WB: The Beirut Express
Billmon:Considering the American blunders, American crimes and -- worst of all -- sheer American ignorance that brought Iraq and its peoples to this point, such a stance has about as much moral integrity as a little boy who, having dumped a bunch of red ants and black ants together to watch them fight, gets bored with the whole thing and flushes them all down the toilet. It is beneath contempt.
Posted by b on July 25, 2005 at 6:38 UTC | Permalink
« previous pager'giap,
affirmative to your above, especially in light of a culture of forgetting -- that your perspective liebenswelt be mischaracterized as not reality based is an exception that cannot pass. I have received well enough confirmation(through people here) that you yourself the real person, do more than justice to the words you lay out here. It is perhaps an American tenderness or sensitivity of those of us on the left, to worry outloud in the face of a fully humanized, culturally and intellectually seasoned perspective in full command of the facts at hand that is admittedly communist -- the taboo against such association is and remains more a testament to the living (still) ghost of McCarthy than an actual argument. Hense, a fear of falling.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 26 2005 18:33 utc | 103
the only thing mr mcarthur gets correct is that yes - i consider mmy work here follows in the tradition of frantz fanon valuablle not only for his analysis of colonialism but for the knowledge he offered to psychiatry - the real sense of r d laing is found in its roots to fanon
anybody who contributes to the fund of knowledge - the funds that we use to never forget - i consider myself still a humble student of people like them
& if it is madness to feel - in our time - then perhaps, yes, i am mad, madder than billmon thinks
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 26 2005 18:38 utc | 104
Groucho: "In my country the opposition party does not fight, and this allows these vicious republican bastards in power to continue to
do just about whatever they want to do--and not just in Iraq.
Gee Grouch, where are all those enlightened people you deal with every day outside the beltway?
Posted by: maxcrat | Jul 27 2005 1:04 utc | 106
Near the end of his article, Galbraith writes:
"Building powerful national institutions in Iraq serves the interest of one group—today it is the Shiites—at the expense of the others, and inevitably produces conflict and instability."
He argues in favor of a "loose confederation" for Iraq rather than a strong central government.
Galbraith is partly wrong on this count. The Sunni Arabs do not believe their interests are served by a loose confederation. They have consistently indicated that they want strong national institutions and that they are opposed to the kind of federal system Galbraith is proposing. They do not want, however, to be locked out of power while Iraq's national institutions are dominated by Iran-leaning Shiites.
Galbraith's prescription only works for the minority Kurds. For that reason it is bound to be a non-starter.
Posted by: Patrick | Jul 27 2005 17:11 utc | 107
The comments to this entry are closed.
goodness.. frantz fannon.
Posted by: b real | Jul 26 2005 16:02 utc | 101