the US introduced us to the term “collateral damage” that this was going to happen – the war would be conducted with complete indifference to the rights of non-combatants.
No David, that’s your schtick.
If you believe you’ve been mischaracterised, David, perhaps you’d like to explain your support for the war succinctly.
Mark, please tell me why saying:
is the same as saying
In particular, why is it ‘utopian’ to think that there is a chance that Iraq will develop into a genuinely democratic state?
Really, Gummo?
I think I was debating Chris when I answered what he had to say.
I think I was debating when I agreed that majority rule does not necessarily equal democracy, which was ignored and misrepresented.
I think I was debating when I dicussed the relevance or otherwise of the ‘legality’ argument against the war.
I think I was debating when I gave a clear, straight answer to Mark’s challenge to supporters of the war to start explaining what victory might look like.
And I think that snide remarks (like calling Last Superpower ‘Lefties for Bonzo’), a refusal to back up assertions evidence when requested, and a refusal to actually engage with anything I say, are not debate, are your shtick, and are also the shtick of several others on this thread.
If you don’t think I am debating, please say why.
David, as I pointed out before, and as Gummo has been suggesting, it’s a cardinal point of just war theory that if you go to war you must have clearly defined objectives and a political strategy to achieve them. In the absence of that, going to war, and the consequent loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, based on something that “might” happen is clearly unrealistic and ethically highly questionable.
Anyway, while were talking about democracy, Iraqi public opinion is fairly clear:
Their “democratic government” has even worse poll numbers than Bush:
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/01/06/10094619.html
Like Barbara, I also think this thread has been interesting; perhaps because most participants are attempting to share the moral high ground through tacitly acknowledging the point that Iraq was always going to change and that the preservation of the Baathist dictatorship was not an option in any long run sense.
Mark – if you cannot support any particular force amongst the people youâve at least got to define and support a process otherwise you are not dealing with anything in the real world at all.
The debate on troop levels (to âsurgeâ or not) revolves around how best can the change that has been unleashed, ready or not, be supported as it unfolds in the interests of the vast majority of the peoplesâ of Iraq.
Is Iraq now a modernity project such that recognizably progressive westerners could sign up to defending it in 2007? Are there recognizable enemies to that project that ought to be opposed?
Mark has now delved deep enough into the question of democracy to come up with the answer that I had provided, (apparently without the question
. âWho are our enemies who are our friends?â Or as Mark puts it; âwho constitute the people?â He quotes the following approvingly;
Indeed it cannot be avoided and has not been avoided in Iraq.
It is simply not important to agree on the method of launching the change that has occurred. That liberation/invasion is well in the past; as is the Iraqi struggle for a constitution, (though minor changes are always on the agenda). The elections that flowed from that constitution are no longer in any serious way doubted to be the free and fair expression of the general will of the population and thus a proportionally representative parliament has been established which has produced a government that is now just over six months old. This government appears to be heading for a reshuffle in the grand tradition of proportionally representative governments. The next elections are scheduled for late 2009 and there are no indications at the start of 2007 that these elections will not proceed as normally as they would in any other democracy.
We appear to agree that Saddamâs Baathists were intolerable fascists when in control of the whole of Iraq and I donât think that anyone commenting here expects people from the remaining 98+% of the population, to put up with the Baathist dictatorship founded from a small minority of the Arab Sunni 20%.
It is both right to rebel against their rule and to continue the process through a struggle for a constitution and democratic elections.
We all should note that this is a supportable process, irrespective of the actual people that currently exist in Iraq.
Whatever the disagreements, about whether to put in more troops, (as requested by the elected Iraqi Government), in the so called âsurgeâ, or to pull them out, these disagreements are not based on the established constitution that guarantees the current rights of the Iraqi peoplesâ and provides for their proportional representation and the formal protection of minority rights. The process that brought about this constitution and the current representation is clearly democratic.
As with the United States of Jefferson, the formal democracy has to be made real as with the actual struggle to free Jeffersonâs slaves. The U.S. was a democracy, where strange fruit hung in trees for centuries, till the 1960âs civil rights struggle produced a new society where a black woman named Condoleezza Rice is now a conceivable US Republican President.
But so far in Iraq there is nothing wrong with the process, nothing wrong with the formal product. The job now is to expose those politicians, those actual forces, that are not abiding by that constitution and then empower and enable the Iraqi Government to deal with them.
Criminals are excluded from the ranks of the people. They are denied the rights of the people and are confined in prisons. They retain human rights but not the rights of âthe peopleâ. Just as in the West.
Christine Keeler, through loss of focus and attempts at humor, tends to distort this;
No Christine; everybody else gets treated with human rights even if âthe peopleâ whose formation âcannot be avoidedâ, go to war with them. The Iraqi people are at war and will remain at war with Jihadis, Baathists and Shia death squads.
The revolutionary people then establish the laws of war. Thus we can decide who is in breach of those laws and punish them accordingly. Even when the top Nazis were executed they were treated under laws that maintained their human rights, and despite some minor shortcomings at the execution so was Saddam Hussein dealt with during this revolution.
Thus also soldiers from the ranks of the people who behave in a criminal manner lose their status as members of the people and are and ought to be treated as the criminals that they thus become, when they start âshoving others up before a wall and shooting themâ.
Shoving the very few U.S. rapist-murders up against a wall and shooting them will not be a violation of the rights of those soldiers, but a defense of âthe peoplesâ rights to be free from all such thugs. These individuals are harming the war effort and deserve the harshest possible punishment for their crimes. There is no excuse for their behavior. That was the point being made about the deliberate abuses of captives at Abu Ghraib. Sanchez deserved to be severely punished for what he was involved in. It harmed the war effort enormously and many heroic Coalition and Iraqi soldiers and civilians have paid for this criminal behavior with their lives.
The reason the people who identify as left, are taking these extreme right wing positions (ie objectively defending Baathist rule; their failure to make any strategic war on Jihadis; no proposal to deal effectively with Shia death squads in Iraq; no respect for nor any unity with any Iraqi political forces especially those that are not secular etc), is because for them the all important issue is their view that Coalition troops fighting the enemy of all modernity in Iraq is wrong – period. They view the war as if the U.S. is rerunning its aggression in Vietnam where it was preventing free and fair elections! They cannot see current U.S. troops in the light of WW2 type heroes actually liberating the masses of Iraqisâ.
Some pseudo-leftists accept a fight in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and the Taliban but a great many do not even accept this, so there is no way that they are prepared to engage in the development of a strategy for victory. Thus they cannot say what strategic view they would have put forward after 9/11 smashed the old ârealistâ views of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. And as we head toward the sixth anniversary of the event they are reduced to complaining about the lack of stability now evident in the region.
They have failed to understand that the war was all about setting off the process of region change and end up sounding like the phony pacifists that they are.
They even complain that the US ruling class had to be lied to by the ruling elite about WMD. How can people expect the US ruling elite to admit that they have been doing far more than tolerating dictators; they have been opposing democracy for the last sixty years and installing and propping up dictators etc
To âsurgeâ or not is just an irrelevant distraction for anti American pseudo-leftists. For them nothing can be done but pull all the troops out, and let the Iraqi peoplesâ fight it out!
Trouble is they suspect that that would lead to a regional war as the Saudis and the Iranians and then the Syrians and the Turks got drawn in. Just as the al Qaeda sorts are already drawn in. That would be a correct suspicion, and is not going to happen while this administration is still in place.
Instead of coming up with a real plan of their own to defeat the three enemies of the Iraqi peoples and of all modernity, they denounce Bush for being dumb and this war for being fought in a cultural swamp where almost none of the forces are worth supporting.
Not to worry no one is listening to them and more troops are going to Baghdad.
patrickm
patrickm,
Beyond the fact that it gives you a good opportunity to be patronising and self-righeous, what is your interest in this discussion?
It should also be pointed out that the Iraqi electoral system is modelled on, and as far as I’m aware, virtually identical to the electoral system adopted by post apartheid South Africa – ie proportional representation on party list voting.
Significantly the Afrikaaner whites ruled/tyrannised the blacks from similar 15 to 20% minority position. This was why the Shiites and Kurds insisted on an SA style constitution that would ensure no minority could ever assume absolute power again and no majority could take absolute power over minorities unless it gained more than 66% of the vote.
In esssence, the Kurds and the Shiites ensured that coalition power sharing would be the norm not the rule in future.
Ironic that Nelson Mandela and the ANC led the way and yet the Left still treats the Iraqi elections with such disdain?
Sorry, that should read “powersharing should be the norm and police state not the rule in future”
PatrickM you’ve got ‘em on the run. You are being subject to standard union meeting tactics for handling someone who looks like outdebating the union leadership on an issue.
er.. you called George Bush “progressive”. The thought police in here will never stand for someone being termed so unless they are a mouthpiece for the hard left.
You might like to check what patrickm says about his own politics, steve, he’s the “hard left” – he’s a Marxist.
Did you read my earlier comment about a recent survey of public opinion, Barbara?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/04/scourging-the-surge/#comment-311740
3% of Iraqis regard the Maliki government as having performed well. 3%.
And legitimate questions could be raised about the commitment to democracy of some in the AMC, including President Mbeki, if we’re honest about it. But the salient difference is that the AMC came to power in a vote that reflected years of negotiation and accommodation and was accompanied by a genuine process of national reconciliation, not the farce that has been visited upon Iraqis. The Soviet Union used to have a constitution – written by Stalin – that allegedly gave citizens more freedoms than in the US. The letter of these documents is nothing if not accompanied by the spirit. The fact that the electoral system was copied from South Africa doesn’t make the result anything approaching democracy – because the Sunni and Shia militias want to wipe each other out. Baghdad is undergoing violent ethnic cleansing – that’s the premise of the new surge strategy. Even the Bushies admit that.
As to Tawney, the fact that he wrote in the 20s means that he didn’t have the benefit of subsequent scholarship. The debate over the historical origins of capitalism is a complex one, but I honestly don’t think it’s got much relevance to this thread.
Steve: Heh.
Mate, this bloke IS you bog standard Maoist HL total FW thought cop. Strewth. Next thing he’ll have you believing that Pol Pot was Jesus Christ.
Well, patrickm and Boy Wonder DJ…
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/world/middleeast/15baghdad.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
I’d ask anyone wishing to perpetuate the discussion of the beliefs of the pro-Iraq war left to go here, please:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/01/15/strange-alignments/