Archive for the 'Iraq' Category

Surge over

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Federal Elections, Foreign policy, Iraq, USA and War
. 23 Comments

The current state of play in the standoff between Congress and Bush over Iraq is that the military commander, General Petraeus, will report to Congress in September on the progress of the surge. Petraeus, who was appointed because he’s supposed to be an expert in counterinsurgency and to have better political antennae than other generals, has emphasised that the surge will not work if political progress is not made by Iraqis. This is generally understood to mean a settlement of oil revenue allocation which would not squeeze out the Sunnis, laws which revise de-Baathification, an inclusive government, disarming militias, and so on. All of which should have been done years ago if it was ever going to work. To date, Maliki’s government hasn’t even been able to present all the relevant laws to the Iraq parliament. In news today, it’s being reported that the Parliament is going on summer vacation til September, not resuming until just before Petraeus has to report.

The surge is dead.

I wouldn’t expect such paragons of diplomacy as Dolly Downer, too busy slagging off Mohammed Haneef, to have any comment. But the Liberal Party should be very afraid of the election period proper, when Labor intends to campaign vigorously on Iraq.

Elsewhere: More surge is dead news from Tim at Surfdom.

War is hell, occupation is worse

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 4 months ago
in Iraq, Middle East, Terrorism and War
. 13 Comments

The Nation brings us a long, detailed investigation of the other war - the effect of the US military’s occupation on the people of Iraq.

It’s not a pretty picture - a combination of jumpy GIs, a fair sprinkling of racists and sadists in the military’s ranks, and the attitude of command that Iraqi deaths were of little concern, it’s impossible not to draw analogies with Apocalypse Now.

Given the anecdotal basis of the report, the self-selection bias of the interviewees, and the presumed motivation of the authors (it’s hard to imagine Laila Al-Irian is keen to give the Bush administration an even break) it’s hard to know how reflective of the overall situation it is. Nevertheless, it’s both disturbing and plausible.

Where are the Australian Eustonistas?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Australiana, Culture, International, Iraq, Media, Politics, Sociology and War
. 133 Comments

…asks recent immigrant to these shores, Pommygranate, on a Catallaxy thread. I think there’s quite a simple answer to that question. Despite the globalisation of the news cycle, and increasingly of selected political issues, there are still significant differences in national political cultures. Australia never needed Eustonistas because it was the Liberals who took us into Iraq, and the Labor Party (and other left and centre-left parties) was consequently united in opposition. A big contrast both to Blair’s warmongering, and to the way such issues play among the Democrats in the States. And the “Third Way” project needed no great defence because it never took off in Australia - the reason being first that the Australian Labor Party shed its socialist clothes at an earlier stage (and in fact the Hawke/Keating government inspired much of Blairism rather than the influence being from Britain to Oz) and secondly that the far left in Australia has not for many years had anywhere near as much influence or presence as in the UK.

The absence of Eustonistas (and I discount the odd voice in the papers, like Pamela Bone, because they represent more a punditarian slot for an op/editor to fill rather than any real political grouping) is a good thing. We have no need of a “pro-war Left” and it’s significant that tiny sects such as the Maoists at Last Superpower are the only political formations who actually represent in a real sense this tendency in Australian politics. The battle lines are relatively clear, with the right wing commentariat being the exemplars of tortured non sequiturs and ludicrous leaps of logic in the face of the collapse of the Iraq War. In any event, such voices are usually very muted (and fewer) now as reality has finally caught up with the faith based community. The probable election of a Rudd government will see the last embers of the fires of the Iraq War in Australian political debate die away very quickly, and hopefully we will have learned some lessons.

Continue reading ‘Where are the Australian Eustonistas?’

YouTube, campaigns and TEH STOOPID

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Climate change, Elections, Federal Elections, Film, TV, Video etc, Howardia, International, Iraq and USA
. 36 Comments

Last month, I linked to Rachel Maddow’s rather groovy video deconstruction of the campaign asylum. Rachel’s worth watching again, taking on the Republicans (and Hillary) on Iraq:

Incidentally, we could do with a better debate on Iraq - not just the nonsense from Dolly et al, but Labor’s position of “implement the Baker report” is also significantly behind events now. But we probably won’t get one. And nor, in terms of political commentary via vid or vodcast, do we have anyone doing the sort of vital and really funny job Rachel is doing in the States. Today did see John Howard take the plunge into the YouTube waters (“to appeal to Generation Y” as if none of the rest of us who aren’t government staffers or flaks have discovered the Intertubes yet…). I’ll post it over the fold. One question though - what ever is he talking about when he claims that the Coalition have been leading “Australian action to reduce greenhouse emissions since 1990″? Does he think teh yoof won’t know he was elected in 96? Is he lying? Has he forgotten when he became PM? It’s an obvious ploy to counter the inaction/denialism/asleep at the wheel theme, but what the? Anyway, Labor’s ad in response is quite cute. Lord only knows how much difference all this makes - building on the post about pollies and social networking, probably not much unless (a) it’s clever; (b) it’s genuinely interactive and (c) it inspires a response. (Btw, Howard’s myspace still has just 8 friends and Rudd is up to 6665.) Personally, I’d much rather see some Australian Rachel Maddows, or some clever viral bombs, than a hundred JohnHoward2007 and australianlabor videos. But maybe they know what they’re on about.

Continue reading ‘YouTube, campaigns and TEH STOOPID’

Dolly and the myth of Al Qaeda and Iraq

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign policy, Iraq and Terrorism
. 15 Comments

This morning on The Insider Dolly gave a virtuoso performance of deceitful political spin in discussing Al Qaeda in Iraq:

I don’t think anyone really argues with the proposition, by the way, that if al-Qaeda and terrorism is successful in Iraq, and there is a complete withdrawal of international troops, especially American troops, from Iraq, that will be a spectacular victory for terrorism and that will have ramifications around the world, including from our perspective in South East Asia.

The Dollyverse must be an interesting one indeed. It seems that recent intelligence memos concerning the resurgence of Al Qaeda cannot penetrate its carefully constructed walls nor anyone that would disagree with him. Of course, given the memo is yet to be declassified one would think Dolly would keep up on foreign affairs being foreign minister and all. One avenue may the the publication Foreign Affairs with an article such as Al Qaeda Strikes Back.

Continue reading ‘Dolly and the myth of Al Qaeda and Iraq’

Cossie’s timing poor

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Foreign policy, Howardia, Iraq, Politics and War
. 25 Comments

Costello:

Can a democratic government survive in Iraq? Well, for the sake of the Middle East and the world, the answer has got to be yes. And any premature withdrawal that means a victory for al Qaeda threatens security everywhere. That’s the point.

White House:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Australian government, meet reality. And that’s before we even get into the wonders of refusing to debate “what if’s” while scrounging around for a retrospective justification for the Iraq War.

I don’t want to sound incredulous …

Published
by
Gummo Trotsky
1 year, 5 months ago
in Federal Elections, Government, Howardia and Iraq
. 15 Comments

… but I don’t believe him:

… Media reports today quote an anonymous senior military source as saying that such a plan [to withdraw Australian troops] is in place in the event the war in Iraq worsens for US-led forces.

The rumoured plan would reportedly be announced before the federal election later this year to ambush Mr Rudd, who has committed to pulling out Australian troops from Iraq if Labor wins government.

Mr Howard has denied any such plan. (National Rupert)

Leaving Iraq The Middle East

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, History, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, USA and War
. 43 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Gwynne Dyer’s The Mess They Made: The Middle East after Iraq:

As Gwynne Dyer argues in The Mess They Made, the Middle East is about to change fundamentally, and everything is now up for grabs: regimes, ethnic pecking-orders within states, even national borders themselves are liable to change without notice. Five years from now there could be an Islamic Republic of Arabia, an independent Kurdistan, a Muslim cold war between Sunnis and Shias, almost anything you care to imagine.

Dyer’s book is important because it’s one of the few books on the topic I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) to really make the effort to place the current conflicts in their long term historical perspective, and to speculate on a future beyond the immediate political and strategic context (although he nevertheless documents the now familiar litany of disasters that has characterised the Iraq War). He does, however, extrapolate from that context to a conclusion which I think is becoming inescapable - much as the Democrats, either through lack of courage or political calculation, might be prepared to maintain US forces in Iraq until the 2008 election, it’s almost certain that the “implosion of public support” for the war will see troops leave when a new President, of either party, is sworn in. Dyer adds his voice to those scholars and analysts who’ve seen the US war in Iraq as a monument to its decline, not a sign of its growing power. Further, he argues that it’s likely that the US will walk away from the Middle East in toto, and he suggests that may not be an undesirable outcome.

Continue reading ‘Leaving Iraq The Middle East’

Sometimes, sarcasm is the only possible response

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 5 months ago
in Disasters, Iraq and Middle East
. 18 Comments

This news headline - Iraq now ranked second among world’s failed states - seems to have left many in the blogosphere lost for words. But as Amanda Marcotte points out, if we don’t talk it up, it can be spun as people not really caring that the whole venture in Iraq is a clusterf*ck.

The Shrub can’t do anything right, can he? As of today, we’ve spent $436,458,000,000 on this adventure war, and still Bush failed to make Iraq the #1 most fucked-up country on the planet. Sudan skidded into first, and I guarantee you, they did it at a fraction of the cost.

Harsh but fair.

Updated: original Failed States report at Foreign Policy.

World Refugee Day

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year, 5 months ago
in Immigration, International, Iraq and War
. 6 Comments

On this World Refugee Day, it might be an appropriate time to remember the refugee crisis resulting from the invasion of Iraq. You know, that war that we were all too eager to sign up for. According to Der Spiegel, most of the Iraqi refugee with sufficient means to make it to Europe are ending up in Sweden, because the rest of Europe won’t take them:

Alvesta is just one of scores of villages, towns and cities in Sweden that are hosting an ever-growing number of Iraqis fleeing the violence back home. The Scandinavian country took in some 9,000 Iraqi refugees in 2006 — over 40 percent of the 22,000 Iraqi refugees who found their way to Europe. And Sweden is bracing for a significant increase this year. Based on the numbers of Iraqi refugees arriving in Europe in the first two months of 2007, the total seeking asylum this year could be well over 40,000. And with much of the rest of Europe doing little to help, most of them are likely to end up in Sweden.

But, as the article notes, that’s chickenfeed compared to the 1.2 million or so in Syria, and 750,000-odd in Jordan. Yep, the invasion of Iraq has thus far resulted in 2 million-odd refugees, not counting the internally displaced.

According to this fact sheet from the recently renamed Department of Immigration and Citizenship (no more multiculturalism for you!), Australia took 2150 Iraqi refugees last year.

Lowering the bar for Iraq

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Federal Elections, Howardia, Iraq, Media, Politics, USA and War
. 71 Comments

As funding legislation passed by the US Congress now requires a report in September about the success of the surge, it’s worthwhile to reflect on how the goalposts which would constitute “victory” have shifted over the years. There’s a useful timeline here. The announced goal of the surge was to bring stability to Baghdad. No longer the case:

May 2007: With the U.S. occupation in its fifth year and violence surging despite the influx of additional American troops, U.S. officials lower the bar again.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said May 7 that for the U.S. troop escalation to be judged a success, American forces need not bring stability to Baghdad.

“The goal in September is not whether the violence has been significantly reduced, or stability has been brought … but rather whether it has been reduced to a level that the political reconciliation process is moving forward in some meaningful way,” Gates said.

One other way of looking at the progress of the surge is to contemplate the fracturing of the narrative that there is one single “enemy”, and that we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.

Continue reading ‘Lowering the bar for Iraq’

falsis nominibus imperium

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Activism, Federal Elections, Feminism, Foreign policy, Iraq and War
. 24 Comments

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Looting, killing and raping - by twisting their words they call it ‘empire’; and wherever they have created a wilderness, they call it ‘peace’.

Thus, Tacitus, the Republican, on the imperialism of his own age, questioning whether the Romans themselves had become the barbarians.

———-

I’ve written before, as have a number of other LP bloggers, about the appalling position of women in the “democratic” Iraq. The absurd justification of that war in the name of liberation and civil rights is now rarely heard, as attention shifts in the heart of the decaying Bush imperium to desparate attempts to maintain its perpetuity. In Australia, there’s now no debate at all, as the Liberals probably wouldn’t dare to mention their own foreign policy. No doubt it will be raised before the election, probably particularly when George W. Bush comes to Sydney Town in September. I have no doubt either that one of the issues raised then by feminists will be what’s happening in Iraq to women, despite the fact that some are blind to this concern. To that end, via Feministing, here’s a disturbing and depressing update from Katha Pollitt.

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Of manifestos, and manifestists, or; has the future a left?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Apocalypse, History, Howardia, International, Iraq, Philosophy, Policy, Politics, Sociology and War
. 93 Comments

I had no idea that the Euston Manifesto was still bubbling along its merry manifestist way (which I imagine to be a third way of some sort) in cyberspace as opposed to having hit a dead end. But it seems it is, and that there is an entire YouTube channel devoted to videos such as:

This informative discussion involving key Ministers in the British government, trade unionist activists, a top journalist and key NGO leaders; discussed the lack of a Arab response to the crisis in the Darfur, the excuses made by Western intellectuals for suicide bombings and other terrorist acts, Iraq and the need to support democrats, and the future for the UN (and whether it is a ‘failed’ organisation).

I’d have thought its moment past, since even though it purported to be some sort of declaration of enduring truths for the left, its actual genesis was in a particularly Blairite moment which will soon be fading into history as a Brown led government loses interest in neocon adventurism and liberal imperialism. The Tories, perhaps appropriately for a party with a pragmatic Oakeshottian philosophical tradition, never had much attraction to grand projects for inscribing democracy on the sands of the Middle East. And British troops will soon be gone from Iraq.

In any event, as some of the subjects discussed in the series of videos linked testify, the Manifestists were never particularly focused on tasks peculiar to the left but rather on raising non sequiturs such as “the lack of a Arab response to the crisis in the Darfur” in order to mask the hypocrisy lying behind the inaction of the West, and the extremely uneven application of principles of international humanitarian law. This, of course, was an aporia necessary to such a project, as those whom the Euston Manifestists would applaud had no actual commitment to principle except as convenient spin and justification of power. In short, rather than re-inventing the left, the Manifestists were more interested in firstly defending Blairism (and to the degree that they showed any interest in the traditional economic and social goals of the left, subscribing to morally authoritarian communitarianism) and secondly justifying their own effective exit from any plausible left. Really, it was all about the two I’s - Iraq and Israel.

Continue reading ‘Of manifestos, and manifestists, or; has the future a left?’

Democracy, freedom, etc.

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Federal Elections, Iraq and War
. 20 Comments

A majority of the members of the Iraqi Parliament has signed a draft bill calling for a US troop withdrawal.

John McCain responds:

TIM RUSSERT: But if the duly elected people’s bodies, the U.S Congress and the Iraqi Parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal, that’s more than a poll. Isn’t that the voice of the people?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: As far as the Iraqi Parliament is concerned, the Iraqi government obviously doesn’t feel that way there … second of all, there is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi. quote, Parliament, said.

Has anyone asked Howard what he thinks?

Blair’s journey

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Developing world, Foreign policy, International, Iraq, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, Religion and War
. 15 Comments

Following up on suz’ post about Blair’s retirement intentions.

The Times is reporting that Tony Blair will establish an interfaith foundation. Sounds like he’s trying to put just a bit of distance between him and what Bill Clinton does, while reserving the right to do what Bill does. Anyway, no doubt it’s a worthier project than going to work for Murdoch.

Blair’s often been compared to Gladstone as a liberal internationalist. That’s a bit unfair on Gladstone, who hated war and also laid down some of the earliest markers for international humanitarian law. Blair seems to be the reverse, though with a fair bit of rhetoric laden on to claim otherwise. The commonality, actually, is probably the zealous Christian “civilising mission” attitude - in Blair’s case a very British disease quite unlike Bush’s crazed manicheanism.

Continue reading ‘Blair’s journey’