Will her betrayal simply be pushed down the media memory hole with yesterday’s garbage? Are we really that far gone?
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August 24, 2005
WB: Down the River + Is Anybody Listening?
Comments
Yup down the fucking river in into the valley of death
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 24 2005 18:12 utc | 1
Add to that (via Catch.com)
PRESIDENT BUSH: I want to thank my friend, Dr. Raja Khuzai, who’s with us today. This is the third time we have met. The first time we met, she walked into the Oval Office — let’s see, was it the first time? It was the first time. The door opened up. She said, “My liberator,” and burst out in tears — (laughter) — and so did I. (Applause.)
Dr. Khuzai also was there to have Thanksgiving dinner with our troops. And it turned out to be me, as well. Of course, I didn’t tell her I was coming. (Laughter.) But I appreciate that, and now she’s here again. I want to thank you, Doctor, for your hard work on the writing of the basic law for your people. You have stood fast, you have stood strong. Like me, you’ve got liberty etched in your heart, and you’re not going to yield. And you are doing a great job and we’re proud to have you back. Thanks for coming. (Applause.)
Link (March 12, 2004)
“This is the future of the new Iraqi government – it will be in the hands of the clerics,” said Dr. Raja Kuzai, a secular Shiite member of the Assembly. “I wanted Iraqi women to be free, to be able to talk freely and to able to move around.”
“I am not going to stay here,” said Dr. Kuzai, an obstetrician and women’s leader who met President Bush in the White House in November 2003.
Link (August 23, 2005)
If I can keep my blood below the boiling point for a moment to comment on the Declaration of War on Women that they’re passing of as a constitution….
– Wonder how people feel whose daughter went off to war & came back minus limbs, part of a brain…, so that Iraqi males w/the full-support of xAm. males in power could turn Iraqi women into chattel?
– There is a bit of good news. It won’t be accepted since the Sunni provinces will vote it down.
– What’s not being talked about is that it leaves in place all the provisions Bremer put in to insure iron-clad control of the economy & agriculture by xAm. Pirates. This makes absolutely crystal clear what the war was about & Who Rules America. xUS is a Country Of, By & For the Pirates. Politicians happy to go to war/drown in a quagmire, killing off hundreds of thousands of mis-guided poor/rural xAmerican kids, to put in a power a MaleMuslim theocracy, as long as the Pirates can steal absolutely everything. (My figure for xAm. deaths comes from the fact that of the 695,000 xAmerican soldiers in WreckIraq I, 425,000 are seriously ill & dying slowly.)
– The other good news is that it throws in the garbage all the bullshit about why they went to war in Afghanistan & the rationales for the “war on terra”. They didn’t go into Afghan. to get OBL , since they deliberately let him escape. And they obviously didn’t go in to overthrow a MaleMuslim woman-hating theocracy, since they just installed one in Iraq, or at least agreed to its installation.
Posted by: jj | Aug 24 2005 18:44 utc | 3
same as it ever was, jj. remember your chomsky:
The people who own the country ought to govern it – john jay, president of the continental congress and the first chief justice of the u.s. suprem[acist] court
Posted by: b real | Aug 24 2005 19:04 utc | 4
What this all makes me wonder, and I’ve never heard any explanation of it, is, why was Saddams government so commited to secularism? Seeing the theocratic forces now rising to power, absent the Baath party, one must wonder why they did this, why they developed a secular& liberal civil law that was the exception in the ME.
I wonder if in some respect, secularism was the only or best common denominator suitable to bind the ethnic&religious factions together albeit with a heavy hand.
And I wonder if most of the resistance to Saddams rule came not from those seeking greater freedom, but instead, from those who wanted less freedom and a greater theocratic hammer.
So finally, I wonder if the more enlightened Iraqi retrospective, will look back wistfully to the glorious freedom days of the Saddam era.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 24 2005 19:25 utc | 5
Safia Taleb al-Souhail deserves limited sympathy. What she’s owed is for the fact that her father was a tribal leader who was killed while in exile for helping plot a coup against Saddam. She’s left the Arab parts of Iraq when she was six or seven, at Saddam’s takeover or at the collapse of the last pre-Ba’athist regime. Her husband, a Kurd, is Iraq’s human rights minister, a man who takes his job seriously but was sustained for years by the United States and various think tanks. Her return to Iraq meant a return to being part of a ruling class, sort of like all the ancien regime popping in to reclaim influence and power at the Restoration of Louis XVIII. She has very, very little in common with the average Iraqi woman, in education, or class, or secularism, and yet she was quite willing to play one on television for George W. Bush’s SotU. It was grotesque and calculated–as though the White House knew she and the poor American mother wouldn’t embrace–nearly so much as Bush’s little USS Abraham Lincoln escapade. And now, she’s disappointed at Bush’s superficiality? The utter unseriousness of his committment? Welcome to the reality-based, Safia. Yeah, it’s perfectly justified to feel stupid. You were. But, of course, you’re still likely to do okay. Unlike those other Iraqi women, the common ones.
Posted by: Brian C.B. | Aug 24 2005 19:27 utc | 6
Saddam was an Arab nationalist and the Ba’ath Party, and others, was born of a pure racial identity that embraced Christian and other Arabs. The Kurds and others didn’t fit in, and were subject to oppression. This was 1950s political thinking. In his later years, Saddam was quite happy to play the Islam card to mollify the rise of religious unrest.
Posted by: Brian C.B. | Aug 24 2005 19:30 utc | 7
Don’t fret, dears. Dr. Raja Khuzai need only hit her ARVN
“Escape” button under her desk, and she’ll be practicing
with a brand new green card at Mayo Clinic within a month.
Read a little history, for cripes sake, on the French in
Algeria and on the British with their pre-named oil states.
It’s all about keeping things hot-popping, unsettled, full
of baaksheesh … but nothing trickling down to the people.
Churning and Burning. All just a cerebral form of genocide.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Livin’ in America
James Brown
Superhighways – coast to coast – easy takin’ anywhere –
On the transcontinental overload
just slide behind the wheel.
How does it feel when there’s no destination that’s too far
And somewhere on the way
you might find out who you are.
Living in America – eye to eye – station to station.
Living in America – hand in hand – across the nation.
Living in America – got to have a celebration – rock my soul!
Smokestack – fatback – many miles of railroad track.
All-night radio keep on runnin’ through your rock’n’ roll soul.
All-night diners keep you awake
on a black coffee and a hard roll.
you might have to walk a fine line
you might take a hard line
But everybody’s workin’ overtime.
Living in America – eye to eye – station to station….
I live in America – I live in America – wait a minute –
you may not be lookin’ for the promised land
But you might find it anyway.
Under one of those old familiar names like;
New Orleans – New Orleans
Detroit City – Detroit City
Dallas – Dallas
Pittsburgh P. A. – Pittsburgh P. A.
New York City – New York City
Kansas City – Kansas City
Atlanta – Atlanta.
Chicago and L. A.
Living in America – hit me – living in America – Living in America.
I live in America – staying alive – we’ll make the prime.
I live in America – hey
I know what it means.
Living in America – hit me – eye to eye – station to station.
Living in America – so nice – would you better stop?
Living in America – I feel good!
Posted by: tante aime | Aug 24 2005 19:43 utc | 8
In response to “Is anyone listening” (3:20P):
Yes, some of us got it, but to answer
Billmon’s questions at the end:
Yes.
and
Yes.
Posted by: afterthought | Aug 24 2005 20:10 utc | 9
b real, the poor, the lost rural kids and the party hack bloggers don’t read Chomsky, so hopefully they can now see for themselves. Be amusing to see how the party hack bloggers will deal w/it. Probably they’ll step right over it and keep going, like the New Yorkers listening to their iPods while stepping over a fresh corpse that Sam Smith just wrote about.
Posted by: jj | Aug 24 2005 21:10 utc | 11
Well, the GOP want to create a Theocracy in the US, so I guess there plan all along was to practise on Iraq.
Posted by: Mike from SD | Aug 24 2005 21:20 utc | 12
Billmon, the point for “nobody listening” may be the colorful past of Ms. Sofia Taleb Al Souhail
I wonder how Riverbend is doing.
As I said in the last post, Bush is not responsible for this mess. The British are!
Will her betrayal simply be pushed down the media memory hole with yesterday’s garbage? Are we really that far gone?”
I suppose it’ll depend on which way public opinion turns. If opposition to the administration and the war either remains constant or keeps growing, there’s a fair chance that this story, and others like it, might gain some traction. In the end, it is even possible that the pandering professions will turn on their masters, abandon their feigned objectivity, question the slanders and lies and investigate the misuse of the government’s powers and offices that have become so mundane. In part, this turn will doubtless be part of the media’s attempt to exculpate itself from enabling the Bush clique.
Absent that impetus, it seems likely that this story will go the same way as those of tax refund checks issued from Austin, the Iraqi mobile chemical weapons labs, Armstrong Williams, “Mission Accomplished,” Medicaid drug benefit cost estimates, and so on. Used and discarded, fucked and forgotten, and, “…really, there are so many more engaging subjects for us to talk about.”
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 24 2005 21:54 utc | 16
Exactly as Joe Klein and the other crypto Likudnikis in the media found her useful back then, they’ll ignore her now., for exactlythe same reason…the glory of the destruction of Iraq and Arab secularist nationalism.
They will be happy with theocracy…no problem. Never mind the sugar coated bullshit about democracy to the Middle East.
Posted by: Thrasyboulos | Aug 24 2005 22:05 utc | 18
The average Joe Lunchbox who has finally come to oppose this war will use the repression of women in the ‘new Iraq’ as final proof that all Arabs are hopeless violent misogynists and get what they deserve. We see it to a certain extent here where some are more worried about the ‘charcter’ of Dr. Raja Khuzai than the fate of the average Iraqi woman.
There will be no ‘ARVN’ button in Iraq the war on terra excuse will be used to ensure that the US doesn’t get flooded with Iraqis who may become a thorn in neo-cons side by reminding all of the great failure or even worse get familiar with mainstream Amerikans and reveal that Iraqis n Arabs (oops sorry sand n…..s) are just people the same as the rest of us.
Of course Dr. Raja Khuzai will be fine and I doubt she would have any intention of living in the US when there are so many other countries where she will be accorded the respect due a person of her station, without having to worry about some rednecked wingnut getting the wrong end of the stick.
But yes Riverbend and other Iraqi women that some have come to see as humans in an inhuman situation will have much to fear.
Saddam was no angel given that he was just another pol on the make but he did recognise that a secular Iraq was that county’s best way of establishing an identity impervious to etnic or religious factions.
Much of the propaganda that the world has had thrust down it’s throat for the last 15 years insinuated that Hussein was some sort of sadist who took delight in murder, rape and torture. That must be an erroneous picture of a pragmatist like Hussein whose rate of murder declined as his power consolidated. I imagine he probably has some sorta Stalinesque rationale that a few hundred thousand murders was a fair enough price to pay for a united Iraq.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 25 2005 0:26 utc | 19
The average Joe Lunchbox who has finally come to oppose this war will use the repression of women in the ‘new Iraq’ as final proof that all Arabs are hopeless violent misogynists and get what they deserve. We see it to a certain extent here where some are more worried about the ‘charcter’ of Dr. Raja Khuzai than the fate of the average Iraqi woman.
Thank you & well-put, DID. xAm. is still such a virulently sexist country, that women live in a one strike and you’re out situation. As you observed, a woman is only listened to if the guys can’t find some way to dismiss her. Since most are merely badly flawed mortals, male supremacy is still the brutal order of the day here.
Before the bastards declared war on Iraq, it had the most thriving middle class society in the ME, and the only state in which it was legal to be a woman rather than mere chattel. Yes, there was political repression, but given the repressive regimes US imperialists routinely impose around the globe, this was probably better than most. Certainly far better than virtually everything else in the region, and vastly superior to anything they’ll allow Iraqis to have for the indefinite future given: DU that’ll last for at least 7 generations, educated & professional classes have been driven out, war against women at fever pitch, theft of entire economy by xAm. Pirates…so let’s see, no money, no jobs, get raped & you, not the male perpetrator, get blamed & murdered, stoned to death in public square for extra-marital affairs, no pleasures…..Oh, but they can have rigged elections….
I wonder how much of the basic structure is that different from what these same elites are imposing slowly, inexorably, upon xUS – bankrupt the people & steal everything, impose virulently repressive woman-hating theocratic regime w/help of rigged elections…Sound like a country you were once called your own? Oh, I forgot, voting for the JackAss Party will change everything.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 25 2005 2:52 utc | 20
Well, all this is the perfect, perfect damn answer to this Marlette cartoon, found in Slate’s daily round-up…oh, to be able to dump an image into a comment, but since I can’t:
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmdma/2005/tmdma050822.gif
anna missed:
I wonder if in some respect, secularism was the only or best common denominator suitable to bind the ethnic & religious factions together albeit with a heavy hand.
Isn’t that how the United States used to work?
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 25 2005 5:48 utc | 22
John FL,
Yes of course, securlarism is and has been the antidote that seperates, for practical and pragmatic purpose, the temporal from the spiritual in civil affairs. It requires though an abeyance from certain cultural and religious traditions in favor of materialism and objectivity, which those traditions often recoil against.
Maybe I was’nt paying enough attention, but it just did’nt register, for me that the much touted discontent with Saddam (in the main stream pablum) over the last 12 years, never bothered to mention that that discontent might be grounded in the recoil against secularism — as opposed to his heavyhanded, garden variety oppression. This would also add another dimension to pappy’s descision to abandon the post gulf- war1 shia revolt, knowing full well, all would then slide to the mullahs power in Tehran. Thinking back, what also happened in Iran with the rejection of the Shah (and all his attempts at westernization) might also fit the template of secularization = westernization, and thus incompatable with Islam. It is interesting none of this has ever been sold as such, I suppose because here in the states also, the trust necessary for secular society, is under similar assult — and is not sold as such.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 25 2005 8:36 utc | 23
I suppose what we have here in the US then, is a secular power that utilizes non-secular means domesticly, to commandeer the resources of a secular country by turning it non-secular in the name of it becoming secular.
And barkeep, make that a double.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 25 2005 9:04 utc | 24
ann althouse http://althouse.blogspot.com/ might want to comment on this constitution thing
see http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/08/amsterdam-notebookspage-25.html#comments
from althouse’s february 2005 report on the state of the union
see http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/02/state-of-union-speech.html:
althouse quote 2/05
It’s very touching when the President introduces Safia Taleb al-Suhail:
(bush–) One of Iraq’s leading democracy and human rights advocates is Safia Taleb al-Suhail. She says of her country, “we were occupied for 35 years by Saddam Hussein. That was the real occupation. ‘Thank you to the American people who paid the cost’ but most of all to the soldiers.” Eleven years ago, Safia’s father was assassinated by Saddam’s intelligence service. Three days ago in Baghdad, Safia was finally able to vote for the leaders of her country – and we are honored that she is with us tonight. (–endbush)
She stands and holds her fingers up in the peace/victory sign, then rotates it around into a single index finger, the inkable voter’s Finger of Democracy. Later, Bush introduces the parents of Marine Corps Sergeant Byron Norwood, who was killed in Iraq. Norwood’s mother, Janet, is standing right behind al-Suhail and, at one point, the Iraqi woman turns around and embraces the American woman. The embrace goes on for a long time, and we imagine al-Suhail is thanking Janet Norwood for what her son gave to the Iraqi people. This long, symbolic embrace leaves a deep impression, beyond any words in the speech.
endquote from althouse 2/05
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 25 2005 10:49 utc | 25
Why should we be suprised that women have been “sacrificed” for the sake of “democracy”? Why would we be suprised the W has turned his back from his State of the Union address where he said “I wanted Iraqi women to be free, to be able to talk freely and to able to move around.”? He is a part of a theocratic takeover of this country who don’t believe that women are equal and are working toward turning back the clock on women’s rights.
Never trust a single word out of Bush’s mouth. In fact, think the opposite of everything he has to say and then you know the real George W. Bush.
Posted by: flan | Aug 25 2005 11:27 utc | 26
CP’s valley of death (first post in this thread)
Street heroin in Geneva is so cheap I can’t even quote a meaningful price…about 1/20 of what it was twenty years ago.
The Taliban did not eradicate poppy cultivation but they kept the prices very / quite high and controlled the market. Now it is ‘free’….
If you could contruct a proper high-o-meter you could show the stuff is cheaper than scotch, I’m guessing close to our local non-brand rotgut vodka.
Nobody knows what to do. It is impossible. Even the ‘free heroin’ program (addicts get medical prescriptions provided they comply with conditions concerning work, health care, parenting, etc.) is compromised.
The UN info. services say poppy cultivation acreage in Afgh. increased 2003-2004—64%. Yields increased as well. Profit to traffikers has gone through the roof, but profit for opium families – that is, 2.3 million people – has sunk 56%.
Afgh. now produces (04) 87% of the world’s opium. Accounts for between 30 and 50% of GDP, depending how you calculate. (The 50% is from…the World Bank.)
The Aug. issue of Marie-Claire (France) has an article titled “Afghani women smoke opium to bear the Burqa.” Many shoot up heroin. Their children are often addicts too. Women who go to the one ONG run detox center in Kabul get death threats – vulnerable women are a great client base. Pennies to bear misery…
An AIDS epidemic in Afgh. is not far off.
I’ll have a double too. Cheers.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 25 2005 14:40 utc | 28
The idea that American-style-democracyTM could be instituted, implanted or forced on Iraq was partly due to the fact that Iraq was so ‘advanced’ and ‘prosperous’ – previously prosperous and potentially so.
(I’m assuming some people were sincere in spouting the hearts-n-flowers stuff. Many will have been fooled…)
It was supposed that Iraq’s ‘problems’ were all due to the fact that it was a dictatorship, with its cortège of bloody repression, etc. Saddam was evil, remove Saddam and Iraq would instantly turn into a docile dream-land alla Americana, with comatose citizens accepting any lies, including the murder of thousands of them by internal actors.
Moreover, as Iraqi standard of living was by then pretty low and miserable (care of the World and its representative the UN with its sanctions) the whole enterprise would not cost very much.
The Iraqis would be happy working at MacDos, or for Halliburton, and content with TV soap opera, a working cell phone system, slightly more food — a bit of glitz; the opportunity for small vacations Disney style, a cheap car, the freedom to produce innocuous but uncontrolled art, papers, poetry, etc.
Therefore all the hype about ‘rebuilding’, ‘free speech’, ‘the role of women’, and the emphasis on technology which is meaningless if people don’t have electricity and clean water.
The backlash, the response, could only be fundamentalist.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 25 2005 15:18 utc | 29
From b’s Froomkin link:
In other resort news, Bush, who caught no fish on Tuesday, also didn’t tip his fishing guide.
Posted by: beq | Aug 25 2005 18:39 utc | 31