great post, Bernhard.
maxcrat- I was also part of those demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq and know your frustration as we were made invisisible by the U.S. mainstream media.
at this point, such demonstrations seem to be for the conscience of those demonstrating. maybe they serve a purpose to show the rest of the world that not everyone supports the current policies and actions, but that was also demonstrated in the recent election.
Americans have chosen and staked a course. I ask every young man who tells me he voted for Bush, “Have you enlisted?” I tell them that if they really support Bush then they need to get out there and make sure that he achieves those objectives. I tell them that during World War II people like my father lied about their ages and enlisted. If this war is just, then they should do the same.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 7 2004 15:06 utc | 3

Right on r’giap
When our grandchildren ask us, “how could you let something like that happen?” we should not be ashamed of our answer.

Posted by: Dan of Steele | Nov 7 2004 15:36 utc | 5

b
what iw saying, my friend is that constant demonstrations are needed. perhaps what was not clear in my post – that even if the first step in mobilisation – is to know you are not alone – that you are not mad – that your passion & your heart have a real & concrete meaning
i feel that the us govt is so corrupt that there should be a national uprising – but that will never happen – in any sense
what can be done & i imagine with a much larger front than was possible against the vietnam war – is to mobilise constantly against this war
constantly – in that in the vietnamwar much was hidden. in our current situation – we have information on a regular basis – the fascists cannot control totally the information – so that each week there is a new scandal – a new burlesque – a new massacre & yes the deaths of their own soldiers
these are perfect conditions for a movement to exist & to grow & to be a source of information or at least a bridge against the wall of lies
no my friend b – political mobilisation is the only way to destroy the melancholia that i feel in our american friends – they have to do something – no matter how little it seems & no matter how ineffective
but they must also understand that when it does become effective & i believe that will very soon – the state will then use the patriot acts & the state will use both judicial & physical force
& in this very volatile situation you can expect more than the four deaths in ohio, or those 15 people at jackson university. i feel that is completely within the relms of possibility. the patriot acts, fema etc are there for that very reason
we in europe must play our role on many many levels – of information, of propogation – of speaking for our american friends until this war & this administration are trampled into the dust
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 7 2004 16:13 utc | 7

12 ING soldiers abducted, executed
Three Diyala provincial officials executed
Iraqi police ambushed at Baquba, one killed, four injured
Three US soldiers injured in attack on convoy in Baghdad
Bomb blast kills Turkish driver near Mosul in attack on supply convoy
Fear, violence reign on Haifa Street
Baghdad’s Green Zone rocked by bomb blasts
23 police killed in Iraq
Iraqi interim government declares martial law
Iraq claims state of emergency as insurgency flares
Two US convoys attacked in Iraq, 1 US soldier killed
Car bomb targets Finance Minister
Two British troops injured in Iraq attack
Execution of two translators who worked for US Marines announced
Just another day.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 7 2004 16:54 utc | 9

@r`giap – agreed but one point. state of emergency is martial law. If that official doesn´t like your look, you´ll be shoot and nobody will ask. BTW that law is illegal as all laws Bremer tried to put in. That step should cost Allawi if he ever should come in front of a decent court.
Dahr Jamail is back in Baghdad and reporting

On Saturday, four car bombs have killed 40 people, ten of whom were Iraqi Police and wounded at least 62 in the city of Samarra which was supposedly taken over by US control at the beginning of October.
An Iraqi health official said that 23 people, including nine policemen, were killed and 40 wounded, in the first of three bomb explosions against Iraqi Police.
The second car bomb detonated while rescue workers were assisting victims of the first blast. A third bomb struck a US patrol while it was attempting to reach the scene of the first two blasts, but there has been no word yet on US casualties.
The fourth blast occurred at 12:30 pm local time when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police station in the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, which according to Iraqi Police killed several policemen and wounded five others.
Witnesses claimed that US troops opened fired sporadically in the city center after they were attacked, injuring civilians and destroying cars.
Resistance fighters in Samarra also handed out leaflets pledging solidarity with their brothers in Falluja.

Highly coordinated well planed attack including even professional PsyOps. (The second attack hitting the rescue workers of the first one is a method said to be used by Israel in Palestine – just makes me wonder who did the tactical training)

Out in Haditha 200 resistance fighters, using RPG’s and mortars, stormed a police station, killing 23 IP’s execution style-they took them out of station and shot them after they tied their hands behind their backs. There were three simultaneous attacks on police stations there and Haqlaniyah.

Again planed and coordinated and in a different place – these aren´t “rag heads” fighting, this is an army

My friend Salam, while visiting me today says of the martial law, “So now any policeman can shoot me anytime he wants. This happened before, but now it is even more legal. But this won’t give the government any power. They were already powerless. Let them put on any law they want, it doesn’t matter.”

Posted by: b | Nov 7 2004 20:35 utc | 11

Just a little more Falluja – the ground attack has started – this was the preparation Commanders Give Marines Pep Talk in Iraq

“This is America’s fight,” Sattler said. “What we’ve added to it is our Iraqi partners. They want to go in and liberate Fallujah. They feel this town’s being held hostage by mugs, thugs, murderers and terrorists.”
…
“God bless you, each and every one. You know what your mission is. Go out there and get it done,” Sattler said.
…
“You’re all in the process of making history,” [Sgt.Maj.] Kent boomed in a clarion voice. “This is another Hue city in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done — kick some butt.”
…
“They’re sharpening their K-Bar fighting knives; they’re cleaning their weapons for the last time; they’ve fueled their vehicles and they’ve rehearsed the plan,” said Ramos, 41, of Dallas.
Ramos predicted that “freedom and democracy” would prevail in Fallujah within days.
“Make no mistake about it, we’ll hand this city back to the Iraqi people,” he said. “I think it will be rapid.”
During the fight, rules of engagement allow U.S. troops to shoot and kill anyone carrying a weapon or driving in Fallujah, a move aimed at allowing U.S. troops to fire on car bombers, Ramos said. Military age males trying to leave the city will be captured or turned back.
…
“This is a whole can of whoop-butt all combined here,” Kent said, surveying the Marines surrounding him.
A pumped-up crowd shouted a deafening “Hoo-rah” in response.

Posted by: b | Nov 7 2004 21:12 utc | 13

oh my friend deanander
i think from very different perspectives we have fought for the same thing
what drew me towards communism in the first instance was compassion – i read as althusser did – that in understanding marx– we are not alone & because what i witnessed even as a child was immense suffering & i knew that it was wrong & that it could be changed
& though i knew history & knew that some of it was not glorious & showed explicitly the failing of men but not of ideas – those ideas have remained with me – if you like as a motivating force – because for finally – it provides the tools & concepts with which to understand our most mishappened world
i went to marx not to seek absolutes because i was instinctively intelligent enough to understand that corruption began with absolutes because absolutes did not allow the terryifying & wonderful streams & rivers of truth. & tho those truths could be contradictory, multiple, doubt ridden – it was with these truths that the struggle must be fought
i have been dissapointed with the experiments – but who am i finally to judge these experiments – the books of weights & balances – show me that all systems have carried within themselves their own error sometimes their own downfall
i have worked on the terrain of culture for 40 of my 50 years & i have almost constantly worked with communities. i have done this on three continents in 11 different countries & the truths are the same because the people suffer
perhaps i was born into an era of wonder & of empowerment & though alabama is correct to say that left failed to do its pedagogical work after the sixties it is also too facile. that epoch showed what people were capable of when they connected their dreams with their realities
it is absolutely consistant deander that you work in the sciences, computers astronomy astrophysics because i think as a human you wanted to stretch human knowledge not for your vanity though in the end there is nothing wrong with that – but i think your heart wanted other people to know. the sciences have given us great cruelty but has also been the font of so much beauty so much wonder. & faced with the creationist who want to pervert knowledge – who want so much to reverse the wheel as the taliban tried to do – this love of knowledge – is in itself a courageous act
another act which deserves to be called courageous in our time but has become a heresy – is simply to remember – to remeber all – to never conciliate the memory’s fine eye with the softness & the rigours of day to day life. the terrible noise that tries to unsteel us. that is why finally i find murdoch so offensive – he screams & screams & screams so that i cannot hear my own breath & the breathing of others. that is their vulgar plan of course – to make us scared of our own breath
but we cannot allow that to happen because there are so many others in this world that need a lending hand. that need the light to be exposed on both their struggle & their successes
i think in this there is no difference between us at all. we wear the same skin
but now in the midst of life – we have to wake ourselves up again – because the world has never needed so much attention – i have never been tempted by nihilism – it is not in my character. i am as melancholic as anyone else especially these last few months with my failing health but i refuse to become a victim i refuse to become a subject
we all in our own fields need to search & create change. the mostly ‘civilised’ discussion here is the testimony of the efforts of b & of siun eff & okie at lespeakeasy to create something where our humanity can speak its name. i imagine that is especially true for americans for the imagined plurity of american life is in fact hegemonic & does not permit the margins to speak until it can be absorbed as another aspect of that hegemony’s so called enlightenment
deanander i think you have every right to feel the dull thud of fear – because i am sufficiently marxist to believe that the terrible circimstances of the synthesis between the ideologial state apparatus & the repressive state apparatus is now in play & i know that sooner or later effective voices of resistance in america will be silenced one way or another
as i’ve noted the situation with the imperial politics of america will get worse & worse though it will dress this up as it always does as something else – while we speak there are people being murdered in fallujah, in sammarra & in mosul. there are people’s lives being extinguished in baghdad & our conversation must be a witness to those massacres & we must speak truthfully of them even if it is painful – it is clearly more painful for those suffering under the boots of an immoral occupation that diminishes us all
so we must be witnesses & we must be activists & we must reject silence as areaction or as a strategy – we have to be willing to be wrong – to make mistakes in trying to understand these terrible times
the american empire will fall. nothing is more certain. but how many people – how many countries & worlds it will take down with it – can be halted or at least limited by people of good heart, of reason & of fraternity
we wear the same skin
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 7 2004 22:09 utc | 15

From Neil Sheehan’s
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and American in Vietnam.

On my first helicopter assault operation in the early summer of 1962 with a battalion from Vann’s 7th Division, I hoped, as young reporters will, for action to write about, hoped that I would witness a fight that day between the ARVN and the Viet Cong. In my mind, as in the minds of other Americans recently come to Vietnam like Vann, the Viet Minh were a distinctly different generation of guerrillas from the Viet Cong. The Viet Minh of my thoughts had been patriots, by and large nationalist revolutionaries who happened to have been led by Ho and his lieutenants because the Communists had “captured” the independence movement during the war against France. That war had ended and the French had gone. The United States had then intervened in South Vietnam to promote nationalism. The Viet Cong guerrillas were misguided peasants who had been gulled into following the wrong side by Communists who were the enemies of good men everywhere (196-97).

Posted by: Jackmormon | Nov 7 2004 22:18 utc | 17

…the good fight is still there to be fought, no one has stolen it away …goodnight

Posted by: Blackie | Nov 7 2004 23:16 utc | 19

“People are allowed to flee, but only if they are not male and of possible fighting age.”
Well, Milosevic is on trial right now for exactly that kind of things. We’ve seen it not too long ago, at Srebrenica. Bush’s motto is really “As long as we’re not as bad as the Nazis, it’s OK.”
Read some report about guys who managed to interview an insurgent inside Fallujah, who basically said that they had planned major assaults in the other Iraqi main cities when the assault begin in Fallujah, to take advantage of the fact that concentrating forces there will weaken the rest of the US positions.
And all these “God soldiers” should remember Jefferson: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever”
I suppose it would be wrong for me to wish for every idiot who will take part in this assault to end up beheaded the Zarqawi way. If so, then I will just wish for all of them a quick death. I also suppose it would be wrong of me to wish and hope for the complete annihilation of the US Army in Iraq. If so, make that half the army.
maxcrat: The trick with demonstrations, in my opinion, is that ultimately they are shows of force. You do one to show you’re really meaning business and the other side should take you seriously. Now, too often, we have people demonstrating, then getting nothing, then demonstrating again – repeat as many times as you like. That’s not how you get effects. You do one massive demonstration and give a serious and definitive warning that things have to show. You issue an *ultimatum*. If nothing at all has changed, there isn’t any negociation, or anything else, then when the ultimatum expires, you hold a second demonstration. And you bring some real stuff with you. Then you storm the castle and throw away the idiots. That’s what the French and the Russians did during their revolutions, and it worked. If you just go on with doing your usual walking in the street with homemade signs, after 2 or 3 of them you’ll just be a big joke for everyone else, and particularly for those you’re protesting against.
So, if you ask my opinion, if there has to be another round of worldwide demonstrations against the war, or against some operations in Syria or Iran, literally assaulting and burning down US embassies should be the logical outcome; otherwise, Bushco will just dismiss it as another “focus group”. Not that I really tend to advocate violence, but when you have to demonstrate against a coming or running war to be heard, it’s pretty obvious that they began first with the violence and should bear the full responsibility of everything that happens after that.
B: When I went to Italy, and it was months after the original invasion, I just couldn’t believe the insame amount of Pace flags I saw there.
Leipzig Monday demonstrations are basically the textbook of successful demonstrations, but it worked because people were dedicated. It was their lifes there, not those of some Arabs living far away. They had the choice between suicide, demonstrating or taking arms, basically. And since the state was weakened at that time, and had explicit orders from Moscow not to shoot the demonstrators, they could get away with it. I really wonder if Bush would even let that kind of demonstrations go on or if Ashcroft would stop them after 2 weeks because such massive gatherings are too risky “security-wise” and offer too easy targets to “Evil terrorists”. Beside, the East German demonstrations reflected the opinion of probably 70-80% of the people, not of 30%.
All in all, I’ve come to the empricial conclusion that demonstrations are more effective and likelier to get the desired outcome in repressive states than in democracies. It’s pretty simple, demonstrations in tyrannies aim to change the system, the regime. When you’re in a “democracy”, you can only have very limited goals because “everyone knows it’s the most perfect system we could ever have, so it’s not as if there’s much to change”.
DeAnander: exactly. In fact, it’s the same with Iran and its nuclear program. It just pisses me off that nations led by backwards superstitious fools believing fairy tales, basically, try to use sciences whose mere existence is the living proof that their core fundamentalist beliefs are just pure BS. And I’m of course pretty pissed off at the scientists that accept to serve such paranoid and schizophrenic regimes, be it the Mullahs’ or Bush’s. At least Heisenberg knew Hitler was insane and his nuclear research went at quite a slow pace in the hope Hitler could be defeated before they managed to get him nukes.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Nov 8 2004 2:14 utc | 21

Well, I stole the election fair and square so let the torching begin. Love, GWB
Excellent – sad & frightening dispatch just came in from Tom Englehardt & Dilip Hiro. On the eve of the Invasion of Fallujah:
Tom: Our ultimate threat, of course, is that those 10,000 soldiers backed by air power and artillery will make an example of Falluja, producing an American version of the Roman solution to Carthage. It would serve as a fierce example of what might lie in store for any incompliant Sunni or Shiite city.
Dilip:
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again in Iraq — and Iran
By Dilip Hiro
With Vice-President Dick Cheney describing the presidential election result as “a broad, nationwide victory,” secured on the platform of an unapologetically hard-line foreign policy, the world should expect more of the same from President George W. Bush and his administration in the “war on terror” he declared on September 12, 2001.
Specifically, this means Bush, Cheney, and their coterie of neoconservative ideologues will continue to visualize the ill-defined war on terrorism in purely military terms, and deploy the Pentagon as their primary instrument to win it. What that undoubtedly translates into is: an immediate assault on Falluja in Iraq to destroy a bastion of insurgents resisting the occupation of their country, and ratcheting up pressure on Iran under the rubric of “countering Tehran’s nuclear arms ambitions.”
This will take place in a context in which anti-American feeling, already rife in the Muslim world, is rising yet again in the wake of a recent report from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. It concluded that some 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died between March 2003 (when the Bush administration with its British allies invaded Iraq) and September 2004; that the largest number of these deaths were caused by the unleashed air power of the invading and then occupying armies; and that women and children had suffered most.
In other words, the invaders may have managed to kill up to a third as many Iraqis in a year-and-a-half as President Saddam Hussein did in his 24-year dictatorial rule. This comparison led the Riyadh-based, pro-government Saudi Gazette to ask rhetorically, “If this is a war on terror, then who are the terrorists and who are the terrorized?”
The net result of Washington’s escalating confrontation with Muslim countries and peoples under various guises will only be to widen further the gulf that already exists between the United States and Muslims in general, paving the way for a much-dreaded “clash of civilizations” that never need have happened.

Posted by: jj | Nov 8 2004 3:59 utc | 23

Quote:
allawi’s state of emergency
***
Like Iraq already is not in THAT state. It’s a joke and everybody knows it except American public thanks to Bushco media…They need to believe that something “positive” is happening in Iraq. This only will increase innocent civilian deaths and boost resistance.
Quote:
If that official doesn’t like your look, you’ll be shoot and nobody will ask
***
And what’s the difference now?
Quote:
That step should cost Allawi if he ever should come in front of a decent court.
***
I don’t think Allawi will stand that chance.
Quote:
That is a direct order to disregard the Unified Military Code of Justice and the Geneva Convention cited in the international press.
***
Hah, “like they have ever been in Geneva”…b you are very optimistic to still believe those bastards care about some conventions…
But there are other “laws” and they all will play in a long run. In the main time there will be suffering…
Fauxreal I totally understand you…

Posted by: vbo | Nov 8 2004 5:14 utc | 25

From the Guardian.
Screams will not be heard -This is an information age, but it will be months before we learn the truth about the assault on Falluja

This is how the fantasy runs: a city the size of Brighton is now only ever referred to as a “militants’ stronghold” or “insurgents’ redoubt”. The city is being “softened up” with precision attacks from the air. Pacifying Falluja has become the key to stabilising the country ahead of the January elections. The “final assault” is imminent, in which the foreigners who have infiltrated the almost deserted Iraqi city with their extremist Islam will be “cleared”, “rooted out” or “crushed”. Or, as one marine put it: “We will win the hearts and minds of Falluja by ridding the city of insurgents. We’re doing that by patrolling the streets and killing the enemy.”
These are the questionable assumptions and make-believe which are now all that the embedded journalists with the US forces know to report. Every night, the tone gets a little more breathless and excited as the propaganda operation to gear the troops up for battle coopts the reporters into its collective psychology.
…
The silence from Falluja marks a new and agonising departure in the shape of 21st-century war. The horrifying shift in the last century was how, increasingly, war was waged against civilians: their proportion of the death toll rose from 50% to 90%. It prompted the development of a form of war-reporting, exemplified by Bosnia, which was not about the technology and hardware, but about human suffering, and which fuelled public outrage. No longer. The reporting of Falluja has lapsed back into the military machismo of an earlier age. This war against the defenceless will go unreported.
…
One last piece of fantasy is that there is unlikely to be anything “final” about this assault. Already military analysts acknowledge that a US victory in Falluja could have little effect on the spreading incidence of violence across Iraq. What the insurgents have already shown is that they are highly decentralised, and yet the quick copying of terrorist techniques indicates some degree of cooperation. Hopes of a peace seem remote; the future looks set for a chronic, intermittent civil war. By the time the bulldozers have ploughed their way through the centre of Falluja, attention could have shifted to another “final assault” on another “militant stronghold”, as another city of homes, shops and children’s playgrounds morphs into a battleground.
The recent comment of one Falluja resident is strikingly poignant: “Why,” she asked wearily, “don’t they go and fight in a desert away from houses and people?” Why indeed? Twentieth-century warfare ensured a remarkable historical inversion. Once the city had been the place of safety to retreat to in a time of war, the place of civilisation against the barbarian wilderness; but the invention of aerial bombardment turned the city into a target, a place of terror.

Posted by: Fran | Nov 8 2004 7:06 utc | 27

@JG — almost the complete Frank Herbert is on my bookshelf, except the later Dune potboilers. BTW I highly recommend Brunner — grab The Sheep Look Up and settle down for several hundred pages of articulate sarcasm and lucid rage.

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 8 2004 17:57 utc | 29

Me, I’m convinced.
For the Rovians….
….The Hague is their own private Hades.
And they know it.

Posted by: RossK | Nov 9 2004 4:55 utc | 31

America failing test of history as offensive compared to terror tactics of pariah states

With the army disbanded and most of the civil service unemployed, thousands of young men in Mosul have no work. The insurgents have made strong appeals to them to change their conditions by expelling the Americans. Religious appeals have turned against the Kurds.
Residents report that graffiti in Mosul has appeared saying: “Kill a Jew. Kill a Kurd.”
…
William Polk, who served President John Kennedy in the state department, wrote recently: “Most Iraqis regard the government as an American puppet. The idea that America can fashion a local militia to accomplish what its powerful army cannot do is not policy but fantasy.”

Posted by: Fran | Nov 9 2004 5:55 utc | 33

@Fran — Scott Ritter channelling Princess Leia, eh? that’s a quote to remember.

Posted by: DeAnander | Nov 10 2004 17:06 utc | 35