Billmon:
II. Festung Baghdad
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September 16, 2006
WB: Shorter Krauthammer + Festung Baghdad
Comments
Krauthammer does a good job laying out all the downsides (of bombing Iran) including especially those ungrateful Europeans, who he says are the greatest beneficiaries of such an action. Curious then, who might be the actual beneficiaries of such action, givin the “terrible costs”? Unless of course, that motivation is drivin by this little bit of projection on his part:
Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The (mullahs) are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorists.
………………
parenthesis mine
Posted by: anna missed | Sep 16 2006 8:57 utc | 1
anna missed,
That’s pretty weird, isn’t it. Long established religions are less likely to get riled up enough for a thoroughgoing self destruction than fresh startups like Omu Shinrikyo (Tokyo and Matsuyama nerve gas attacks) and the Jim Jones kool-aid cult. Based on what I’ve seen, anyway.
For what it’s worth, the death sentence of Shoko Asahara, who founded Omu Shinrikyo, was confirmed by the Japanese Supreme Court yesterday. His words, upon returning to his cell after the trial judgement gave him the death penalty, were reportedly (loosely translated), “I don’t get it, why did it come out that way? Shit!” He’s clearly not a well man, but the High Court and the Supreme Court concluded that he is not sufficiently unwell to avoid punishment.
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Sep 16 2006 10:08 utc | 2
“by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.”
Which are of course evangelicals … how about Senator Brownback for President?
About Baghdad. The idea to seal of a metrople of 7 million people with a 60 mile ditch is lunatic. This is pure U.S. domestic policy to show off some action in Iraq. Expect daily mile-counts and a glorious finish life on TV the day before the election.
b! To me the thought of enclosing a large city within a ditch does not seem so far fetched. Berlin was encircled by a wall. I realize that Baghdad is larger but the thought of insulating ourselves from difficulties is there. Baghdad will be a “gated community”. Taking these statements as symptoms of a political historical process I would interpret them as one of the first signs of surrendering to the evidence that the world has become unmanageable. The Chinese built an enormous wall and the Manchus nevertheless crossed it. Aurelian built the first walls around Rome but 135 years later Alaric went through them. Walls are no solutions but their being thought is an extremely rich manifestation of how the world is being seen.
Posted by: jlcg | Sep 16 2006 10:56 utc | 5
Let me get this straight. They’re planning on digging a moat around Baghdad? That sounds rather feudal…
Posted by: Boojwahzee | Sep 16 2006 12:54 utc | 6
A senior U.S. commander said today that the effort to subdue Sunni insurgents in Al-Anbar Governorate has become secondary to the “main effort” of securing Baghdad to avert civil war.
Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq and the top operational commander, acknowledged that commanders have siphoned troops from Al-Anbar, weakening the military’s strength there, to build up the U.S. presence in Baghdad.
Commanders are seeking to curb sectarian violence in Baghdad between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Sep 16 2006 13:38 utc | 7
The Israelis did everything they could to avoid the mistakes of South Africa. Their apartheid would be new, slim, invisible. Like the Germans, with endless regulations, controls, oppression and a democratic face for the foolish.
Sharon realised that was not working.
So a wall was built, or is being built. There are various political objectives there, and all that has a long history.
Still, it was an admission of failure. Seen as such, even by Bush, even if only for politically correct reasons.
What ‘democracy’ builds huge walls to keep some of its citizens from moving about, working, tilling the land, or contacting each other – people grow suspicious. Amend that, they should, but don’t.
A wall or ditch or high tech zapper fence or anything around Baghdad is an illusion. Materially, it cannot be accomplished. Psychologically, it is a disaster and will do nothing but augment attacks (as usual). Politically, it is risible, and shows that the US is at its wits end and floundering.
Or maybe the model of Gaza is attractive?
Posted by: Noirette | Sep 16 2006 17:21 utc | 8
This land once called Mesopotamia will come through the current horrors. This is a society that has endured for millenia in the face of madness, tyranny and deprivation as bad if not worse than this, so that when we look at a timeline of that society, the two to three generations that will be needed to fully flush effects of the amerikan inavsion and occupation from the stream of Iraqi culture will be barely noticeable.
But consider a timeline of the invaders’ society. Amerika has been at war with Iraq for longer than it’s involvement in WW2 lasted, and, as most of us baby-boomers are all too well aware, the after-effects of that involvement are still with us now.
Amerika has been a society for coming up to 250 years.
10 years (being about the minimum amount of time that direct amerikan involvement in Iraq could last) is a sizeable chunk of 250 years and factoring in the hangover, we can see that there will be a substantial and far reaching impact upon the occupiers’ society. One that will continue to echo about whatever that society has become a century from now.
I’ve written before about how the occupation of Iraq will influence law enforcement in amerika, that law enforcement forces will contain more and more officers with ‘hands on’ experience of dragging families out of homes in the middle of the night, then torturing and or executing any male that makes them feel threatened.
Of raping any female or child that they feel a lust for.
As much as law enforcement command will try and restrict these behaviours to the obviously occupied zones of amerika; in particular the african amerikan, latino or migrant ghettos, there will be spillage into more ‘amerikan’ communities, which will then be ‘spun’ by information outlets until such outrages are regarded as a normal consequence of being a felon.
Of course the definition felon will be changed, probably to something like; anyone who isn’t rich and powerful, that doesn’t attend a reputable church every week, work for a reputable corporation (yeah i know an oxymoron), and raise children who do exactly the same.
Of course the sociopathic automatons that service in Iraq will have machined most of the occupying force into, won’t all be working in law enforcement when they return. There will be teachers armed with the skill-set and unfounded confidence to straighten out the public school system, civil servants trained in the methodology of ensuring that citizens comply with those ‘essential’ regulations whilst ignoring ‘irrelevancies’.
And lots of NCOs and junior officers armed with the skill and knowledge to be just the sort of middle manager a corporation requires most in the 21st century.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 16 2006 22:59 utc | 12
The ditch around Baghdad is really a wall. Like the Israeli wall, only better. This underground wall needs no bricks, rebar, mortar or electric fencing. Just a lot of backhoe work, some sensors and cameras, and you’re done.
For what is a wall, Gentle Reader, but an obstacle? And what does an obstacle do, whether it rises up from level ground, or digs into the ground in the form of an all-American rut?
Why, it controls traffic.
All the weapons, ammo, car bombs, IED’s, pistols and cordless drills currently being assiduously applied to the citizenry of Baghdad must now come into the city through one of 28 checkpoints.
It’s a big change.
You can’t just drive into town on the back roads with a load of hellacious firepower. Now you have to make some effort to hide it, smuggle it, conceal it.
What the general public does not know is that the Americans (and the Israelis) have extremely sensitive sensors for detecting the entire range of ‘nitrogen-rich’ molecular signatures given off by explosives, accelerants, homemade bombs, and the like. Ahem. Did I mention extremely sensitive? Yes. Extremely, extremely sensitive molecular sensors — especially when these sensors are stationary. (As opposed to riding in a helicopter).
There is no need to even search or approach the line of vehicles, people, and carts out in front of these 28 checkpoints. With these ultra sensitive sensors, the people and vehicles carrying explosives will stand out like a fire truck with its lights and sirens on.
Such vehicles or persons can be taken out without loss of American lives. More to the point, no such vehicles or persons will get into the city, and the insurgents will catch on to that fact real quick, and stop trying.
Another advantage of a ditch, instead of a wall, is that it lets you more easily plant vibration sensors deeper in the ground, to detect tunneling.
Baghdad can, in fact, be sanitized to a surprising degree. Especially as persons who are deemed undesirable are escorted from the municipality and forbidden to return.
The result will not be the shining city on a hill that Fux News and the White House will describe it to be.
It is the equivalent of locking yourself in the bathroom, and letting the rest of your house go.
Look for ditches around Fallujah, Basra, and all fourteen of those huge, permanent American bases.
Posted by: Antifa | Sep 16 2006 23:12 utc | 13
@Antifa
Seems like if they had a foolproof way to secure city perimeters then Fallujah and Ramadi would already be secure.
I’ve read about similar measures in both places yet they remain extremely dangerous cities for the occupying force and their collaborators (and to be sure innocent bystanders).
And they’re of course much smaller than Baghdad.
Posted by: ran | Sep 17 2006 0:21 utc | 14
The concept of putting a wall, moat, ditch around something and then imagining that by controlling all points of entry and egress one will therefore control everything that goes on within that area is hardly new neither is it effective no matter how ‘advanced’ the technology may be.
The effectiveness of the control is a function of the compliance of the population within. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Israel has meant that there are few conspirators on the inside of the occupied Palestine side of their wall. The bulk of potential saboteurs are within the prison camp on the other side of the wall.
This will not be the case with Baghdad unless amerika intends moving all Iraqis out.
True the equipment will detect nitrate rich goods but since there is every chance that is what the manifest will say, USuk forces will have discovered nothing to their advantage.
Many nitrate rich substances even explosives will continue to be needed in Baghdad even for legitimate purposes, so that social hacking rather than physical hacking will come to the fore. That is; methods of scamming the goods off the ‘legitimate’ owners will become the new M.O.
Along with every other scam, and piece of lateral thinking along with a deeper tunnel. It wasn’t that long ago that Israel’s ‘advanced’ listening devices were defeated by a tunnel in Palestine. 6 weeks, 2 months?
The reason that we are taught the story of the trojan horse, which wasn’t smuggled thru the gates, is in the hope that we don’t fall for this shit. Inevitably all a wall does in the sort of situation that Baghdad is, will be to provide the oppressors with a false sense of security.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 17 2006 2:06 utc | 15
Digging a moat prepares a place for a seige. Baghdad is therefore “beseiging” itself, and its twenty-eight points of entry will have to serve as its twenty-eight points of egress.
This being so, wouldn’t insurgents strangle those exits (or egresses) within ten miles of the moat? And if they do, wouldn’t leaving town on a errand be tantamount to an act of suicide–unless, perhaps, the folks on the errand could afford the kind of taxi service plying between the Green Zone and the airport?
Baghdad, under these terms, would cease to be a capital in any practical sense.
Is there anything wrong with this picture?
Posted by: alabama | Sep 17 2006 3:33 utc | 16
The Ditch is just a cover for the ultimate operation: to enclose Baghdad in a hermetically sealed dome, in which liberty, prospetity and democracy will flourish like exotic plants in a greenhouse.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Sep 17 2006 8:07 utc | 17