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Iraq Withdrawal
In a piece at Crooks and Liars, Glenn Greenwald calls for a realistic debate about U.S. troop withdraw from Iraq:
Being opposed to the war before it began does not necessarily mean that one must be in favor of withdraw now. Even if it would have been preferable not to have invaded, the reality is that we have invaded. So the question now becomes – how do we best rectify the disaster we have created? If our withdrawing would worsen the security situation in Iraq, then demanding that we withdraw anyway is a form of easy moralizing which cannot actually be morally justified.
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There is a compelling argument to make that we should withdraw our troops. But that argument can only be based on the premise that our troops — contrary to the views of the elected Iraqi government — are doing more harm than good, not that the invasion was unjustified in the first place.
Let us forget for a moment that even 10 weeks after the election, there is no Iraqi government. There are also no signs that there will be some weeks from now.
Let us forget that the most of the government folks are former expatriates, who depend on the U.S. to provide their personal security and current and future income. Only some 70% of the population does call for an U.S. withdrawal.
There is one very simple easy question that makes any discussion about morality of an withdrawal or helping Iraq a waste of time.
Let us for a moment assume there were reasonable plans to better the situation in Iraq through the use of U.S. diplomatic or military means.
Who would be responsible for their implementation?
You see the problem?
Whatever idea might come up how the
U.S. really could help in Iraq, the execution would lie in the hands of
Cheney’s administration. People who screw up anything but propaganda in the first place.
Is there anybody who has reasonable confidence that these people can implement any serious issue?
See, that´s what I guessed. So stop the discussions now and get the troops out.
This same argument went on for, what, eight or nine years during Vietnam, during which time we bombed the hell out of three countries and were responsible for 3 Million deaths. This area of the world is far more strategic. We have no plans of completely ceding control back to the Iraqis unless they are our puppets. This is only act two scene one. There is a long way to go.
If you read between the lines of the Buckleys and Fukuyamas, you will find that they are not anti-imperialist peaceniks, but rather, Kissengerian realists who long for the return of the types of policies such as those that made Chile such a smashing sucess. Fukuyama’s recent op-ed in the Times, “After Neoconservatism” is an example:
In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments….
….If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote (sic) democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like….By definition, outsiders can’t “impose” democracy on a country that doesn’t want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.
In other words, return to NED subversion of democracy and the stealing of elections; growing and supporting ‘new’ Chalabis and Allawis, since these older used models have lost their sheen in the desert storms; the return of John Perkins’ ‘jackals’; and when all else fails, the imposition of a fascist ‘strongman’ dictator, who will uphold ‘American interests’.
I had thought about deconstructing Fukuyama’s piece line by line, but just didn’t have the time. Still, it is a worthwhile exercise to read between the ideological florishes and decipher what actual policies are being advocated.
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The Role of the Public Intellectual in the Formation of Public Opinion
I think even some readers of this blog suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual purpose the Buckleys and Fukuyamas serve as cogs in the machinery of empire. They are called “intellectuals”, which might lead one to believe that people like them sit around and think up new and daring policies to be implemented. That is not the case.
The more one studies history, the more one sees that there are no new policies or strategies under the sun; all have been tried before, most by the end of the Roman Empire. Those in doubt should read their Parenti and Zinn one more time.
Just as there are only a few types of politicians: demogogues, that seek to sway people’s emotions; populists, that seek to ride people’s emotions, mythic icons, that seek to misdirect people’s emotions, and various stripes of realists, that seek to calm or allay people’s emotions and appeal to their intellects–so too, there are a limited range of policies out there.
Policies either centralize control or decentralize it; they either increase order and coherence, or violence and chaos; they either increase inequality or decrease it; they either increase sustainability or decrease it; and they work with coalitions by either expanding or limiting them, and augmenting or diminishing the power of any of a number of constituent factions. After all, Politics, simply stated, is merely the art of determining who gets what.
There are two ways these changes are effected. One is by working with coalitions as described above, and the other way is with propaganda. Propaganda, as in the case of advertising, appeals to people’s prejudices, their hopes and fears, and also serves to retail partial or complete untruths.
So, there are no new policy options that political scientists have not, as yet, discovered. Empire constantly cycles between hard power and soft power. All Buckley and Fukuyama are suggesting is that it is now time to begin to cycle.
So, if these ‘intellectuals’ are not thinking up new policies, what are they doing? If they cannot be thought of as pioneers of priciple, perhaps they can better be seen as purveyors of propaganda.
The role they play should be thought of more as market researchers, or perhaps as unscrupulous traders at a livestock market. They write long and flowery essays in leading publications read by the nation’s ruling elites. They constantly seek new metaphors and images, often employing concepts and terms drawn from emerging scientific fields, or hot new buzzwords from popular culture, as ways to dress up the ‘ideological pig’, and then put it up for bidding. Phrases such as “We are not…”, “We should seek to…”, “We messed up the….”, “We must build…..”, “It is time to…”, are the foundational blocks they employ in appealing to the public support. Attractive and marketable ‘feature’ blocks are often catchy nonsense phrases, such as “The world is flat”, tendentious references to the implications of “Orientalism”, or trendy current concepts such as “viral”, “cloned” and “interconnected”–none of which actually describe anything that was not known to political thinkers before the germ theory of illness was first postulated.
All manner of logical argument, and more importantly, logical fallacies are put out for a test run, as the taste of the market is known to be fickle and unpredictable.
These articles run in prestigious publications, such as dailies, like the New York Times and Washington Post, and weekles and monthlies, like The New Republic, and others of that ilk, running the gamut of acceptable elite opinion (The Nation being the extreme left limit). The elite, who are, as Chomsky notes, the most brainwashed of society’s strata, have completely internalized the premises of empire, and therefore never see through this rather transparent game. So, they get all excited about these opinion pieces and start nattering among themselves about them. Despite the elite’s pride in its intellectuality, and superior intelligence compared to other social classes, it is, therefore, rather surprising that these pieces are never parsed for intellectual consistency or adherence to observed fact, but only for what aspects of the apologetics they believe that others will believe.
Through this game of everyone thinking for everyone else, eventually, a consensus emerges among the elite over which phrases will work best. These phrase are then picked up by the propaganda apparatus known as ‘the media’, and tried out. If the reaction of the targeted audiences proves positive, the memes are then spread throughout the land.
Of course think tanks, employing similar processes, play a great role in determing the initial policy of a new administration. This is done under the guidance of member public intellectuals by up and coming young trenchworkers. But once the general direction has been determined and agreed upon by the narrow ruling faction, the role then falls to the public intellectual to sell this ‘policy’.
Once policy has been implemented, and as in the case here, is found wanting in some manner, the public intellectual then takes up this added role of ‘developing and selling new policy’. Each intellectual then appears to compete in the marketplace of ideas for having, and selling, the best policy. The very limited range of elite accepted options which spring forth from this process, and their consistent prejudicial and inaccurate handling of facts, opinion polls, and other evidence, instead hewing to elite accepted myths, like the “Iraqi–Al Qaeda connection”, “Zarqawi”, or more recently, “Civil War”, should give the game away. That it doesn’t, is indicative of the prominent propaganda role of this endeavor.
Nevertheless, being able to best market the unmarketable, is still quite a feather in a public intellectual’s cap.
This method has produced such notable phrases as “Bush’s noble mission to spread democracy.” It should be noted again that phrases such as these are then spread uncritically throughout elite and common discourse as the latest marketing meme, despite how fatuous they sound, or more importantly , despite the absence in the evidentiary record for any facts supporting these ridiculous claims.
Of course, I have simplified the process a bit in this description. In actuality, an adroit politician will consciously peddle different, and often contradictory, slogans to different segments of society, domestic and foreign; each one meant to appeal best to its intended audience. When there is a need to obfuscate motivations they will often employ mutually contradictory slogans or explanations at the same time; often employing proxies for this purpose. This technique often accounts for the fact that different departments of the executive branch may seem to have apparent differences of opinion or approach, over which much needless editorial ink is then spilled, as these ‘disagreements’ never seem to actually develop further. This is what is commonly known as “throw it against the wall and see what sticks.”
This explanation is how I see the role of public intellectuals as generally operating within elite consensus in our society. Of course, actual dissidents, such as Chomsky and others, do not follow these rules. But it should be noted that even dissidents, such as those opposed to the US presence in Iraq, still field test various arguments in public fora, and will often use the arguments that best appeal to the emotional responses of their target audiences, even if other arguments hold greater intellectual coherence and validity. And, of course, dissidents, being outside the bounds of the permissible in public discourse are generally given short shrift, or find their positions hopelessly mischaracterised and slandered by the corporate media.
Sadly, it is the appeal to the emotions, both positive and negative, that most holds resonance in the formation and swaying public opinion. And that is why, after understanding what I have written above, and also having worked next door to a meat factory for several years, I would still rather eat sausage. It’s not that there is any more mystery in how it is made. It just tastes better going down.
Posted by: Malooga | Feb 27 2006 3:17 utc | 15
As another note, has anyone noticed how the conventional wisdom of “we have to stay in Iraq to prevent civil waq” has played out in the reality of the past week? What a joke. The US did nothing remotely like that last week during the single most significant event of potential civil war.
This reminds me of the old Borsht Belt joke about the two wizened jewish ladies sitting on their aluminum chairs facing the ocean in Miami Beach. One of them has just returned from her grandson’s Bar Mitzvah, and she is complaining, “The food was horrible, absolutely inedible! And the portions were so small, too!”
Logic is no longer required in public discourse. I”m not being facetious, I’m serious.
The press never analyzes anything or holds anyone to account, without also presenting the ‘other side of the story’.
The government intentionally propagates contradictory explanations at the same time, and then emphasizes which ever one sounds best for the situation.
The only attempts at analysis are a few stray op-eds intended for the elite, who actually need some information to make financial decisions.
Critical thinking is no longer taught in schools.
Newscasters are chosen for looks, voice, sense of projected authority and trust. This has nothing to do with reporting ability, or accuracy, or truthfulness.
It’s a complete virtual reality. Whatever sounds good, goes.
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Additionally, what might be called meta-dialogues, or mythic truths, have been well established and drilled into people’s psyches, overriding all fact. What do I mean by meta-dialogue? The deep and abiding myths about America which us USAans have been spoon fed since birth, are an example. The myth of American Benevolence is an specific example.
Whatever the facts are, or the explanations, most Americans believe so strongly in our good intentions, that nothing changes that interpretation of reality. Pictures of helpless moslems being shot dead at point blank range in a mosque, torturings, rapes, waterboarding; because we KNOW that we have good intentions–that is postulated–all interpretations must be viewed through that lens; for most, with very little trouble.
This mythic truth then becomes all pervasive, so that no story can negate it. All must fit within the given framework. Wars–Vietnam, or Iraq, for instance–can be ‘mistakes’, or ‘prosecuted poorly’, or even, at the bounds of the expressable, the exception that proves the rule. But if one establishes through sound academic scholarship, as Ben Blum and Ward Churchill have, that white Americans killing brown people for lucre and land is the standard behavior, well, you have just committed ideological heresy. You must burn at the stake or, at the very least, be derided as a conspiracy theorist, or a charlatan nutcake. You don’t get to talk to Tim Russert or Charlie Rose like George Will does. You can’t even publish a book about baseball. Who would believe what you had to say?
Other examples not specific to America are: ‘the ability of science to solve any problem, eventually.’ The world will be in its final death throes and many people in the west will be completely untroubled, waiting for science, the technological messiah, to bail them out.
‘The cult of individualism.’ Suicides, depression,alienation, anomie, isolation, loneliness, lack of purpose; all of these and more are at all time highs in Western society. But drugs are the prescription, literally; the atomized structure of modern society is sacrosanct.
Another very important one in imperial conflict is the good vs. bad meta-dialogue. It is so drilled into our heads that this is an objective truth–and that WE are good–that people never see past it. You can talk about differing interests all you want–people’s eyes glaze over. We are INNATELY good and they INHERENTLY are bad; who cares what their interests are?
The American Western has been deconstructed by others far more talented than I, but it still has some bearing here. The true story of the American West is one of garrisons of soldiers slaughtering, decimating, and forcibly relocating Indians. But the American Western magically transforms this conflict into one between two groups of white guys–cowboys–though cattle rarely figure much into the story line. It’s the white hats vs. the black hats, good vs. evil. And who is always good? Why the propertied interests, of course. What has been peddled to us as the story of rugged American individualism, is in reality a reactionary peon to property rights. Sure the rogue in the black hat might be handsomer or sexier, but he must fall before the established order. That is the way of things.
Well, if you’ve been raised on such outright propaganda, how could it not integrate itself virally into your belief system? It bores in so deeply, so tenaciously, that it never needs to be overtly referenced in discourse; it is always there, ever-present in any dialogue.
Every news story you will ever see in the corporate media is based upon this assumption. Because it is a given, it never needs to be stated. Only in the exceptional case, when the needs of an individual are considered, perhaps someone who has suffered at the hands of a corporation, does the myth need to be EXPLICITLY invoked, and then only to demonstrate that this is the exception to the rule that is being covered.
Europeans have their own mythic truths, similar to Americans. The European Myth of Civility has been shown up to be a bit threadbare recently. The Eurpean Myth of Superiority shows up in many forms, one being, ‘European Benevolence in contradistinction to American Ruthlessness.’ This sense of exceptionalism can be just as destructive as the American one, particularly because of its sense of subliminal self-denial.
Forgotten are the centuries of European colonialism. Buried are European interests in former colonies. Buried are the proxy wars which send Africa into periodic paroxysms. Of course, European intervention in Africa is always packaged as “necessary to provide stability and re-establish order.” It is considered too trivial to state explicitly just whose order is being re-established.
Now, African conflict IS complex; there is colonizer/colony conflict, there has been the ‘free world/communist proxy conflict, the past decades have had increasing French/AngloUS proxy conflict, and now there is China entering the mix. The media covers these proxy conflicts as tribal conflicts among groups of savages that can’t get along, much like the Shia/Sunni caricture of Iraq.
Nevertheless, Europe has a rich history of violent meddling in the affairs of its former colonies. The Belgian led assassination of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba was just the first salvo in that bloody conflict. The ‘forgotten war’, conflict in the Congo has taken in excess of 3.5 Million lives in the past decade, more than any war since WWII. (Something to remember as we agonize about 46 people killed in a car bomb in Iraq, or 5 shot dead in Palestine)
Then, there’s France’s intervention in The Ivory Coast, Britain’s in Sierra Leone, and the Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) intervening in Guinea-Bissau. Add that to the Rwanda/Burundi/Uganda mess where Hutu and Tutsi serve as proxy combatants for French and AngloUS interests, respectively. Oh, and Darfur, almost forgot.
The head of the IMF has traditionally been a European. What is noteable is what we don’t see. We don’t see European countries lining up behind unilateral, no conditions, debt relief. We don’t see them lining up to provide Africa with drugs to combat AIDS.
Further afield, we find French complicity in the kidnapping of Haiti’s Aristide, and the global French multinational led assault on public water supplies worldwide, noteable for the large riots it caused in Bolivia, leading to the overthrow of the government.
And yet the myth of European Benevolence is so strong that American born and raised activist, Susan George of the important group ATTAC, who has lived in Europe for decades, in her generally excellent book, “Another world is possible if…”, devotes an entire chapter to ‘How the world can be saved if we all acted like Europeans!”
Anyway, the point wasn’t to go off on Europeans. The point was to demonstrate how unspoken beliefs color all media coverage, even progressive, leading to people’s inability to see and confront unpleasant truths. These beliefs serve as ‘comfort blankets’ that one can employ in the absence of rational thought. The general public, who is usually too busy, harrassed, or simply uniniterested in the news, can hold onto these blankets as a surrogate for facts and thought. Then when called on for their opinion by polls used to manufacture consent for elite policies, the sheeple can be assured of trotting out the ‘right’ opinion, even when they have no idea where Afghanistan is on a map, have never met a moslem, and don’t know that Iran isn’t full of dirty Arabs.
If the ‘Myth of the Fragility of the Free World’ wasn’t so strong, and oft repeated (“They hate our freedoms”, sounds dumb to us, but it has this exact purpose.), it would not be so easy to whip people into a rabid lather over ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, which itself, is a deliberately misleading, fear-inducing, misunderstood, construct.
So, the point I guess I ultimately want to make, is that we first have to expose and combat these meta-dialogues between power and subject, these pernicious unspoken beliefs and prejudices, and uproot them from the subject’s mind before we can even hope to proceed to the next step: basic critical thinking skills. Then, after all that, maybe the sheeple will notice that we are not exactly preventing civil war.
But even there, we have the media to combat. There have been other weeks with just as many deaths as this past week, that have been swept off the radar, never mentioned, by the media, because it went against elite intention, which at the time was to portray an Iraq ‘making steady progress.’ Now that the elite have changed tack, we are literally bombarded with evidence of Iraqi religious strife. But that’s a topic for another rant, one entitled, “Understanding the News Cycle.”
Posted by: Malooga | Mar 1 2006 3:33 utc | 47
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