There are several inferences that can be drawn from this fact.

I would particularly enjoy his attempt to explain how the US can continue to muster the financial muscle to project its world-altering will upon the world.

So what’s your argument, GregM, shorn of all this scholastic disputation and ideological stereotyping? That the US can invade another country at will if said country has a vile dictator? That what you’re saying? Please be clear about it.

The flipside of this debate about sovereignty is that the US flouted any attempt to place any limitation on its sovereignty.

The flipside is the Left’s amazing capacity, over history, to repudiate the Westphalian principle when it suits their ideological agenda.

mahmoud, collaborator in genocide, eh?! whatever next …

Now, now SG. Be fair to Mahmoud. No one has accused him of being a collaborator in genocide; just of being an apologist for it. Which he is.

Like you.

the Leftist fixation on the Westphalian principle of the sovereignty

The flipside of this debate about sovereignty is that the US flouted any attempt to place any limitation on its sovereignty.

Again, I find myself in agreement with much of your description of the nature of the Iraqi Constitution.

And I, for one, have never underestimated the progressive role played by the US in WWII.

My major point of contention with you, however, is against your optimism about the future. I find your dismissal of the importance of the rise of Hamas quite glib.

Moreover, my reading of US domestic politics causes me to believe that this prediction of yours:

[Bush] may not get the deal done in his Presidency, but the next U.S. President can’t fail to understand that ending the failed war for Greater Israel is vital to U.S. interests, and so GWBesque policies will continue.

is quite Pollyannaish.

I seem to recall us having a similar discussion some time ago.

Again, my reading of US domestic politics makes me more confident than ever that the US will greatly reduce its profile in the ME if either of the Democrat candidates win. And I am quite confident that either of them will win.

The last time we had this discussion the US was not deep in financial crisis. This crisis imposes strictures on any Administration that can be ignored only at risk of systemic financial collapse.

1. How do you justify your assertion that the events in Iraq constitute a “bourgeois revolution”? My perception is that it is a theocratic revolution more closely associated with Iran 1979 than Paris 1830.

As a revolutionary communist I am first and foremost a democrat. In Iraq communists can stand for election, can vote, can establish political parties and alliances. People prepared to defend the constitution can now exist in Iraq and are free to publish etc., and to struggle for change. This is just not the case in Iran where the vicious theocrats are running a dictatorship and rigging elections that their opponents would win and so are simply forbidden to stand in.

Naturally, a majority of the people (and politicians) in Iraq are God-botherers, and so we can expect them to form governments (not unlike Rudd, only Australians do not have Proportional Representation, so God-botherers here carry on their two-party-dictatorship, cyclically unaffected by how many of us hate their guts.)

The Iraqi constitution and its current enforcement ensures that what we have in Iraq is a formal bourgeois democracy. Of course the Islamic culture flavors that democracy as Catholicism did in Italy, and Ireland, or Protestantism has the U.S., and of course it is backwards compared to western democracies. As backward as Britain say Ninety odd years ago, when women couldn’t vote, and Oscar Wilde was being jailed; or how about that slave owner Jefferson, in a democracy where all men were created equally. Strange fruit hung in many trees, as the struggle to make a formal democracy real, unfolded to the point where Condoleeza Rice, and Obama are only now realistic presidential candidates.

There are obviously forces that exist in Iraq that resemble the KKK and terrorize people accordingly, so Iraqi peoples have to cast aside illusions and get on with struggle. That’s all we get in this world, and I have nothing to say about the next which I will leave for Rudd to explain.

2. Is it your contention that the Bush Administration is deliberately encouraging a bourgeois revolution, or do you believe that this is an accidental result of Bush’s policies. My belief is that Bush believes he is fomenting a bourgeois revolution, but he is in fact fomenting a theocratic revolution. Bush is therefore the midwife of some very unwelcome developments in the Middle East. The rise of Hamas, an Islamist movement, in challenge to Fateh, a secularist movement, in Palestine would appear to falsify your rosy scenario.

I believe that Bush is quite deliberate in this policy and is succeeding. It is not Bush that made Fatah so corrupt and out of touch that Palestinians turned to Hamas. It is not GWB who is reforming Fatah but Abbas. In the end the prisoners will have to be released and Marwan Barghouti will eventually lead a reformed Fatah. The Peoples of the region will have to sort out the pace of their revolution but they have very young population profiles, and so we can expect pretty rapid progress once the large bottle necks have been broken. Take the example of the Kurds, they are making breathtaking progress for a people who had no friends but the mountains.

The Palestinians require the Zionist occupation be ended and a Palestinian state established and GWB is the only U.S. president to call this occupation for what it is. He may not get the deal done in his Presidency, but the next U.S. President can’t fail to understand that ending the failed war for Greater Israel is vital to U.S. interests, and so GWBesque policies will continue.

I think it’s important to remind people about WW2 and U.S. contributions to the victory against fascism. Some in the ‘anti-war’ camp don’t seem to be able to imagine that the U.S. could ever be on the side of the angels. Every war has to be evaluated on its merits and the war against Baathist tyranny is now five years along the track, self evidently a war of liberation.

I also think contrasting the positive role of the conservative leadership of WW2 with the vicious conduct of the Kennedy liberals, and their anti-totalitarian clap- trap as they let loose butchery in Asia, is vital to understanding the modern world. Liberals have been coasting along with their bullshit for years in the absence of a radical left, but that can’t remain the case in the face of the evident bankruptcy of liberalism when protracted armed struggle is required and waged.

and what the fuck is wrong with this stuipd preview box?

Iraqis fleeing to Jordan and Syria accounted for the entire net increase in global refugees in 2006 - 1.2 million. Chaldeans are fleeing in record numbers, as are the Jews, Sunnis account for most of the refugees note above, and Shi’a are getting car bombed constantly.

Further, while France remains a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council that whole institution will be an international joke. No civilized country should have have any more regard for its opinions than they do the opinions expressed over a quiet ale or G&T at the Bellarine Tennis Club.

Perhaps GregM could enlighten us with some actual facts about the last time the French used their veto to vote down a proposal in the Security Council that would otherwise have passed. (Hint: it was as recently as 1976!)

How does that record compare with the record of the use of veto by the US? By the UK?

While it is encouraging to see GregM attempt to dip his toe in the waters of Ideational Flexibility, he should perhaps attempt to avoid the Deep End of Utter Fantasy.

thats how i see it.

In fact, the majority of the Iraqi parliament have taken huge satisfaction in bamboozling Bush and his administration.

As Mark has hinted, in a real sense, therefore, Iraq has no government at all.

Thus, what have the 80% of the Iraqi people got from this exercise?

My answer is a group of cunning rejectionists who have pledged to do more or less nothing until the Americans pack up in exasperation and go home.

If that’s what the majority of Iraqi people want then that’s what their Parliament and government should be doing. That is what democracy is about.

Mind you, as Katz is a fact-free zone, I’d like to see some evidence, for once, for what he contends.

Yes, Yes. I know. Ideational Flexibility and detachment from reality and all that.

But just once. Is that too much to ask?

My answer is a group of cunning rejectionists who have pledged to do more or less nothing until the Americans pack up in exasperation and go home.

And to complete this thought and to make explicit my reference, there is a WWI analogy that can usefully be made.

Wilson won the war.

But by clever stonewalling and sophisticated bad faith, Lloyd george and Clemenceau bamboozled Wilson, who crept away from Versailles a broken and defeated man.

Lloyd George and Clemenceau won the peace.

Bush = Wilson.

No they didn’t.

That’s a quibble. I’m not expressing myself well because I’m tired. I’m well aware that Germany was divided into four occupation zones, three of which became the FRG. The process of the unification of the zones aside from the Soviet one began prior to 1949. My point is that when Adenauer formed a government, there had been no war and no insurgency in the territory that became the FRG since 1945.

Only time will tell.

After an infinite elapse of time all will be told.

Trouble is, Bush has only 10 months.

Democratic election is no guarantee of a government being viable.

While the present Iraqi parliament was elected in as democratic a manner as can reasonably have been expected under the circumstances, that is no guarantee that the elected representatives will act in good faith to the people who bankroll them. The US government are bankrolling the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government has virtually no revenue base of its own, and have steadfastly refused to make the necessary compromises to pass an oil law which would certainly initiate a flow of revenue to the Iraqi treasury. Both post-war Germany and Japan quickly re-established a revenue flow from taxation. Such a revenue flow is a sine qua non of effective government.

In fact, the majority of the Iraqi parliament have taken huge satisfaction in bamboozling Bush and his administration.

As Mark has hinted, in a real sense, therefore, Iraq has no government at all.

Thus, what have the 80% of the Iraqi people got from this exercise?

My answer is a group of cunning rejectionists who have pledged to do more or less nothing until the Americans pack up in exasperation and go home.

Well, the Adenaeur and Yoshiba governments controlled the territory over which they purported to rule -

No they didn’t. They were under occupation from foreign military powers who controlled the territory that they purported to rule, in the case of West Germany the US, the UK and France (though not of, course, East Germany, under Soviet control and we all remember how the east Germans expressed their pleasure about that in 1989, don’t we) and in the case of Japan the US and its supportive allied powers, but not the Soviet Union.

A bit of basic reading of history would have told you that.