Brings back to mind Max’s argument of a week or so ago : while we are increasingly amazed at just how badly the neocons have missed their mark, in fact they are right on target.
Violence, destruction and chaos are just what the neocons ordered for all the rivals to “greater Israel” in the Middle East.
Iran is next, no matter how contrary to reason in light of American, or world, interests.
I don’t know of course. But that analysis is not inconsistent with the facts of the matter.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 21 2005 11:01 utc | 3

Sided with the crips the bloods the dirty dozen the hells angels the aryan brotherhood the new and old mexican mafias, hamas and hezballah, the Iranian Revolutionary guard, the PLF.
The U.S. military is supporting pluralism and equal opoortunity for all in the nasty short and brutish market. Traditional values restored.

Posted by: razor | Aug 21 2005 13:52 utc | 5

It can turn two ways:
1. Fall of Saigon scenario: by arming the militias with helicopters (see here, you can fit Hellfire missiles to a Blackhawk!) and tanks, the U.S. runs the risk of having those weapons turned against them. The North Vietnamese Army did just that when the moved South in 1975. They occupied South Vietnamese aribases shock full of shiny new American fighter planes and turned around used them on the South Veitnamese.
2. Somalia: The militias take over large parts of the country and cast aside their political masters. You know the rest.

Posted by: Rafael Pinero | Aug 21 2005 16:12 utc | 7

The Kurds have been fucked over for generations. This is their chance; and they will take it. All it needs is one of the border players to step up to the plate.
Turkey………. 50/50 (All those oil bribes)
Syria……….. 10/1 (Pipelines)
Iran………… 100/1 (They are preoccupied in the South)
Shia Iraq……. 1/10 (Better a fuck-up in Northern Territories, than down here)

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 21 2005 18:44 utc | 9

A better alternative to Maxs argument (the chaos in Iraq is intentional) might be that the neo-con thinking itself is victim to its own rhetorical upside-down world. They are in effect caught in their own trap. To shore up flagging support, they have to show progress in handing security over to the Iraqis. The only way the Iraqis have a chance at providing that security is to have better weapons (our weapons). And because the US has ruined any social and economic sense of opportunity, and failed, in real political terms to relenquish a believable soveignity — the Iraqi security forces are filled with with the dissaffected, who’s loyalitys remain with whatever sub-group (clan, religious, militia, gang, etc) has traditionally provided for these basic needs.
One could assume the neo-cons have been well aware of this fact, as they have been reluctant throughout the occupation to provide adequate weaponry to the Iraqis. But now, the circumstances (of showing progress) force the methodology to play to the rhetoric, and so give weapons to the enemy they must. Which everyone should, it would seem, come to acknowledge
as one of the final milestones to be passed on the road to utter disaster.
Eventually, one that plays Russian roulette in a show of invincibility or power, will at some point meet, head on, the hard reality flirted with by the rhetoric.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 21 2005 19:07 utc | 11

And now for something completely different:
Crips, Bloods Deployed to Dis ‘Ssein Clucks,
main man Donald Rumsfeld and his home shootah lay it down for the press. 😉

Posted by: MarcinGomulka | Aug 22 2005 0:42 utc | 13

anna missed:

‘ Eventually, one that plays Russian roulette in a show of invincibility or power, will at some point meet, head on, the hard reality flirted with by the rhetoric. ‘

Yeah, but not if you’re a neocon. The gun’s pointing at our heads and we’ll be taking the bullet. Wolfowitz has flown the coop, is perched at the World Bank and Feith is back in his law firm in Jerusalem.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 22 2005 3:51 utc | 15

Good points Max Andersen, but I have to ask, and add,
“Fictitious clarity”?, “fictitious clarity”, or “trained incapacity”? -makes no difference-, as Democracy is an Illusion anyway, and the most fucked part is,
they, (we,) just don’t want to see or talk about where we’re headed.
Where it may be worse than syndicalist corporatism. it is indeed interesting.
I, at this time, suspect worse. In that, in my unintelligent opinion, what we are seeing is nothing short of Nouveau Reich Economic Theories being played out in the golden GRAND CHESS BOARD (Tm).
Perhaps, the left, are like fish asking what is water, in that they don’t seem to get that they are locked into the same aristotle binary system as the right. And neither sees the NOUVEAU REICH for what it is… As Mark Ames wrote:
The Third Reich died a hard and premature death – exactly 988 years prematurely – but its spirit lives on as we enter the new Millennium. MARK AMES looks back at the year that the Reich returned, quietly consolidated its power and took control of planet earth so completely that Hitler would be left scratching his charred, bullet-punctured, museum-displayed skull at the sheer wonder of it all.
Sure looks like the The Rise of Rove’s Republic. to me. But, what the hell do I know, I’m just a cosmic smuck.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 22 2005 5:42 utc | 17

Maybe for those who live in the dominant empire of the era it seems to work. However if you interact with the other people on this planet (who are around in much greater numbers) the act of imperialism defies understanding. Part of this is those who aren’t caught up in the patriotic plastic anthems and cheap jingoism aren’t emotionally impelled into the vortex of reactive chaos that empires drag with them. The other reason is that the sort of tribalist messages that empires foist upon their citizens are so directed at the particular citizens people outside that empire looking in just can’t believe how anyone could fall for that line of BS.
For just about everyone else on the planet what happening in Iraq didn’t require much prediction either. Maybe I’m not a lefty cause I’m tired of finding out my predictions have come true. I mean no one seriously imagined that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did they? Why would Hussein hang on to them? Hussein was nothing if not pragmatic and having WMD would gain him nothing and cost him heaps. Most people worked that one out before the war didn’t they?
Same with what happened after the invasion. Who didn’t think that once the Iraqis saw that they had fallen out of the frying pan into the fire they would resist. No one tolerates invasion. There is little ‘inevitable’ about it. Ultimately unless the invaders can overwhelm the indigenous population they get their asses whipped. The US can’t get enough soldiers to fight there so I don’t think we’re gonna see a mass migration of the citizens from Brooklyn to Bagdhad.
There’s a post up a ways with a link to some self important collector of ‘verbal history’ (an oxymoron of unbelievable shallowness) where some fool who served in Iraq is whining about how he came home cause he injured his leg playing basketball but was angry that we had to go a while without a shave. He also feels sorry for himself that he shot a couple of kids (there’s something not quite right about that story but there are far too few bits of information to know what the lie is with any certainty). Anyway to anyone on the outside looking in his story appears to be as ego-centric as most early 20’s males but there’s also a feeling of “How can that bloke be so dumb?” Whatever happened over there was bad but he won’t admit to himself that a/ invading a country is a bad act that inevitably causes misery for all involved and b/ although you can’t change the past if he wants his future to be different he must recognise who the players are that caused this invasion to happen. This includes himself and all who supported this militaristic state and not just the con men in charge. However he has been so indoctrinated that even after being to a miserable inexcusable war he can’t even admit he was conned much less look at his part in the con.
The sort of jingoism that becomes so pervasive that people aren’t even aware of how silly it sounds when they consider the current US society to be one of the “most advanced civilizations in the world”. Now I’m not trying to stir anyone up here because this isn’t an insult to the people in the US who are essentially the same people as anywhere else. They should be aware that they are living not that well in a corrupt society where people have lost most of their freedoms except the ones that don’t matter.
eg. If you’re living in a community where most have a reasonable life with quality health and education and where the leaders have no choice but to eventually take notice of the people, owning a gun is really a non issue.
An in-depth visit to most other developed countries around the world shows exactly that situation. People are getting a lot of the benefits of social change and technology but they don’t have nearly as many jails, poor people unemployed (or if they do have a cyclical unemployment problem the unemployed can live and eat without being marginalised by the rest of the community) and violence is neither a real or imagined problem for the vast majority of the community.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that all is rosy in the rest of the first world but generally things are a whole hell of a lot better than the sort of miserable fear filled wage slavish existence that US society currently demands from its citizens.
US citizens appear to be getting so divorced from the society around them that they are falling back on old superstitions in the hope that the clock will turn back to the ‘golden age’ of US society. This age if it ever really existed was in the time before the US acted out too many dreams of empire.
I can’t think of another developed society where there is serious discussion about replacing the knowledge that humanity has been able to glean thus far with old wives tales yet there it is happening right now in the Kansas public education system. This is ‘advanced’? The only other societies doing this are African nations that have fallen so deeply into anarchy and chaos that the foundations of technological society have gone and the only thing left is witchcraft and shamanism.
I could go on with all sorts of examples but that’s not the point. The point is that there are a lot more people living outside the US than in it, the populations of other first world nations would outnumber the US population many times over and most of those people have seen the results of imperial adventurism when their own nation was a party to it or have witnessed imperialism as inflicted upon their nation. There is no way that those populations consider it viable or appropriate.
The dreadful Brits would be a classic example. They are in Iraq for a multitude of sleazy reasons but at no time has the majority population got behind the war effort or whatever the contemporary cliche for rah rah ing on murder is.
They are still a bit too close to their own dreams of empire and there are enough scraps of the old empire’s machinery undemolished that a larger minority of Brits can be cranked than most places. When they did get involved it was only if they could be in a quieter place like Basra where there’s oil and money to be made but it wouldn’t require the population becoming inured to either large scale casualties or too many massacres being committed under their flag.
Imperialism is a fact of life but it is neither a long term winning strategy nor likely to improve the quality of life of the Empire’s citizens. People unable to see that have been captured by rhetoric or fear or both.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 22 2005 13:12 utc | 19

Deb;
So what are the character flaws which make the American public not learn anything from Philipine to Viet Nam but some how have sobered up the Brits? And since the French are not in Iraq, are you saying that they don’t have any imperial ambitions anymore? Many people were uneasy about invading Iraq but did you also imagine that Bush will win a second election after royally screwing it up, and people will not loose their jobs instead get promoted for creating the debacle?
The word “most” in my earlier post is quantitative and not qualitative but since you brought it up, is there a competing example of advanced civilization that you have in mind? You are not thinking of the bush people of serengetti, are you? If I move to a new city and have the water, phone, and electricity working the same day, I’ll call it an advanced civilization.
I know that empire is not good in the long run but that is your and my take on empire, not the imperialists. It is bad for its victims in the short run and the long run, but it is good for the impreialists in the short run. The trick is to make the short runs last longer and make more than one short runs at the same time! That is why the project is called “Project for the New American Century” not the millenia, ’cause the millenia will have to be dealt with when we get to it.

Posted by: Max Andersen | Aug 22 2005 23:23 utc | 21

Debs, I think your distinction between American and British complicity with their respective government’s war crimes is one without a difference.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 23 2005 3:33 utc | 23