At this point, Americans aren’t even willing to ask those questions, much less answer them. Which is why the most likely scenario is that failure in Iraq will be followed by further setbacks in the war on terrorism, as the neocons (or their neolib counterparts) stumble from one ill-conceived fiasco to another.
Back to Main
June 30, 2005
WB: Failure is an Option
Comments
With apologies to all I’ll repost here the prediction I posted two threads down.
The Fascist Beast is going to opportunistically start turning on Bush, sort of (too soft, too tired, too persecuted by the nasty liberal-traitors), any time soon.
WHAT WE SEE NOW IS THE BEGINNING OF THE TRANSITION PROCESS.
Do not celebrate when you see the WSJ editorials or Senator Goering (N-Ala) say mildly bad things about Bush.
(I can already envision the snarky I told you sos on DKos who’ll interpret this as a measure of victory. It’s not.)
It will be all part of Der Plan to install his successor, Jeb or whoever, as the New Improved Puppet Fuhrer.
A New Fresher Cleaner Bush-Mk II can still easily steal the 2008 elections.
(And much impotent woe will be felt on liberal blogs throughout the Land.)
Bush Mk I is dispensable. The Reich is not. Long live the Reich.
Posted by: Lupin | Jun 30 2005 6:36 utc | 1
Great post by a guest at Juan Cole on this very point.
A taste:
“I think it is delusional to imagine that there exists a “solution” to the mess in Iraq. From this perspective, the folly of Bush, Cheney and Company in invading Iraq is even worse than most informed observers of the region already think. Starting an avalanche is certainly criminal. It does not follow, however, that such a phenomenon can be stopped once it has begun.”
“Not on my watch” Bush says. Oh yeah George? Just watch.
Posted by: Night Owl | Jun 30 2005 8:26 utc | 3
I’m reminded of the fact that Richard Nixon acknowledged that he was elected in 1968 ‘to end the war in Vietnam’, yet somehow we spent the next 7 years extricating our troops from that country so that a claim could be made that we had achieved ‘peace with honor’.
Nixon had spent more years ‘withdrawing’ from Vietnam than his predecessors had spent ‘inserting’ us there.
I’m now wondering just who should be stuck with the ‘extraction’ process after Bush and his ghoulish cadre of hacks leave office (an otherwise welcome event, questions of succession aside).
Posted by: Jon Koppenhoefer | Jun 30 2005 9:13 utc | 4
Great guest posting at Juan Cole’s indeed.
We are all so truly fucked.
And I also think they should stop comparing it to a Lebanon XL-size mess in Iraq. If you take such a bigger country with neighbors’ involvement, it is far more accurate to compare it to 2000s Congo than to 1980s Lebanon – I just suppose most knowledgeable people are too horrified by what really occurs in Congo to risk the comparison, a kinder kind of denial if you want.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jun 30 2005 9:16 utc | 5
What about the military bases? My understanding is that the US is building bases in Iraq. If true, there is no way in hell this administration will abandon its folly – at least not yet.
Posted by: Dismayed | Jun 30 2005 9:16 utc | 6
To have spent a life largely in service, duty and sacrifice because you truly, honestly, believed and valued in the highest esteem the truths of Truth, Justice and Liberty, fervently held dear the rallying battlecries of Democracy and Freedom, only to one day reach a sudden epiphany of realization, in a renching horrible instant … to understand that those beliefs had become mere hollow words, tools and lies to be mouthed by a political system long corrupted to the core for something utterly base … greed and power for a select few … is to undesrtand betrayal. Without honesty and honor, above all else, all those words are nought but a mouthful of ash.
Can the average Joe ever openly acknowledge that the USA is an empire ?
Does history show us what the real cost of empire is to humanity, to ourselves ?
Could there be such a thing as a moral and realistic Empire ?
Is not the very foundation of empire exploitation and repression ?
Is it not by its very existence a supremist denial on home soil and beyond our shores of true Democracy ?
Just as the cornerstone of the Confederate American States was morally unjust slavery, so is a Pax Amerikana. Far more subtle and euphemistically concealed, at times, but slavery all the same.
Whether the US stays or goes in Iraq or Afghanistan, the US has only performed and encouraged terrorism. Everything we went to war for has been proven to be lies.
We deny every possible tenet of the Rule of Law by detaining people in places like Guantanamo without trial, without charges, torturing, renditioning, ‘disappearing’, assasinating, collectively punishing, hostage-taking, whilst proclaiming to be the worlds champion re human rights. And we do this to the cry of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’, when why we really do it is to preserve the empire.
The adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq have done nothing to discourage terrorism. They have created exactly what the Jihadists desired, an ever more corrupt, mendacious, openly rabid world bully evermore bereft of friends and allies effectively recruiting for the Jihadists cause.
True America has always been the big schoolyard bully since American Exceptionalism was forged in the late 19th century. Only now the ‘gloves are off’. The elites that are ‘American corporate capital’ think they can do what they like, when they like, to whomever they like, and are answerable to no-one.
The Bush administration can never admit when they are wrong and that only adds to people’s frustration and reeks of the arrogance of the new imperial Rome.
To those who believe the Democrats are the saviours of a lost America … they gorge at the same trough.
Remember the Romans ? Thier civilizing hand. The ruthless, brutal, conquerors, exploiters and butchers of countless non-roman ‘Barbarians’ ?
Julias Caesar sought to be emperor and in doing so the Republic of Rome was inevitably destroyed. There is always an accounting.
‘Comply or be crucified’ the Romans declared.
And in the end … the Romans fell.
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 30 2005 9:58 utc | 7
The Vietnam Phoenix program rises from the ashes in Iraq ?
Salihee was a special correspondent. He was shot and killed last week in Baghdad in circumstances that remain unclear
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Days after Iraq’s new Shiite-led government was announced on April 28, the bodies of Sunni Muslim men began turning up at the capital’s central morgue after the men had been detained by people wearing Iraqi police uniforms.
– snip –
“The commandos told me to keep the body outside of the refrigerator so that the dogs could eat it because he’s a terrorist and he deserves it,” Abu Amir said.
The killings didn’t stop in May.
Saadi Khalif’s body was also found at Yarmuk. The 52-year-old Sunni, along with his brother Mohammed, was taken from his home in western Baghdad on June 10. His abductors rode up in pickup trucks painted with Iraqi police insignia, his family said. About 10 came into the house, while about twice as many fanned out in the street outside, forming a security perimeter. They had radios, uniforms, flak vests and helmets, family members said.
“The doctor told us he was choked and tortured before they shot him,” said Ahmed Khalif, one of Saadi’s brothers. “He looked like he had been dragged by a car.”
Mohammed Khalif, 47, also beaten and shot, still had on metal handcuffs at the Yarmuk morgue.
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 30 2005 10:28 utc | 8
I very much like the Roman analogy and was about to use it myself.
I think the Europeans look at us the way the Greeks must have looked at Rome.
Bottom line: I do not believe an Empire can change, by itself, without first undergoing a catastrophic collapse of some kind.
America will not change, it will have to be changed by outside events, likely a perfect shitstorm combination of military defeat and economic meltdown in various degrees.
It is, at this point, already too late. As I wrote recently, not a matter of IF but WHEN and HOW.
Posted by: Lupin | Jun 30 2005 10:30 utc | 9
Failure is not only *an* option at this stage, it is *the* option.
I sort of picture what’s going on in the White House not unlike that classic moment in Black Adder II:
Wise Woman: Three other paths are open to you. Three cunning plans to cure thy ailment.
Black Adder: Oh good.
WW: The first is simple. Kill Bob!
Black Adder: Never.
WW: Then try the second. Kill your self!
Black Adder: Neu. And the third?
WW: The third is to ensure that no one else ever knows.
Black Adder: Ha, that sounds more like it. How?
WW: Kill everybody in the whole world. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Posted by: Lupin | Jun 30 2005 10:40 utc | 10
How fast opinion moves! Six weeks ago a few of us were publically stating what we had determined perhaps a year and a half earlier: that the war of occupation was irretrievably lost because our volunteer army cannot sustain itself at current levels in a steady state. We are now beginning to see the same problem in Afghanistan, where a Soviet-style defeat seems more and more probable, though perhaps more distant. This takes us to the domestic consequences (the foreign ones are just too awful to contemplate).
Lupin’s first post is on the button. The corporate plutocracy, who do paint by numbers, unlike the current imbecile-in-chief, understand that the war is unsustainable, and, reading the polls like everyone else, know that the American people are beginning to understand the same fact. To protect what is truly dear to them — the tax cuts and the unbundling of New Deal social and environmental protections — they have to throw shrubby off the train.
But while this policy seems to be the only ‘option’ for escaping the mess they got themselves into by putting up an incompetent puppet in the first place, the reactionaries don’t have a back-up candidate. Cheney is even more culpable for this disaster than the witless Bush; Dennis Hastert has made himself unacceptable by his McCarthyite slanders against those who opposed the war, or for that matter anyone who has shown any disagreement with the Party Line. That takes us to the President Pro Temp of the Senate, who if I have my line of command correct, would be Frist, unless by some miracle we get a Democratic Senate the next time around. After that it is the inestimable Condileeza.
The point is that the Republican Party is so deep in this shit that even sacrificing Bush is unlikely to save the Plutocracy, which will protect its gains by the time-tested technique of the filibuster.
Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Jun 30 2005 11:46 utc | 11
Hmmmmm….
Billmon: Iraq indeed has become the central front in the war against Al Qaeda
However, war is still not the appropiate method against terrorism. (Billmon, you’re pretty aware of the extent to which propaganda prevades public discussion of just about everything, but I think you still fell for a few stunts, like the word-creation ‘War On Terror’ itself. It would be nice if you’d give us counterspins on this as gifted as “Cheney administration” or many others.)
…the U.S. military has made itself enormously unpopular in Iraq… However, without more troops, it seems inevitable that Iraq will continue to descend into chaos and (ultimately) something close to Hobbes’s war of the all against the all…
I sense an apparent contradiction above. Methinks more US troops mean even faster descend into chaos, or, at least, an even more assured descend into chaos after the inevitable US pullout.
Tactically, I suppose the logical emphasis would be on covering the retreat — i.e. preparing to withdraw in a way that maximizes the existing Iraqi government’s slender chances of survival and minimizes opportunities for Al Qaeda to exploit the situation.
I’m not sure. Everyone with an eye for details knows that the Iraqi ‘elections’ were a shamble, well below the standards of even the recent Iranian or last years’ Ukrainian elections.
…ok, you are doing a ‘realpolitik’ evaluation. But, even so, from the viewpoint of US elites, unless Jaffari & co can be controlled further through the money route and through all the advisors in ministries, I don’t think they are seen as having much worth: too close to Tehran. From the viewpoint of both the neocons and the Kissingerian paleocons, and possibly Brzezinski’s gang too, the best outcome would be an Iraq that can’t be a regional power factor – i.e., a fallen-apart Iraq.
Of the elites, only the ‘failed state’-focused Albrightians will see that option as the worst – unless they do the carving-up, with Bosnia as model, and with naive hopes that that would lead to stability.
Byman’s plan … (He argues, sensibly, that it’s the least worst among the five options he lists, which range from dramatic escalation to immediate withdrawal.) But as the opening step in a phased retreat — one that hopefully avoids the helicopters on the roof of the embassy bit — it could make sense.
Byman’s plan seems to be the Salvador Option in a different dressing. I don’t think any further US messing, especially covert, would do any good. Even for the US elites, from the perspective of a managed defeat: immediate pullout would at least give a chance for a ceasefire by the resistance and a post-pullout division between the different groups within the resistance, but Byman’s option would assure a continued and united fight.
I suspect, although I could be wrong, that Assad is playing footsie with the insurgency not so much to screw the Americans but to try to keep the jihadists focused on Iraq and not him.
Waitaminute. Is Assad playing footsie with the insurgency? Aren’t you falling for neocon propaganda?
First, only 5% of captured resistance fighters are claimed to be foreign. Second, most of them come from Saudi Arabia, whose borders are somehow always forgotten in US accusations. Third, how come the Syrians can be accused of willful failure to protect their borders, when the much better equipped US (night-vision goggles, radars and IR cameras, satellites etc.) can’t protect those same borders on the other side?
It’s easy to contemplate the end of the American Empire when you retroactively look at England.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain kept the peace in a quarter of the entire globe. The sun never set on the British Empire.
Now what have they got? The Channel Islands. And most folks think the Union Jack is based on an old dress design for the Spice Girls.
History is a bitch.
Posted by: Lupin | Jun 30 2005 12:05 utc | 13
Outraged: To have spent a life largely in service, duty and sacrifice because you truly, honestly, believed and valued in the highest esteem the truths of Truth, Justice and Liberty, fervently held dear the rallying battlecries of Democracy and Freedom, only to one day reach a sudden epiphany of realization, in a renching horrible instant …
I’m sorry if you told this several times and this is general knowledge around MoA, but when was that moment for you? (I already had this question in my mind when you told me about your Gulf War personal history.)
To Lupin: comparisons with Rome are the most common, but I think a comparison with Athens is more appropiate. A shining torch-bearer of everything progressive, from democracy through philosophy to art, and at the same time a hypocritical opponent of Sparta, cruel overlord of its own allies in the Delian League, and a society of deadly intrigues, demagogues and second-class citizens at home. Read Joseph “Catch 22” Heller’s Picture This, wich focuses on this and other historical parallels rather forcefully.
The idea of the Delian League has come up again and again in my mind when I think of US foreign policy, especially the Melian dialogue. Is this where Cheney is steering us? And who would the Melians be? The Iraqis? Democrats and Liberals? Our flagging allies? It makes me wonder.
Billmons post was intriguing and was good food for thought this morning. As Congress goes on its recess for the July 4th holiday, RNC big wigs were passing out the usual propaganda packets to the divided and discouraged Republican membership. The magic propaganda buzzwords for the long weekend: “Democratic Defeatism.” The replaces the last current buzz word, “Obstructionism,” and may be used with the phrase, “Democrats do not have a plan.” Forbidden word, as usual, “Quagmire”. I’ll count how many times such phrases are used in the News this weekend, except for Faux News, which gets me physically ill.
Posted by: Diogenes | Jun 30 2005 12:34 utc | 15
@DoDo
Hmmm, … that moment ? … pass … though the seminal seed was the 30-60 minutes of tension before H-hour, the crossing of the startline from Sudia Arabia and Kuwait into Iraq, in Desert Storm after the preceding months of Desert Shield. I’m thinking, jeeez, what is really going to happen here ? How many casualties are there going to be ? Yet, suddenly realizing that all the senior brass, in fact everyone, was pumped up just like dedicated fans before a Superbowl match. The flippant, whispered, discussions going on about the ‘acceptability’ of up to 5,000 US casualties in order to crush the Iraqi Army. I suddenly realised I was an alien amongst humans or vice versa. My thoughts could NOT be expressed without repercussions … of course that never happened, however, hours later it became apparent the Iraqi’s on the farside of the sandberms were completely combat ineffective, they’re morale after months of precision, fuel-air and carpet bombings by B-52s non-existant. They were slaughtered … when they did’nt expose themselves recklessly to surrender. Conscripted teenagers held in thier positions by the Iraqi equivalent of the soviets NKVD field security units … step back and be machine-gunned by your own people … stay put and be carpet bombed into oblivion by us.
The knowledge that there are the equivalent of mass graves on the southern Iraqi border where Iraqi half-trained, shoeless, teenage conscripts, that had no love for Saddam, that were’nt quick enough or able (unwounded) to exit the slit trenches were buried alive by armored bulldozers and AFVs with dozer blades as the trenches were filled in … that those graves will never be a news article on CNN … that that was not considered by anyone in command as ‘dishonorable’ … sorry …
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 30 2005 12:51 utc | 16
Indeed, there are some weird and quite frightening with the Athens of the war against Sparta, with the bullying and downright looting of “allied” states, the pervasive demagoguery in politics and justice, the complete ineptitude and vanity of populist politicians who think themselves as military genius, the influence of silly religious beliefs that bring stupid decisions, the relying on marine to go quick, attack, and get out fast, with a comparatively limited land army, decisions to invade a target too big instead of finishing the job with the real enemy, justice used by nearly everyone for mere greed, to get easy money from the prosecuted ones, and basically greed, greed and yet more greed, and so on.
What’s frightening is that eventually some junta of idiots took over, then was even worse military leaders than the previous ones, and ultimately just when they got replaced by a more democratically-minded leadership, some huge military blunders costed the war. Then every other Greek celebrated the defeat of imperial Athens, hoping for freedom everywhere – which of course wasn’t to be, since the winner was *Sparta*, and a Spartan-imposed tyranny was imposed in Athens.
Concerning Rome, it’s fashionable to praise the Republic and villify the Empire, yet the Empire lasted longer, and the Republic was basically doomed since one century (just as the late Roman empire actually). The Empire wasn’t more prone to robbery and looting than the Republic, and I’d say usually a little bit less, because the Republic had to ensure that the masses in Rome were quiet and looted the whole provinces to that end, when the Empire actually didn’t make that much differencecs anymore, and knew that not only rebellion in Rome was life-threatening, but rebellion in the wealthiest provinces. Though many emperors actually forgot it. All in all, I don’t think one can praise that much the Republic, particularly if one is blaming highly the Empire, since the situation was nearly the same for 90% of the Empire – don’t forget that the “Republic” was even less democratic than the USA, with a rigged system that gave the majority of votes to the wealthiest 5% class.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jun 30 2005 12:54 utc | 17
Outraged: Actually, I’m still amazed that one of the generals at the time admitted openly that *200.000* Iraqi soldiers had been killed, buried alive, on the first day of the land assault. At the time I thought he was gloating and making up stuff with such a body count and a story, but now I feel he may have been absolutely right.
I’m also reminded of the story I heard of a friend who knew a Kurd who was unemployed since a long time in 1990 and enlisted in the army then, when a recruiter came to town and advertised for good wage and few work. After 2-3 weeks training, the whole bunch of trainees was sent for a 5-days walk in the desert, as part of their military formation. After 4 days, their instructor came and told them “Good, you’re now part of the freedom army that liberated Kuwait”. If the bulk of the frontline was made of such unlucky people, it’s no wonder they opposed no resistance.
I also wonder if their relatives have any love for the Americans after that bloodbath.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jun 30 2005 13:01 utc | 18
@Cluesless Joe
As I recall it, there were a couple of scant, unconfirmed live reports about it before the story was killed … some passing references to unconfirmed reports in non-mainstream press afterwards …
‘Conventional’ warfare is inhumane enough, covert and special ops are … worse … people are objects, resources, to be exploited … used up and discarded on command … nothing more …
When handling ‘assets’, informers, agents … you have to establish a sincere bond so the ‘asset’ can truly trust and have faith and confidence in you personally, not what you represent, but you … you learn all thier weaknesses, foibles, hopes and joys … the most trivial and innocuous confidences … yet, if it’s deemed the asset needs to be ‘cut loose’, even if that means almost certain capture, detention, torture, death for the asset and thier family, associates even … you just have to do it … and if you’re human, no training can ever let you forget those moments … anyways, enough said, sorry about this, seriously OT.
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 30 2005 13:29 utc | 19
I seem to remember a number of 55,000 for buried soldiers established years later, but I’d have to look that up.
Failure in Iraq will not be defined as losing the war or withdrawing forces. Republicans will view Iraq as lost if whatever happens there results in electoral losses here. Bush/Cheney/Rove may truly care to lay claim to some sort of perceived military or diplomatic victory in Iraq. Lacking that victory means pinning any failure in the enterprise on the Left becomes paramount. It’s possible successfully painting the Left as responsible for losing Iraq is preferrable to winning it. It only takes swaying 51% of the public to that opinion to make losing a success. Bushco has very successfully primed the public to believe the very worst of the Left and to generally give a pass to any transgressions on the Right. The media and publishing houses ably assist this effort. This public attitude will have citizens voting Republican in ’06 and ’08 as payback for all those “damned pinko, hippie, librul, femi-nazi, godless faggot lovers” that prevented Bush from winning the war in Iraq.
Posted by: steve duncan | Jun 30 2005 13:54 utc | 22
preparing to withdraw in a way that maximizes the existing Iraqi government’s slender chances of survival and minimizes opportunities for Al Qaeda to exploit the situation.
the idea that the iraqi government should or needs to stay intact in its existing form is not an assumption we should be making. democracy may not be the best solution for them .“Many Iraqis have more trust in their tribal elders than the country’s judges. “
old habits die slow. and not all of them are that bad. we should lessen our attachment to iraq moving in a direction we think is best for them. it is inevitable there is going to be lots of retribution, but will it be worse than the amount of killing going on today?
are we willing to invest in the country if we aren’t holding the purse strings??? what about all that reconstruction money? (is there any left or has it all gotten eaten up by those permanent bases?)
also keep in mind lots of the ‘insurgents’ are not going to be insurging any more once they have jobs
“Iraqi officials say jobless men are becoming insurgents in order to earn money.”
i may be incredible naive but i think the iraqi’s may not be so lost without us. news coming out of iraq, presented here by sic, before the turnover ,claimed the assassinations were going to begin, this is inevitable. it will happen whether we are there or not. these people are targeted. the puppets will only survive if we’re holding the strings.
and even that is questionable,(just today a parliament member was killed, along with his son and three of his guards, in a car bomb explosion in a northern district of Baghdad. the insurgents targeted Dhari al-Fayyadh in the al-Rashdiya area while he was on his way to attend a National Assembly meeting. Al-Fayyadh is the second parliament member assassinated. Lameea Abid Khaddori, of the Iraqi List headed by the former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has also been killed. )
what is the motive of al qaeda to remain in iraq once we leave? i believe their election was manipulated anyway. the kurds, shite and the sunni’s are going to have to hash it out. but its their friggin problem. bummer, i know, and we really screwed them over. but i’m sure a few hundred billion dollars would go along way towards healing that riff. the cards are going to fall where the cards are gonna fall.
cheney&co is more likely to not care if the whole world sees who they really are than give up the piece of pie they are banking on in iraq. that’s just common sense. even if only a small percentage of americans wanted to stay. do they see a strategy in having a failed iraq at the present.were they ever going to give them jobs? were they ever going to let them run the show? if our intentions were never to leave, which it seems fairly obvious thats the MO then when do you think they were going to tell us/them?? the people are angry and restless. if all boils over into a civil war or just one big clusterfuck how would that not serve cheney in the long run? i know that sounds absurd but didn’t chomsky say we were pitting them against eachother from day one? thousands are not dying everyday. this is a trickle trickle 25 here 50 there. even a thousand a year dead US forces they probably think it’s worth it. they need time. time to get the bases up. time for the contracts to all get worked out. they don’t care if we are unhappy. we are being pacified w/speaches and promises. another couple years………
the iraqi’s will never become docile. they’re screwing with the wrong people.
i think the solution is impeachment. we are more likely to get out of iraq thru other channels, a new administration. far fetched yes, totally unrealistic no.
Posted by: annie | Jun 30 2005 14:07 utc | 23
preparing to withdraw in a way that maximizes the existing Iraqi government’s slender chances of survival and minimizes opportunities for Al Qaeda to exploit the situation.
the idea that the iraqi government should or needs to stay intact in its existing form is not an assumption we should be making. democracy may not be the best solution for them .“Many Iraqis have more trust in their tribal elders than the country’s judges. “
old habits die slow. and not all of them are that bad. we should lessen our attachment to iraq moving in a direction we think is best for them. it is inevitable there is going to be lots of retribution, but will it be worse than the amount of killing going on today?
are we willing to invest in the country if we aren’t holding the purse strings??? what about all that reconstruction money? (is there any left or has it all gotten eaten up by those permanent bases?)
also keep in mind lots of the ‘insurgents’ are not going to be insurging any more once they have jobs
“Iraqi officials say jobless men are becoming insurgents in order to earn money.”
i may be incredible naive but i think the iraqi’s may not be so lost without us. news coming out of iraq, presented here by sic, before the turnover ,claimed the assassinations were going to begin, this is inevitable. it will happen whether we are there or not. these people are targeted. the puppets will only survive if we’re holding the strings.
and even that is questionable,(just today a parliament member was killed, along with his son and three of his guards, in a car bomb explosion in a northern district of Baghdad. the insurgents targeted Dhari al-Fayyadh in the al-Rashdiya area while he was on his way to attend a National Assembly meeting. Al-Fayyadh is the second parliament member assassinated. Lameea Abid Khaddori, of the Iraqi List headed by the former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has also been killed. )
what is the motive of al qaeda to remain in iraq once we leave? i believe their election was manipulated anyway. the kurds, shite and the sunni’s are going to have to hash it out. but its their friggin problem. bummer, i know, and we really screwed them over. but i’m sure a few hundred billion dollars would go along way towards healing that riff. the cards are going to fall where the cards are gonna fall.
cheney&co is more likely to not care if the whole world sees who they really are than give up the piece of pie they are banking on in iraq. that’s just common sense. even if only a small percentage of americans wanted to stay. do they see a strategy in having a failed iraq at the present.were they ever going to give them jobs? were they ever going to let them run the show? if our intentions were never to leave, which it seems fairly obvious thats the MO then when do you think they were going to tell us/them?? the people are angry and restless. if all boils over into a civil war or just one big clusterfuck how would that not serve cheney in the long run? i know that sounds absurd but didn’t chomsky say we were pitting them against eachother from day one? thousands are not dying everyday. this is a trickle trickle 25 here 50 there. even a thousand a year dead US forces they probably think it’s worth it. they need time. time to get the bases up. time for the contracts to all get worked out. they don’t care if we are unhappy. we are being pacified w/speaches and promises. another couple years………
the iraqi’s will never become docile. they’re screwing with the wrong people.
i think the solution is impeachment. we are more likely to get out of iraq thru other channels, a new administration. far fetched yes, totally unrealistic no.
Posted by: annie | Jun 30 2005 14:13 utc | 24
Concrete Realities
I am always surprised when people talk about the “permanent bases” that so few say what seems obvious – the bases and their concrete and steel, like everything else going on in Iraq, exist only because someone profits from them. Concrete and steel do not have to be used by the U.S., merely handed over plausibly so that the expense can see justified. The point is to pay construction companies for concrete.
In this, they are following Daley’s Chicago plan of putting concrete embankments on the Lake Michigan shore. Only in Chicago, no one is saying, “such a vast and expensive project, it must be for something valuable.” No one says that because people in Chicago can see that as soon as the concrete goes in, the people stop going to the lake there. The concrete’s work is done already upon completion. What’s left for it is that it simply must last long enough not to embarrass the PR plan. The concrete was put in because it means hundreds of millions (or billions) to contractors – and that’s a concrete benefit of being related to contractors.
Sure, the various blank-blank Authority groups in Iraq would love to follow Moses Malone’s plan in NYC to get tolls off the network of highways and other institutions, but there isn’t anyone left who seriously believes we could collect tolls for long in Iraq. No, the only real (concrete?) tolls collected are war spoils and war frauds. So, perhaps we could get real about the bases and remember that, like concrete all over the continental U.S., government concrete plans are first and foremost about getting built, about getting paid.
And those plans for, and laws for, and treaties for multi-million dollar payments have – in at least this one dimension – been planned for and nailed down by the recipients with none of the haphazardness we keep discussing here, but rather done in detail, concretely, down to that last delightful detail of no accounting controls in wartime.
Why do you think someone would pay billions of dollars to build bases in an exploding country? Why would a marketing company add the name “permanent” to a product?
Posted by: citizen | Jun 30 2005 14:48 utc | 25
@ citizen
do you mean you don’t think the strategic location is coveted? just the means created thru its developement?
Posted by: annie | Jun 30 2005 14:59 utc | 26
Annals of Last Throes
United States Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
06/28/05
Travel Warning
The Department of State continues to strongly warn U.S. citizens against travel to Iraq, which remains very dangerous. Remnants of the former Baath regime, transnational terrorists, and criminal elements remain active. Attacks against military and civilian targets throughout Iraq continue, including in the International (or “Green”) Zone. Targets include hotels, restaurants, police stations, checkpoints, foreign diplomatic missions, and international organizations and other locations with expatriate personnel.
…
There is credible information that terrorists are targeting civil aviation. Civilian and military aircraft arriving in and departing from Baghdad International Airport have been subjected to small arms and missiles.
…
Official U.S. Government (USG) personnel are strongly encouraged to use U.S. military or other USG aircraft when entering and departing Iraq due to concerns about security of civilian aircraft servicing Iraq. Due to safety and security concerns, U.S. government personnel are not authorized to travel commercially on Iraqi Airways. Currently, U.S. government personnel are only authorized to travel commercially on Royal Jordanian Airlines.
All vehicular travel in Iraq is extremely dangerous. There have been numerous attacks on civilian vehicles, as well as military convoys. Attacks occur throughout the day, but travel at night is exceptionally dangerous.
…
The U.S. Embassy is located in the International Zone. The Embassy can provide only limited emergency services to U.S. citizens in Iraq. At present travel to and from the International Zone is extremely limited.
Cheney & Co. may well dump the shrub, but they can’t allow an impeachment; as with Nixon it would drag out too many details. An assassination would set up conditions more favorable to the cabal.
Posted by: rapt | Jun 30 2005 15:04 utc | 28
I’d like to just add one comment.
Can we stop with the snide comments about Iraqi troops avoiding fighting, please?
Why the hell shouldn’t they avoid fighting? They weren’t the ones who fucked up their country. They didn’t ask for Americans to come in and follow whatever GWB’s grand agenda is, whether it be oil, democracy promotion, chasing terrorists or proving he has a big dick.
Given that they had nothing to do with the mess America has made of their country, I fail to see why they should in any way risk their lives to try to make America look good. Sure, at some point, presumably, the US will indeed give up and go home, and at that point these poor bastards will have to pick up the pieces. But until then, accepting dollars from the US while doing absolutely nothing to help them out seems a natural and reasonable reaction — lord knows it’s what I would do if someone invaded my country.
Posted by: Maynard Handley | Jun 30 2005 15:08 utc | 29
hm, i was just wondering if there was any scenario, hadn’t thought of that.
Posted by: annie | Jun 30 2005 15:11 utc | 30
excuse me , my last comment was refering to rapt.
maynard i’m not following you. could you reference the snide comment so i don’t have to reread the entire thread.
i’m not sure what you mean.
Posted by: annie | Jun 30 2005 15:16 utc | 31
Quoted is Daniel Byman, who in “Let Iraq Collapse,” The National Interest, 1996 FALL, argued at length about the value of partition.
A strong federalism or partition has growing support in the shia south.
The US may be able to have its cake after all, retaining military presence and economic influence via partition.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 30 2005 15:16 utc | 32
rapt: An assassination would set up conditions more favorable to the cabal.
+ BINGO! Instant martyr! w the divine…
Posted by: beq | Jun 30 2005 15:24 utc | 34
annie, my post (snide comments about Iraqi army recruits) was directed not as a comment but at the original WB post, in particular the lines (repeated in one form or another in many blog posts)
…..
News flash: Iraq is a disaster. I’ve been back one day, and the airport road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Americans while Iraqi forces sat in the shade of date palms on the side of the road, their rifles resting across their laps.
It really does read like a scene from Full Metal Jacket:
Cowboy: Be glad to trade you some ARVN rifles. Never been fired and only dropped once.
………………………
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 30 2005 15:25 utc | 35
annie, my post (snide comments about Iraqi army recruits) was directed not as a comment but at the original WB post, in particular the lines (repeated in one form or another in many blog posts)
…..
News flash: Iraq is a disaster. I’ve been back one day, and the airport road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Americans while Iraqi forces sat in the shade of date palms on the side of the road, their rifles resting across their laps.
It really does read like a scene from Full Metal Jacket:
Cowboy: Be glad to trade you some ARVN rifles. Never been fired and only dropped once.
………………………
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 30 2005 15:25 utc | 36
rapt
Just my opinion, but you should probably keep your conversations with the urantians/intergalactic lizard conspirators to yourself.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 30 2005 15:28 utc | 37
@ slothrop. At this point we need w. He has a way of exposing the cogs and gears. If the military is onto him and showing it then the machine will throw a rod sooner. My 2 cents.
Posted by: beq | Jun 30 2005 15:35 utc | 38
slothrop
you wouldn’t happen to have a free link to that Byman article by chance?
Posted by: dk | Jun 30 2005 15:47 utc | 39
We actually have two countries in SW Asia in which we are losing because we don’t have enough troops in country, not just one. The question is, if we can “save” one of them, which one should it be? Iraq or Afghanistan? Afghanistan isn’t lost yet, plus it’s the place where the enemy actually is. Therefore:
1. In the next 60 to 90 days we rotate 60 or so thousand regular Army/USMC light infantry/air assault troops out of Iraq and onto the Afghan-Pakistan border. Their mission would be three-fold: 1) kill all Al Queda; 2) put OBL’s head on a pike, and; 3) stabilize the country enough so that Karzai or his successor is more than Mayor of Kabul and we put a dent in the exploding opium trade.
2. The remaining forces in Iraq — Reserve and NG units, plus the regular Army/USMC units which are not compatible with Afghanistan (armor, armored cav, mech infantry, etc.) would be withdrawn to Kuwait. They would have two missions: 1) to operate as a Quick Reaction Force to put out major blowups under well-defined Rules of Engagement, and; 2) to rotate in and out of Kuwait so as to continue to train the Iraqi forces.
As the Reserve and NG units reached their regular rotation dates and came back to the States, they would not be replaced. Eventually there would be two or so brigades left in Kuwait on a permanent basis — about what we had there before the invasion took place.
3. If civil war breaks out in Iraq, so be it. We weren’t going to be able to stop it anyway and at least we won’t have soldiers right in the middle of it.
4. As for Afghanistan, eventually we’d have about 100k troops there who would stay until some form or stability is reached and/or a truly representative govt told us to take a hike. With no oil there, taking a hike shouldn’t pose a problem.
5. With any luck, we’d be out of Iraq in about a year and out of Afghanistan in significant numbers in about the same amount of time: we’d have, say, the equivalent of two brigades in Kuwait and the same in Afghanistan this time a year from now, which is about 15,000 – 25,000 soldiers/Marines.
6. What do the Repubs say? As Billmon pointed out, in Dear Leader’s speech the other night he suddenly starting drawing the distinction between “terrorists” and “insurgents”. If that wasn’t the signal that we are secretly trying to cut a deal with “insurgents” to bug out, hard to know what is.
7. This could be our response when the wingnuts accuse us of wanting to cut and run: “We’re not cutting and running; rather we’re putting the troops where they should have been all along and let’s hope it’s not too late. Let’s at least win somewhere and where better than the place where the enemy actually is as opposed to the place where the enemy isn’t? Or was this really all about the oil all along? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Posted by: fbg46 | Jun 30 2005 15:52 utc | 41
Afghanistan isn’t lost yet, plus it’s the place where the enemy actually is.
There is zero chance to “win” in Afghanistan. It is drug land and the money involved in drugs is running the county – Karzai or not Karzai – it is unruleable. Try to take away the drug farming and the farmers will kill you.
120,000 private contracters in Iraq. What is their interest? Keep the war going.
Failure is not an option.
Rather a strange phrase, if you think about it. For one thing, it states a fact, because the operation has already failed, irreversibly, on the two points that mattered most in the spring of 2003: i.e. no WMD’s, and no “reconstruction” (as of commerce and public services). Failure is not an option because we have already failed. It’s interesting that this fact doesn’t seem to bother the folks who sponsored the war in the first place on these specific two grounds.
The phrase is strange in another way: if we grant that failure is not an option, then “success” will have to be redefined every step of the way, and no one can claim to know what those steps are, or where they will lead. Nor does anyone care. What has been achieved is this: the intricate, fatiguing, frustrating, complex balancing-act of the Clinton years has been grotesquely simplified. It’s a text-book example of Freud’s “death-wish,” the aggressive drive to simplify things when the burden becomes too complex. And there’s really no check to that drive, whose logical outcome is genocide.
But at least the events of the past two years have put the “First Gulf War” into context: it, too, was a drive to simplify things. The client-state of Iraq had become too complex–as indeed it had already done for two decades with the emergence of a secular state binding (with its own incalculable violence) the divided ethnic and religious elements in Iraq. Within this perspective, Clinton’s determination not to engage in a ground-war became a passing irritation, a minor inhibition, to the forces of a driven and mindless violence. “Failure is not an option” then takes on the meaning of “we will always ignore the complexities on the ground” (as these are posed, say, by the promise of pan-Arabism, secularization, centralization, and state socialism). And we can apparently afford this: first, because we can lose any number of American soldiers, who are, in the last analysis, merely mercenaries, whether in uniform or otherwise, and second (though I have trouble comprehending this) the USA can apparently “afford” a war that will cost at least a trillion dollars.
Ther’s a hitch, however–namely the situation in Israel and Palestine, which I take to be the major concern of those for whom “failure is not an option”. How do you not fail in Israel and Palestine? What does it mean “not to fail” there? Is it “not a failure” to exterminate the Palestinians, or export them on a “trail of tears” to some other corner of the universe? For these are the logical outcomes of this enterprise. Can we actually afford this? I have no doubt, given the hardening of our body politic, that we would learn to tolerate such actions provided we could finance them, for I know of no counterforce that might stay our violent hand: certainly not Europe’s, not China’s, not Russia’s, and not Greater Islam’s….
Posted by: alabama | Jun 30 2005 16:35 utc | 44
You trying to pick a fight slothrop? I been purposely keeping the lizards out of my posts for quite a while now.
Posted by: rapt | Jun 30 2005 16:51 utc | 45
I think we approach a point now in which we must be very careful what we say, even by way of carefree daydream (or convening w/ extraterrestrials, and btw rapt, I cannot ever say you are wrong about all that) about this or that fate of our hated leadership.
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 30 2005 16:59 utc | 46
Afghanistan on brink as violence escalates
British troops from Iraq to Afghanistan
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 30 2005 18:30 utc | 47
There are no enemies in Afghanistan.
Enemies of America?
Mullah Omar riding off into the dust on his moped, confusedly peering? Binny hunkering down in a cave and sipping tea? Ragged boys trying to earn a living selling single cigarettes? Starving girls, shadows in the street, with no schoolbooks?
Drug farming in Afgh continues because Afgh. farmers are prevented from growing any ordinary crops they could sell for money. They cannot borrow to grow dates or wheat or whatever (others have locked up the market, and transport is a problem…) – they cannot even get seeds and will starve if they try.
The only cash crop is opium. The warlords rule the country and provide security, of a kind – the transport, transit, bringing to market of goods for sale, as for them the trade represents sure and steady revenue, and is worth the rather heavy investment. As per usual, the markup is several 100s of %.
Afghani farmers have no choice. (Or little choice – a bit exagerated…) And grab the pittance. They have children too.
The whole idea of the US “winning in Afghanistan” is mind boggling.
Win what? Why?
Surely nobody thinks that the aim of the invasion of Afgh. was to create stability or give school books to starving children?
With bombs, DU, guns?
Huh?
Posted by: Noisette | Jun 30 2005 19:32 utc | 48
Slothrop,
I’m afraid you don’t even know the IDENTITY of your leadership. Which rather debases your analyses and prognoses across the board.
Posted by: John | Jun 30 2005 20:11 utc | 49
A little belief and fairy dust is all it takes.
A great Dan Froomkin piece on Lider’s PR ploy:
LINK
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 30 2005 21:41 utc | 50
@annie
Gone for awhile, but I’ll respond to your question from 10:59. Certainly, the strategic location of Iraq is coveted, but it is optional. The backers of this venture are profiteers, and big ones. They get their money as long as the occupation can be strung out, and more soldier deaths and maimings only hurts them insofar as it shortens the occupation.
Did we win Vietnam? Did we ever have a chance?
Now for different questions: Will the construction companies get paid? Is there any chance not? How long are we likely to be able to use or determine the user of those castles? A real warlord would burn them – these guys are capitalist politicians.
@slothrop – thanks for the Moses Malone snort. I meant Robert Moses, a real pioneer in privatizing politics, and as a master creator of the automotive city, bearing some heavy kharmic burdens these days.
Posted by: citizen | Jun 30 2005 22:09 utc | 51
@outraged
criminy, your past career sounds like something out of le carre, whose novels detail just the flavour of betrayal you mention above, the abandonment of carefully cultivated “assets,” the false friendships of the agent runner…
I am not sure this theme (of betrayal and expediency) is ever OT, because this instrumental approach to human beings — regarding them as “asset”, merchandise, investment, pawn, stalking-horse, decoy… is the same amorality that permits the worship of markets and the reduction of all things to “cost and benefit.” it is CBA at its rawest that betrays the agent in the field when his/her “product” is no longer “worth” the effort of protection or the wages paid. it is CBA at its rawest that calculates the expendability of 5000 US troops or 200,000 Iraqi troops, or 500,000 Iraqi children, and concludes that “the price is worth it.”
and as always in CBA, two essential words are always missing: to whom. cost to whom? benefit to whom? if the two parties are not one and the same, the whole calculation is invalid.
sure there are conditions when this kind of cold bookkeeping may be valuable, even moral — triage at scenes of disaster for example, when wasting time on the doomed would only doom the still-salvageable. but in the war games and cold-war games of which we speak it is the nadir of amorality, the sociopathic belief that I/we are the only Real People and that all others are something less, objects not subjects, expendable. it was for this very reason that 2nd wave US feminists found so useful the word objectification to describe the reductionism that sees in another human being “only what I can get out of them,” only what they are “good for” (that sees any female for example only as an assemblage of penetrable orifices or gropable/gawkable flesh, possibly for personal gratification and possibly for sale to others)… rather than Buber’s Thou which looks back at the I as an equal and a second self.
the antithesis of this predatory CBA approach to our fellow humans is I suppose the Quaker directive to see “that of God in everyone,” or to recognise that others are as real, as alive, as significant as ourselves… or the Buddhist directive to recall that we are “all bound upon the Wheel” and sharing a common fate, a common process… I digress as usual. but was moved by your recent posts.
whether by osmosis or gossip or feral news I have been aware of the “buried alive by bulldozers” story since it happened, and it festers in me still, the horror of their last moments as the Darth Vader style heavy equipment bore down on them, the wall of sand engulfing their frail human bodies, the panic, the suffocation. buried alive — a repeating nightmare for any feeling human, theme of innumerable horror stories. what a way to die. this also will be remembered against the Yanks and the Brits and all Westerners, at least for a generation or three.
Anybody else get the feeling that Independence Day,is going to be a real Blowoff! Especially, w/ the CIA’s Italy Snatch Tied to “Fixing the intelligence”and the THE FULL COURT PRESS(tm)! Prop-agenda. And other various and sundry things, maybe I should lay off the Chivas Regal or switch it up w/cha’teau du phenobarital 1998 heh?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 1 2005 2:50 utc | 53
Bartender, burp , er uh excuse me, may I have another.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 1 2005 3:03 utc | 54
This AM I posted this: “Bush/Cheney/Rove may truly care to lay claim to some sort of perceived military or diplomatic victory in Iraq. Lacking that victory means pinning any failure in the enterprise on the Left becomes paramount. It’s possible successfully painting the Left as responsible for losing Iraq is preferrable to winning it.” Then this eve I see this from Reuters: “By Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) – Several Senate Republicans denounced other lawmakers and the news media on Thursday for unfavorable depictions of the Iraq war and the Pentagon urged members of Congress to talk up military service to help ease a recruiting shortfall. Families are discouraging young men and women from enlisting “because of all the negative media that’s out there,” Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said at a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Inhofe also said that other senators’ criticism of the war contributed to the propaganda of U.S. enemies. He did not name the senators.” It’s only get to get worse, get very ugly, and the Left can expect blame for every failure we face. Bush has never answered for a screw-up in his life and his enablers aren’t about to let it happen now.
Posted by: steve duncan | Jul 1 2005 3:22 utc | 55
Diogenes, You might think of the Sicilian expedition; J. W. Fulbright often did.
Meantime, day after day creeps toward the next election and we still don’t have verifiable voting: what will the national response be in 2008 when the 40-60% loser in the polls wins the election 51-49?
Posted by: Brian Boru | Jul 1 2005 4:40 utc | 56
Speaking of CBA I hope you have all seen the yesmen´s genius presentation of Acceptable Risk and Gilda the golden skeleton. If not you should really see it and don´t forget to try The Dow Acceptable Risk Calculator.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jul 1 2005 7:30 utc | 57
@DeAnander
” … the flavour of betrayal you mention … ”
Text, unnuanced words, are insufficient to the task … but little by little you are more and more soiled … your soul … by participating, planning, committing directly and indirectly … actions that become ever more difficult to rationalize away as ‘Duty’, ‘the mission’, when they collide with the full wieght of the actual meaning of Truth, Justice, Honor.
Forget LeCarre’ and other fantasist entertainment bullshit. The mystique is fostered, encouraged by those involved so as to feel special, ‘elite’, exceptional … it is nothing but Ego and escapism. And is used along with so many other snake-oil devices to ensnare/recruit with dreams of glory, heroism, adventure.
When you’re ordered to ‘cut loose’ an asset, knowing full well what the consequences will be, and you do … if your human, a part of your own soul dies.
Once enough of your soul dies, you are no longer to take pride in your service … the ‘mystique’ is abhorrent … the regret, guilt … shame … is …
There are those that revel in the portion of unfettered power over others given them by serving in the machine (Military, Intelligence, Foriegn Service) that plays ‘the great game’. Whether it be in the abstract or up close and personal. Many are simply ‘unaware’ of the part that they play … merely a cog .. Gung-Ho and jingoisticly ‘Patriotic’ … blind to both the personal and holistic reality … blind to the consequences.
In interrogations most are role-playing or acting thier part, professionally, in order to perform the task … then there are those that obtain a pseudo-sexual sado-masochist thrill from the total dominance of a helpless nother … those are the ones that if not collectively ‘checked’ by the rational, use thier skills to manipulate and seduce others to abett thier desires and seek to obtain control, command of the process to thier own, disguised, ends … yet they are the ones that fiegn the greatest patriotism and cloak themselves in the mantles of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’, Truth, Justice and Liberty. They or to a lesser degree, the ‘unaware’, are the ones that can be used, manipulated themselves, by the policy makers dealing in abstracts, to go yet one step further … again and again … until there are no rules, no conventions, no restraints, no honor, no humanity.
Without Honesty and Honor, above and before all else … thier is nothing but ash.
I’m rambling, sorry … the skill to communicate what I’m trying to impart is beyond me .. it slips through my grasp of expression.
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 1 2005 8:43 utc | 58
Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
That’s all ye know on earth. And all ye need to know.
Posted by: John | Jul 1 2005 9:47 utc | 59
@outraged actually I think le carre was/is haunted for a lifetime by those same decisions and that same damage to the soul, which he tried to exorcise by writing novel after novel about the same story of betrayal. as his writing progressed, the mystique or romance dropped out of it until by his later novels, each one became a howl of outrage against the very things you describe…
it is such a cruel trick that wicked old men play, to feed young people shining ideals of Duty, Honour, and then encourage or outright order them to do great evil while telling them it is all in the Good Cause… children ardent for some desperate glory and so forth.
anyway, your honesty is remarkable, imho more people from “the secret world” should tell their stories and dispel the mythos. I remember the appeal of that world from my youth, there was a time when I thought of it as appealing, exciting, fascinating. I think it was a combination of le carre and philip agee that cured me. now it gives me only a shiver of revulsion — like Sandia or Los Alamos. people in these worlds enjoy their skill and their intelligence, their insider knowledge, and revel in the exercise of their craft (as does any worker given the chance) and carefully refrain from thinking about the end product: death, despair, torture, destruction.
@DeAnander
I regret the comments re Le Carre … it was an almost instinctive, visceral, feral response. Possibly because the lost, past joy of escaping in such fictions is gone forever because the reading only reignites the clash re reality. Somethimg else stolen.
Indeed it is such cruel tricks old men play. And play knowingly with the full knowledge of what they do. They steal the lives, and later the lifeforce, of those they ensare.
I wept as struggled to write these posts, as I weep now. I cannot talk in specifics … this is the first time I’ve been able try to express in some minimal way … what others cannot understand. In service you cannot cease to conform, especially in the ‘secret world’ as you choose to call it … without risking all … clearance, career, livelihood, sometimes the ultimate. For those of us who participate in the ‘great game’ and then become ‘aware’ when still within it … it is a prison … in a physical sense, spiritually and mentally.
My virtual ami R’Giap via the Whiskey Bar is of a similar age to me, yet we could not possibly have a more diametrically opposed past. My views and outlook (right-wing, militarist, jingoist) in my previous life would be anathema to him, yet even though I’ve never had a strong view politically, in the past … I’m instinctively repelled by talk of Marxism and the dialectic … I feel a bond of spirit … a love for his sincere clarity of expression of humanity and human dignity … possibly some understanding of his abhorrence of acts, consequences, actions … as one who was on the other side …
War and warlike actions changes one forever … there is a saying, one who has seen the elephant … the elephant has many forms … and once you have, you can never go back.
One wistfully longs for a society, a system, that in reality only ever existed, if it ever truly did, in sanitised history. Oh, if only for ‘the light upon the hill’ to have become a reality …
My greatest outrage is reserved for the corruption and destruction of those in service and the latest ‘declared’ ‘enemy’, especially the innocent and young … by the decisions of these old men … especially when it need not be so … victims all. It was Abu Ghraib and the full, clear, comprehension of what it truly meant for our future that propelled me out of self-imposed silence.
I, uh, yeah, another time.
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 1 2005 19:07 utc | 61
Thanks for telling your story, Outraged. Having interviewed dozens of Viet Nam Vets in the 70’s for disability benefits, I can tell you that you are not alone. Many of them served in “pacification” units and some confessed to My Lai style atrocities that seemed normal at the time but haunted them later. (The VA told them that the things they did never happened and denies benefits.) All were taking illegal drugs when I met them. They may not have served in intelligence as you did, but they were taken in by the lies and violated their own humanity and that of others to carry out their missions in service of the Empire. Not fully developed as adults and carried away by the culture in which they operated, they didn’t fully realize what they had done until they came home and had to live with it. The clash of those violent memories with “normality” in America was too much to bear at times and psychotic episodes – in public – were common among them; I dealt with a couple episodes myself. Your assignment was different than theirs, but the corruption and destruction you speak of has a wide reach, and not just in the service (see Dick Cheney).
I did not go to Viet Nam, but still recall being 18 myself and honestly don’t know how I would have handled a My Lai situation at that age. I just feel for those who were lead down that path and am grateful that this was not my fate. There but for the grace of God….
Your posts here are much appreciated by all of us and extremely valuable to help us understand what our govt is really doing. I hope you’ll take care of your health and find some hard earned peace.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jul 1 2005 20:34 utc | 63
Another virtual hug for outraged.
I have not been in the exact same circumstances of course but I recognize some of the feelings. I’ve had the experience of suddenly realizing that something I had believed/spoken/supported was actually inhumane and unjust.
As a consequence, I carry remorse for my misguided attitudes, gratitude for my epiphany, courage to make amends for my behavior, and eventual forgiveness for my naivete. A blessing, considering most people never get the realization in the first place.
Posted by: gylangirl | Jul 2 2005 23:53 utc | 64
outraged
i want you to know that i consider you a friend also – & our presence at the whisky bar & here has meant much to me
i do not think we are that far from one another. the ‘privelege’ of our lives is that we have seen what no person should see
i imagine you & i never thought we would get to this young age 50 & be able to speak as we do & it is necessary for you to speak & speak & speak because whether it is securityspeak or commodified forms of marxism – they are based on exclusion & never never on understanding & they are as far away from the human heart as it is possible to be
if i may – i will speak of a moment in 1973 – when i had done things – things that could have got me into a great deal of trouble for the cause i loved & love still – in the middle of this – the events of chile happened – & the maoist attitude of this was that the soviet union was a social imperialist & the more dangerous enemy – something in truth i could never stomach but did – so the maoists in the first instance opposed allende as soviet tool & at the same time accusing him of treason for not arming the people. the john ford movie of the death of in piao was to come – but already here i could not bear the stupid sanctity of the correct line when what i saw in chile made me weep & i knew what was wrong
slothrop often mocks my heart here – the version of marxism from my heart – but it was those moments – where the heart saw through the lies of my proper cause & i refused to become a person who cried over their ‘lost god’ but to see the frailty of human beings as the principal cause of the problem. the simple unpreparedness of human beings & the hegemonic control over our destinies by tyrants. i decided in that moment – what had led me to give material aid to my country’s enemies – my heart would be the instrument through which all was to be seen
& neither althusser or benjamin are really so far from that. it was their tears that drew me to their ideas. their tears draw me to their ideas still. those too of gramsci
but i understand what deanander is saying re le carré – there is that moemnt – where karla crosses the bridge – in smileys people – that what has been won is everything that has been lost. there has been something profoundly savage in le carre’s indictement already
the pain of his life – his real life & that of his father & the business of lies – makes reading his ‘perfect spy’ unbearable – really unbearable
it did not surprise me that his late works are so angry – they are unbelievably angry. perhaps they are elitist still – but what i hear is his offence at their idecency, their stupidity but above all something that was there from the beginning – the complete absence of vision
i do not imagine that when he wrote in the time of wilson/heath – that it could get any cruder – well it has got so crude that his response has been fury, disciplined fury
& i think that fury is in us outraged but it must neither kill us or demean us – our knowledge may be terrible knowledge – but it is also a privelege
– & we have an obligation to speak evenwhen we are falling apart. precisely when we are falling apart to rebuild ourselves breath by breath
i consider you under these circumstances a bother – a companero in our community of resistance
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 3 2005 0:36 utc | 66
Outraged,
You do not lack the skills to communicate. Ya done good. My experience is so much milder having left the USAF as a jr. officer without ever firing a shot in anger.
But your words speak to me.
Posted by: nuttymango | Jul 3 2005 22:29 utc | 68
I am sending postcards to nearly every US Senator. They will have the quote from Inhofe, and then I will say:
Get the Bush, Cheney, Kerry, Clinton kids to enlist! Leadership requires walking the talk! This will do wonders for the recruitement problem! If Iraq war isn’t good enough for the Bush administration kids and the Senators kids, why should anyone else sign up?
Anyone who supports this war and does not have his/her kids signing up is a HYPOCRITE!
anyway, I plan on printing up the postcards and starting to mail them this week.
join me!
And always support those soldiers and Marines who resist and do not go along with the “program”. They are the true heros.
Posted by: Susan | Jul 3 2005 23:24 utc | 69
I am sending postcards to nearly every US Senator. They will have the quote from Inhofe, and then I will say:
Get the Bush, Cheney, Kerry, Clinton kids to enlist! Leadership requires walking the talk! That will do wonders for the recruitement problem! If Iraq war isn’t good enough for the Bush administration kids and the Senators kids, why should anyone else sign up?
Anyone who supports this war and does not have his/her kids signing up is a HYPOCRITE!
anyway, I plan on printing up the postcards and starting to mail them this week.
join me!
And always support those soldiers and Marines that resist and do not go along with the “program”. They are the true heros.
Posted by: Susan | Jul 3 2005 23:27 utc | 70
the skill to communicate what I’m trying to impart is beyond me .. it slips through my grasp of expression.
your expression has developed at such expanding speed. at first information, always information but i am hearing so much more in your voice now outrage. an unfolding that is very moving.deep within us all i truely believe we know what is good, right , true and honorable.
to come to terms with our failures takes courage. those that hide behind a cloak of patriotism, or become indoctrinated to accept, embrace evil, inside we cannot lie to ourselves. i think it is much more difficult for a brilliant mind to accept ones atrocities. you have resided in the belly of the beast, seen and heard and done things i’m sure most of us couldn’t even imagine. but it is people like yourself who have come out the other side that can lead in the healing ,you cannot change history but you can come to terms with it.you have seen the elephant and you can’t ever go back, but you can go forward, make a light on the hill become a reality. there is a long long life ahead . within you is much depth. forgive yourself and grasp your fullness
One wistfully longs for a society, a system, that in reality only ever existed, if it ever truly did, in sanitised history. Oh, if only for ‘the light upon the hill’ to have become a reality
don’t wish for a different past, make the most of your future. you are very beautiful.
Posted by: annie | Jul 4 2005 10:00 utc | 72
@DeAnander, LonesomeG, Gylangirl, remembereringgiap, nuttymango, Jonku, annie … simply, thankyou … though I would have you realise I’ve been hard, harder than stone … willingly, knowingly, ruthless … my time will be over soon enough, the twilight of ones life, one way or another …
Annie, I’ve been ‘professional’, a word that has a hidden, inner, sterile, meaning to me now … never beautiful … though now, somewhat too late, beauty is seen in others, where before it could not or would not.
My post was in reply to DoDO only because ’twas asked, and in a moment of weakness, tried to answer, to impart some understanding …
What I see all around us, blatant, raw and stark … is the formerly hidden corruption of society. A corruption of values that no longer needs to be ‘plausibly deniable’, no longer hidden, or even fully concealed … a canker that has already created an ever diminishing, lower threshold of simple decency.
And like R’Giap … though forlorn hope still exists … my heart, my head, see little prospect of our escape from the reckoning needed to set it aright.
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 4 2005 12:14 utc | 73
outraged
we will not, we will not go gentle into that good night. sure & certain
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 4 2005 16:38 utc | 74
it is thru the reckoning we may find our place on the hill. of course thru turmoil but i certainly believe any backlash will match the suppression we have endured. beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if you are seeing it in others where once you could not…….
Posted by: annie | Jul 4 2005 20:03 utc | 75
& it is that, outraged, that they now do openly what they once did covertly – drunk on their power, endless in their vengeance – they clearly do not see the monster has been revealed
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 4 2005 21:38 utc | 76