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Random News Thoughts
Anybody here who wants to run FEMA? Looks like nobody serious is willing to take the job.
In endless hubris the top NYT editorial says Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. Yes, there is reason to be ashamed, so lets blame Iraq.
In a disinformational piece
Dana Priest says Attacking Iran May Trigger Terrorism. Iran could hit back if attacked! Isn´t that enough reason for a pre-emptive strike? She manages to even hind at Al-Qaida connections to Hezbollah and from there to Iran. Sure, Sunni extremists Arabs just love Persian Shia.
The British government has peached three British residents to the CIA. They didn´t want to be MI-5 informers, so they were carted off to Guantanamo.
Kevin Phillips in How the GOP Became God’s Own Party foresees the end of the empire. Faster please.
In A Faltering Coalition, the WaPo editors explain their dislike for multilateral diplomacy against Iran. In short: ‘If the world does not agree with us, there must be something wrong with the world.’
The Bad Headline of the Day award goes to the London Times web front page: Barbarians target Jews. Those babarians are, of course, in France where all statistics on anti-semitic incidents are pointing down.
The Telegraph says the U.S. may attack Iran. Who knew? Now I do like this bit about the usefullness and reason for diplomats:
listening posts are to be opened in countries close to Iran to make up for America’s lack of a diplomatic presence there
The Brits are planing for "contingency" (or joining?).
The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable.
This while an official British report says the war on Iraq was a key ‘contributory factor’ for the bombing in the tube.
In Iraq one Shia sheik has now turned out against Jafaari as Prime Minister. How mach did Khalizad offer to pay him?
By pure incident Rice and Straw arrived in Baghdad today. Less podholes there than in in Blackburn, Lancashire.
There is just not enough trouble in the world, so the Japanes foreign minister calls China a Military Threat.
In case you didn´t know, Europe is dying says Santorum.
Please add your links in the comments.
Iraq: following the NY times article, which I only skimmed
My interpretation is the US could not maintain security and order either because it did not want to so did not try (e.g. allowing looting after the invasion), through ideological blindness and incompetence, or because of cold calculation, or a mixture of the two, a que sera sera hubris, rooted in the here and now. (Leaving profiteering out.)
There are so many examples, who knows where to begin.
One: right after the invasion the US abolished car tax/ proper car registration, and so 100’000’s of new of clapped out cars entered Iraq. The infrastructure to deliver gas to them was not sufficient in times of blocked roads, security checks, destroyed pipes, etc. Traffic became completely chaotic, with crashes and deaths all over, queues at petrol pumps, not to mention the snarls and jams caused by traffic lights being off because of electricity cuts. The police were overwhelmed (those that had not been fired, or sent to guard the pipelines…)
Lord Bremer then decided to re-write traffic laws to solve some of these problems, and set up a commission to do so. They wrangled about bus lanes, stop signs, hand signals, safety rules (checking tires!) but mostly about fines, penalties, drunken driving, etc. as the US tried to impose its traffic code. Iraqis were mystified but played along (they were paid), incomprehension was rife, nobody could agree on anything. Would buses (err?) have a maximum ‘people’ weight, or not? Could people be fined for excessive hooting or not?
– All this rendered by cynical or bemused translators!
Meanwhile, families were being gunned down for not stopping properly at checkpoints.
Afaik, no final document ever saw the light of day, and of course no laws were ever implemented. The traffic police gave up and went home. Today, all considerations about tires and night lights are completely immaterial.
— Other examples: farming, food, clinics, doctors, sewage, water, factories, electricity, family law, courts, ..etc.
From 2003 to 2005 everything in Iraq rapidly disintegrated, fell apart.
Never having had control, the US was forced to forge alliances – overt and covert – with militias, some directly paid for by them. This opened up a can of worms where temporary alliances based on shifting aims could deploy force and guerilla techniques. That is what we see today. How it serves the US is unclear.
The situation in Afghanistan is similar, if muted. The Afghanis are so poor and have suffered so much….
The Edges of Empire, I call it. In Chechnya, exactly the same situation prevails (local differences.) While the first Chechen war 94-96 was a stand off between the Russian army and guerillas of the independent stripe, with others being hapless bystanders, it has morphed into the same confused multi-polar situation, with main and very shaky authority in the hands of Gvmt.-cum-corporate (read business interests) elite, commanded in part by a far away authority, and a multiplicity of groups opposed, in effect just fighting for their piece of power.
Murderously.
Posted by: Noisette | Apr 2 2006 16:01 utc | 10
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