No Bang for the Buck: (PDF) Military contracting and public accountability
Steven Staples
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 16 2007 5:20 utc | 3

Taiwan legislators are still sane: Taiwan Rejects Most of U.S. Arms Package Offered in 2001

After six years of hesitation, Taiwan’s legislature voted Friday night to approve only a small portion of an $18 billion arms package suggested by the Bush administration as the best way to gird the self-ruled island against any attack by China.
…
[T]he opposition Nationalist Party, which controls the Legislative Yuan, refused to endorse it, saying the suggested purchases were too expensive, inappropriate for Taiwan’s needs and likely to fuel an arms race with the mainland.

Posted by: b | Jun 16 2007 5:38 utc | 5

Oh, and Happy Father’s day to the dad’s!
Howard Moss, Elegy for My Father:
Father, whom I murdered every night but one,
That one, when your death murdered me.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 16 2007 7:06 utc | 7

Uncle Scam, I think you’ve got it backwards. The U.S. has been a war-based economy since Roosevelt, and if it weren’t for arms sales, the U.S. would probably be a massive corn field… not a bad idea to me, actually, considering what a war economy has done to the rest of the world, not to mention the corrosion in the souls of people in the U.S.
I think Israel is just mimicking the U.S. “success story.” The difference maybe is that, with the internets, people can know more about these goings-on if they want to.
btw, I don’t know if this article was posted here in the past, but it’s certainly worth a read. Schmitt’s idea of dictator is practically a line reading of Bush administration tactics… including the (permanent) “state of emergency” and “unitary executive” to justify dictatorial powers to the executive branch.
the article notes that Schmitt has also been the philosophy behind authoritarian marxism as well.

No wonder that Schmitt admired thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, who treated politics without illusions. Leaders inspired by them, in no way in thrall to the individualism of liberal thought, are willing to recognize that sometimes politics involves the sacrifice of life. They are better at fighting wars than liberals because they dispense with such notions as the common good or the interests of all humanity. (“Humanity,” Schmitt wrote in a typically terse formulation that is brilliant if you admire it and chilling if you do not, “cannot wage war because it has no enemy.”) Conservatives are not bothered by injustice because they recognize that politics means maximizing your side’s advantages, not giving them away. If unity can be achieved only by repressing dissent, even at risk of violating the rule of law, that is how conservatives will achieve it.
In short, the most important lesson Schmitt teaches is that the differences between liberals and conservatives are not just over the policies they advocate but also over the meaning of politics itself. Schmitt’s German version of conservatism, which shared so much with Nazism, has no direct links with American thought. Yet residues of his ideas can nonetheless be detected in the ways in which conservatives today fight for their objectives.

and some quickie wiki
For Schmitt, every government capable of decisive action must include a dictatorial element within its constitution. Although the German concept of Ausnahmezustand is best translated as state of emergency, it literally means state of exception, which Schmitt contends frees the executive from any legal restraints to its power that would normally apply. The use of the term “exceptional” has to be underlined here: Schmitt defines sovereignty as the power to decide the instauration (establishment) of state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben has noted.
According to Agamben,[citation needed] Schmitt’s conceptualization of the “state of exception” as belonging to the core-concept of sovereignty was a response to Walter Benjamin’s concept of a “pure” or “revolutionary” violence, which didn’t enter into any relationship whatsoever with right. Through the state of exception, Carl Schmitt included all types of violence under right, linking right & life (zoe) together, and thus transforming the juridical system into a “death machine”, creating an Homo sacer.
Schmitt opposed what he called “chief constable dictature”, or the declaration of a state of emergency in order to save the legal order (a temporary suspension of law, defined itself by moral or legal right): the state of emergency is limited (even if a posteriori, by law), to “sovereign dictature”, in which law was suspended, as in the classical state of exception, not to “save the Constitution”, but rather to create another Constitution.
This is how he theorized Hitler’s continual suspension of the legal constitutional order during the Third Reich (The Weimar Republic’s Constitution was never abrogated, underlined Giorgio Agamben[citation needed]; rather, it was “suspended” for four years first at February 28, 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree and the suspension was renewed every four years similar to a – continual – state of emergency).”

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 16 2007 14:03 utc | 9

some background on nato expansion explaining the current flap over “early warning” detection in poland. from Gowan’s book Global Gamble:

[295]
The form of the American campaign for enlargement is interesting because of its complete lack of credibility. We are led to believe that picking suitable entrants to NATO has nothing to do with geopolitics but is rather about which states of the region have achieved high enough standards of democracy and market economy to be worthy. Thus, during Secretary General Solana’s tour of the CEECs in 1996: ‘The secretary general will be making it clear that no decisions have been taken yet and that each applicant will be judged on individual merit,’ a Nato official informed us. ‘But it is clear that some countries are more ready to join than others and, obviously; they will be the first to join.’ Although Nato has not yet specified formal criteria for admitting members from the former Warsaw Pact, ‘it is no secret that countries judged to have made the most progress in democratic and economic reforms will be favoured . . . .’I
This is a brave attempt to pretend that NATO is a norm-based collective security body preoccupied above all by democratic concerns, rather than the strategic interests of its main states. But nobody can seriously believe that. In reality everyone knows the main lines of the division which is planned. Only the details on the exact boundaries are in doubt. The American-Germanled western alliance will be moving into Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary through incorporating these countries within NATO. At the same time, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union are to be excluded.
Of course, the exact modalities of Polish membership are not yet clear.2 But these are essentially insignificant details. They do not touch the main issues: namely that Poland will be integrated into NATO’s military capacity and Russia will be left outside.
The first consequence is an inevitable and major political blow to Russia which will tend almost certainly to be as permanent as the old division of Europe was. Russia will be excluded from significant legitimate political ,influence over the major political issues in the affairs of Central and Western Europe whenever the western powers want it to be excluded. Discussion and ‘deeision-making will take place first within NATO and only afterwards will Russia be consulted – or not – as the case may be. This is bound to be as unacceptable to any Russian government as it would be to any British govet’timent if the UK was placed in a similar situation by a security alliance stretching from Calais to the Urals. It simply makes a mockery of the notion of respecting Russia’s interests as an important European power – never Wind a Great Power.
But enlargement into Poland cannot be assumed to be of purely political significance. Even if Poland were not formally integrated into the NATO rnmand and even if there were no permanent stationing of either nuclear Weapons or non-Polish NATO troops on Polish territory, the military strate” balance of force profoundly changes for Russia as a result of Polish CWbership, because NATO acquires the ability to build the infrastructures [296] and co-ordination mechanisms to deploy force on Poland’s borders with Ukraine very rapidly in a crisis. As a result, the United States and Germany acquire the ability to use a far more potent form of coercive diplomacy against Russia, in the event that Russian and US interests clash in the zones around Russia’s borders. This again is inherent in any expansion of NATO into Poland. Soothing words about strategic partnerships, consultation, etc. between the US/NATO and Russia will not dispose of this fact.
In this connection it is important to recognise the transformation of the balance of
military power that has occurred since 1989. Today NATO has three times the military strength of Russia and the rest of the CIS combined. With Poland and the other CEECs joining, NATO’s factor of predominance will be four to one. This is also important when considering the rhetoric from Warsaw or from the Republican Right in the United States about the continued `Russian threat’: such language as an explanation for NATO expansion isjust not credible.
Thus Polish membership of NATO will absolutely inevitably repolarise European politics. Those who say Russia should welcome this enlargement because NATO is purely defensive and threatens nobody are either ignorant of international politics or mendacious, because they ignore the simple fact that Russia will face a mighty nuclear-armed military alliance on its own border (of the Kaliningrad triangle), an alliance whose leading powers are already engaged in a vigorous competition with Russia for influence over its Asian energy-and-minerals underbelly and over Ukraine.
Russia will, therefore, inevitably do what it can under any leadership to undermine this state of affairs. Of course, some argue that Russia will have to come to realise that it must accept the new realities, give up its ambitions to be a Great Power in European politics and accept that what counts now is strength as a capitalist economy. Along this line of argument, NATO expansion actually helps Russia by making her face these facts. But this is itself just the language of Machtpolitik and acknowledges that NATO enlargement is a deliberate assertion of power against Russia designed to make its elites sober up and face defeat. It is also a disingenuous argument because the quest for economic strength cannot be divorced from the quest for political influence, above all in Russia’s case, where a close relationship with Ukraine and the Caspian and Asian Republics can bring the new Russian capitals very handsome rewards.
Against this background, we can predict an effort by Russian governments to combat NATO’s expansion into Poland. This response might take a variety of forms and might develop at a variety of paces over the next decades. Russia could threaten Poland by stuffing Kaliningrad or Belarus with tactical nuclear weapons;3 it could repudiate the CFE; scrap its START commitments; 4 engage in wrecking tactics in the UN; turn the Baltic states into hostages; turn nasty on the Black Sea Fleet; turn its base on the Dnestr [297] into a threat to Moldova; embark upon a more activist policy to destabilise Ukraine or seek to expand its influence in the Balkans. None of thismay seriously threaten the security of Western Europe and it might even strengthen the currently very ragged cohesion of the Atlantic alliance and US leadership in western Europe. But it could cause misery for hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Particularly dangerous will be the onset of intense American-Russian rivalry within Ukraine. Russia has powerful levers for pursuing this struggle, not least its economic leverage over the Ukrainian economy, its links within Ukraine’s political elites and the crisis of Ukraine’s armed forces and state administration (not to speak of its appalling general economic crisis). At the same time, American hopes that it has a strong base of political support in Ukraine may prove unfounded and a deep internal crisis within that country could ensue.
Along the borders between those definitely in and those definitelyout, there lies a grey zone of states which may or may not be included. The French government would like Romania in, while other western governments disagree. The German government would favour Slovenia’s inclusion; others (notably in Italy) are far less enthusiastic. Slovakia is another grey zone country. The states left out will become a field of political rivalry between Russia and the West and, in the Balkans, between Turkey and Greece. Indeed, there are clear signs that such rivalry is already underway, in Bulgaria.
In any case, the results of this expansion can only be to increase insecurity for the excluded states by tilting the local balance of forces against Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The tendency will be for the excluded to fear anew local assertiveness from the included and to devote more of their extremely meagre resources to military budgets. Thus already overstretched budgets and poverty-stricken populations will be strained even further.

pretty prescient, written in ’98.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 16 2007 14:50 utc | 11

b real collection: Somalis yearn for Islamic rulers to return and tame the warlords

Local people, from teen-agers to elders, now talk of the brief period of rule by the Islamic Courts in wistful tones. For the first time in a generation, there was a level of security in the district that few had believed was possible. The various clan-based militias which terrorised the region, setting up checkpoints and settling disputes with guns, buried their arms.
Before the Courts’ arrival, there had been nine roadblocks along the route from Marere to Kismaayo, a port town roughly 100 miles away. Controlled by individual militia groups, they demanded money from everyone who passed. Under the Courts, the roadblocks disappeared.
The effect was immediate. The price of food in Marere fell as traders travelling from Kismaayo no longer had to factor in the cost of roadblocks. The cost of travelling between Marere and Kismaayo also fell – from 100,000 shillings to just 30,000. One commodity increased in price: cigarettes. The Courts banned smoking, along with the chewing of khat, a mild narcotic popular throughout Somalia. The price of a packet of cigarettes rose from 6,000 shillings to 20,000. But strict conservative policies like this began to erode much of the UIC’s popular support in Mogadishu.
…
“If the Islamic Courts came back, not just this area but the whole of Somalia will be safer,” said Mohammed Abdullahi Gure, chairman of Marere elders’ committee. “People used to fear the Islamic Courts. The government does not have the holy Koran so they do not fear them.”

Posted by: b | Jun 16 2007 17:05 utc | 13

bernhard, i have just sent you an email of consequence.

Posted by: conchita | Jun 16 2007 18:34 utc | 15

beq, lol, very very clever.
quite a line up of links opening this thread. i guess iran is as good as a done deal. from #1
The hawks in the room reported later that they were deeply unhappy — but not surprised — by Mr. Burns’s assessment
yeah, right. here’s the money quote…
Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney’s top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.
there’s our time frame. next spring.

Posted by: annie | Jun 16 2007 18:55 utc | 17

@beq:
The technology for that modest proposal is already up and running. Thermal depolymerization process, TDP, turns turkey guts into light crude. I wonder if one could use the end product for cooking oil in one of those turkey deep-fryers.

Posted by: catlady | Jun 16 2007 20:26 utc | 19

i wrote to bernhard about this earlier, thinking it might be better if he posted so that it might be more conspiculously posted, but it looks as if he must have missed both my email and my comment alerting him to my email. so on second thought, i think it more important that the community know the purpose of my email to b.
r’giap is in the hospital in nantes recovering from a heart attack. he is in intensive care, but resting “comfortably.” as most know, i visited him in nantes a few years ago and we forged a strong friendship. during that visit i also spent considerable time with his colleague stefan who wrote to me today with this news. stef wrote after visiting him in hospital and said he found him much better today than yesterday. he also sent his phone number in his hospital room to me which i am happy to share with anyone who would like to call him (email me). i called r’giap and was relieved to find him sounding stronger than i expected. he is naturally concerned and a bit frightened. he said the doctors were being a bit oblique and did not yet know the extent of the damage. it seems the heart attack started as early as wednesday when he felt what he thought was heart burn. when he saw his physician on friday, he sent him to a cardiologist who rushed him to the hospital and performed surgery putting stints in a coronary artery. steph said they had him drugged up to kill the pain, but he sounded quite lucid to me.
steph said that if i wanted to email r’giap he would print it and bring it to the hospital. knowing steph i am certain he would extend that offer to anyone who writes. you can get his email by going to one of his posts or you can write to me and i will gladly send it as well as his home address if you would like to send something via snailmail.
i have known many people who have heart attacks and recovered to lead healthy lives, often healthier than before. not being the praying type, i am hoping with all my heart that he is as fortunate. sending out all good energy to a very, very good man.
still steel, r’giap, still steel.

Posted by: conchita | Jun 16 2007 22:07 utc | 21

@copeland
Yeah, Chuckie Heston was good for lines like that:
Its a madhouse, a madhouse
take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
From our cold dead hands

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 16 2007 22:44 utc | 23

Just wanted to jump on and say I was concerned and sending out good thoughts to our ol’ tovarich, r’giap. Godspeed and a healthy recovery. I will be contacting conchita about this most distressing news.
Namaste’ my friend r’giap, …Steel.
Also, catlady, It’s wasn’t me whom said that, I don’t think. Anyway, If I did, I have revised my thinking on it.
I now suspect that we will NOT be attacking Persia until C+ Augustus and his skewered boot licker’s, are leaving office, –if he leaves– or unless things get so hot for them with hearings, impeachment, what have you, here at home, that they need a false flag cover.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 16 2007 22:54 utc | 25

Uncle$–I’m undoubtedly misremembering (as I often do). I do know that someone brought up some possible nasty thang that had the potential to mess up my flight plans for the weekend of April 7-8.
r’giap–be well! thinking of you

Posted by: catlady | Jun 16 2007 23:54 utc | 27

Best wishes to R’Giap. Bernhard has obviously said what he wishes to say to him. That is quite worrisome, as it follows Gilliard’s trajectory precisely.

Posted by: jj | Jun 17 2007 1:47 utc | 29

It’s unfortunate that Bernhard wouldn’t provide a separate thread for condolences, as I hate to pollute this one w/worldly matters…yikes what to do..should I post this on a non-related thread or what?
Okay, I won’t post any details, just recommend in strongest possible terms that anyone looking for impt. wkend reading should head on over to marc parent’s site (mparent7777-2.blogspot.com). New Sy Hersh article there. 2 articles down is one written for CFR – saying ok, US Elites have LOST Iraq War – now how to manage the defeat to protect Elite interests as much as possible. Finally 2 articles down is a discussion of Robt. Samuelson art. from WaPo for non-economist types – “It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun”.
For the economically sophisticated around here, I have a question. Reading through that last article, it occurs to me that none of this economic madness would have been possible w/out the government allowing the Predators to switch from Pension Plans to 410(k)’s. Is that so? If they were on the hook for fixed payments to employees, they would have had an institutional stake in the health of the economy & market. Further, by forcing employees into the market & calling it their pensions, they deliberately created a class of indentured stooges so they could pump up the market & make off w/all the money before it collapses upon the suckers they forced to be standing around holding the empty bags.

Posted by: jj | Jun 17 2007 2:04 utc | 31

stay strong, r’giap! take care that you recover in full & don’t rush it.

Posted by: b real | Jun 17 2007 4:03 utc | 33

r’giap darlin’ sweetness i have been worried about you and thought of responding the other day but just didn’t quite no what to say. since i heard a few hrs ago i have been working in my studio or i would have posted sooner.
like free jazz is being played in my body with old sun ra leading his funky orkestra
sleep sleep heal heal and we are going to be keepin the midnight oils burnin’ waiting to hear when you are up and chuggin’ along. my dad felt 100% better when he had a tune up on the old ticker and he was much older than you. so just hang in there, dream good dreams and know we’re missing you and this place would never be the same without you so come on back to us real soon.
xxxxxooooxxxxxooooo
annie

Posted by: annie | Jun 17 2007 5:12 utc | 35

best wishes for a speedy recovery rgiap, you stalinist fruitcake you.

Posted by: ran | Jun 17 2007 6:04 utc | 37

the enron collapse, the trillions lost in Iraq….and yet, we’re still _just_ comfortably numb enough to wait for the next election ha ha ha ha ha

Posted by: catlady | Jun 17 2007 6:48 utc | 39

Radical Group Pulls In Sunnis As Lebanon’s Muslims Polarize

The short trip up the narrow concrete steps to their apartment made clear what the family looked for in a leader. Their son’s thickly bearded face was first, scowling from a photocopied sheet declaring him a martyr. An image of Saad Hariri and Siniora followed, next to a poster of Saddam Hussein with sunlit clouds surrounding his head. “God bless Osama bin Laden,” someone had scrawled one flight up.

Posted by: b | Jun 17 2007 7:10 utc | 41

to everyone who has written wishing r’giap well, just wanted to let you know that i have copied your comments into an email to him which stephan will print out and bring to the hospital. he is lying there in icu – just him and lots of wires and tubes and monitors – i know it will make him smile and give him heart to know we are all rooting for him. i’ll be calling him again today and will post updates on how he is coming along. hopefully, soon he will be able to write a comment on his laptop (so glad we gave this to him because he has it with him and has his itunes playing classical) and steph can take to a hotspot and send his thoughts to us.

Posted by: conchita | Jun 17 2007 14:39 utc | 43

from Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, on the historic factionalism in iraq. adds more support to the claim the US did not create sectarian animus, but idiocy of occupation made a bad situation worse:

If any single person has come close to unlocking the secrets of the Iraqi character, it is Ali al-Wardi (1913-95). His works on the social psychology of Iraqis and his forays into Iraqi social history made him an eminent – and controversial figure – in his own time. He had frequent brushes with the authorities, especially since his conclusions did not mesh with the official versions of Iraq’s history that successive regimes were spinning. His work, however, was overlooked or even dismissed by western academics and experts on the country. In many respects, his writings on the social history of Iraq and his generalisations on the social pathologies of Iraqis did not match western standards of academic scholarship, but this did not detract in any fundamental sense from their profundity and wisdom. No one of consequence in the US administration, or even in that of its ally, Britain, consulted what alWardi had spent decades analysing and assessing. His research, his anecdotal style of writing, laced as it was with recollections of farcical and curious [13] episodes in Iraq’s social history, was simply ignored. His work did not fit into any category of what was considered acceptable thinking in the west, neither for those who advocated war in the interest of universalising the fruits of democracy nor for those who insisted on the preservation of the balance of power or Arab `exceptionalism; He was simply too awkward, too eclectic, in his method to have been taken seriously as an authority on Iraq, Iraqis and `Iraginess:
Ali al-Wardi was born into a well-known family of merchants and ulema (religious scholars) in Kadhimain, Iraq. In Kadhimain life revolved around the twin shrines of the seventh and ninth Imams of the Shi’a, which received pilgrims from all over the Muslim world. His early life seems to have been one of considerable hardship and deprivations. Nevertheless, he managed to gain entry to the prestigious American University of Beirut, and went on to receive his Master’s and PhD degrees in sociology from the University of Texas in 1950. He returned to Iraq where he joined the faculty of Baghdad University, and rose to become the leading figure in its sociology and social history department.
Ali al-Wardi was a prolific writer. His most notable work was the monumental, multi-volume social history of modern Iraq, misleadingly entitled Sociological Glimpses from the Modern History of Iraq, and he summarised the results of his life-long enquiry into the roots of Iraqi society in a volume entitled Studies in the Nature of Iraqi Society. Ali al-Wardi rejected the statistically based methodology of modern, mainly Anglo-American, social science, which he found inappropriate for Iraq’s conditions. Rather, his methodology followed Max Weber, as he openly admits, but he may have been equally influenced by his readings of the Muslim world’s greatest philosopher of history, Ibn Khaldun, whom he called `the best of references: It is probably from Ibn Khaldun that he drew his inspirations for his major insight into the nature of Iraqi society, namely the pervasive dichotomy between the city, representing urban civilised values, and the steppes, representing the prevalence of nomadic, tribal values.
Ali al-Wardi insisted that the process of modernisation and urbanisation was skin deep in Iraq, and that tribal values, born of the experience of surviving in the harsh environment of the desert, continued to hold sway for the vast majority of the country’s inhabitants. He claimed that the fragility of Civilised values in Iraq was partly a response to the frequent invasions that devastated the country. Under such circumstances, Iraq would rapidly shed its civilised veneer and revert to the culture and values of tribal nomadism. The sense of the impermanence of the source of their values drove Iraqis into developing their noted schizoid qualities. The desert could actually or metaphorically encroach on the city, while at the same time, the city could tame the desert by harnessing the country’s waters and cultivating its soil. The [14] second key finding of al-Wardi was that Iraqis were ambivalent about the wellsprings of their value systems, which, given the stark contrast between town and desert, obliged them to accommodate conflicting and contradictory perspectives within their persons. The advance of modernity did not decisively supplant one with the other, but merely camouflaged this character bifurcation more adroitly. (The ebb and flow of urban/desert values continued in another manifestation during the last decade of the Ba’athist rule in Iraq, when the values of the tribe were given decisive ascendancy by the regime and became the norm for society.)
This cultural ambivalence has had serious consequences. The state, which is a defining feature of advancing civilisations, stands in contrast to tribal solidarity as an organising principle. The latter celebrates the tribe as the repository of virtues. At the personal level this translates to bigotry, a proneness to disputation and violence, and an exaggerated concern with lineage and status. The tribesman sees the state as a usurper and exploiter, but this has not stopped the tribal migrant to the city from seeking employment in the government as a highly desirable end in itself. The tribesman disdains craftsmanship and most professions, and prefers the prestige of a governmental post to the perceived inferiority of the tradesman’s lot. The lackadaisical attitudes to property rights and the rule of law stand in contrast to the perceived glory of seizing property and imposing one’s will through force or fear. The latter are eminently tribal traits that persist, even in a modern setting.
The sense of a conflict-strewn society permeates the work of al-Wardi: tribe versus tribe; tribe versus government; intra-urban violence between neighbourhoods; tribe versus town; town versus town; town versus government. The religious divide in society between Shi’a and Sunni also manifests itself in the form of mutual antagonism; however, al-Wardi does not relate this to any innate dogmatic hostility between the sects but sees it as an expression of the tendency of social units and groups in Iraq to divide into antagonistic camps. The rivalries between the Ottomans and the Safavids for control over Iraq exacerbated the Sunni/Shi’a divide, and this fissiparous antipathy continued in different forms into modern times. Ali al-Wardi linked Shi’ism to the south of Iraq, and considered it an urban phenomenon, or at least mostly prevalent in settled populations. Sunnism in Iraq, however, was associated with the prevalence of nomadism and tribalism, and was mainly to be found in the steppes of northwest Iraq. The centre of the country was a stronghold of moderate Sunnism, especially Sufism.
The potential social glue of the Islamic faith, when transposed to the toxic inheritance of the history of the country, became an instrument of control, dispossession and marginalisation. Each episode in Islamic history, instead of forming a shared expression of a common heritage, became infused with a factional perspective and added to the intensity of societal divisions. Iraq was imperfectly modernised, and there remained the ever-present contradictions between cultural values and traits acquired in the alleyways of towns or the hardscrabble life of remote villages, and the imported ideas that accompanied the modernisation process. Transformation of society was a painfully slow process, subject to frequent setbacks and reversals, with old patterns of behaviour often returning to the ascendancy. Here it should be noted that Al-Wardi saw democracy and democratic values always as social rather than political virtues.
Ali al-Wardi invented a new type of sociology, which was that of a fragmented social order interacting within the framework of a tumultuous historic legacy. It emphasised the disjointed nature of Iraqi society, held together by geographic imperatives of coexistence in the same space rather than a common sense of shared history or purpose. This underlying scepticism about the prospects of a quick reform of Iraqi society made him an unacceptable figure to those who proposed to ‘re-engineer’ the country according to the prevailing ideology. That does not necessarily mean that he took a fatalistic position regarding the possibilities of change, rather that he insisted that no social or political project could succeed if it did not take a realistic account of the country’s inheritance. In the end, he did come out in favour of a special variety of democracy, one that was based on both recognition of the country’s diversity and proportional representation. `The people of Iraq are divided against themselves and their sectarian, ethnic and tribal struggles exceed those of any other Arab people . . . . There is no way of resolving this condition better than adopting a democratic system, where each group can participate in power according to its proportional number [author’s italics]:
The importance of Ali al-Wardi’s thesis lies specifically in the possibility that it might have provided a counterbalance to the range of ill-considered and ahistorical assessments of Iraq that governed the planning for the war and its aftermath. Those who drew their lessons from their own engagement with Iraq, notably the British, could have provided the only other alternative reading of Iraq. But their perspective was also flawed, marred as it was by a fear of contradicting the reigning orthodoxies in Washington once the decision to go to war appeared to gather an irreversible momentum. A few voices were raised to remind people of the celebrated 1920 Uprising against British rule as a possible indicator of how Iraqis would respond to occupation.
The only lesson drawn from that uprising, which seemed to have appreciative audiences in both the State Department and the Foreign Office, was that an authoritarian minority, preferably drawn from the military, should rule the country. This argument, of course, never got a serious hearing and was summarily brushed aside. It could not withstand the withering contempt from the messianic advocates of full-blown democracy as a precondition for the broader changes to be effected in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2007 15:57 utc | 45

(i sent you an e mail conchita.)
include in the mails:
R giap. be strong, we fight for you from a distance – Noirette.

Posted by: Noirette | Jun 17 2007 16:06 utc | 47

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, on Musharraf and DC:
Quite a check off of similarities with Palestine – Cheney betting on the wrong man;
America’s Bad Deal With Musharraf, Going Down in Flames

Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy.
…
The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State’s policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney’s office. Anne W. Patterson, the new U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, is an expert on Latin American “drugs and thugs”; Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, is a former department spokesman who served three tours in Hong Kong and China but never was posted in South Asia. “They know nothing of Pakistan,” a former senior U.S. diplomat said.
Current and past U.S. officials tell me that Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney’s office. The vice president, they say, is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any U.S. criticism of him.
…
A secretary of state with vision — a James Baker or a Madeleine Albright — could have recognized that Musharraf’s time is up. Instead, we have Rice and Boucher and Cheney, who — just as in Iraq — can only reinforce a failed policy. Washington is doing itself no favors by serving as Musharraf’s enabler. Indeed, the Bush administration’s policy of sticking by Musharraf is fast becoming eerily reminiscent of the Carter administration’s policy of sticking by the shah of Iran.

Posted by: b | Jun 17 2007 20:04 utc | 49

From the Voices of Iraq:
Iraqi police receive nine unknown bodies from U.S. forces

The al-Aamil neighborhood police station in western Baghdad received nine unidentified bodies from U.S. forces on Sunday, an Iraqi police source said.
“The bodies, which showed signs of having been tortured, were of civilians shot in the head,” the source, who did not want his name mentioned, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The security source did not say who killed the civilians, or the U.S. forces’ relationship to the bodies.

U.S. copters raid northeastern Baghdad, leave casualties

At least four civilians were killed and 18 others wounded on Saturday morning when U.S. copters dropped bombs onto a residential area in northeastern Baghdad, local residents said.
(snip)

U.S. warplanes raid southern Kut, wound five

U.S. warplanes dropped cluster bombs on southern Kut, 180 km southeast of Baghdad, wounding five civilians, local residents said on Saturday.
“U.S. warplanes flew over Jihad neighborhood in southern Kut, late last night, and dropped cluster bombs on the area, wounding five civilians,” an eyewitness told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
Another eyewitness told VOI “the area was calm and witnessed no armed appearances prior to the U.S. bombing last night.”
(snip)

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 17 2007 23:16 utc | 51

Found this story from a link on Prison Planet:
Negroponte behind Samarra blast

Posted by: Rick | Jun 18 2007 4:21 utc | 53

RE#52
From The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

In all of the back-and-forth, nobody of any stature has suggested that Bremer’s approach toward the Baathists was too soft. But now, in a compelling, detailed history of the occupation, Iraq’s first postwar civilian defense minister makes just that argument. In the first major account from an Iraqi insider, Ali A. Allawi contends in The Occupation of Iraq that one of Washington’s principal mistakes was that Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority did not go far enough in dismantling the Baathist structure of Iraq’s bureaucracy.
“The CPA did not demolish the state that it had inherited and then start to rebuild it along the lines that it prescribed,” Allawi writes. “The unwillingness to treat the Ba’ath legacy for what it was — a totalitarian state with a privileged elite — and therefore in need of a radical overhaul, made the CPA reforms essentially tentative and nominal. It was as if a huge, decrepit building had been struck unevenly by a demolition ball that succeeded in inflicting only minor damage to the edifice.”
Saying that Bremer didn’t go far enough is a striking and controversial argument. Allawi — a former banker who left Iraq to study at MIT in 1964, lived in exile until 2003, and later served as the country’s postwar finance minister — maintains that Bremer’s “blunderbuss approach” to de-Baathification was too focused on high-ranking officials; Allawi laments that Bremer’s occupation government did not do enough to root out Baathists and their network of sympathizers from important mid-level positions in the government. Allawi’s hard-line views on de-Baathification aren’t shared by many of the Americans who have been involved in crafting Iraq policy. There’s a growing consensus, even at the White House, that Bremer’s policy needlessly alienated anxious Sunnis and helped fuel the insurgency.
[…] Allawi wishes the Americans had tinkered with more, not less. It wasn’t just de-Baathification that he thinks was too timid; he contends that the CPA should have overhauled state-owned businesses by pushing for more free-market reforms. It is understandable that former exiles such as Allawi would seek an even more aggressive overhaul of Iraq’s government, but it’s difficult to imagine that many Iraqis who stayed put during the Baath tyranny would have tolerated an American occupation that sought to do so.
Indeed, Allawi’s lament is shared by many former Iraqi exiles who returned to their country after Hussein’s fall, dreaming of modernizing their homeland and sharing all they had gleaned in their years overseas.

Whats wrong with these exiles, is they’re so far out of touch with their native culture, they suffer from the same “they want to be like us” myopia the neo-cons do. Because they’ve become like us. And if you think thats advocating “backwardness” then look what we, and the exiles, have been doing to them for the last 4-8 years under the name of “enlightenment”.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 18 2007 6:46 utc | 55

“…adds more support to the claim the US did not create sectarian animus,…”
the historic cultural fault lines among the inhabitants of the Churchillian artifice that is Iraq are inarguably facts
“…but idiocy of occupation made a bad situation worse”
implies competent occupiers would have made a bad situation not worse, but sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and everything
if not, then
despite the best efforts of a well meaning competent occupation force trying to improve things, the victims of the illegal occupation just aren’t civilized enough to know when they’ve had a good thing shoved up their collective wazoo because their fearless leader was apparently a threat, not just to them (although apparently by many accounts, them people were living together in relative peace despite this), but to the entire planet.
Churchill was a great man, he knew them people to be recalcitrant in the 1920s, that’s why he gassed them to save them from the Turks (or whomever).

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 18 2007 12:22 utc | 57

freier-markt uber alles und Komfort macht frei

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 18 2007 12:33 utc | 59

completely OT for a change – opinions on clotheslines, hanging laundry to dry in your backyard, like the working-class
just curious

Clotheslines: Righteous or declasse
Judging by the response of the woman interviewed, a more apt headline would have been – Clotheslines: Bane of the ignorant and self absorbed. Harsh words, you say? Bear with me.
“I don’t want to see people’s dirty laundry. We can’t be told what to do.”, says the female upper-class representative.
Laundry is clean, not dirty, when hung to dry by “the working-class.”
It would seem the “upper-class” is either hanging dirty clothes to get that “outdoor fresh scent” (perhaps in the rain to pre-soak) before washing and drying in indoor machines, or servants really are washing the dirty rags on the line and leaving them to dry – which could be very green with the right soap.
Given the opinion of this woman and the chair of the OHBA, I doubt it is the latter. Neither would seem to have that much foresight.
Apparently, wealthy neighbours are calling the interviewee to brag of eco-friendliness, imploring her to view the “dirty laundry” they’ve hung and to get with the program or risk not being chic.
No one is telling this woman she has to look at the laundry drying for free, or that her servants must hang hers outside.
She, however, has no problem telling others what they can do in their own back yards as she is obviously “master of her domain” and all she surveys.
Despite what the fortunately unidentified woman might believe about herself, her lot in life ends where her lot does – at the fence around her husband’s property.
If she wants to tell all the poor souls that border her domain what they can reasonably do with theirs, she should move from a public city to a gated community and crush all opposition to become chair of the board.

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 18 2007 13:25 utc | 61

Andrew J. Bacevich has a good one in LAT: More troops, more troublesCandidates who call for beefing up our armed forces to deter terrorism show a profound misunderstanding of the Mideast.

The Democrats vying to succeed George W. Bush think so. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all promise, if elected, to expand our land forces. Clinton has declared it “past time to increase the end-strength of the Army and Marines.” Edwards calls for a “substantial increase.” Obama offers hard numbers: His program specifies the addition of 92,000 soldiers.
Leading Republicans concur. John McCain has long advocated a bigger Army. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are now chiming in. Giuliani wants to expand the Army with an additional 10 combat brigades. Romney says that “at least 100,000” more troops are needed.
This bipartisan consensus — which even includes Bush, who recently unveiled his own five-year plan to enlarge the Army and Marine Corps — illustrates the inability or refusal of the political class to grasp the true nature of our post-9/11 foreign policy crisis.
…
In fact, this enthusiasm for putting more Americans in uniform (and for increasing overall military spending) reflects the persistence of a second consensus to which leading Democrats and Republicans alike stubbornly subscribe.
This second consensus consists of two elements. According to the first element, the only way to win the so-called global war on terrorism, thereby precluding another 9/11, is to “fix” whatever ails the Islamic world. According to the second element, the United States possesses the wherewithal to effect just such a transformation.
…
The underlying problem is that the basic orientation of U.S. policy since 9/11 has been flat wrong. Bush’s conception of waging an open-ended global “war” to eliminate terrorism has failed, disastrously and irredeemably. Simply trying harder — no matter how many more soldiers we recruit and no matter how many more Muslim countries we invade and “liberate” — will not reverse that failure. More meddling will evoke more hatred.

Posted by: b | Jun 18 2007 14:44 utc | 63

left alone, iraqis would have been just fine (saddam forever!)
w/o the direct protection of the u.s. (quashing the uprising following the earlier invasion; sanctions; etc), saddam would have been gone long ago.

Posted by: b real | Jun 18 2007 15:58 utc | 65

and let’s face it, among the “realists'” objections to overthrow, aside from the fear of iranian-led shia iraq, was the concern for intractable civil war. well, whaddya know.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2007 16:35 utc | 67

thanks conchita & noirette for the update & personal contact on our behalf.

Posted by: anna missed | Jun 18 2007 17:43 utc | 69

is there a psychiatrist in the house? or maybe an optician? that’s my initial reaction when reading this quote on the secrecy news blog
Senate Seeks Reports on Energy Security, Nuclear Weapons Policy

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate would require the Director of National Intelligence to prepare an unclassified report on energy security.
“American dependence on foreign oil has made our Nation less safe,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in an introductory statement. “Oil revenues have provided income for dangerous rogue states, they have sparked bloody civil wars, and they have even provided funding for terrorism.”

yes, dear god, finally!! keep talking democratic senator wyden

“In a sickening phenomenon that I call the terror tax, every time that Americans drive their cars down to the gas station and fill up at the pump, the reality is that a portion of that money is then turned over to foreign governments that ‘backdoor’ it over to Islamist extremists, who use that money to perpetuate terrorism and hate.”

fuck

Posted by: b real | Jun 18 2007 18:54 utc | 71

my mail is goofed up
do you want a gmail account? I can invite you if you like. from any working email send me a note.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 18 2007 19:18 utc | 73

jcairo
I don’t know what your problem is, i really don’t. you always object to what i post, but don’t specify what the problem is. i haven’t claimed at all no one knew the history. many of course did but were sidelined by ideologues. i don’t see how this makes me an apologist of “empire.” if by apologist you mean anyone who claims saddam forever is a bad policy, then yeah for your sake, i’m an apologist.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2007 20:57 utc | 75

your link is idiotic, imo. it’s a sort of “leftism” anchored to a strategically limited regression of horrors proving the interests of men often include genocide perpetrated by white americans, therefore no agency by white male americans is legitimate. this is a bit of casuistry that would require that b, for example, is barred from offering advice about u.s. politics because his gpa was in the luftwaffe. why stop at wounded knee, anyway? why not ban all attempts at instrumental action by referring to the prehistoric invention of the stone club as a provenance of evil denying forever the intervention of humans to stop wielding it?
also, this sophistry is implicitly racist because it generalizes the formation of will as racially determined.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2007 21:15 utc | 77

i agree w/ most of what you say, but if you ascribe to the view of westphalian states-rights as a guide to int’l law (which i’m not sure myself about), then the multi-lateral intervention in the 1st gulf war was adequately justified.
and the kind of isolationism advocated these days has no saliency imo given the threat of 4th gen warfare and problems economic globalization.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2007 22:17 utc | 79

haven’t watched it, but a rightwing “film” debating the merits of canadian healthcare.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2007 22:42 utc | 81

Slothrop, you may enjoy this book.

Posted by: jj | Jun 18 2007 23:16 utc | 83

test

Posted by: conchita | Jun 19 2007 2:00 utc | 85

conchita – yes

Posted by: Rick | Jun 19 2007 4:16 utc | 87

excellent posts fauxreal.

Posted by: annie | Jun 19 2007 5:51 utc | 89

foreign policy puts out their ranking of the most failed states of 2007, highly politicized one at that. how else to explain sudan rating worse than iraq?
besides, it’s only the sixth month of 07 & they think they can call it already? yea right….
Sudan Oil Industry in BP Figures

June 17, 2007 — Sudan oil industry emerges as a small, but steadily growing along the increased importance of Africa as oil supplier. That is what could be easily concluded of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, released last Wednesday.
For the third consecutive year, Sudan retains its proven oil reserves at 6.4 billion barrels. Though small, but clearly implies that replenishment is taking place despite eight years of growing production volume.
BP first included Sudan in its annual statistical book, that has been publishing for 56 years, in 1981 putting its reserves at 200 million barrels, that increased to 300 million the following year. And it continued with that level till it joined the club of oil exporters in 1999 with 300 million barrels reserves. The jump came in the following year, when proven reserves topped 6 billion, rising to 6.4 billion barrels in 2004 and continued so till last year.
This increase in reserves matches the growing oil reserves of Africa that stood at 84.7 billion barrels in 1999, moving to 93.4 billion the following year, to 112.3 billion in 2003 and 117.2 billion last year.
With this volume of reserves, Sudan occupies the fifth position in the continent after Libya, Nigeria, Algeria and Angola.
Equally Sudan’s production has grown over the years. From 63.000 barrels per day (bpd) in 1999, to 174.000 bpd the following year, to 211.000, 233.000, 255.000, 325.000, 355.000 in consecutive years and 397.000 bpd last year according to BP’s review. With blocks (3) and (7) now fully operational, it has exceeded 500.000 bpd already this year.

Posted by: b real | Jun 19 2007 14:06 utc | 91

that is nice to hear, thanks conchita

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 19 2007 15:37 utc | 93

b real – foreign policy puts out their ranking of the most failed states of 2007
This morning I tried to find out how they determain their numbers. But they don’t let you see their raw data or even their “secret formula” on how they mix those.
Basically they say they take the data from lots of (U.S.) press reports. If they do so, that automatically leads to reinforcing the “balance” reflected in U.S. press reporting.
It’s simply bullshit.

Posted by: b | Jun 19 2007 18:38 utc | 95

ya know, slothrop just for the sake of argument, I would be quite willing to go along with your POV just to see if it leads to a solution that you once said you were interested in finding…
having said that, the fact that the US govt is largely populated with white men of dubious motive (same for mine, though not so long or violent, we like to profit too) and has been for a long time does not mean that any criticism of the US govt can be construed as racism
and unless you are saying that list of events from that idiotic link never happened; please, you start at Wounded Knee or in 1848 if you like, and explain in each case how the military actions were well managed and proved beneficial to the people on the pointy end of the stick – through to 1991 and I’ll go from there…
I think you and r’giap are both correct in your arguments, give or take

Posted by: jcairo | Jun 19 2007 23:14 utc | 97

for those among us who read digby and are curious who digby might be. link

Posted by: conchita | Jun 20 2007 3:20 utc | 99