In his excellent history of the Iraq War, The Assassins’ Gate (reviewed here in Salon), George Packer writes:
Iraq provided a blank screen on which many Americans were free to project anything they wanted, and because so few Americans had anything directly at stake there, many of them never saw more than the image of their own feelings. The exceptions, of course, were the soldiers and their own families, who carried almost the entire weight of the war.
This state of the affairs on the home front was, in one way, the natural outgrowth of a political atmosphere that had become increasingly poisonous for a decade. The culture wars produced Clinton hatred, which led to impeachment, followed by the contested election of 2000, followed by Bush hatred, which was just as intense and crazy making as its predecessor. Iraq provided another level on the downward spiral. Whereas the street fights of the late 1960s were the consequence of Vietnam, the word fights of the early 2000s were not the consequence of Iraq - if anything, the other way around.
Packer’s careful book of impassioned yet dispassionate journalism, and Thomas E. Ricks’ Fiasco, are both antidotes to the ludicrous hyperbole and political projection that characterises much debate over Iraq. I’ve read both over the weekend, and have learnt a lot, not least something about the way in which debates over Iraq have been framed and shaped.
It was the first bloggers’ war, and the characteristic features of the form - instant response, ad hominem attack, remoteness from life, the echo chamber of friends and enemies - defined the quality of the debate about Iraq far better than the reasoned analyses and proposals that quicky disappeared from view…
Packer might be a tad unfair to some corners of the blogosphere in this assessment, but the essential point remains true. Debate over Iraq - whether in op/eds, on shrill tv and radio rantfests, or indeed in legislative chambers - has had almost everything to do with emotion and the search for political advantage and almost nothing to do with rationality and an assessment of the situation as it really is.
Witness the debate over Nick Cohen’s book What’s Left?, which has come to these shores via an op/ed piece in The Australian by Pamela Bone, who if I’m reading her correctly, admits that she hasn’t read the book yet.
Bone’s incoherent article seems to derive most of its rhetorical power from creating dichotomies as to what “the Left” criticise and don’t criticise.
when letters to the editor pour out compassion for one Australian held too long in custody, but there is nary a mention of the victims of a genocide that is going on right now in the Darfur region of Sudan, one suspects at best selective compassion, at worst, bad faith. One suspects that indignation over human rights abuses depends less on the extent of the abuse and more on who is doing the abusing.
It’s scarcely worth treating this moral self-righteousness as if she were making a rational argument, but there certainly have been voices from the Left calling for military intervention in Darfur, and one would struggle to find any evidence that the Australian government have ever shown any concern over the victims of this genocide.
But the real purpose of Bone’s slapdash polemic is to point a finger at an imaginary enemy that allegedly resides within our civil society. It’s telling that no actually existing left figures are named in her piece. Not one. Who is this “left” that presumably also participates in Australian public discourse?
Seeking to counter criticisms made of Cohen that he conflates fringe organisations and Marxist groups with mainstream left opinion, Bone writes:
But it is not valid either to say these attitudes belong to only an extreme fringe. To greater or lesser degrees they are prevalent in mainstream liberal thinking.
Where is the evidence? There is, and can be none. Is Kevin Rudd the “left” that holds all these morally heinous views that Bone criticises? Is it Maxine McKew? Is it Bob Brown? Who knows? And we won’t know, because the purpose of this hyperbolic rhetoric is to smear anyone who refuses to adopt some sort of triumphalist Bushism. It would only expose the extreme emotionality and lack of rigour of these “arguments” if they were held to any sort of standard of truth.
As Sunder Katwala writes at the Guardian’s Comment is Free:
Nick Cohen doesn’t really know what “the left” is.
He is admirably candid about it. “I use the left as a generalisation. It is not an exact term because it is very hard to say what it means, but you know the left when you see it, and there were times when it felt like the right word. Overall, however I try to be specific”, he writes in a brief “note about terminology” at the start of his new book, What’s Left?
Not very specific though. He embarks on a brief taxonomy but it quickly collapses. The “far left” (Leninists) would hardly matter, except “they have merged into a much wider and more incoherent alliance which has little to offer beyond a rootless rage”. Cohen calls them Chomskyans and nihilists “‘because of their wilful refusal to stand for anything”.
He has somehow convinced himself that these nihilists “are the dominant left-wing force today”. This dominant force is made up of “academics, students, readers of and writers for most leftist newspapers and all but the bravest Muslim and poor world intellectuals”. All “share this group’s defining unwillingness to condemn crimes that can’t be blamed on the west”.
That is about as specific as it gets. Cohen mentions the working-class (”the old left”) and the middle-class (”the liberals”); admits he can’t work out what New Labour is; and then declares that he will “use the liberal-left as a cover-all term for every shade of left opinion”. (Which is very odd, when the contortions of the illiberal left are his abiding theme). Then, it is on with the show …
You could make a realistic case that some of the currents of opinion that Satwala rightly dismisses as being unrepresentative have more importance in the UK than in Australia. We have no George Galloway or Respect Party. Former Marxist intellectuals are not key figures in social democratic thinktanks here, as they are in some New Labour supporting organisations. Bone has even less of a case to make than Cohen, and as Satwala argues, his is incoherent enough.
Michael Fitzpatrick is quite right to suggest in spiked that this species of incoherent polemic is all about “personal psychodrama”:
Walter Benjamin wrote that the polemicist approaches his text ‘as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby’. In this book, Nick Cohen aspires to the tradition of radical polemic but he reproduces only its confrontational form, without grasping its intellectual content. Whereas polemic presents a battle of ideas, Cohen’s book is about conflicts of feeling and emotions. The Princess Diana of the journalism of attachment, he reduces political comment to personal psychodrama, passion to petulance, argument to abuse.
The culture wars have nothing to do with reasoned argument, and everything to do with constructing phantom enemies whose identity remains necessarily elusive, all the better to elide them with Islamists. None of this sort of tosh has any sort of connection with the real world, and with reality on the ground in Iraq. Both Packer (who supported the Iraq War as a liberal internationalist) and Ricks (who as a military affairs journalist has no opposition to the use of armed force) exemplify the best of journalism. Their careful and compelling books based on reportage from the ground and allowing a wide range of people to speak (US soldiers, young Iraqi women, insurgents, and many more) go to both the facts of the situation in Iraq and to the real and intense emotions generated by the fiasco of which Hicks speaks among those centrally involved in it - whether Iraqis or American soldiers. Neither seek to make political points, or to ram conclusions down their readers’ throats. But both books leave the reader in no doubt that the Iraq War is one of the central tragedies of our time. Bone, and Cohen, by contrast, show journalism at its absolute worst - self indulgent and fundamentally self serving outpourings of barely coherent anger.
Um, Hicks is in Guantanamo. “Fiasco” is by Ricks.
Otherwise, good post.
Oops, thanks, Andrew. Fixed now.
I may be picking scurf here but he clearly has cut and pasted “nihilists” from somewhere else. You only have to take a name-check of organisations currently pilloried by the right to see this: Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross, the UN. However flawed the latter is, the idea that all people should have a right to live their lives and raise their children in a just world is their founding objective. A concern for social justice is also the heart and soul of most so called left -leaning groups. If these notions have become objectionable to some conservative groups then you have to ask- Who are the real nihilists?
Mark is right to point to the baseless conflation of the extreme and mainstream left as the main problem in Bone’s article (and one can only assume Cohen’s book). But that is not the only problem.
Bone writes things like “yes, those who opposed the Iraq war are entitled to feel vindicated” but she offers no explanation for why the war turned out the way it did and instead turns to beating up on Nick Cohens straw man. She calls on left-wing commentators to put aside what she calls their self-righteousness, that is she tells them to just shut up.
It seems to me that both the pro-war left and the pro-war right are keen to blame Iraq on dodgy execution alone, rather than examine what lay behind the dodgy execution.
Incidentaly Packer nails the central problem in the paragraph Mark has quoted here when he writes “Iraq provided a blank screen on which many Americans were free to project anything they wanted.” The idea was over-ambitious and so was the execution. The source is the same, and it must not be protected from scrutiny even if that scrutiny does look like cheap point-scoring to Bone and Cohen.
What Serendipity. Ken over at Surfdom has a pretty good post on just this very point http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/02/04/troubled-by-impotence/ . I thoroughly recommend a look.
Ah the squalor, the squalor..
When you run a society, you can do a number of fundamentally evil things. One of those is surely to declare an unprovoked war on another country, invade it, occupy it, and reconfigure its institution.
These people smeared us, who opposed it, as traitors and fools.
Now we know the whole thing was a lie, and that the occupying army will be defeated, and the consequences will be horrendous for the population and broader international politics.
And what happened to those dreadful shills who uncritically accepted the lies and smeared the rest of us? They were paid, and glorified at the time.
They are paid and glorified now. And they still attempt to smear us.
By coincidence, I am reading John Cornwall’ popular but still intellectually solid Hitler’s Scientists, and the first volume of The Clyde Company Papers by P.L. Brown.
Written in 1942 and based strongly on original sources, it reeks of the contemptuous, reflexive genocide which the wretched Windschuttle claims exists only in the mind of black armband historians.
We are awash with language which is dangerous.
Yes, Fiasco’s central theme is botched execution, hence the title. I think Chain of Command by Seymour Hersch (plus his series in the New Yorker) is thus far the most definitive story of the invasion of Iraq in the context of “the war on terror”.
Iraq was certainly a cart before the horse. What we have there is opportunism by a consortium of players who saw the potential cakewalk into Iraq as the ticket for each and every faction - a win-win situation for everyone. It didn’t turn out that way.
My view is that it could have never turned out right in any case (though it may not have been as disastrous to this extent if the mistakes enumerated in Fiasco had not been made) because of one aspect of this war: the intention to seize Iraq’s oil. In this I think Greg Palast makes a very good case in his Armed Madhouse. it is analogous to saying Hitler made a mistake in invading Russia. Not many people know this but the invasion of Russia was a rational move that almost succeeded and indeed it was necessary for Germany to underwrite the war thus far. And so, invasion of Iraq was necessary to underwrite the “war on terror”.
Well of course the Iraqis resented the notion of having their cash cow seized by the US. Lucky for the insurgents then that the US went about its business like Moe, Larry and Curly: Wooob, wooob, woob. The Iraqis know full well about the whole business of Iran in the 50s and the way the US and Britain conspired to seize that country’s oil. Read the excellent All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer.
Now comes a forensic examination of the mutilated corpse of US action. The most noticeable aspect of the sham has been the pathetic, ever-shifting rationale for the war. First it was the pre-emptive strike against a rogue state whose bloodthirsty dictator had demonstrable form - invasion of Kuwait.
Then the casus belli disappeared entirely, replaced by the humanitarian rescue mission by Uncle Sam to deliver Iraq from a monster together with a gift of democracy to boot. Oh oh, Abu Ghraib. Dear me. Think hard guys. So they came up with… “well, we admit it, we fucked up but it will be worse if we leave.”
Hmm. This hasn’t played well domestically so scratch that and let us go for patriotism, the last flip card in the game of scoundrel show poker: we can’t be seen as “losing”, American “prestige” will suffer and that is apparently not good for the world.
This soap opera will be continued: do not miss the next exciting episode. And now, a break to our sponsor…
Mark, agree that Thomas Rick’s Fiasco is one of the best reads on Iraq. Close to the bone like Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” from ‘Nam, and Michael Ware’s on the ground reporting from Iraq. Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh (Chain of Command) have also written some compelling pieces.
You wrote today: “The culture wars have nothing to do with reasoned argument, and everything to do with constructing phantom enemies whose identity remains necessarily elusive,….”
George Orwell wrote in 1948, (Part 1 Chapter 2 of Nineteen Eighty-Four), and says hello across almost 60 years of obfuscation, spin and bullshit….
“He (Winston) went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone–to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone:
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink–greetings!”
Yeah, g’day Winston. Unfortunately, we’re still there, mate.
This war that was ostensibly about oil - Operation Iraqi Liberation - has a narrative that has been described as ‘Leninist.’
And it’s rather telling that the last two standing for the ’smear-on-Niger’ are both well known fascists. Hitchens a red fascist - Ledeen a brown ( or blackshirt)
I see this war as fundamentally racist and about protecting a euro-colonialist Apartheid police state that was established by terror in the region in 1948.
The winds of change that swept over Africa have finally reached the Middle-east and the Anglosphere has botched another land war in Asia.
Now that the neo-cons are getting mugged by reality we might take the opportunity to outlaw the fascist extremes from politics. The new law on genocide/ holomodor denial looks like a good place to start.
We could lock up Keith Windshuttle and send-a-message to the racists.
No more racist colonialist apartheid wars.
I’m kinda hoping it was really about the oil. Gaining control of a vast reserve of the world’s most strategic resource is the only justification for the Mesopotamian caper that has even a nodding relationship with realpolitik and common sense.
I think that the conclusion that I’ve come to from reading both books, as well as others on this topic, is that oil had little or nothing to do with it when compared to insane utopian dreaming about how to reshape the Middle East and the world.
You mean they’re really barking mad??
Yeah!
Mark, your last comment is spot on. Every serious analysis, every reputable journalistic account, places responsibility for the war with that motive of recasting the Middle East, with a veneer of concern about WMD as something that was easy to agree on and sell to the public.
However, I think your comments about Bone and Cohen are guilty of some of that “hyperbolic rhetoric” which you condemn. You write that Bone and Cohen are “smear[ing] anyone who refuses to adopt some sort of triumphalist Bushism”. And yet, from that article:
In what way does “ferociously critical” of Bush = “triumphalist Bushism”?
Because, as far as I can tell from Bone’s writing, she’s never been “ferociously critical” of Bush, Paulus. The reviews of Cohen’s book suggest that it’s almost all a rant about the evils of his “liberal left” and doesn’t devote any space to ferocious criticism of the war “while offering support to Iraqis”… So I think it’s reasonable to concede that their motivation is something other.
I’d strongly suggest that people read Packer’s book. He genuinely does those things.
I’d also point out that if you go back and look at what I’ve written about Iraq, I’ve very frequently foregrounded what I see as the deep harm being done to the Iraqi people. But what she means by that appears to be “shut up and salute the flag or you support the terrorists” or something. There might be some people around who laud the insurgency as freedom fighters. I’m not one of them. I think that there were a number of chances that were missed to support the emergence of some form of secular democracy and a reasonable shot at economic and social stability. All of those were missed, or thrown away. In any sane and reasonable analysis, that is the responsibility of the Bush administration, not that of critics of the war.
Mark, I do not understand how you could come to that conclusion! And the US is not barking mad, that is too glib an explanation.
The plan was quite a rational one. It was however poorly executed and no doubt not helped by the disconnect (even hostility) between the State Department and the Pentagon.
In my more paranoid moments I toyed with the idea that there was a deliberate policy to destabilise Iraq — to make it come apart at the seams, which also seems to be happening to Palestine. The theory is that warring factions at each other’s throats inside a country like Iraq are much less of a threat than a dictator at the head of a unified machinery of state threatening the neighbourhood. This was a theory put up by Mark Steyn and I am not entirely sure he was joking. Previously there was an inkling of that with the early half-arsed attempt to get the Kurds to revolt and secede, with ugly results.
Oil was always central to AT LEAST one faction in the US based cabal. At the very least it was seen as bankrolling the adventure. The reason why the whole thing has failed is precisely because of Americans wanting their hands on the oil and the Iraqis not wanting them to have it. And that is why it would ultimately ALWAYS fail even if there was no FIASCO and everything was done properly, with the Marine PhDs running the show and a kissy-kissy, touchie-feely occupation.
Sir Henry, I’m not saying that oil isn’t a factor at all but I think it’s secondary to the geopolitical issues. It may well have been a big factor influencing the Cheney/Halliburton factions but I think the ideological warriors behind it - Wolfowitz and all the rest - were more caught up in utopian dreams about reshaping global politics. The fantastic nature of these (literally - they’re fantasies) is captured by the Feith et al policy paper which suggested restoring the Hashemites as Kings of Iraq. Ascribing too much rationality to American foreign policy in this debacle is understandable, but wrong, I think. The “realists” who were on the losing side of the arguments were the rationalists. The winners of the arguments were pushing one fantasy or another (Rumsfeld’s strategic doctrine being another important one).
I think that’s wrong. The plan, it becomes clear from both books, didn’t exist. There was no “phase IV” plan and until Casey took over, not even a campaign plan for the theatre. Everything the state department did in terms of the postwar was just thrown in the bin. The nutjobs in Cheney’s office and OSD genuinely believed that the troops could leave after three months, and Garner could sort of come in and anoint Chalabi and walk out. Garner’s problem was that he also mistook the nature of the mission, but still didn’t have a plan, but didn’t like the Chalabi scenario. Then Bremer came along with what was essentially Wolfowitz’ parallel to the WW2 aftermath.
The plan, it becomes clear from both books, didn’t exist.
Wasn’t there the “Project for the New American Century” under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute?
(I’m not saying a sensible plan, mind you)
I’m gutted about the direction Boney has taken in the last few years. Her feminist writing was much better. Yet another proof, if you need it, that Teh Left and feminism isn’t some kind of Hivemind.
Quite so. Whilst I have a degree of sympathy for where the pro-war left were coming from, it often seemed as though they assumed that the political and military decision-making and execution was being and would be done by people like themselves in pursuit of aims similar to their own. Very naive…
Helen PNAC didn’t have a rational plan of the sort Mark speaks of, they had a grand design for re-shaping the Middle East. The importance of PNAC is that it conclusivley proves that many a neo-con both inside and outside the Bush Administration were out to test their theories in Iraq well before September 11th.
I have to agree with Mark about the oil. If the neo-cons were simply after Iraqi oil they could have either helped put in place a pro-western dictatorship in Iraq along the lines of the one in Egypt or established a US-backed Shia enclave in the oil rich south, as Paul Wolfowitz suggested in 1998.
I dunno whether you can really make that call. The only people who know for sure are those in the inner circle. Conservatives generally have been reluctant to get involved in wars without “good” reason. Bringing democracy to the world isn’t such a good reason (to them).
Anyway if it wasn’t about the oil why not start in a place where there’s a demonstrated desire for democracy and legitimate and elected founding leader (Burma)?
And then let’s not forget the sheer number of connection between Petrochemical inc. and the US administration.
An unwavering belief in an inherent superiority based on not much. Brings to mind a couple of movie lines:
and
Trouble is the poor Yank’s famous know-how does not extend to other cultures much - “gook” was first applied by American soldiers to Koreans because the Koreans would say: “Me Gook”. The Yanks thought that meant Me Gook as in “I am a Gook”. But wrong.
Me from the Chinese “mei” meaning beautiful, gook from the Chinese “guo” meaning country. Me Gook (beautiful country) is the Korean word for America and its inhabitants. The South Korean word for Korea is Han Gook.
If they’d expend a little more energy on non-profitable areas of study like cultural diversity they mightn’t be in the Mess-opotamia today.
And if they were a little more collectively gracious (as in don’t turn “your country is beautiful” into a racial slur) people might be a little less hostile.
Correct. But the Bush Administration are not conservatives, at least as far as foreign policy is concern. Neo-conservatism is in fact profoundly radical in it’s belief that the US is so powerful that it can successfuly reshape nations, and indeed regions, without having to worry about things like unintended consequences.
Catamundra: “Trouble is the poor Yank’s famous know-how does not extend to other cultures much…
If they’d expend a little more energy on non-profitable areas of study like cultural diversity… [a]nd if they were a little more collectively gracious (as in don’t turn “your country is beautifulâ€? into a racial slur) people might be a little less hostile.”
Well how very brilliant of the Yanks to have the first military m.o. in all human history to give its soldiers a derisive word for the collective enemy, thus making it psychologically easier for the soldiers to objectivize and, well, kill them. Pity no-one’s ever thought of it before, from the Greeks to the Brits to the Hurons. Besides, words like “Nip,” “Jap,” “Jerry,” and even, guess what, “Yank,” all have fairly simple etymologies; if “gook” derives as you say from “guo” then it is simply a commonly-used word in another language turned into a piece of useful gibberish. The ‘racial slur’ aspect you speak of would seem to have come after this fact. Is syphilis more correctly the “French disease” or the “English disease”? I keep forgetting.
“a little more energy on cultural diversity”
Someone here recently mentioned that American soldiers in Iraq refer to the locals as “hajjis”, which means of course a person who has made the hajj — a term of respect in Arabic, though it sounds like gibberish in English, thus cleverly solving the troop-morale problem in a politically correct fashion: an instance of cultural diversity, Yankee know-how, and ‘collective graciousness’ all working hand in glove to achieve a common goal, which is, of course, to kill people.
Bone is a Decent, and they’ve been somewhat hard up for excuses. Lashing out at The Left (that they once felt a part of) is all they have left.
Paul Norton on 5 February 2007 at 8:25 am
Paul, since you are an ex-revolutionary I think I know where you are coming from. It was perfectly (ideo)logical for revolutionary Leftists to support Iraq-attack.
In fact both the pro-war Left and pro-war Right were naive about the war since invading and occupying Iraq was wrong in both conception and execution. The war was a form of revolutionary constructivism in both its violent regime-changing means and multicultural nation-building ends.
The war was ill-considered in conception since the nation-to-be-built was Iraq, an in-bred, primitive and divided country unsuited for democracy at this moment. It is impossible to nation-build a stable democratic multicultural state with such a large population of hostile minorities.
And the war was botched in execution since the regime-changer was the Bush admin, a gang that could not shoot straight if the target was front and centre. Treators to Westphalia and congressors of Vienna would concur that revolutionary international regime-change will always come to grief.
Conservatives, whether Left-wing or Right-wing, were therefore right to oppose the war. Constructivists have obviously blown it, or at the very least backed the wrong horse.
Chris on 5 February 2007 at 6:36 pm
Correct. The “neo-conservative” foreign policy was an example of radical constructivism not moderate conservatism. Making the world over in a drastic fashion.
Global foreign policy should aim at slowly working with the grain of local cultures. The shape of change should be incremental not fundamental. And the space of change should be evolutionary not revolutionary.
Mark on 4 February 2007 at 10:39 pm
Three-quarters correct. Iraq-attack had a geo-political, rather than geo-economic, rationale. The Bush admin wanted to attack Iraq in order to swap Mesopotamian client states, Saudi for Iraqi. This Machiavellian utopianism is very familiar to students of 20th C revolutionary movements.
The oil factor was important for martial, rather than industrial, reasons. Oil had something to do with it, but it was what Iraq’s oil revenues rather than the US’s oil costs that were the key.
The Pentagon was worried about what martial mischief Iraq would do with growing oil revenues, not what industrial grief the US would have to cope with higher oil costs. The Bush admin perceived Baathist control of Mesopotamian oil as the key to Hussein financing an alleged or potential program of WMD accumulation and proliferation.
The Bush admin wanted Iraq to spend its oil revenues on assisting the Republican, rather than the Baathist, party to control the distribution of Iraq’s oil revenues - particularly in the matter of arms spending. This would also favourably tilt the ME balance of power in US favour. If the plan worked.
The US had little desire to grab all of Iraq’s oil - where would it put it?
I predicted the geo-political rationale for Iraq-attack about six months before the invasion. My Ditch Saudi-Hitch Iraqi thesis predicted that the US would withdraw from Saudi just before it invaded Iraqis.
This is in fact what happened. Also, Wolfowitz later admitted that the Saudi problem was “a big factor” behind Iraq attack.
I think that Wolfowitz genuinely believed that democracy could be made to take root in Iraq. He was ignorant of Mill’s law that “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of [culturally incompatible] nationalities.”
I believe that this formulation imposes a false dichotomy.
Ever since the Middle East became the major supplier of oil to the United States, the geopolitical issue was the oil issue.
This has been a constant in US policy ever since the CIA overthrew Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953.
And Jimmy Carter, of all the isolationist, non-bellicose presidents, enunciated the policy in the Carter Doctrine.
Bush’s policies in Iraq are fundamentally a culmination and logical extension of the Carter Doctrine.
In the face of all the fiascos, disasters, slip-ups, SNAFUs and abandonments of visions, policies, plans and tactics, the one element of the US mission in Iraq that has remained constant and non-negotiable is the Bush administration’s insistence that Iraqi oil be privatised.
This provision was written into the US-drafted Iraqi constitution.
Nabakov on 4 February 2007 at 10:29 pm
Nope. Iraq-attack was about getting more power, not saving money. Ditch the Saudis-Hitch the Iraqis. Turn an enemy into a friend after a friend had turned into an enemy.
GHB more or less founded the Riyadh-Washington axis. GWB wanted to replace it with the Baghdad-Washington axis.
Saudi Arabia was the gift that kept on giving until it went bad. And the Carlyle Group made a packet out of selling arms to the Saudis.
Bush the Younger and Chalabi wanted to replicate the success of Bush the Older and Yamani. But neither guy was up to the same standard as their role model.
And Iraq is one of the most horrible countries in the world. Only a thug like Hussein could run a violent dump like that.
While this topic is of course large and many-sided, and naturally hard to get a full grip on, there’s a rather large, hide-in-plain-sight dimension to all this that I think people are missing. (This is not to defend the Iraq war, merely to contribute to understanding it.)
Let’s say an African terror group blows up a subway car on the Paris Metro. Well, the Parisian police and security services are going to be busy getting to the bottom of it. But let’s say a group based in Cote d’Ivoire, claiming to act in the name of all Africa, (and enjoying broad grass-roots African support from Mali to Mozambique), melts the Eiffel Tower, and turns the Tuileries and the Centre Georges Pompidou into giant smoking craters. It’s no longer a job for the police, and I think nobody would be surprised if the full French military, land sea and air, over-reacted throughout Africa. It might not be the wise response, but it would surprise no one.
One of Bush’s initial speeches on the subject said something like “We are fighting over there so we will not have to fight over here.” Again, it wasn’t smart, but the strategy is a classic one, going all the way back to Scipio Africanus, its most famous exponent (forget that the parallels are far from exact). I believe part of the thinking behind all of this, as I’ve said before, is an attempt to keep terror from becoming normalized on the American continent. If American society were to be radically disrupted by a routinization of terror tactics, the ripple effects would be felt throughout the world; for instance, China’s economy would suffer substantially. In that sense, terror on a militarized scale (which is what we saw) is a security issue for a large part of world society. And in that sense, all the people saying “A war on an abstract noun is silly!” are being silly themselves. They are criticizing the advertisement, not the product; which of course is part of what the product’s makers intended.
I think the historical tragedy in all this is partly, as it were, a co-incidence; there were people in power who were already drooling to tamper with Iraq for their own multiple and devious purposes, but didn’t have quite a good enough reason to do it, who held office just at the time that this highly unusual act of war occurred, which introduced a kind of radical uncertainty into so many military and diplomatic norms. These folks were given an on-ramp by the events of 9/11, but the on-ramp was neither straight nor complete. Like Evel Knievel, they attempted to jump across the Snake River, but the stunt was ill-conceived, and down they went.
The idea that “it’s all about the oil” is just plain retarded, as is the idea that “it has nothing to do with the oil at all” or “it’s all about democracy.” Part of what it’s about, as Mark said, was a sort of fantastical species of wishful thinking by people whose aims and means were not effectively checked by a credible opposition.
Part of it, too, I believe, is due to the onus of sheer habit or historical momentum. Which is to say that the US, which spent the better part of the 20th-cent. fighting wars which it construed to be for the greater benefit of Humanity, or for the Free World, or other such vast idea-complexes, has forgotten how to sell itself on fighting a war for its own simple national self-interest. So it has to tell itself (and the world) that this is really about ‘democracy’ or some such. Well, democracy is a grand goal, but the president is not constitutionally authorized to roam around, spreading it willy-nilly, in fruitful soil or in barren. He is, though, authorized to defend US territory. After fighting so many wars on global scales, and slogging through long-term out-flanking maneuvers, it’s possible the US gov’t has simply forgotten what a reasonable definition of ’self-defense’ is.
Not forgetting that the real human crisis and tragedy here is the one suffered by the Iraqi people themselves, it may yet emerge that if the US ultimately fails in this adventure (and that’s still far from certain, appearances notwithstanding, because we are capable of taking a long view and defining success differently than many other people), something strange I think may happen. Due to the manifest incompetence, bad faith, and spendthrift wasting of moral credibility and political capital (Bush has effectively lost half the US’s moral nest egg of the 20th-cent. on the blackjack tables in Vegas), the long-term effect may be that the US finally just stands down as a ’superpower’ (which, in the absence of a ’super’ nemesis, is really after all not needed) and stops being the ‘Leader of the Free World’ (there is no longer a ‘free world’ to lead, just a lot of countries with different interests; that battle has been fought and won, may it come no more). I wouldn’t mind at all if America just went back to being what it was around 1910 or so: a big, funny, rich country full of gospel singers and eccentric millionaires, and we stopped speaking for anybody except ourselves.
That’s all very interesting, j_p_z.
However, if we take it as a given that some sort of bellicose response was almost inevitable after s11 (and as I think you agree, the choice of Iraq was contingent on the presence of several players and groups in the administration), I wonder why the campaign against the Taliban wasn’t sufficient. Particularly if it had been done properly. It’s probably another object lesson, incidentally, in Rummy’s flights of fantasy. But I think you’ve demonstrated why there was initial public support for the Iraq adventure, but not why it was necessary. I don’t think a whole lot of folks would have quibbled with the US’ right to fight its enemies in Afghanistan. Obviously it might have created huge problems wrt Pakistan, but that’s another story.
“The US had little desire to grab all of Iraq’s oil - where would it put it?”
In automobiles, aircraft and ship engines and power generators? And it’s not about putting it anywhere anyway at the moment, it’s about controlling it for profit and geopolitical strategy (ie: reining in China and India).
But I’m also happy to entertain the notion that there was also some possibly well-meaning geo-political big picture rationales as well. Shame it was a bunch of sheltered workshop fingerpainters who got their hands on the canvas.
Ultimately though, you do have to wonder why every superpower for the last 100 years or so has spent so much blood, treasure and credibility on an arid 2nd world region that no longer commands any major trade routes. Maybe it’s the dates, camels and antiquities?
Just to clarify what I said about oil, yes, there’s no question that resources are a factor and that’s why the Middle East is of interest to the West (and everyone else). What I want to argue against is the one horse narrative - “blood for oil” - that’s more of a talking point or a rally slogan than an argument. Yes, oil privatisation was something that the US oil companies and their allies in the GOP wanted. But I don’t think the war was waged to achieve that. I think denialism about non state actors was one factor (and this ties in with j_p_z’s points) - Wolfowitz and perhaps Cheney just couldn’t believe that terrorism could exist without “state sponsors”. But I think the geopolitical fantasies were only about oil insofar as they would necessarily be centred on an oil rich region - to the degree that there was any strategic consideration there that made any sense, it appears to revolve around Israel. Though there also seems to be some notion that increasing Shi’a power could also be a useful tactic. But I think a lot of it really is literally nutsoid.
j_p_z,
In 1910 the US had all it needed. Now it doesn’t, the foremost of those needs being, yes, you guessed it, oil!!.
Imagine, as John Lennon was wont to say, a world where the US still needed much oil but was prepared to allow the orderly markets of the world determine supply and demand.
Many goods and services are traded on that very basis. Buyer and seller meet and by some mechanism or other agree on a price for the commodity.
Now, is a world where oil in sufficient quantities is traded on that basis the current world, a likely world, a possible world, or a naive dream?
The US government has made it very plain over decades which of those descriptions is most applicable, while always making pious pronouncements about the possibility of a better world. Lest this be misconstrued as anti-Americanism, let me also observe that many other big governments are in th same game, the most notable of which at present is Russia.
Therefore, the argument can be made that the most important commodity in the world is a case study in market failure. The halcyon days of 1910 represented the high-water mark of market economics.
See the difficulty in your nostalgia?
I’d also comment that the “it’s all about the oil” explanation has some appeal on the Left, I think, because it’s sort of residual Marxism - it’s economistic determinism and causal reductivism. Materialism vs. idealism. But it would be quite wrong to think that ideas in history don’t matter, or that nations only act because of economic interests. Economic realpolitik is part of the reason why they act, but it doesn’t provide a sufficient explanation. The real world is messy, and multicausality is omnipresent.
Yes it’s true that Israel and religious fanatics are also major cards in the pack. But imagine for a moment if there were no militant religions or oil in the ME. Then it would have as much bearing now on how the rest of the world turns as Bhutan, Paraguay, the Cook Islands or Tasmania.
Yes, but it’s a backdrop to everything that happens on this, Nabs. It demonstrates why there is interest in the region, but it doesn’t explain everything that occurs there just by itself.
I’d respond by observing that to conflate to a large degree the geopolitical and the oil motive is not the same thing as asserting monocausality.
It is clear that there were all sorts of agendas at play when the decisions were made in and around the White House that war on Saddam was a good idea.
In the end, the war doesn’t happen until Bush signs off as C-in-C on the orders to attack. He had been subject to a bewildering array of advice and options in the years, months, weeks and days of discussion on the policy of attack.
One thing we can be quite sure of is that the case made to the Congress to get their vote of consent was one mere sliver of “bureaucratically convenient” justification for the war.
So as Bush wielded his fatal Shaeffer who knows which visions and dreams swirled before those rather close-set eyes. Maybe it was only oil. Maybe he simply enjoyed the tumesecent effects of flourishing a war-like pen. The possiblities are endless.
I think that’s right. Seeing into the mind of the decider in chief is to inspect the ultimate black box.
Mark: “That’s all very interesting, j_p_z.”
Hee hee. Coming as that does after my mile’s worth of blather, I’d say that’s a rather dry and deft left-handed slap. Consider me duly chastened.
“I think you’ve demonstrated why there was initial public support for the Iraq adventure, but not why it was necessary.”
That would be a tough task indeed, because I don’t believe that it *was* necessary. It was merely one of many things that could have happened; sadly, it’s the one that did. I’m just helping dissect it, not defending it.
Katz: “[Oil] has been a constant in US policy ever since the CIA overthrew Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953.”
Well, in 1953 the CIA ousted a popular government by means of a rather modestly-plotted coup; it didn’t invade the entire country. A minor difference in tactics. Therein lies a tale, nicht wahr?
Besides, it was the UK which was primarily interested in Iran’s oil in a vital way; they snookered the US into going along with them, and the US eventually signed on (Truman had at first nixed the idea; those were the days!) when it saw not primarily Iranian oil (doing just fine with ARAMCO, thank’ee very much), but a way to flank the USSR, shore up NATO domination, cut itself a juicy slice of the profits, rid its UK ally of a popular and galvanizing gadfly in the person of Mossadegh, and deter proto-Socialist chess moves like, say, collectivizing and nationalizing industries and resources. Do you see the limits of your materialist cynicism? Some day, we’ll get into chess. See, the different pieces move in different fashions!
Nabakov: “Then it [the ME] would have as much bearing now on how the rest of the world turns as Bhutan, Paraguay, the Cook Islands or Tasmania.”
Except if Bhutan or Paraguay had launched a one-shot nuclear strike against the US, as some of the Cubans were eager to do (restrained, ironically, by the USSR which had put them there for its *own* purposes). Then all bets would be off, and we’d see some really wacky shit happen, as for instance, we’re seeing now.
Katz: “See the difficulty in your nostalgia?”
Gosh, but that’s simplistic and patronizing. If I’m getting a lollipop, may I have one of the ones with a caramel center?
“…but it doesn’t explain everything that occurs there just by itself.”
An awful lot less would happen there without black gold underfoot.
Even the most lowball estimates place the value of Iraqi oil reserves at a couple of trillion dollars.
I don’t know about you but if I saw an opportunity to control assets worth that much, I’d be in there like Flynn, gold in one hand and gunships in the other.
And especially if my main geopolitical rivals like China and India were bypassing the oil spot market to stitch up long term energy supplies direct at source.
It is multi-faceted, yes. But the trick is in deciding whether it’s the nutso neo-cons or the realist geo-strategists who had final say on the script.
The neo-cons were the useful idiots who made all the public running on Iraq - and may have well believed every word they screamed about WMD and democracy as they strutted the stage, but the glacial force pushing up behind them back-stage was the US pursuit for oil and strategic dominance.
It’s not about oil proceeds. People who think the claim is that the US wanted to steal the oil don’t even get past first base in understanding this subject. It’s not money. It’s about what oil itself gives you. Kinetic energy etc. Oil is crucial to economic success. There’s nothing else like it. It’s been the planet’s greatest gift to human prosperity.
The US uses 25% of the world’s oil.
And there is only so much of it, and either the West will use it or China and others will use it. We have no difficulty recognising China’s crimes in Africa or Russia’s in Chechnya etc as being driven by economic self-interest, but we are blinded to the fact that the US is in the same basket. We are far too close to them. We believe their bullshit almost as much as they believe it themselves.
You have to look past what Wolfowitz wrote in 1998, or what Cheney had for breakfast in 2001. Certain historical forces are far larger than that. This is not to be deterministic. It is to recognise the cheery indomitability of human self-interest.
We are masters at self-deception while serving our interests all the while.
Strocchi’s ditch Saudi, hitch Iraq formulation is exactly equal to “it’s about oil”.
Maybe I’m not making myself clear enough - I’m happy to see the economic self-interest. I just think it’s too broad a factor to explain why the Iraq invasion happened when it did and why it was done so cluelessly and in the face of any sensible calculation of the outcomes.
It’s also worth noting that just because you think you’re acting in your own interests, it doesn’t mean that your actual actions will further those interests.
“Except if Bhutan or Paraguay had launched a one-shot nuclear strike against the US, as some of the Cubans were eager to do (restrained, ironically, by the USSR which had put them there for its *own* purposes). ”
Bit of a non-sequitur there old chap. The only natural resources Cuba ever had of interest to the West were cheap sex, great rhythm sections and fine cigars. And very keen to sell ‘em too.
Also do you really think there is a single nation state in the world that ever thought mounting a nuclear attack against the US would be anything but utter suicide? They’d have to be MAD.
“…the cheery indomitability of human self-interest.”
A great line and perhaps another potential LDP slogan?
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity.
It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. ”
I can get with that. My big problem though is that a controlling faction of the current Board of Directors are a bunch of clueless, hamfisted, vainglarious farts riding roughshod over some very real and valid stockholder concerns.
Or as EB White said “I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.”
wbb: “We believe their bullshit almost as much as they believe it themselves.”
North Korea, 1951 — a country just bursting with oil! 50,000-odd US troops killed in 3 years, to secure the oil underneath the Yalu River.
Europe, 1917 — Woodrow Wilson stampedes in, to get him a piece of that hot Flanders oil action.
World Goes to Hell, Part One, 1933-1940 — US sits on its ass because there’s no oil to be had underneath the Reichstag (we checked).
World Goes to Hell, Part Two, 1941-1989 — Japan and Germany, seized and occupied for their oil. (found some after all!) Russia invaded and occupied by US Army to this very day, because of the oil in Siberia. Venezuela and Canada secretly invaded and ruled by the US (well, Canada not so secretly); we put that comedian Chavez on the masthead because he’s the perfect disguise.
There’s no doubt that oil’s a pretty durn important thang; but can you folks hear yourselves?
Another non-sequitur there Zengerman.
You’re talking about then. This is now.
What’s going on? Yer normally a lot sharper and more cogent. And in a different time zone too. At least I can blame my recent comments on the late hour driven on by a surfeit of Macallan Gran Reserva and Goldfrapp.
j_p_z,
1. Tactics relate to means, not ends. And the oil part of this thread is about ends.
2. Nostalgia is by definition simplistic. I notice that you did not address my central proposition that is is not possible for the US to withdraw from the world 1910-style and also to prevent US residents from have gun battles at gas pumps over access to dwindling supplies of the stuff that drives their lives and their dreams.
This is what Bush meant when he said “the US way of life is non-negotiable.”
I join Nabakov in noting with concern that you’ve been a bit off your form on this thread.
Katz: “Tactics relate to means, not ends.”
Well, alright. And I could have sworn that I argued at length that Eisenhower’s ends in the Mossadegh affair (your example) were not wholly defined by a thirst for oil. Look at where Iran is on a map. Imagine you’re fighting a cold war, and that you have a key ally who has a certain problem, etc. etc. I’m not justifying the coup, I’m only opening the thing out to its proper dimensions. But even if all this were not so, there remain (I think) situational threshholds which enable or bar various tactics and various pursuits of ends, n’importe quoi. The US could not fire-bomb East Germany in 1948, even though it had bombed Dresden only a few years before. Similarly, George Bush could not have unilaterally invaded Iraq on September 10, 2001.
“the oil part of this thread is about ends”
No, the oil part is about how, or if, or how much, it relates to the war part.
If you think the entire US government is a giant “Ocean’s Eleven”-style caper whose main goal is to steal oil, then I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s a way of viewing the world, I suppose. But I would ask then, why didn’t Bush the First steal all the oil from Iraq AND Kuwait AND little Cindy-Lou Who, when he was poised to do so? Why was there massive US military action in Korea and Vietnam, where there is no oil, but not in Venezuela and Nigeria, where there is? Could it be that the US government also thinks about other things besides… oil?
“2. Nostalgia is by definition simplistic. I notice that you did not address my central proposition that is is not possible for the US to withdraw from the world 1910-style…”
You used the word nostalgia, not I, which is why I called you simplistic. Read again what I wrote; it’s not nostalgic (perhaps the 1910 remark was a trifle flip, but honestly, I’ve been on this blog before, yes?). I wasn’t talking about full ‘US withdrawal from the world’ (and in any event, ask the Spaniards, the Cubans and the Filipinos if the US was a shy, reclusive hermit prior to 1917).
“to prevent US residents from having gun battles at gas pumps…”
And tell me, do we get to eat our squirrel stew before or after the gun fights? Yee. Haw.
As regards your substantive point from the earlier post, well, put it this way.
“You can have your cake and eat it, too, so long as you’re willing to pay for it. And even if you aren’t willing… so long as you pay all the same.”
–Bert Brecht, preface to ‘Baal’
The ‘price’ of oil can be expressed in many ways, and market price is only one of them. As a US taxpayer, I pay the fully expressed price of oil, no matter what the sign says at the pump during those gun battles (been wounded twice, muh-self). The money may not go into the pockets of the people you want it to, but I still pay all the same. I pay for it in higher taxes to fund exorbitant militaries; I pay for it in social services I don’t have, but might have had, except the money was spent in other ways. I pay for a lot of stuff that I don’t use myself, in all kinds of indirect ways. There are schizophrenic bums sleeping on my streetcorner who should be in state mental hospitals; but instead, Italians and Canadians get subsidized dental care on my dime, in the indirect fashion of their free defense shield that I shelled out for. It’s a kooky world, and I don’t pretend to understand all of it. But if there were an oil shortage, then the price would simply be expressed in yet another way.
Look, it’s quite clear that oil is to some important degree a factor in this horrid and misbegotten war. How, really, could it not be? But as I say, the war simply could not have begun on 9/10/01. That’s not an enormous point to make, and it’s astounding that I’m pushed to writing this many words to articulate it to you.
There’s lots of other, more important points for people to make, so I’ll stop taking up so much real estate about this. Besides, I’ve got a busy day ahead of me of ropin’ steers, drivin’ monster trucks, and shooting station attendants.
I don’t, viz:
My point is that in the ME (but not in Korea, VN and other places) US strategy is powerfully conditioned by the disposition of the region’s oil.
Your point about the “price” you pay for oil and those dazzling Canadian and Italian smiles is well taken. But only in a Helleresque world could you be describing a “market”. In short your description of this is proof of market failure. As a contrast, rubber, an equally important strategic material, which the US must import, is traded on free-market principles. Why doesn’t the US have a Carter Doctrine for the Malayan Peninsula?
Nothing I’ve argued contradicts this.
Indeed, Bush needed 9/11 to add moral weight to a strategy that had already been mapped out before 9/11. Bush was able to shackle the legitimate outrage of Americans to his ambitious and maximalist purposes. It was only after 9/11 that the Neocon project was grafted on to Bush’s plans. That was the major policy contribution of 9/11 to US strategy. The Neocons provided:
1. A moral purpose for pre-existing plans.
2. An organisational principle for Middle East reconstruction.
3. A vocabulary of rhetoric to assist in selling the Iraq project.
No, I’m not arguing conspiracy. Al Qaeda provided an opportunity for Bush, an opportunity that may otherwise have lain dormant in the womb of time.
(I’d also argue that al Qaeda knew its mark. Bush’s half-arsed bellicosity has been a godsend to Islamists everywhere. But that’s another argument for another thread.)
I agree with this very much, Mark. The US have stuffed up royally in pursuing their traditional interests in the Persian Gulf. The time now is to diversify and yet the US is stuck in its old ways of thinking.
911 was when the sports star got punched in the face by a drunk in a late-night bar incident. The sports-star didn’t know when to just go home, and now is out of the team for a few weeks doing community service by day and cruising the streets looking for his assailant by night.
Meanwhile the finals are on.
I would say the former. Iraq was a war entered into withour restraint or regard for stability and it was not in the national interest. Even if you argue that the “realist geo-strategists” thought Iraq was in the national interest in clearly fails the stability test.
The foremost realist in the Bush Administration circa-2003 was Colin Powell, and it is widely recognised that he lost more or less every argument their was to loose at the time.
You persist, j_p_z in misunderstanding the oil and LNG question. The USA does no want to steal the oil. It wants to control the market the oil slops around in. Who buys it and what they u$e to pay for it.
Kuwait is an oil ally that deals on Nymex. No need to invade them. Or Mexico, or Norway etc.
Nigerian oil goes to the US already. No need to invade it. But you can be sure that there is heavy US involvement in all aspects of the Nigerian state. War there is still on the cards. The US is perceived by many Nigerians as ripping off that country blind.
As for Venezuela, the US tried to overthrow Chavez just a few years ago. Why? Because Chavez hates the US and wants to sell his oil to the South and to China etc.
But bottom line, your attempt to paint the argument that the invasion of Iraq had a lot do with hydrocarbons, as being as stupid as to say that everything the US does, anywhere, is about oil, is a time-waster.
wbb — well, I’m certainly sorry to be wasting your time, which could be far more productively spent in writing a vast history of the world where you replace the letter “s” with “$” every time it appears. Let me know when you get