and, btw, you didn’t answer my quesdtion, but your agreement is implicit: saddam, liberation of shia& kurd, are positive outcomes achievable only by military confrontation. perhaps if the swissguard performed the deed, we’d be buds, noirette.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 2 2007 18:05 utc | 103

argh
yes yr quite right. in the movement against the shah – the leftist forces which included everything from nationalists, social democrats to marxist – leninists were int the last analysis too open & not sufficiently hard. in their opposition to that shah it was they who suffered the greatest – but they underestimated the threat from religious conservatives & completely ignored their capacity to use force. they were bloodily repressed
the facts that leadme to day that this is a war of national liberation are first of all empirical ones. you do not win against imperial force without the support of the people. schisms or factions or grouplets are simply not capable of the military strategy that is being conducted by that movement. slothrop see this through his bill kristol sunglasses & cannot see anything except shia sunni cnflict & in the end it is a self serving argument
because just recently in two instances we can measure – the demonstrations in opposition to the wall of baghdad were opposed by all & in extraordinary numbers, the call by sadr brought out onto the streets hundreds of thousands of iraquis of all confessions & in many many towns cities, basra, tal afar, baghad, nasariya, baqba – on & on – the resistance is clearly made up of different ‘confessions’
the kind of struggle that is being fought cannot be done without roots deep in the people & a developing military organisation
& forgive me – but fuck these ‘warrior generals’ like petraeus – pumped up little nietzchean pomposities & their crooked agents like malaki – give me saddam any day – & that is what the mass of peopl in iraq want – according to different & varying sondages that are polled by everyone except christian scientists
& it is also clear from past experience of the empire in honduras & el salvador that it instrumentalises more informal forms of violence like car bombs, infiltrating & supporting groupuscules – negroponte was not the ambassador for iraq for nothing
i simply see slothrop’s position as being a very cloistered one – because he does not suffer the direct results of imperial policy – he like many of us is a beneficiary of this illegal war
& the situation with the kurds is nowhere near as clear as slothrop is alluding to & there has been much struggle in their towns & cities
but i repeat, what i cannot accept is what dan of steel calls ‘ the lust for iraqi life’ – that is & remains white skin privilege
in france we have one of the the most shallow & corrupt of the ‘new philosophers’ – andre glucksmann saying exactly the same things as slothrop but with a pornographic precision

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 2 2007 19:12 utc | 105

i give you facts, and you make sausage to feed your indestructible notion of “empire.”
“not a civil war.” this is an insane claim, but one none of you can throw away because it is the lifesupport system for a anti-u.s. chauvanism masquerading as “leftist” politics.
ok, some more facts:
1. the shia dominated government will not permit “rebaathification” for reasons that transparently have to do with preserving the shia revival in iraq.
2. in the south, very much in spite of the popularity of sadr’s professed nationalism, the shia largely regard the occupation as a mediation to forestall sunni revanchism (andf let’s face it,. it is a kind of revanchism)–thgis point is confirmed over & over by al-hakim and the support of federalism (really: confederalism) by iran.

Posted by: slothrop | May 2 2007 21:56 utc | 107

Namaste, Rememberinggiap.
And yes, psychological damage, b. How unevolved we humans act. And, yes, slothrop, you could put that whinnyness to greater use. Your theories fit your facts, kewl! But to think that “getting rid of Saddam” was some great feat in a leftist plan…
Someone (fareastener?) over at eurotrib said “The russians need their twenty years of peace.”
An egyptian friend of mine said, “The americans keep picking at the scab, they won’t let it heal over.”
I’ll accept your analysis, r’giap (positive soul that I am!)–I really hope you’re right: that a civil society is…building…beneath the bullets and bombs.
I agree with you that South America is showing direction, an alternative path.
I very much, r’giap, enjoy reading your words, and…
are you a leninist fruitcake, a stalinist fruitcake, a maoist fruticake, or just a fruitcake?
Still steel… I think a feminist revolution is needed in the middle east and in the east… I don’t…yes I fear the blood…from the flesh involved…but I see no other way.
(In the same way that I think all americans need to take mushrooms; but they won’t…though they need to…and Sarkozy! Berlusconi redux; the french Blair..as if that could be a good thing.
But…can I just state for the record that I think when one’s solution involves the idea of killing another human being…and without knowing that human being…there lieth the “mound” of past sufferings that informeth present sufferings…
Well…slothrop. Wishing people dead under trains–is that part of your understanding from theory, or is that you adding to the violence (mental of physical) that stains a planet orbited by a moon, revolving around a sun, ya know, all the things we could be interesting ourselves in if it weren’t for…global capital…and knocky gits…
…and b, namaste, but as a non-soldier (conscientious objector if they ever have to ask) seeing success in terms of killed and killing…one is too many…green vs. red. Green loves red…No!
Greenbacks are beyond caring about bloodcells…
Something like that…

Posted by: Argh | May 2 2007 22:06 utc | 109

i lust for the moment you step in front of a train
When diplomacy fails, resort to violence? I know this was just a snide comment to DoS, Slothrop, but it seems to be a theme of yours, at least in this thread. Saddam is gone, yes, but at what cost? Global warming could be solved by all the humans on the planet conveniently dying tomorrow, too. What sort of ends-justifies-the-means sort of games do you play in your head?

Posted by: Pyrrho | May 2 2007 22:21 utc | 111

argh
i think b’s post was largely about perception & about how a perception make us able to live with things we ought not
or as maîakovskii sd
death to art that makes a life not worth living liveable

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 2 2007 22:26 utc | 113

incidentaly scahills book on blackwater, terrifying & teaches a new lesson or two about the particular psychopathology of the empire
& speaking of criminal psychopathology – the choice for israelis between netanyahu & madam livni – must also be making a few people frightened by the endless computations of cruelty

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 2 2007 22:35 utc | 115

rgiap
fuck you, now. i never defended u.s. militarism, i many times emphasized your underestimation of u.s. power.
u.s. out of iraq, now, goddamnit. if for no other reason than to give rgiap the pleasure to watch the massacre of arabs by themselves proving an abstract passion to preserve the homeland. maybe it’ll work out like post occupation algeria, only with a few hundredthousanmd fewer slit-throats.
u.s. out of iraq now, goddamnit.

Posted by: slothrop | May 2 2007 22:37 utc | 117

slothrop@98
“i am a commited leftist, and my commitment is unchallenged, in fact is strengthened, by this war.”
No Sir, you are not a leftist.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | May 2 2007 23:19 utc | 119

b cool
you’re a fucking cipher. fuck you.

Posted by: slothrop | May 2 2007 23:39 utc | 121

anna missed
i am often asked here(in france) – where my cultural intervention begins & where my social intervention ends but they are oen & the same thing for me & have always been
one of the things i did with the vietnamese was to aid in making rings from u s planes that had been shot down
they are borne from the same place
so no our commenting here is not art but it is communication & to the degree that our societies functionally silence us – it is implicitly cultural
& some of what i read here rises to that in the sense that i cannot read it anywhere else – not in the same sense – & in some special cases – when someone is offering information or knowledge that is unique – then it is as sublime as art
art, mayakovsky knew was a key to our transformation & communication is an integral part of that process
for example, b’s post about perception aids me with communities i work with – who are sometimes of north african or arab origin & still the general ignorance of what has happened, what is happening in the middle east is enormous
it is a question for another thread but i wanted to insist that i cannot seperate art & politics – the questions has always been to transcend the polemic to offer practical but mysterious tools to aid us to understand & transform the world we are living in

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 0:03 utc | 123

& i would think that is why there is so much pain in our communications, & that we too suffer sporadically from the fatigue of knowing or desiring-to-know & also why there is a great deal of sadness in even our most optimistic posts – essentially because we are living in the darkest times since the second world war & on especially dark days – the catastophe & the carnage seems endless

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 0:19 utc | 125

And because #125:
Everyone has spent half their energies, for the last three years, cuddling or feeding slothrup.

Posted by: Anonymous | May 3 2007 1:34 utc | 127

No comment. 😉

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 3 2007 1:46 utc | 129

There has to be another reason, Uncle $cam, because slothrup doesn’t count.
Working in the absence of Billmon, perhaps?

Posted by: alabama | May 3 2007 2:01 utc | 131

you’re an asshole alabama. wander over to feral scholar and see how your “satirical” “kill soldiers” goes down.

Posted by: slothrop | May 3 2007 2:16 utc | 133

well, my fighting days are long gone. an ant farm could kick my ass. i live by the charity of others. all i have is my “country.” i’m a devil’s advocate here mostly, but this statement “kill soldiers” angers me, sure, but worse, it’s strange i’m among the few here willing to share my embarrassment for this post.

Posted by: slothrop | May 3 2007 3:07 utc | 135

You don’t count, slothrop–not where this blog is concerned.
Other people count. remembereringgiap counts, because he reads and thinks. He even breaks thoughts now and then. Uncle $cam also has a knack for doing that sort of thing, and so does b. Lots of other posters do the same, and some can be very compelling (and even disturbing). Others, like you, cannot, and never will.
This is not about right and wrong, or up and down, or right and left. It’s about the “labor of the negative,” as someone so wisely called it–the work of thinking, wherever it leads, and whatever it may yield.
It’s just not your thing. It’s like being tone-deaf, or color-blind, or trying the play the piano when you can’t hold the beat from one measure to the next (a total disaster, as I myself came to accept, after years of pretending that it didn’t matter).
Nature is wasteful, and life is unfair, and so I’ll never play the piano, and you’ll never say anything interesting or pertinent on this blog.
To your friends and loved ones, for sure, but not on the threads of this blog. This is not necessarily a bad thing–provided you come to accept it, and spend your worthy efforts where they really pertain. It’s a matter of “loving your fate,” a matter of amor fati, as another wise man said.

Posted by: alabama | May 3 2007 3:28 utc | 137

Goodbye, slothrop, and good luck!

Posted by: alabama | May 3 2007 3:34 utc | 139

Friendly casualties, enemy casualties (whoever the latest other to be demonized is …), indifference to uncounted civilian casualties …
More deaths, whosoever it is who does the dying, or lives with the physical or mental maiming, or the grief of loved ones lost or crippled, will NOT directly affect government policy.
Government policy will change only when the PTB, powers behind the throne, the corporations and old money, the beneficiaries of the Military-Industrial-Complex fear an awakening of the indoctrinated serfs … and western society is full of 1984 indoctrinated though delusiory sophisticated serfs … bred and brainwashed ‘dumbed-down’ and fed myths and euphemisms day in and day out …
Only when an overwhelming myriad of negatives finally breaks through the ingrained myths, illusiary beliefs and surreal state of ‘non-thinking’ uncritical mass of human drones in the ‘International Community’ that a ‘critcal mass’ realize we’ve all been sold a bill of goods re our supposed Democracy/Freedom/Rights/Rule-of-Law/Free Press&Speech such that the deference to our plutocratic rulers acting on behalf of corporates refuse to co-operate any further … excercise thier rights under the constitution (or your equivalent) to do so to effect a reality change … will the PTB fear it’s own niche, its own position, and change course in order to fight on and win another day …
Sorry … too many cliches …
Consciously openly threaten the state by collective passive refusal to submit, i.e. Ghandhi, and the PTB will cower in fear …
Until then, weep rivers of tears and steel your heart for worse …
The soldiers are all victims too … less so than true innocents … but victims all the same … those that I would describe as ‘aware’ are by and large in no position to exercise the noble and gallant acts or actions of defiance or refusal some fantasize about and would project upon them …
Last two cents … IMHO individual attacks or criticisms are the equivalent of defacating into a gale force wind …
Peace.Salaam.Shalom

Posted by: Outraged | May 3 2007 4:28 utc | 141

Outraged- good luck with what you say…what anna missed said as well…because it’s not “thought” according to some here, based upon what passes for “thought” at this point in time in this place. Funny that you who have had actual experience in situations, instead of spouting mere rhetorical sadism, have the humanity to resist becoming the thing others here claim to reject.
namaste, as argh said. namaste. I bow to you. I acknowledge the universe inside you.
good luck to all you great thinkers, as you label yourselves.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 3 2007 5:59 utc | 143

Iraqmire is justified because:
A. the ends justify the means regardless of:
i. the fact that the inhabitants are far worse off post invasion
ii. the fact the rationale for invasion was but a warmed over ‘the Polish are coming’
iii. the fact the supposed ‘benefits’ of the invasion could very well have been achieved through less deadly means
B. the invader/occupier – AKA the US – isn’t imperial, it is incompetent
C. doesn’t really matter what this might be, as the rest are the entirely specious and utterly weak musings of a ‘good German’
wishing for the death of more grunts is in bad taste and inhumane as is the wishful, and wistful, idea that Iraq is now a better place because grunts are there preventing something…

Posted by: jcairo | May 3 2007 10:19 utc | 145

If a person whose opinions you know and trust come along and read what you write, and declare it immoral, then maybe they didn’t read it closely enough. If several trustworthy people come along and do the same, then the problem is probably with what has been written, not the readers.
It’s hard to come and see “In Favor of Killing American Troops” and not be disturbed. Regardless of the brilliant “logic” which pushes one to make this argument, emotions trump logic every time, and that’s like a punch in the gut for people like me who are here in part because we dislike mass killing.

Posted by: Rowan | May 3 2007 14:55 utc | 147

Slothrop wrote in response to me:
chandresekaran’s book on bremmer reveals incompetancy, not a master plan to divide & rule.
I haven’t read this book, but followed Bremer’s doings and I tend to agree.
Mind you, the line between effing everything up accidentally or on purpose is hard to draw, as is the line between acting with common sense, moral probity and conviction, and going off half-cocked – as all schoolboys know. But no, overall, I would not impute the specific person ‘booted Paul’ with that kind of secret agenda. Yet, the seeds were sown at that time, particularly in the Constitution itself (illegal.) Even for that, it is possible to find disculpatory explanations, in the sense that the Americans, or Bremer himself, were facing a situation they did not understand – a country with an authoritarian Gvmt. run on what they might call ‘socialist’ lines. (That was the reason for getting rid of Baathists, rather than their putative or possible support of Saddam…)
The liberal (old sense), individualistic, competitive mindset of the USuk led them to create divisions: between the people (men and women, adults and children, different religions or ethnic belonging), the territory .. linking territory to revenue, which incorporated some Iraq principles with some US principles – catapulting what is officially private in the US (eg. Texas oil companies; still, historically they were situated in Texas itself, and of course benefit from, or are regulated by, in various ways, Gvmt. arrangements / laws, etc.) to what was public and de facto centrally managed in Iraq (eg. land, and what it provides.)
But all that sidesteps that the crux is the imposition – by force and genocide if needs be – of an ideological, social, political, economic model. It worked, in Yugoslavia. (More or less, for the moment.) Looked like a possibility (?) in poor Afgh. And Russia was brought down…
That is how Bremer saw it. That was where he was at. With extra force, wild cash, supreme authority, all his.
Slothrop: if it is a civil war, how easy would it be for powerful invaders of the US to get rednecks and libruls in the US to actually fight each other? To re-trench into communities that they could count on… etc.

Posted by: Noirette | May 3 2007 16:32 utc | 149

noirette
i think, based on what i read, the inter-ethnic animus in the m.e. has a deep history marked by socio-political and economic discrimination and exploitation. in other words, the war is fueled by class conflict, just as all civil wars are to a great extent the product of classes fighting it out for a bigger share of the social product. there are many historical comparisons of civil war as class war: “greater” albania v. serbia, irish-anglo war, the war in transcaucus chechnya/georgia. to be sure, these conflicts can be expressed, as they should, as the endlessly local confrontation of exploited labor v. global capital, but also this global class war is mediated by the local formations of class conflict with interethnic/interreligious characteristics. of course, as any leftist would no doubt agree, consciousness of class is crucial to the resolution of such conflict. without this consciousness, the emergent formations of power will merely repeat the errors of the old regimes. the civil war in iraq is a class war pitting oppressed shia v sunni baathist and salafist kooks. the latter have zero political consciousness, as far as i can tell, vaguely defend sunni totalitarianism. among the former, the shia, the political consciousness is informed by a rich history of scholarship (old man badr, shahristani, etc.) and leadership (like sistani’s “quietist” orientation). what is needed for the shia is time to heal the iraqi political consciousness brutalized by several decades of authoritarian rule. as to whether the u.s. can provide this space for the shia revival to succeed is debatable, i agree.
in any case, a learned leftist like johnny b cool could explain the situation far better than i.

Posted by: slothrop | May 3 2007 17:34 utc | 151

It is not the problem of logic, it is the premises. Education teaches you to see and analyse problems from the point of view of the king, the CEO, the boss, so that you can serve and possibly become the boss. This is masked by creating a self outside of the world, in a sort of god-like position.
If I were in Iraq I would need a position on killing american soldiers. But I am not. I am not in the situation where “to kill or not kill american soldiers” is a question I must ask in my daily life, nor am I going to be in such a situation in any forseeable future. Why would I then need a position on that question?
Being in favor of or hoping for something does not change the world one bit (though in some twist of thinking we all learn that what we think is very important, democracy, and so on). If I want to save lifes I think the relevant question is what I can do in my situation, where I am, to do that?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 3 2007 17:47 utc | 153

“what is needed for the shia is time to heal the iraqi political consciousness brutalized by several decades of authoritarian rule. as to whether the u.s. can provide this space for the shia revival to succeed is debatable, i agree.” – slothrop
what is hidden & what is not said in this statement is truly terrifying
surely you can see slothrop why i & others feel a profound disquiet

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 18:31 utc | 155

slothrop don’t be silly. Iraq was religions wise, rather like say Switzerland. Catholics and Protestants – a past history for sure; no relevance today. None. If anything, rather like in the US, some kind of ‘traditional’ attitude or a ‘reformist’ one expresses itself purely politically, without, here, any awareness of ‘roots’ even for editors of independent newspapers who are now aged about 40 and don’t have history degrees and are stumped if they should run pipole (“people”) pages, or not. Deep history…lost.
Argh but history is not my strong suit.
Anyway, I guess it all boils down to: if WE or I do it, it is OK. If THEY do it, they are primitives and savages. That really is the bare bones.

Posted by: Noirette | May 3 2007 18:47 utc | 157

no. i don’t acknowledge your “disquiet” because i have adequately proved here and elswhere my opposition to the war. from the very beginning. unlike you, i scrutinize the evolving situation in which a no doubt unintended consequence of incompetant and evil intent has provided this interval in which the shia revival might be sustained.
well, more proof i’m right: have the shia mounted a coordinated insurgency againbst the occupation. no, they have not. i’m not even going to ask you to answer why the shia militias have not fully turned against the occupation. the answer is bloody obvious.

Posted by: slothrop | May 3 2007 19:00 utc | 159

again, your ‘fact’ ‘is without foundation -shias not only participate in the resistance – in certain areas they are leading it
i don’t know exactly where you find you information slothrop but as i have sd – that source is the same from which bill kristol & his ilk drink
& on the militias themselves – it is a far from neat proposition. there are those who are agaents of the empire – the death squads – it is completely clear – that the intelligence apparatus of the empire is deeply implicated in the death squads in exactly the same way it was in central & latin america & as we are witnessing today in africa
there are militias which have momentary & i really mean momentary alliances with the occupation. there are other such militias that are violently oppossed to the occupation & there are of course militias which constitute another element of the resistance to u s power
i think the source of some of the material you post on iraq need to be divulged because of their practical proximity to the neoconservatives

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 19:19 utc | 161

now you’re just spewing innuendo.
badr, sciri, da’wa tacitly, tendentiously support the occupation–have from the start.
christ. what’re you reading?

Posted by: slothrop | May 3 2007 19:24 utc | 163

sloth
i think you will find it is a great deal more complicated than that

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 19:36 utc | 165

Good Killing: a duty to kill the Bad Guys?
Apologies to alabama and b if I’m way off base here, but I have assumed from the start that the reason you have made your “pro-killing” statements has to do with finding the U.S.’ politics morally untenable. I heard it as a kind of confession, a starting place necessary to ground an honest way to think war.
And, since we’re discussing emotions, let me be more personal. I grew up assuming that the U.S.’ reasons for going to war were basically good ones.
WWI: same bad guys as WWII
WWII: German and Japanese aggressive authoritarians
Korea: authoritarian communists
Vietnam: …
Vietnam never made sense to me because I saw teh Vietnamese more as nationalists than authoritarian communists. Iraq 1 stopped making sense as soon as I learned that Bush pere had greenlighted invasion of Kuwait.
At some point, I had to learn that the entire logic by which I had learned to justify the history of U.S. wars actually could not justify the wars I was seeing in my adult life. So I find my self in the position of believing that – according to the morality of war that my countrypeople taught me as I grew up – my country is playing the villain. And I did grow up with all sorts of phrases in my head about how it is a necessary duty to kill those villains.
And so I hear b and alabama as people like me, people whose minds tell them that it is a duty to kill the villains. People who are shocked to see one’s own “tribe” playing the wrong roles.
But I disagree with those old teachings that have seasoned my mind. With ASKOD, I say that these thoughts are distractions from what is mine to do in the place where I live and breath. No, I’m saying something related but a bit different. Despite the dark attractions of turning my country’s logic on itself, I think there is a better path, and it starts by changing the way I still want to think.
The revolution, the real change we dream of, does not begin until the police will not shoot down the people. I can think of no better opposition to this national self-betrayal than to change my own mind’s paradigm about how some people deserve killing. If i can do this, then I believe I will become capable of spreading the conviction that no one needs a good killing.

Posted by: citizen | May 3 2007 19:54 utc | 167

no slothrop – its precisely because you do not understand the complexity of the empire’s manouvres that you make such simple errors
& i have a feeling that you are monolingual – leaving you without a wealth of sources – but even then i’d say you have the opportunity to read the english manguage journals of lebanon, egypt, pakistan & india for example
i am familiar with the emptiness of your views or more simply the absence of facts on iraq because that’s all you read here in both the french & italian journals especially thos of the ‘left, the germans & the swiss slightly less so
but your position seems to come from an exclusively english reading list – is this true? – there is of course no problem with that but you should know as a scholar how that limits your capacity to comprehend
i’d also suggest to you some of the english quarterlies coming out of russia – packed with interesting facts & analysis

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 20:28 utc | 169

b
that’s the 4th time that’s happened in a couple of day – have i developed huntington chorea

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 20:31 utc | 171

for example/A>

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 3 2007 21:50 utc | 173

Very interesting literary discovery and pieces of detective work, #172 & #173.
Perhaps AEI could use a “Junior Fellow”?

Posted by: Anonymous | May 3 2007 22:06 utc | 175

Another logical game, since we’re going down this path…
If American politicians and population turn against the war, it’s not because of American casualties, it’s because of bad news, of which American troop deaths are only a part of. A bigger part of it is Iraqi violence against themselves. That says to the American people “They don’t care about freedom, they just want to kill each other. Why are we there?” Therefore, in order to maintain the increasing anti-war sentiment in the US today, the news from Iraq must get worse and worse, especially in sectarian violence. Therefore, it is logical to be in favor of death squads, ethnic cleansing, and suicide bombing, as it will hasten the removal of American troops.
Gosh, logic WILL lead you to the truth.

Posted by: Rowan | May 3 2007 23:48 utc | 177

@Rowan:

If (a) the only goal is to withdraw troops (and nothing else matters, including how many of them die) and (b) increased violence would convince the American public to pull out, then yes, logic would take us there. Unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately!), I don’t know of anyone who would agree with (a) — it’s a straw man you’ve constructed, so that you can tell me I’m evil — and (b) is almost certainly false.

It’s hard to imagine someone who wants America out of Iraq no matter how much it damages either one. I suppose you might find some American, somewhere, if you looked very hard, who had taken George Washington’s caution against foreign entanglements to heart and who didn’t have any particular motivation beyond that. In the real world (you know, that place we leftists are supposed to inhabit, as opposed to Dubya?) people want troops out of Iraq for some reason, usually on behalf of either the Iraqis or the troops themselves, or both. I can’t answer for the troops — it’s possible that fewer troops would suffer in the long run if there was more sectarian violence now, so somebody who cared about the troops and didn’t care about the Iraqis might possibly be able to argue for it — but increased sectarian violence would not abate after the U.S. withdrawal, so nobody who wants the troops out to stop hurting Iraqis could argue for it. If you want to complain about people who want to apply logic, at least let them be logical!

As for (b): who says America would allow increased sectarian violence to kick us out? We certainly didn’t care about it going in! Heck, from the pro-war perspective, it’s a good thing: it gets the Iraqis killing each other, instead of us, and in the long run it cuts down the number of people who have the ability to fight. Plus, the more internal violence there is, the more plausible it sounds to claim that the U.S. is keeping the peace. In order to deny this, you have to disconnect yourself from reality as much as any neocon.

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | May 4 2007 0:34 utc | 179

but i do demand that he at least imagine a common humanity
i don’t think of done anything else. wish we had that moa archive to prove it.

Posted by: slothrop | May 4 2007 1:04 utc | 181

r’giap,
Just what is America’s problem in Iraq, if its not “resistance”to its occupation.

Posted by: anna missed | May 4 2007 1:14 utc | 183

when the extremely psychotic edward teller at the livingstone laboratory fed icecream to his acolytes like wolfowitz & imagined their dark worlds – they could have never seen that their greed but above all their stupidity would lead them through the gates of hell

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 4 2007 1:51 utc | 185

“what is also sad for me – is your country is living its saddest moment in these years we are living through”…”(i have wondered often if our copeland who posts here is related in some way to miles copeland spy & friend of sorts of kim philby who while defending americas interests did not lose his humanity)”

It’s generous of you, r’giap, to speak kindly of me as you did upthread. I don’t know the history of Miles Copeland; but in the late 60s and early 70s I stumbled from my suburban roots into urban poverty, political struggle, and I even lived as a draft fugitive not far from where I grew up in Texas. America had its moment of Greek Tragedy that traces back to the Civil War; but you know as well as I that the incipient moment of tragedy goes back to the Jamestown Colony.
My high school history teacher, Mr. McIntosh, set up the projector, and it was radical for that environment. He showed his classes reel after reel of the rise of fascism in Germany and films of the death camps.
When people in my 60s generation registered as conscientious objectors or burned their draft cards or joined a vigil or a street demonstration for the first time in their lives, it was a heady feeling, like being alive for the first time. And yes, hiding out from the draft board was a transformation, very much a life undercover.
There have been times lately, while reading here at MoA, that cause me to reflect on that history again. America is offered the opportunity to think about catharsis. In today’s Texas classrooms, high school students are reading Night, Elie Wiesel’s testament of the Holocaust. In those pages Wiesel reminds his readers that “The opposite of love is not hatred but indifference”.
America leaders are defeated today in Iraq as they were years ago in Vietnam, mezmerized by a kind a religious idea when it comes to the war.
Andrew J. Bacevich in April 23rd issue of The Nation writes

“That the crisis touched off by the events of September 11, 2001, will continue in perpetuity has become an article of faith. Politicians now talk of peace the way cynical politicians talk of the Second Coming: Paying homage to the idea remains an obligation, but only rubes take such stuff seriously.

The faith of abstractions, the hard to pin down delusion that occupation forces are building democracy, and the blood will drive us slowly mad, as it did in Vietnam, this time Iraqi blood slowly seeping into our dark dreams.

Posted by: Copeland | May 4 2007 2:59 utc | 187

for our dead soldiers

Posted by: slothrop | May 4 2007 3:06 utc | 189

@Truth,
You are, of course, entirely correct. The “logical” arguments are built on assumptions which are, if not obviously false, virtually impossibly to prove, and probably foolish to declare in such certain terms.
In this, I find these “logical” arguments identical to b’s original post. He assumes that more American deaths will hasten the US leaving. I see no particular reason to believe this.

Posted by: Rowan | May 4 2007 4:52 utc | 191

A fitting end to this thread/

Posted by: anna missed | May 4 2007 7:32 utc | 193

But in their contempt for politicians and journalists, Americans should not be too quick to let themselves off the hook. Any serious effort to reduce the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions would imply rethinking the premises of US foreign policy, based on self-aggrandizing assumptions about American wisdom, competence and prerogatives and about the capacity of others to manage their own affairs. Given our chronic inability–or is it unwillingness?–to see the world as it is and to see ourselves as we really are, such a reassessment seems exceedingly unlikely. In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. Long live the emperor.

from the Bacevich link @190

Posted by: jcairo | May 4 2007 10:15 utc | 195

Ah! – anna missed linked the article in #193

Posted by: DM | May 4 2007 10:46 utc | 197

Dark Wings Spread in the Night.
Didn’t want to interfere with spring gardening.
Link

Posted by: Mephistopheles | May 5 2007 2:47 utc | 199