It left me with the conviction — or at least an intuitive suspicion — that an open-ended war in Iraq … will bring nothing but misery and death to them, and creeping (or galloping) authoritarianism to us. — Billmon
I’m stunned, Billmon, that you’ve only now come to this conclusion.
You yourself have been documenting the evidence for your suspicion for 2 years now. Here’s some of that evidence — from your own site — in the last week alone:
1) [The US Army is] sending Shi’a troops to bust down doors, search women and arrest men in the Sunni heartland… It’s hard to imagine a better way to fuel sectarian hatreds and push Iraq closer to civil war.
2) What [former defense minister] Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world…. estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn…
So you were aware that the Bush administ’n is actively encouraging sectarian hatreds, and stealing vast sums of Iraqi money — the very money that is needed to help the country defend itself — but it wasn’t until you saw this sick porn site that you realized we’re doing more harm than good? I don’t get it.
I’ve never bought the argument that things will be OK if we just leave, but it’s been clear to me for over a year now — just from reading you — that we’re actively making things worse (whether intentionally or not).
What’s that old mayor Daley quote: our soldiers are there to preserve disorder.

Posted by: Vin Carreo | Sep 25 2005 7:58 utc | 3

The only way out is to say we’re sorry and pay reparations, accept partition of Kurdistan and Iranian “peacekeeping” troops in Baghdad, or something equally stupid, since there is no hope of real peace.
This awful but practical solution might have worked two years ago, but I think we’re actually past the point of no return now, and there is no way to withdraw U.S. forces. Very sad indeed.

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Sep 25 2005 8:06 utc | 5

It’s vital to keep one’s wits about one’s self. One look at the sight of mutilation should not a whole strategy make.
The fact is, the US invasion is not the whole problem. It set off a reaction that was coming in time anyway. The ME is a powder keg influenced by history, the present, and the future. The United Sates is a bit player. When there is the fact of the end of oil and these countries are sitting on these increasingly difficult to extract supplies worth so much money, there is no other possible path, given the usual behavior of men, than conflict. And the area is changing.
Every problem in life comes with a solution. This is not the end of the world nor the beginning of totalitarian rule in the United States. Dictatorships arise when a country is out of control. Iraq needs one. If you remove a dictator suddenly, you’ve got to replace him with some similar type of control, and let the people move gradually themselves to an alternative. Even if they split up the country, some kind of strong central control would be needed at first. Plus, sometimes I think people underestimate the Iraqis’ ability to work through this.
We simply have to find this evasive solution.
One thing that might help would be to control the panic and listen to ideas in hopes that by some small quirk of fate we could elect some people who could accomplish a political solution.

Posted by: jm | Sep 25 2005 8:41 utc | 7

I was in Washington yesterday, Billmon. Admittedly, I didn’t come far – I rode in on the Metro from the end of one line in Maryland – the car was standing room only from the first stop. A wide variety of persons were there – children with their parents, adolescents and young adults, the middle aged (young middle, middle middle, and older middle like myself) and seniors – blacks and browns as well as whites. I asked a few people where they’d come from – Baltimore, Boston, Minneapolis (three busloads wearing red berets from an activitist Catholic parish, whose director of religious education was just denied an award because of her gayness – when complaints to the archbishop by her opponents didn’t work, they wrote to Rome). There still are sane human beings left in our country – whether we will be able to prevail is [I hope] still an open question – but if we give up now we can be certain the war criminals have won.
A couple of weeks ago I asked former Presidential candidate Wesley Clark – why not get out now? His reply:

General Clark: Well, I would say that’s not the right course to adopt,
right now. And I want you to picture what would happen if we announced
we’re coming out. Now just imagine it, OK. The president, right after
Labor Day, you know they always say never announce anything new before
Labor Day, the president comes on national TV and says, “I’ve heard
your thoughts, my fellow countrymen, we’ve lost 2,000 American’s,
spent 200 billion dollars and we’re coming out. We’re coming home.”
Well the men and women in the armed forces can do it. It will be a
fighting withdrawal because the insurgents will be on the heels of the
American columns as they come out. I can picture our men and women in
those humvees and the dump trucks. You can see them taking fire and
asking, “Should I shoot back, if I shoot back who’s in that building?”
I can see a long and bloody retreat. It will take several weeks to get
out of there, four or five weeks. Or if you stage it, it will be
bloodier and more difficult for longer. The insurgents will claim they
won. But that claim will be disputed by Al Qaeda. They’ll say that
they drove us out.
And the people who helped us in Iraq will be targeted. They already
are targeted but they’ve got some assistance and support. That will go
away quickly. These people will be running for their lives. 200, 300,
500, 800,000, a million. Everybody who ever talked to an American. We
don’t know where the boundary will be. But it won’t be pretty.
And when it’s said that we are coming out, the political process that
we’ve put in place will start to come apart, naturally. People are
already preparing. There’s plenty of private militias there. They’ve
got scores to settle, territory to gain, cleansing to do, resources to
capture and I’m sure the Kurds will decide, you know they aren’t Arabs
anyway, they’ll go their own way. So I would expect a pretty rapid
recourse not only to civil war but regional conflict, if we were to
pull out and say ‘we’re coming home.’ Now, that’s my scenario. It
reduces American prestige, influence and power all around the world.
Q: These things [editorial note – I meant the reduction of America’s
prestige, influence, and power] have happened already, sir.
General Clark: Well, not to the extent I think I’ve sketched it out.
So what I’d say is, that there is a middle ground or a better ground,
than staying the course or announcing a withdrawal. We need to change
that course and use America’s leadership and power not only militarily
but diplomatically and politically in the region to become a focus for
regional cooperation. It is not yet too late.

Madeleine Albright, at the same conference, also repeated the line, “This was a war of choice – but we have no choice now but to prevail”.
In public, at least, both these prominent figures are claiming that their end condition for our involvement is (a)achievable at any cost, and (b)worth achieving at the cost it would take to achieve it.
I disagree with both these claims. At the march yesterday, it was clear that the people who came (100,000? 300,000?) have a different agenda: U.S. out of Iraq, and George Bush out of the White House.
May it be so.

Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 25 2005 9:46 utc | 9

Under sanctions and oil-for-food Iraq was already being economically run by the West. Saddam was, in some ways, just as much a puppet as Allawi. France and Germany did object to sanctions, up to a point, but they were pretty ineffective. The status quo was unberable – neither fish nor fowl, with the jackals hovering over Iraq and snarling at each other.
Then, a combination of Western impatience (which started under Clinton) and USuk necrophiliac corporate greed (the dead are so precious, n’est-ce pas? Think how much money and energy it takes to kill them and who pays for it..) culminated in a sort of apocalyptic neo-imperialist project, where traditional occupation / domination (pieces of the world carved out and allotted to different Western powers, sometimes leading to serial occupations…) is transfomed into a giant jamboree where corporations run rampant.
US actors in Iraq are multiple. The army provides some of the grunts and guns – but to do what, except provide muscle for the money makers, is unclear. They are supplemented by private grunts. The corporations are there principally to fleece the American tax payer, on no-bid contracts for which they deliver practically nothing. The humanitarians, NGOs, UNs and so forth are there also to drain money from the West to their pockets (though I don’t doubt the sincerity and good works of many of them) and justify their existence. Some Iraqi factions either just want to join the gravy train, skimming off some of the profits, or mistakenly think that they may one day gain some power or political advantage by siding with the biggest Mafia bully on the block. Some may have genuine desires for a specific model of cohesive society, but they will be, in this context, fundamentalists who count on authoritarian structure and a cult system in which people will accept submission and poverty, as that is the only model that stands a chance of success against the opposing forces.
This is a weird offshoot of capitalism, gone fantastically murderous and wild. Nobody wants to reconstruct Iraq or invest in it. Nobody wants to ‘exploit’ the Iraqi people, set them to work…And soon nobody will want to feed them either, as the World Food Program has been yelling for a while.
In an odd way, nobody wants to occupy Iraq. The corporations just want a pseudo-reality of war (to sell arms), as well as the ideological ‘cover’ of war, as it gives them a free hand and provides some moral justifications.
So it isn’t an old style ‘occupation’ from which one can ‘withdraw’.
Just one argumentative POV…there are many other facets.

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 25 2005 10:26 utc | 11

To try and excuse the unconscionable slaughter of fellow humans with half assed rationalisations like. It was coming anyway or the US is just a bit player tells the world how determined some Amerikans are to think they have a right to throw their shit around and fuck the consequences.
The bit that gets me is when blame for all this gets put back on the Iraqis as in “When there is the fact of the end of oil and these countries are sitting on these increasingly difficult to extract supplies worth so much money, there is no other possible path, given the usual behavior of men, than conflict.”
There are many other nations around the world who wouldn’t have minded that oil but were content to trade for it. Despicable as everyone says the Chinese regime is they didn’t go into Iraq all guns blazing to try and steal Iraqi resources. Neither did the Russians or anyone else who probably had a bigger need for the oil than the US.
The assholes on both sides of the one party in the US have had a ring fence around most of the oil in the ME for decades. When they didn’t need the oil for themselves they abused their position in the UN (with the connivance of the spineless Brits) to ensure no one else could buy it. Unfortunately by the time they decided they needed the oil, the Iraqis had already signed contracts with China, Russia, Germany, and France to name but a few. This would not only have endangered the US corporations’ hegemony on oil, the rise of the Euro meant that the deals may not have even been done in US dollars so BushCo bent over and kissed their contributors asses and then sent in killers to take the oil.
I doubt many people in here are that shocked at the photos on those sites certainly no one who has been around kill or be killed situations. This is why most of us hate war. Seeing people reduced to piles of blood and rags is what happens in war.
The point is how do we exert any control over the bits that could conceivably be within MoA readers and contributors control. There is no point considering anything that requires any particular behaviours amongst the Iraqis. Even if we did know what would put the cork back in their bottle we have no way of making it happen.
There will be fighting when the invaders leave but history (Vietnam, Laos, South Africa) tells us that it will probably quiet down quite soon if ‘outside agitators’ are no longer there. Certainly US/UK/Australia/Japan/Italy owe Iraq huge reparations but no reparations can be made until they have gotten out.
So instead of discussing how many dead Iraqi souls can be crowded onto the head of a grenade pin it would seem to be more useful to thrash around practical ideas for stopping the slaughter by US/UK/Australia/Japan/Italy.
A tax strike would make the assholes in charge listen because that is all they really need from Joe Citizen. They don’t need your vote they’ve worked out how to manage without that and people can walk around town carrying signs forever but as long as Rove can adjust the spin correctly then it doesn’t matter.
But a tax strike does carry considerably more angst for the participants than a street march. There is no doubt that some people will get singled out for the full federal treatment but if people are genuine about not wanting anymore murders in their name then the price they are being asked to pay is much less than the Iraqi kid caught in the crossfire is paying every day.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 25 2005 11:16 utc | 13

Welcome, sir.

My own moment, and it was like a switch going off, came when the first Abu Ghraib photos made it clear to me that we had no broad authority left in Iraq that did not involve either massive bribery or massive slaughter. I sympathize with those who try to be anti-war while maintaining that we should keep a sufficient presence to clean up our disaster. I just think they’re asking the impossible, rather as if a marital interloper tried to hang around to mediate the fight the couple has when the affair is discovered.

Posted by: cymack | Sep 25 2005 11:59 utc | 15

I realized the dark flower of fascism had blossomed in the US after watching one episode of “24”.

Posted by: Zug | Sep 25 2005 12:54 utc | 17

mr kurtzy – he gone too far – to go back -ô he will never go back – welcome to the nightmare the third world has had to live for a century – now that we are all lost in the jungle on a ission going to nowhere – thank you mr kurtz – ô mr kurtzy – how you show us the mirror to ourselves

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 13:42 utc | 19

I believe billmon is spot on in his assessment of the whole fracus. Damned if ya do, damned if ya don’t.
But it all go’s back to chaos theory. Chaos is the friend of the exploitive classes. Always has been and always will be. We know that if Iraq breaks down into civil war each group will need weapons. The Russian, French, and US military hardware makers benefit. How will those factions pay for that hardware? Oil of course. The Sunnis are desperate right now to hang on some areas with oil. They know civil war is coming and with no oil, (most is in the Shiite and Kurdish areas) they are sitting ducks. And as billmon says, the bodies will be piled high. The Iranians have already sided with the Shia and the Kurds will get US support, especially to keep that oil flowing through Turkey.
Yes, chaos is good for business. And as I posted yesterday on the Cursed thead, Texas run through and through the whole thing. God bless Texas as the country song says.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 25 2005 14:18 utc | 21

That adventures by fools like our current fools Iraqui adventure are a fatal cancer is a CONSERVATIVE theme.

Conservative? Perhaps I missed the irony. They would have wrapped their mission in progressive packaging if the public had not been at the ass end of that phase of the political cycle.
These are right-wing revolutionaries. They are as radical as it gets.
People are so fucking anguished and in such fucking despair they are beginning to contemplate taking drastic measures: buying a bumpersticker and/or withholding a dollar or two from their taxes in protest.
Posturing. Self-aggrandizing posturing.
Apparently it never occurs to anyone to withdraw support from the social pornographers — the propaganda system that pimps The Regime and its policies to the public [mixed metaphor].
MediaCorps is so much high-end hardware and overhead without viewers. We have more power as audience than we do as constituents. HuffPo has something on the fallout at NBC after Must See Tee Vee lost some of its market share.

Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 25 2005 16:15 utc | 23

Some sooner, some later. There are a lot of us, anguished by the Vietnam War, who knew from the minute Bush began to push for the invasion of Iraq that the whole presentation was a fraud, a show. Vietnam was a war built on a pack of lies, Iraq is a war built on a pack of lies.
Having no legitimate business in Iraq, our military should skedaddle-fast.
Welcome Billmon.

Posted by: Marjorie Colson | Sep 25 2005 17:33 utc | 25

mr kurtzy – he writing – a big book – a grand thesis – on this little venture & all the ventures that have preceded it & logically follow it
mr kurtz – he gone very very mad – he & rumsfield – share stories – stuff happens – it all goes up in smoke – silhouettes & shadows
fire & water & more fire
men women & children less value than rocks stones & pebbles
ô mr kurtz – he not stll now – him running up & down – back & forth – here & there – before & after – him running into bottle – out of bottle
him here for long long time now

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 18:10 utc | 27

The longer we stay in Iraq, the smaller the pieces that must eventually must be put together again, become. The whole history of the occupation has been predicated upon pounding the pieces (of Iraqi society) into yet smaller and smaller fragments, when things fail to gel. The odds of a succesful exit strategy have diminished incrimentally in time and action every step along the way. At this point there is NO reason to believe ANYTHING the United States might do to “save” Iraq is plausable — and EVERY reason to believe whatever the United States does in Iraq now will only INCREASE the odds of an even bigger disaster.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 25 2005 18:45 utc | 29

some sort of sense has come to juan cole but it is a sad sort of sense because it is too late. as many have pointed out here – imperialism does not leave of its own accord & only the acceleration & consolidation of the resistance(which is clearly happening) will force the hand of u s imperialism
we have written for years here wanting, desiring & demanding some form of loguc from the tyrants who rule from the roll of dollars – but there is no sense – it is murder awash in murder – it is in its real sense – compulsive. they are as i crudely suggest ) not finished yet. there is more murder to come
& the manner in which they will legitimise that murder & control any internal resistance to it in the mother country itself – is cause for fear – as annie so expertly articulates
the world wants u s imperiaism not only to leave iraq & afghanistan but all the other parts of the imperium where they stain the earth with blood & lies & corruption

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 19:04 utc | 31

The whole history of the occupation has been predicated upon pounding the pieces (of Iraqi society) into yet smaller and smaller fragments
divide and conquer
wow alabamas back,
cole change his mind
groovy

Posted by: annie | Sep 25 2005 19:43 utc | 33

r’giap –him here for long long time now
I am afraid you are right

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2005 19:59 utc | 35

What a relief that the anti-war activism is yielding results. Hurricane Toto couldn’t have come at a better time to draw back the curtain on how utterly the Extremists have hollowed out the institutions of governance.
But for a counterpoint to Juan Cole’s superb post, I highly recommend cruising over to Steve Clemons blog (www.thewashingtonnote.com) for a read. For non-americans, he’s THE MUST read for everyone who is anyone in DC. Happily he Outed pope ratso this week, but otherwise reading him is a surreal trip into the vain hopes of an Elite is Desperate to maintain American Prestige.
After you get back from journey into the fantasyland of the ego of the DC elite, bought & paid for by the Pirates, Paul Craig Roberts’ new piece will reground you. He notes what’s painfully obvious to those not in their pay – China will continue to prop up the dollar til it’s sucked everything productive out of America, then not. link

Posted by: jj | Sep 25 2005 20:13 utc | 37

jj
mr kurtz – he read & read – the articles you suggest are on his bureau – with something scribbled – exterminate them all- something to that affect/effect
mr kurtz – he laughs & laughs – knowing that it is not yeat dark & that it will become infinitely darker & mr kurtz & his kind – they love the dark – as long as it is not skin
mr kurtz – he understands the ampleur of what is about to happen – & nearly goes into rictus – reading the new york times most belated editorials – mr kurtz him he know – words worth less than blood – he drink it – after all
mr kurtz he wants you to rest for the long ride we are all taking to where he know not

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 20:36 utc | 39

michael
sadly, i think you think we are in the period of the eague of nations where perhaps such things were possible before spain – but today to speak of horse trading in anything other than the sense it has on the streets straight to you from the poppy fields of fghanistan strikes me as a little optimistic if not totally delusional
as mr kurtz would long for us to understand we have gone way beyond that point some time ago

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 21:06 utc | 41

The Cal State Prof. who runs angryarab blogspot said in interview last wk. that post war planning meetings had already happened in neighboring countries. don’t know which segments were party to them. Hatred of american occupation could be sufficient to unite warring factions & allow for creation of a real state, but it’s impossible to imagine xUS elites allowing that to happen…

Posted by: jj | Sep 25 2005 21:15 utc | 43

Reposting:
This question of a “fast” or “immediate” withdrawal is such a moot point. No matter when we leave Iraq there is going to be nasty fallout, just as there was in Vietnam/Cambodia. Sure, we could STILL be in Vietnam, perhaps preventing it from happening or delaying the inevitable while we continue bombing, napalming, and commiting whatever other atrocities. This is simple “permanent war” as Orwell noted in 1984.

Well I agree about the nasty fallout part, but the fact is the status quo in Iraq is in any case unsustainable. The American military’s manpower cupboard is just about bare, and there is no realistic chance of getting other nations to contribute significant new forces to the Iraq imbroglio (on this point I must respectfully disagree with Juan Cole).
I’d also like to point out that the fallout from the denouement in Iraq could not be avoided even if the US was willing to contemplate the kind of draconian measures described by Scheuer in Imperial Hubris. Such measures might possibly defeat the insurgency, but they will not mitigate the sectarian tensions that threaten to rip Iraq apart once the stabilizing influence of 140 000 American troops is removed, as it inevitably must.
Sometimes policymakers confront situations in which all their options are bad, and this is exactly the situation the US has stumbled into in Iraq. The fact that it is beyond the America’s capacity to set right what its ignorance and hubris has wrought is one many people are still reluctant to acknowledge, but by temporizing on the inevitable they are ignoring the larger danger, which is that the Iraq war has already tore a huge hole in the fabric of American ideals and values, and it’s high time someone in a position of leadership accepts the responsibility for telling this unpalatable truth to the American people.
Americans need to hear some hard truths about Iraq. They need to hear that their leaders fabricated a casus belli in order to justify invading a country which posed no threat to the United States in order to forward a not so secret agenda concocted on the basis of neocon fantasies. When Nazi Germany did this in 1939 it was widely held to be one of the most notorious acts of aggression of the 20th century – and Nazi Germany at least had some legitimate grievances with Poland. Why do Americans now hold themselves to a lower standard? Americans need to hear that behind all the self congradulatory rhetoric about “liberation” the reality is that American troops killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis in order to invade and occupy their country, and they continue to kill more every day to keep such control of it, such as it is. They need to be invited to consider how they would feel if the situation was reversed and Muslim Iraqi soldiers were patrolling the streets of American cities with the what amounts to the power to commit summary executions of ordinary Americans. They need to be reminded that it is an incontrovertable fact that Iraqi prisoners have been tortured -not “abused” or “mistreated”, but tortured– while in American captivity, that this torture occured with at least the tacit approval of the highest echelons of both the military and civilian leadership, and that no one in a position of responsibility has come within a country mile of being held accountable for this outrage.
Then they need to ask themselves whether even five years ago this is the country that they imagined America to be, or which they want it to be now.

Posted by: Lexington | Sep 25 2005 21:57 utc | 45

Good God, what an abject coffle of defeatists you are. You can’t just pull out of Iraq. These are people whose faith has been proven hollow, whose trust has been breached again and again. Before we dare leave, we have to give these people something to live for.

Posted by: vidkun | Sep 25 2005 21:59 utc | 47

theodo
i would like to take point with you & a part of the left which seems to have bought the mythology of the islamic enemy – a mythology of its omnipotence of its organisational capacity & of its roots with the people
it seems to me that you implicity want american trrops there because the worst case scenario for you is an islamic dictatorship in the mold of iran
i take issue with it because in essence i do not believe it – as gille keppel clearly indicates – islamic fundamentalism of the kind represented by the gia/islamic btherhood/alqueda was nearly in its deathbed & that it was a passage not a fixed point. that there exists no such fixed point even within imperialism itself
what can be clearly said is the islamic fundamentalism has its roots in cia operations in afghanistan, that it has its roots in it unyielding relationship with egypt, it has its relationship in the assasination of every secular leader the middle east has really articulated & the decimation of such secular groups who have been by their very nature socialist or social democratic, it has its roots in a relationship with israel that has ignored & ignored toally & in the manner of anhilation – the palestinian people’s just demands
imperialism, this naked form of imperialism has created the political islam you fear the most & now through this immoral & criminal war – that movement has got both a recruiting ground & the most powerful of pedagogical tools – the truth
the truth is the american armies of occupation are in no way different from the invading german armies in the east of europe – they recognise neither law nor morality – nor even of history itself
the occupation of iraq is a racist war of extermination that has only just begun & being the most pessimistic of us here – i think that it will increase & be extended to other areas. i see no diminution of the conflict – on the contrary i see extensions in the countries we have spoken of but also of those elewhere in the ancient soviet republics for example – where already there has been such clear evidence of american involvement
my vision is dark but i think of it as no darker than the reality that this world is confronted by daily
i wish that the hundreds of thousands of people marching in the u s meant something but the craziness has gone too far – far too far – & if that opposition should become effective – it will be smashed & smashed ruthlessly – also using the kind of myths you spoke of in australia in your last post – & thos yths will be smashed into the heads of those too scared to do anything but witness the catastrophe take place – much like fema
the world inside mr kurtz head had more light than we have today

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2005 22:32 utc | 49

Billmon, well stated. What the “war on terror” is in actuality is the ripping up of the Bill of Rights here at home. When US citizens can be arrested and detained without charge indefinitely and the judicial system with right wing appointees supports it, the Bill Of Rights is being ripped up. When people can be labeled as “enemy combatants” by the executive branch of our government and the Geneva Conventions lo longer apply and they can be subject to “special rendition” and tortured with impunity, the Bill of Rights is being ripped apart.
As the debacle in Iraq continues to snowball and the Rovian slime and spin PR comes under stress watch for a new level of propaganda and a slide towards authoritarianism here at home. The new jingoistic propaganda and fascist tendencies will put Goebbels to shame.

Posted by: bagpipe | Sep 25 2005 23:43 utc | 51

from Raed’s latest blog entry (talking about San Francisco)
You can feel the war everywhere, even more than you can feel it in some Middle Eastern cities. There are even some governmental leaflets telling people how to point out suicide bombers in the subway or around the streets! The stickers read “We’re all in this together”!
In what together?! In killing other people and occupying their countries, then living in fear of revenge acts, and spending our time searching for suicide bombers around us?

Posted by: andrew in caledon | Sep 25 2005 23:53 utc | 53

the raed’s of this world, riverbend & the other bloggers working from iraq are showing throughout all this horror, this escalating horror – such decency, such sense & such contexts that they make all the ‘journalism’ with the singular exception of robert fisk – to be not only worthless – but to be another aspect of the repressive violence that is ripping thoughout our lives

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 26 2005 0:19 utc | 55

R’giap,
In many ways I agree with everything that you say. I read and reread Kepel’s book and his thesis seems sound: the failure of Arab nationalism fed in to a turn towards Islamism, and the Wahabism of Qutb. It’s plain to see that the majority of Arabs wanted no part of crazy dreams of Caliphates and wanted, like almost everyone else, to be left alone and allowed to get on with their lives. The CIA and the Saudi’s gave the Wahabist project a kick along in Afghanistan, but again it was localised and the Taliban were the high-water mark in terms of where fundamentalist Islamism was going. Keppel, as you will know, saw 9/11 as the death rattle (albeit a spectacular one). There was no way that any country, let alone the USA, could have taken such a strike diplomatically. The Taliban (who knew nothing about the preparations) were in the cross-hairs because they wouldn’t hand over Bin Laden.
This brings us to Iraq. We all know why the US invaded and occupied Iraq. It was for geo-strategic reasons, which is think-tank speak for good old imperialism. They hoped it would be of the neo-king where Saddam goes, flowers and sweets for the marines, and then the country becomes another Honduras, or Philippines, where democratic looking, but essentially corrupt pro-US regime runs the show for Washington. But the plan fucked-up in a big way. Americans are not subtle imperialists by all accounts, and even in the sanitized vision we get in the west, the aggressive shouting at people, the door kicking, the bag over the head and Abu Graib would breed hatred and resentment in any occupied people.
I think all this is straightforward enough, and would find a positive echo with most if not all who come to MoA. The US and its allies need to get out as soon as possible. I read yesterday that the British are drawing up plans to leave, which will have a knock-on effect with the Japanese. Politically, Blair has less of a stomach for the consequences of their actions. Things might be starting to shift. I think we can write Bush off in terms of his crawling away–he’ll leave that to his successor. What I’m saying is that I don’t think it is going to be as bad as you suggest. I have been for a long time sway on this issue by the fact the Saddam was gone, and sublimated the actual logic behind his remove. At one level I always knew that his removal was optional for Washington–having a presence on the ground in a world seen through the prism of oil was always the main objective. What I did not want to think through (a consequence of my personal experience with he hard left) is that popular pressure can still have an effect. On one side we see that Bush and Blair were actually re-elected after their invasion, but at a political cost. Since then, the insurgency and the continued faltering at the polls have made Blair blink. The US will stick it out until the next administration. So we’re not talking revolution here, but an example of popular pressure around the world and local physical resistance. It seems increasingly likely that the US presence when they leave will be a greatly diminished shadow of what they had envisioned in 2002-3. Fundamentalism will not be the winner; neither will the US and its allies, but Iran who will dominate the South and possibly Syria who will come to some arrangement with the Sunnis in the North. The Kurds will get to do what they want, hopefully. Syria and Iran are undemocratic, but they are driven by Realpolitik. They are not Taliban–and in any case they have immense problems with the aspirations of their own people. US soldiers are dying for nothing, and the resisters are dying for something tangible. Things will settle, R’giap. This situation is bad for all sides, but wars constantly change shape and substance and more rational minds will prevail sooner rather than later. American imperialism will be defeated, but American capitalism will do rather better. The left needs to think about where its strength now lies, and where the power for socialist change comes from. The logic I’ve described is bourgeois to the core, but I can’t see any alternative at the moment.
Kurtz was mad and his darkness was his own.
Annie, I know you have taken it upon yourself to say who should come here and who shouldn’t–but if you have nothing sensible to say in response to you eye meeting my insolent gate-crashing, then say nothing.

Posted by: theodor | Sep 26 2005 1:34 utc | 57

glad you’ve seen the light!
i expected this much sooner than now but you had to fight through the many years of patriotic brainwashing which is the yankee culture.
congratz, billmon

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Sep 26 2005 2:27 utc | 59

when you come here and call people who “bellow” for troops out the ” pseudo-left ” and suggest that this would lead us in a deeper downward spiral and you get downright insulting(12 yrs old and why don’t i go vomit in a toilet???) when i suggest you try a different bar? i don’t name call anyone who thinks we should stay the course and lump them all into any category even tho i may disagree w/them.
you don’t think i’m sensible? in your post on hearts and minds you said this leaving behind a moderately peaceful and moderately uncorrupt administration that can organise its economy and society in the ways that they want. this is pretty much off the table. when you claim we are whining about neocon projects and playing the blamegame???? and now, if i have nothing sensible to say i should say nothing? well, lucky for you i will be hearing rickie lee jones tonight and won’t be around to critique any of your posts. i will try to refrain from commenting on your opinions in the future since clearly my tone offends you.

Posted by: annie | Sep 26 2005 2:59 utc | 61

Juan Cole has not changed his mind.
He has repackaged his plan as “GROUND TROOPS OUT NOW!!!”. Sotto voce : and the occupation of permanent bases in Iraq by the US Air Force and Special Operations troops.
Am I the only one who notes the striking resemblance, sick pun intended, between the Israeli methods of airborne and commando attacks on the Palestinians and Juan Cole’s proposed airborne and commando attacks on the Iraqis?
He’s just stripped down the occupation of Iraq to the occupation of Enclaves in Iraq with the perpetual protection of the oil pipelines running out of Iraq from the chaos every elsewhere within.
I admire Juan Cole. I cannot understand his rationalization and apology for the occupation.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Sep 26 2005 3:10 utc | 63

Until progressives as a collective confront the war here at home i.e. the the Bernard Lewis’s, the Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations cult ;until progressives learn about and confront the ideology and social interests and meta-narratives of
“team b” , the systemic problems and effects of entropy that arise will continue even past Cheneyco. As I have said before Bush is just a symptom of a much darker deeper problem.
Like a self-healing/self-replicating typical network – in this case, of neo-Nixon gangsters/criminals- the rise of Rove’s Republic will carry on the mandate, just as the ‘net tends to interpret corruption as damage, and routs around it, so too does the doctrine. A memetic phenotype, i.e. an individual’s implementation of a meme, can -in principle – continue to replicate for as long as the brain it lives in is functioning. The most likely strategy is to force a sudden loss of interest in the field the meme belongs to, when the ideas held by the host differ to much from the ideas held by other hosts of the same meme. “The enduring legacy of politicians like Thurmond, Wallace and Helms [Nixon, Reagan] may be the meme of a distinctively Southern style of cultural/memetic politics, transplanted to national politics as a whole.
Further, the challenge for progressives is to teach what they learn to each-other (as we do here at moon). However, to make the task even more complicated, we have to convey it to the general public (i.e. joe sixpack & susie soccer mom) in a way that they can grasp it.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, they say. Nor did it fall in one, but it eroded swiftly, it’s currency deteriated to nothing, sucking the marrow out of the bones of the middle class; to say nothing of the working poor.
That we will never leave Iraq is a fact. These “Sykophants” i.e. Corrupt abusers of Law, have given our Ceasar his mandate, and he has long crossed the Rubicon. Just as the german volk gave Hitler his maniacal mandate. So goes Iraq.
Interestingly enough, Billmon’s comments on the German film Downfall (Der Untergang) passed w/out much fanfair, but it intrigued me enough to pick it up last night. Like annie , I have been silent all day because the story of Traudle Junge ( Hitler’s secretary)frightened and effected me so deeply. I have spent literally all last night and the vast majority of today thinking about the machine regrime state and the methodical, relentless, systemic, ideological symbolic philosophical covert war we are in here at home.
As billmon suggested the “certain psychological similarities and the totalitarian mindset” they [Bush and Hitler]share are out right creepy. Like Traudle Junge, part of the reason I voted for Bush (to be brutaly honest),was in part out of dark curiosity, and part wanting to get this slow motion train wreck over with.
Just as in Hilter’s character in Downfall, and the rhetoric about the Fatherland, Hitler showed little use for Germany’s sons and daughters; he proclaims that they deserve to suffer because they have proved to be too weak. Reminds me of the disconnect and aloofness of our king george and the katrina affair as well as other instances of cruelty.
I did not mean for this screed to become a review of the movie, nor, about the recent meme that “Bush is like Hitler”, more what shocked me was the delusions and iedology system of the regrime, even when Nazism ends the zealotry went on. And the most horrifing part was, Hilter like a wounded child, was determined to destroy his country if he couldn’t rule the world. A literal selfish “do or die” philosophy, which resonates much with these ideologues we have in power here.
Finally, the behind-the-scenes bonus material interviews with several of the cast and crew, one of the actors, the one whom played Albert Speer (I think), said something to the effect that we shouldn’t look at these events as tragic, in the sense that tragedy brings to mind an accident, for there was nothing accidental about their actions. What came to his mind was the complete ‘recklessness’.
What come to my mind is the Powers that be here today, would also bring the whole country down w/them rather than lose power. They know if they pull out of Iraq the will be done for. They know that they are war criminals and will be tried for crimes against humanity. Which makes them very very dangerous.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 26 2005 4:06 utc | 65

for whatever reason, our city did not join the rest of the free world in protesting the ongoing occupation on saturday, but instead held the march & rally today. in a way, it’s apropos that the hallucinatory mood of apocalypse now has been evoked already, for my odyssey today had a surreal feel to it to. for starters, it rained all damn day. non-stop. march’s and rallies should be invigorating & electric but w/ the gloomy setting, all the piss n’ vinegar stood a very real likelihood of being royally pissed on. still, i was surprised to see several hundred people had come out in the rain & assembled at the designated time. it was announced that there had been some last minute arrangements for the rally to be held inside a hotel where a “jobs for justice” convention was winding up this w/e, and that we would march from where we stood, outside the renaissance hotel, all of a few blocks away to the holiday inn. so we did just that, w/ a police escort. other than the cops, the only other people who saw our rousing march were those few individuals checking out of the holiday day inn.
inside the hall, there were perhaps 500 people. the sound system wasn’t suitable for this, so watching the lips move on the speakers & trying to imagine what the girl strumming the guitar was playing didn’t hold my interest for too long. the guy in front of me, spiked, bleached mohawk, lots of chains dangling everywhere, back of his shirt advertising some sickly-looking group of pale white youths sitting in a diner – the casualties “if you don’t like them…fuck you”. someone hands me a flyer. cool. gotta be better reading than that shirt. socialist appeal. okay. the disaster of katrina makes urgent the need to ditch capitalism and demand world-wide socialism. missing a lot of dots in between, but i can keep reading. blackwater is in new orleans … these are the same guys that gave us abu ghraib. now wait a minute. bush re-election. cripes. so i’m staring at the casualties again.
after a lot of clapping, we take to the streets again. it’s still pouring. this time we’re marching along a route that’s actually around a mile long & straight through the downtown area. the rain doesn’t completely dampen our spirits as a few hundred of us do the call & response things while the bucket brigade sets the rhythmn. the police hold back the traffic for us. some cars honk in approval. a guy in an suv (of course) imagines he’s being profound as he barks out ‘get a job’. we march past a theater where women in furs and sleek black dresses and men w/ brown suits & little bow ties are assembling to hear the truth from minister farrakhan. next block, there’s a crowd filing out of the dome after an nfl game. a guy sporting a team shirt featuring the number of a quarterback who hasn’t even been on the team for the past two seasons cuts through the line of marchers, front to back, waving his arms all around and yelling ‘you people are crazy’. another fanatic, again sporting a uniform accessorized w/ the concomitant beer cup, make disparaging remarks toward some ladies carrying a sign. 1-2-3-4 WE DON’T WANT YOUR BLOODY WAE. an intoxicated girl, being held upright by her shorter boyfriend, also sporting a uniform, responds ‘what war?’.
we march onward. the signs that weren’t plastic, or covered by plastic, are now indecipherable. more cars are honking now. the wind is blowing the rain in our faces. WHAT DO WE WANT – PEACE!!! – WHEN DO WE WANT IT – NOW!!! a guy pounds on the rim of a shattered bucket. faces pressed against windows looking out on us. we’re bilingual now. EL PUEBLO UNIDO, JAMAS SERA VENCIDO. the drumming combined w/ the sound of the rain hitting us builds in intensity. our voices echo through the canyons of office buildings. we are soaked. we are hoarse. we have purged ourselves.
waiting for the bus on the way home, there are no more protestors around. a man stands in front of me, wearing a hospital gown, open at the back, and blue elastic pants w/ shiny black dress shoes. he carries a clear plastic bag containing what appear to be his normal clothes. the bus arrives. we get on. how strange. nobody seems to pay him any attention. he doesn’t evidence any problem w/ self-esteem, on moving about in public in such an attire. maybe he’s purged himself today as well. as the rain strikes the window along my seat, i think of the different uniforms that i’ve seen this afternoon. my stop arrives. i exit the front of the bus and head down a side street. the man in the hospital gown is already ahead of me, walking hurriedly down the center of the street. i opt for the sidewalk. maybe another day.

Posted by: b real | Sep 26 2005 4:44 utc | 67

The Neoconservatives are a mixture of all types, but I think they are primarily businessmen and wannabe empire builders. They created their fantasy in the PNAC doctrine and got their chance to put it to the test. Doesn’t look good, does it? They are so transparent and disorganized. Some think it is a deliberate chaotic look, but I suspect it’s real. I think they are laughing at all those who think they are dictators with the power and tight organization of Hitler. Many folks have created an overblown myth about their power and they are amused and love to see people as suckers. Typical hucksters.
Iraq seems to have strayed from the plan and all the years of work in the good ‘ol USA is falling apart as they are losing their base. I think they are failures, people definitely shouldn’t be cowering in front of them. The problems and powers are elsewhere. They are a distraction. They are little men. Not the reincarnation of evil dictators from history as much as they might read up on them.
And Bush has been used by everyone all his life. It’s as if he’s not his own person. A toy. And one with a terrible learning disability.

Posted by: jm | Sep 26 2005 4:45 utc | 69

The Potemkin Country
All this imperialism and genocide isn’t new. The US has been doing this for a long, long time, ever since pre-revolution as Knut points out. Now, because of the fragmentation and proliferation of lines of communication (ie. the Net) it’s harder to ignore; and with 911 (and Katrina I suppose) it seems to extend closer to home. So what’s the call? More militarisation or lower living standards in the US (on average, the median may rise)? We already know what the billionaires say. More of them this year than ever before. But they may not stick around if things get ugly.
Re: NowThatsFuckedUp: Humans are primates. Fascination with sex & violence are not rational responses, they’re biological. Doesn’t mean we have to indulge them (I don’t shit in public… any more), but no point being either outraged or guilty. They are going to be there until the next evolutionary leap, and I mean the big one away from biology entirely. As far as taking the pictures, it’s creating the carnage that really bothers me in a moral sense. The pictures are pretty irrelevant, or a least a very distant order problem on my compass.
Arguing about the merits of various sensitive rebuilding or policing strategies is laughable with this leadership. It misses the point entirely. As Noisette notes, this leadership is WINNING their war on almost every front. Mission Accomplished big time. Just add up the bucks. It’s just not their relatives or friends getting killed. And the money is flowing like the Mississippi, straight from the treasury into their pockets. They must just smirk when they hear that some left-wing weirdos call it a disaster. They have no empathy organ.
BOTH Iraquis and the USA will be immediately better off – almost regardless of subsequent policy – if Amerikans can change this gov’t somehow. Voting used to be the way. May not work anymore. We’ll soon see. 2006 mid-terms are the only light in the tunnel at this point; and controlling the Congress and Senate a great chance to stop the rot on the SCOTUS and begin some criminal investigations with teeth. The alternative to making this 2006 election the end for CheneyCo is disaster, both within and without.
Forget your favourite issue. The only non-negotiable demand for electoral support: public and independent investigations. First neuter them, then investigate them, then impeach them, then imprison them… you get the picture. Wouldn’t be suprised if we have to fetch them from Paraguay and their money from Caymans.
The rest of the “shoulda, coulda, woulda’s” are fairly spurious in this context IMHO.

Posted by: PeeDee | Sep 26 2005 4:49 utc | 71

Cheney just took knives into his knees, so he’s not running to fast. Rove’s kidneys are weighed down with stones he can’t throw. Condi’s too busy painting her lips and can’t run well in those $2000 spike heeled shoes. Roberts has no lips at all. Rummy is completely confused, as usual. And Bush is in an altered state.
They should be easy to knock over. Anyone should be able to outrun them.

Posted by: jm | Sep 26 2005 5:02 utc | 73

People have noted May pullout for UK. I was dubious – rightly so. They’re not going anywhere, like…
Tony Blair has dampened hopes that he will set a timetable under which British troops would start to pull out of Iraq next spring.
Ministers told The Independent that British troops were unlikely to take on a different role in Iraq before next summer – and would then gradually hand over frontline duties to the Iraqi army and police before a staged withdrawal was contemplated at a later date. Despite growing pressure to set a date for troops to return home, ministers insisted that such a deadline would not be set. link

Posted by: jj | Sep 26 2005 6:52 utc | 75

I look back with fondness on the days when I considered Philip K Dick to be paranoid.

Posted by: PeeDee | Sep 26 2005 8:14 utc | 77

A minor difference between Vietnam and Iraq: some of the Vietnamese invited us in. Not many, and not representative, but a few. I’m not aware of any Iraqis who invited us in (Chalabi and Judith Miller don’t count, for obvious reasons)….Since we’ve never been welcomed there, we’re trespassing on someone else’s property–we do violence, as it were, to the laws of hospitality. On these grounds alone, we really ought to leave.

Posted by: alabama | Sep 26 2005 8:33 utc | 79

As was to be expected:
Rummi – 1:0 – Condi
Aid to Iraq Ministries To Shift to Pentagon

The U.S. military plans to take over responsibility from the State Department for providing assistance to Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries, following a determination that greater resources and technical expertise are needed.

The Pentagon isn´t even able to do its own budget so know it will train how further spoil the Iraq money. Condi as SecState is now a lame duck just as Powell was.
As Hersh said. It is Bush, Cheney, Rummi – Condi isn´t even in the picture, other than under her husb… .

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2005 10:44 utc | 81

Bush like an incompetent Dr Faustushas old America’s soul. Because of the Communist threat, Vietnam had at least a shred of justification; Iraq has none.
Bush, like Ceausescu or “Papa Doc” Duvallier, is a soulless kleptofascist that has looted the country, and worse, he has corrupted the very soul of the Nation.
Too many Americans — even good Americans — have been corrupted by fear and greed sown by the regime; it has grown torturers and supporters of torture in our midst; turned Americans into monsters.
Even after he is gone, like Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, Rumania, post-WWII France, etc, etc. we shall be forced to look in the eyes of our fellow Americans and ask “were you one of them?” and “what did you do during the war?”
There is no redemption from this; the blot is forever.

Posted by: Lupin | Sep 26 2005 14:38 utc | 83

Look carefully at those photos. The next Tim McVeigh is hiding there…

Posted by: dab | Sep 26 2005 17:37 utc | 85

Anna, WRT your message about the protest march in Seattle, I have had similar thoughts although not as a participant. It’s all so sterile, these “protests.” Citizens have to ask permission to protest against their ruling classes. They’re told where they can march, how long, and in what manner. During large political assemblies the citizens are caged off into their “free speech zones” where they can be safely ignored.
It’s all too safe. Too sterile. Too… impotent.
This is why I never felt it accomplished much outside of providing the participants with a feeling of “doing something.” Did the marches against Vietnam do anything, or did the political climate change? I don’t think that the former honestly influenced the latter to any significant degree, although I may be wrong (I was still too young at the time to know or care). Even if it did, would the far more tightly-controlled media climate of today allow it to precipitate to the same degree?
We witnessed the largest massing of people against a political action during the run-up to the Iraqi invasion in our world’s history. Millions upon millions marched in nearly every country on the planet, and it didn’t change the outcome. The elite control the media, the media define “reality”, “reality” ignores the majority of the sentient population — unless there’s money in it. (And that’s sort of the heart of it, isn’t it… that as long as our governments and their friends can acquire more money and power during bad times than good then there’s no reason for the good times. Ever.)
I can understand the anger and frustration with the situation, but “1st world” populations are far too controled — both physically and psychologically — to allow any type of civil disobedience that would produce real results.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Sep 26 2005 20:09 utc | 87

When ask if Fascism could every happen in the United States, Huey Long is said to have responded with: “Oh yes, accept here they would call it anti-fascism”
If you want to create the Neocon state, you might first move to prove that popular democracy can not work.
Those that run this government are also the ones who want to undermine the system it is based on.
People don’t realize, when they voted for Bush, they were voting for the end of democracy, the end of morality (because morality is a middle class concern – see “Its a Wonderful Life” when George Bally does not exist), the end of decency and the begining of killing in every form.
The slippery slope is not ubiquitous, or necessary. But we are sliding on one anyway, because we have imbraced immorality.
How is it that we have embraced immorality? By calling it morality.

Posted by: Timka | Sep 26 2005 20:51 utc | 89

When the internet was new, there were sites that showed gore, mostly photos from forensic autopsies. The shots were disgusting, and a few were upsetting, but no cause for comment. AFAIK, they’re still around.
What sets off alarms here is the pleasure that the soldiers show in causing pain and death. If you want to be analytical, the most obscene thing in the Abu Ghraib photos was Lynndie England’s smirk.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 26 2005 21:21 utc | 91

@ pyrrho
it took the murder of 4 white students by the Nat’l Guard at Kent State to turn public opinion during the Viet Nam disaster
nothing even close has happened yet to provoke the sheeple out of their [self-righteous] cocoon

Posted by: andrew in caledon | Sep 27 2005 0:09 utc | 93

For a life -and death – story about the Americans who I have faith in and their struggle against their corrupt betrayers
see
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/25/MNGD7ETMNM1.DTL
which was in Sundays San Frncisco Chronicle.
and
in which the most disturbing of the host of disturbing facts is the three closesly spaced shots to the head, which, is a classic sign of a targetted shot executed with American military trained precision. Perhaps, a coincidence, but, hard to believe an accident.
Good Americans who are not part of the “left” and who refuse to accept their betrayal.

Posted by: razor | Sep 27 2005 1:52 utc | 95

jj
No. The flaw of conspiracy theories is they always fit the purposes of the theorists, which is the sort of perfect fit I never see in real life.
I am suggesting that stray bullets on the battlefield don’t come in classic groupings of three, that, for example, at that prison uprising in Afghanistan way back when, the special forces arrival was unequivocally announced when instead of the hosing approach to shooting with little effect, reporters reported hearing three shots, followed by someone falling.
If indeed those particular shots were in a tight group of three, it suggests a single gunman who sighted and shot, which raises new questions. What did they see when they sighted being the big one.
Perhaps, just bad fire discipline and those of us who have never been there not being in the position to second guess. But the question deserved an answer.

Posted by: razor | Sep 27 2005 2:28 utc | 97

@Citizen K:
Please stay away from brutal history. Stick to fairy tales.
Allow our “Pure” leftist friends some room to maneuver.

Posted by: Groucho | Sep 27 2005 3:39 utc | 99