All that’s left in the corporate till now are the lies that will now be used to obscure the birth (in all but name) of the Islamic Republic of Iraq.
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August 20, 2005
WB: Slouching Towards the Islamic Republic
Comments
Billmon,
Though you comments are good, and quite believable, I don’t think that blood soaked dubya is about to leave Iraq anytime soon and if the military does move at all it will be into Iran, public and opinion be damned.
Iraq is a Klondike, and this will also keep the catastrophe sputtering along “happily.” For neo-con fabulists and the Republicans who do as they are told, and other lovers of the rotting carrion and misery that war brings, Bush’s firmness in staying in Iraq will look like strenght. We arn’t leaving.
Iran is next. I suggest the following investment areas, Defense issues and Funeral equipment suppliers with government contracts.
thanks for the great read, and exposure of Bush’s fabulist “Iraqi Constitution” phantasmagoria for what it is…..another failure.
Posted by: boilerman10 | Aug 20 2005 23:58 utc | 1
Also in Bush’s till, a Wendy’s receipt, an old pretzel, a decoder ring, a picture of Barbara,
a gas receipt for $2.69 a gallon last week, a
gas receipt for $2.79 a gallon this week, and
his IOU for a now four Trillion dollar US debt,
which has bankrupted every state except Vermont,
and will result in collapse of a Great Society
before 2008. Push NO SALE. Make the bell ring!
Women? Even in the US, children are “chattel”.
Welcome to a Neo world of bind, torture, kill.
Posted by: Lash Marks | Aug 21 2005 3:07 utc | 3
With regard to Iraq it is interesting to note who is on board H.Con.Res.197, Barbara Lee’s :
Bill declaring that it is the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United States military presence in Iraq.
Friends Committee on National Legislation
The DLC Demoplicans are not there. Ron Paul is the lone Republicrat.
Is Russell “I call what I am doing breaking the taboo” Feingold ready to call for the registration of the AIPAC as an agent of a foreign government as suggested by Doug Ireland The Real AIPAC Spy Ring Story–it Was All About Iran? Is Feingold ready to Support Cindy Sheehan! : “You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism.”?
Douglas Feith seems finally to have left the Pentagon, are neocon hopes and plans to destroy Iran as they destroyed Iraq gone with him? He pushed hard for both. Others are paying the price in blood.
Unless and until “our” government takes our interests into account rather than the Likud’s it will be destruction and death as a way of life as far out into the future as the eye can see.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Aug 21 2005 5:49 utc | 4
I don’t deny that the upshot of the Iraqi constitution will initially be repression of women and handing power over to a group of unelected zealots, but since friends who have read the koran tell me that it contains rather less strictures against women than the bible does, then we shouldn’t just assume that the repression of women in Middle Eastern states is because of Islam.
As I understand it the women as chattels sociopathy is common to a lot of semi-fuedal agararian communities and not just islamic ones.
That is the woman’s ‘role’ was constructed to preserve agricultural land in economicly viable sizes and create a system of succession. Since the system was designed by males it favours males but I’m not sure that it’s entirely fair to blame the religion for this state of affairs.
The system was very similar in most nominally Xtian communities until the structure of the economy changed. Of course it didn’t just evolve it required resistance from women to force a change. That change really only occured once ‘who gets the farm’ stopped being one of the major forces driving a community. Either because there were other options for economic achievement or urban migration required land to be bought and sold rather than just passed on to the next generation.
I’m sure the dynamic in the middle east will be similar and while the current system is unjust if it is changed before other aspects of the society especially it’s economic structure are changed, then how will land succesion, marriage and care of the elderly be managed?
Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 21 2005 6:06 utc | 5
Excuse me while I palely imitate the master:
“If you’re suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn’t going to happen.”
— Donald Rumsfeld, April 25, 2003
Our goal is to have a peaceful democratic Iraq that’s at peace with its neighbors and is respectful of all of the various religious and minority elements in the country. The neighboring countries I suppose are looking more for a regime in Iraq that is a mirror image of theirs. So in the case of Iran they’d want a small handful of clerics to have an extreme regime in that country which of course is not something that we’re going to allow to happen.
— Donald Rumsfeld, February 17, 2004
I think that you will see [the Shia leaders] come to terms with the fact that there are different religious traditions, different political traditions, different ethnic groups in Iraq, that all now will have to be in a unified Iraq. I was heartened by some of the statements of some of the Shia that they understand that a theocratic government, or a clerical government, would be unacceptable to the vast majority of the Iraqi people. And so they will find a proper role for Islam in their future. Many societies have done that and have done it still with democratic institutions in place.
— Condoleezza Rice, February 8, 2005
“They’re not going to develop [an Islamic government]. And the reason I can say that is because I’m very aware of this basic law they’re writing. They’re not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al Hakim*, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.”
President Bush, February 8, 2004
*Hakim, as you know, is the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, which should have given Bush a clue as to the cleric’s real motives
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Aug 21 2005 6:13 utc | 6
“…Bush’s revolutionary aspirations”?
Maybe the neocons have some aspirations (which I’m sure have nothing to do with Democracy or liberation), but the only thing Bush aspires to is another whiskey.
Posted by: steve expat | Aug 21 2005 7:38 utc | 7
Before the invasion, some said the aim was chaos and the breakup of Iraq into three pieces. These people were often laughed at, or reviled.
Debs: I’m sure the dynamic in the middle east will be similar and while the current system is unjust if it is changed before other aspects of the society especially it’s economic structure are changed, then how will land succesion, marriage and care of the elderly be managed?
Saddam accorded decent rights to women (and children.) They were upheld. It worked fine. Care of the eldery was family-based with free clinics and medecines and hospitals. (Or practically free; money did help to get higher-level care.)
In Afghanistan, before the Taliban, about 40% of State functionaries were women. 40% of doctors. Exactly 50% of teachers. Some huge % (well over 50) of nurses. And so on – lawyers. Women were not very active in business, banking. That is traditional. The Afgh. stats in this area were way way above that of many Western countries.
The Taliban sent the women home not so much for religious reasons but to destroy the State. It worked.
A similar process is going on in Iraq.
Billmon: …the 29-year old, named only as Amina, was dragged out of her parent’s house in Urgu District, Badakhan province by her husband and local officials before being publicly stoned to death …If that (or worse) is really what the women of Iraq have to look forward to…
Most of the killings of unfaithful, unmarried but consorting and raped women are shootings/beatings. They began the day of the invasion and happen, I am sure, every single day. There are no statistics afaik. But going through isolated stories and descriptions by women of what they (and their friends) are going through, or have experienced, as well as reports from doctors, particularly in morgues, women’s associations, parents, etc. it is to my mind perfectly clear. Human trafficking (very lucrative) and sex slaves are an important part of this picture.
There are brothels in the Green Zone (afaik). I am not implying that the Americans are complicit, but war, violence, and poverty will kick women into into a black Zone where rape and death lurk on every corner, and prostitution may be the only way to feed children. If the killings can be justified by some religious hog wash, so what,- it serves the purpose of the killers though.
Men whose status, livelihood, position, role in the family are taken away or destroyed (or never offered) will seek power where they can. They will embrace an ideology that gives them control and power over the only weak people around them – women and children. That sounds harsh and sexist, but at some point it is the only strategy open for survival, honor.
Posted by: Noisette | Aug 21 2005 10:08 utc | 8
According to some MTP talking head, an American style democracy circa nineteen hundred would be just fine. Just because women had no rights back then doesn’t mean that the US wasn’t a democracy.
Of course he fails to recognize that Iraq wasn’t living in the nineteenth century and before the US invasion, women in Iraq did have rights. That simple fact, that women in Iraq enjoyed more freedoms than women in other ME countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, was number 10 on my list of reasons that invading Iraq was a terrible idea.
Posted by: Marie | Aug 21 2005 16:10 utc | 9
Yo man. Good prose as always. One quibble though:
Such a revolution can be achieved, if at all, only gradually, through the same forces of economic and social modernization that have triggered such a violent reaction from Al Qaeda and the forces of Islamic fundamentalism.
The notion that the “forces of economic and social modernization” substantiate triggers for Al Qaeda et al is right wing cant. You’re using more words to essentially say “they hate our freedom,” which is not a very useful angle take on things from when searching for solutions.
Whether you’re looking at the growth of Al Qaeda in the 1990s, the current debacle in Iraq or the revolution in Iran, the cause has generally been a reaction to foreign force. Rather than looking at KFC and porno as causes, we aught to be looking at the decision to stationin US troops in Saudi Arabia after the Persian Gulf War, to prop up the Shah, and obviously to occupy Iraq.
You might also look at the distribution of ownership, knowledge and profit from much of the recent commecial development throroughout the region. Much like our propensity to back up autocratic regimes (“ugly allies”) on the political side, our tendency to boss the locals on the economic side is alarmingly shortsighted.
Posted by: Outlandish Josh | Aug 21 2005 20:34 utc | 10