Tag: Iraq

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The Un-War

I have said before that there is no “war” on terror. It’s not a war. It’s a series of random skirmishes. But, as I have also observed before, the Republicans would prefer to keep America in a perpetual state of war and they have now succeeded. The Republicans love to say, “sure, in normal times we could respect the constitution, but this is a time of war” or “sure, normally we don’t torture, but this is a time of war…” or ” sure, normally we try to have a fair tax system, but in a time of war, the rich should not have to pay taxes”.  Or how about, normally we don’t steal a nation’s oil reserves, but Iraq wasn’t using them for anything anyway.

There’s a brilliant mind at work here. If you can justify otherwise outrageous policies on the basis of war, why not have a perpetual war. But wouldn’t that be a bad thing? Only if it was a real war. But then how do you get people to believe we are war when we’re not? Simple. There are always terrorists and always criminals. Simply redefine “war” so it looks like something that is always going on. Bingo.

How does it serve their interests? Fear is the Republicans’ best friend. It is through fear that they can abrogate your civil rights, examine your book-borrowing records, scan you naked at airports. It is through fear that they can channel billions of dollars to their friends in the military and the defense industries. It is through fear that they can hide: our enemies cannot be permitted to know how much we spend on security– as if it would make any difference to them– and so, neither can you.

This “war” is not going to end. Obama can’t end it because the Republicans will roast him for being “soft” on terror if he does, and he doesn’t have the guts to take a chance on that. It will not end because there has never not been terrorists and there probably will never not be terrorists, and the Republicans know that perfectly well. They have their dream position. They know that they are sonsofbitches and as long as they can keep America afraid they are confident that Americans will trust them to wield the big stick and do to our enemies what we consider monstrous when they do it to us.

This war is forever. Patriotism, flag-waving, bigotry prevails for now. Trillions will be spent on fighting the phantom menace, ineffectually in the end, because the very definition of terrorism is random violence.

I don’t when or if Americans will ever realize how they have been conned.

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3%

In a very recent poll, only 3% of American voters considered the war in Afghanistan the “most important” problem facing the country. Now, you may say, well, that doesn’t mean a lot of voters don’t consider it somewhat important. I would suggest that the fact that only 3% consider it the most important (consider that way more people think there really are witches), that it is a dead issue.

So, ten years after this war was considered so urgent, so important, so vital to the security interests of the United States that thousands of people would die for it, and billions of dollars of weapons would be deployed for it, it now doesn’t even register on the radar. Is there a lesson here?

Sure there is.

  • Americans have a very, very short attention span. If you can distract them for a few days, you too can be a Senator or Congressman or president. Do not worry your pretty little head about the consequences of your decisions five years down the road.
  • Number 1 explains why so many state and city pension funds are bankrupt. Apparently, American politicians are almost uniformly irresponsible or stupid or both. Don’t blame them: the same voters keep putting them back into office because they promise to be patriotic, religious, and heterosexual.
  • Americans can be fooled over and over and over again. We are about to see an entire new crop of idiots thrust into political office where, God help us, they may get their hands on Social Security, Medicare, and the Education system. God help us again.
  • Those large segments of America’s deeply religious communities who claim to be pro life? Shameless liars, all of them. Life is cheap. Life is shit. People are dying in a war no one cares about. These people never actually save anyone’s life, but they are more than happy to kill for cheap oil.
  • Those nations who sign on to America’s wars? Do you realize that your soldiers are also dying for a war that barely registers in the consciousness of the population of the country that talked you into this?
  • Obama, I guess, would love to walk away. The fact that Karzai is now talking to the Taliban about an accommodation of some sorts speaks volumes about where this is going. How lovely to be a Republican: you convince Americans it will be clean and simple and decisive, you start the war, you wage the war, you lose the war (make no mistake about it: it is lost), you borrow the money to finance the war, you reduce taxes on the rich so they don’t have to pay for it ever, then you walk away from the disaster. Then, in the next election, you run on a platform of a government that is less intrusive and more fiscally responsible.
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Surge and Purge

Contrary to general belief–can I shock you?–the “surge” is not a “success”.

It has achieved the political goal of short-term reductions in the numbers of casualties. It hasn’t moved us one iota closer to a stable Iraq.

The supposedly left-wing media swallowed this one hook, line, and sinker. What has happened, in a nutshell, is this: local U.S. commanders have negotiated a sort of power-sharing arrangement with some of the powerful Sunni militias who were leading the attacks against troops and civilians in Baghdad. In exchange for local control, road blocks, and, apparently, considerable cash– and continued possession of their weapons and territories–, they have implemented a truce. One of the reasons President Maliki would like to see U.S. troops leave is so he can go into these enclaves and rout his political opponents for good so he can consolidate real power in his Shiite government. He doesn’t have real power over these militias. Does anyone other a few diligent journalists know about this in America?

Some of the Sunni groups were fighting both Al Qaeda and the Americans. Some analysts believe they have negotiated a temporary truce of convenience in order to focus on their Iraqi opponents. The idea that this is a step towards a stable, pluralistic democracy is rather naive. It looks more like Lebanon or Egypt or Syria.

The idea that the U.S. is fighting for democracy and freedom, and for a free pluralistic society in Iraq that will resemble…. well…. who? Nobody. Because such a state cannot exist in a nation in which the majority of citizens believe that Allah should govern and infidels should be killed. The only way such a state can evolve into a progressive, liberal western-style democracy, is through progressive secularization. We need to give them high-definition TV’s and Walmarts. We need to convince them that American Idol is satisfying entertainment, and that Paris Hilton really is important, and that Cadillac’s really do cause women to have orgasms. We need to convince them that you can feel quite spiritual by being anti-abortion and opposed to sex education and homosexuals without having to sacrifice the even the smallest material comfort.

Call me crazy but I stand by something I said years ago:  Iran will be the first true Islamic democracy in the Middle East.

I found this after I had written this rant.  It’s a rarity– a media outlet that questions the claims McCain and Bush are making about the success of the surge.  Here’s another.

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The Naked Army

There are moments, inevitably, when the unblushing face of real American foreign policy–as an extension of commercial corporate dominance– reveals itself. Here it is: the treaty governing future American relations with Iraq, a little document Bush is hoping will tie the hands of future administrations.

The Bush Administration claims that the document is not a “treaty” because a treaty would require congressional approval, which would require a relatively transparent discussion of all of its provisions, which might alert the opposition parties in Iraq to the fact that they are unwillingly surrendering their national sovereignty in exchange for American military protection of a government that could never survive on its own, and would alert Americans to the fact that this quagmire grows ever more gooey.

Oh my– all the screeching conservative voices that swore with wounded dignity that the invasion of Iraq was all about liberation, not about extending American military might into the oil-rich middle east, and — heavens, no!– never, ever about installing and preserving a pro-American government in Baghdad, or intimidating the Iranians. Oh my, no. What a coincidence that, due to instability and those wicked Al Qaeda insurgents, we’ll have to stay for, oh, a decade or so, or at least until the oil runs out.

Where is the coverage of this issue in the media?  Practically non-existent.

As I’m typing away here, the Blue Jays broadcasters are wondering why, oh why, are home runs down this year.

Could it be the cold weather?

Could it be better pitching?

Injuries?

What, oh what could it be?

Hmmmm. No idea.

No mention of the testing for performance enhancing drugs that has kicked in..

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It was Always Really About the Oil

In a rather stunning disclosure, Alan Greenspan, former head of the federal reserve, admits that he urged Bush to depose Saddam Hussein for the simplest of all possible reasons: the oil.

Greenspan insists that nobody in the Bush administration agreed: they were only concerned about WMDs and democracy and human rights. But they also told him that nobody here talks about the oil. They knew that if there was the slightest suspicion of it, the other Arab countries, and the rest of the world, would go ballistic. It is quite possible that they never talked about the oil because they didn’t need to. Everyone understood it absolutely perfectly. Except George Bush who, to this day, seems to believe that it was about democracy and the safety of American citizens.

Keep in mind that America doesn’t have to actually hold deed to the oil to take possession of it. They merely have to ensure that whoever controls the oil is friendly to American dollars and technology, like Saudi Arabia.

In Greenspan’s eyes, it is right and good that the U.S. should take oil from where ever it can be found and use it to generate prosperity and a high standard of living for America and Americans. He is a former (?) disciple of Ayn Rand. America must be strong. It must do whatever serves its own interests. It can take the oil. If you’re too weak to take the oil away from America, then that’s just tough.

There is a pretty kind of logic to this spirit of individualism. It is very, very pretty. It is elegant and slim, because strategic decisions are unfettered by moral or ethical considerations, and should be guided strictly by questions of efficiency. How soon can we get rich? How many bodies do we step over to obtain our goals?

To believe in the myths of individualism and capitalism, you have to believe in “finders-keepers”, for there is no way to justify the possession of oil or air or water on any basis other than “might makes right”.

Or you can believe that we are all in this world together and nobody in particular has any kind of magical title to the world’s resources.

Or, like George Bush, you can believe your own spin: God commanded us to destroy Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a great sinner.

The disadvantage of Ayn Rand’s brand of individualism is that eventually someone stronger comes along and knocks you off the pony and takes it away. And you really have no moral grounds upon which to complain. You can only hope to make yourself strong enough so that you can take it back. And to make yourself strong is to make yourself cruel. The suicide bomber is Ayn Rand’s ultimate legacy: not strong enough to take the oil back, but fully comprehending that the world is really about raw power, individual fanatics are easily convinced that there is meaning in flailing against the machine. In George’s Bush’s gentle dreams– which are not Ayn Rand’s dreams– there can be no comprehension of individuals who give up the possibility of enjoying the fruits of raw power. The only explanation is the lamest one: they must be jealous of our affluence and prosperity and freedom.

Patriotism, in the case of Iraq, is an attempt to convince most people– who do believe we are in this together to a great extent– that the war on Iraq is a moral cause. It is a lie. It can’t be anything but a lie because the war on Iraq is about nothing more than “finder’s keepers”. We found your oil. Now it’s ours. Just try to take it from us.

Ayn Rand had nothing but contempt for religion.  Which is odd, because most of Evangelical America believes in Alan Greenspan.

 

The bizarre thing about Ayn Rand’s philosophy, and those backroom fascists who believe in it, is that even the most hard-core capitalist doesn’t practice it when it comes to neighborhoods and families and churches and schools. Everyone knows how long a family would last, or what a neighborhood would look like, or how children at school would behave, if we all actually practiced Ayn Rand’s version of enlightened self-interest. There would be no need to do chores, or clean up your garbage, or keep it quiet after 11:00 at night, or do your homework– if the world works better if I only do what is in my own self-interest.

She is consistent in one respect: there is no need of a god in her scheme of things either. We are quite enough.

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Write Your Own (self-serving) History: Richard Neuhaus

Richard Neuhaus was on the CBC last night with Michael Enright defending his support of the war on Iraq. The astounding chutzpah of conservative commentators! He announced that, before the invasion, there was complete consensus, even among our European allies, that Iraq had or was about to have weapons of mass destruction. Even all those critics of war agreed….

It’s as if Hans Blix never even existed. It’s as if the United States had to use all of it’s power of persuasion to hold back the U.N. from authorizing an invasion so it could check just one more time to see if the rumours were true.

And he didn’t read me, of course.  And more me.

If you believe Neuhaus, a subscription to National Review is awaiting your check, in U.S. dollars.

It’s telling– the only way the conservatives can try to exculpate themselves from the sordid mess that is Iraq is to accomplish one of two things: 1) prove that the idea was good, but George W. Bush Jr. executed it badly. George W. Bush: you are no longer my friend. Or, 2), prove that nobody else knew any better at the time.

The Democrats did not help matters by largely voting in favor resolutions in favor of the war, even if Bush now says that Congress has no right to say anything about how or when he conducts a war.

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William Wallace: Braveheart

The irrational affection with which the movie “Braveheart” is embraced by it’s fans deserves some consideration. (The film is rated #82 in the IMDB top 250.)

All right. I’ve considered it.

These fans are idiots.

How on earth could any sane person like this film? It’s completely, wildly, insanely inaccurate. It glorifies violent behavior that makes the hero of “Patton” look like Gandhi. It indulges in the most offensively masochistic scene of torture and dismemberment ever filmed. And to top it all off, it tries to convince you that it was all about “freedom”, as if William Wallace, had he won, would have imposed democracy and and freedom of conscience and a free press on Scotland. When he screams “freedom” at the British at the top of his lungs, he means, “freedom for you peons to work for me instead of them”.

But it’s a great shtick. Soldiers then and now buy it entirely, every time. “I’m fighting for freedom”. Not for Exxon or Boeing or the Bush family connections to Saudi Arabia– no, no, no: “Freedom”. Freedom. That heart-gushingly platitudinous everything and nothing that we feel every time they run our flag up a pole or sing the national anthem in a sports stadium in front of 15,723 advertisements.

It brings everyone together. We don’t all agree that George Bush Jr. should make sure the Saudi’s don’t lose control of their vast oil wealth, but we all agree on “freedom”. Freedom is everything. That is precisely because, as it used by our leaders, and William Wallace in “Braveheart”, it means nothing.

People should not make the mistake of believing that the inaccuracies imposed on the story by the author, Randall Wallace (a descendent, allegedly, of the hero) serve the purpose of improving the story. In fact, the story, what little we know of it, was better without the improvements. (Gibson dispensed with the famous bridge at Stirling and filmed the battle on a plain instead, because it was too difficult to recreate those stirring scenes of head-to-head confrontations that never happened. What happened was, Wallace’s army waited until a large chunk of the British army had crossed the narrow bridge, and then cut them off and slaughtered them, and then simply slaughtered each new group of soldiers as they rushed over the bridge to aid their comrades. Not as glorious, quite, is it?) The real purpose of the alterations are to convince you that what was, in fact, tawdry, violent, and complicated, was actually pure and noble, inspiring, and lovely. How many men died, leaving their families impoverished, starving, because of this romantic delusion that somehow their lives would be fantastically better if they were exploited and oppressed by their own upper classes, instead of the Barons and Lords of England?

Both sides killed and tortured and maimed. The leaders of the Scots would rouse their followers with great speeches, and then sell them out to cut side deals with King Edward, hoping to outflank competing Scottish interests and seize real power. To his credit, Wallace did not– from what little we know. But he was sold out instead by other Scots. His sin was the delusion he presented to his followers, that they could trust their own leaders. The lie in “Braveheart” is that there was something noble about Wallace’s delusion.

Wallace was, in truth– though you wouldn’t know it from the film– a member of the Scottish nobility.

You must watch this film and then join the army, and you will look at George W. Bush and Stephen Harper and wonder how any fool could fail to see that they have nothing in their minds and hearts except the immortal welfare of the souls of young American and Canadian men and woman who wish to die in glory in the service of Walmart and Boeing.

When the Americans withdraw from Iraq, as they inevitably shall, they will, perhaps, leave a little Arabic William Wallace behind, who will be sold out and captured and tortured, and will scream from his tiny little filthy cell somewhere, “freedom!”

How much of “Braveheart” is made up? Pretty well all of it. There is no real historical record of Wallace– just a wildly inventive 15th Century poem by “Henry the Minstrel”. Could it have been real? Yes, if you believe in fairies, and boogey men, and the international communist conspiracy to poison our drinking water with fluoride.

The point is, that the events in the film are not even likely, or, in many cases, possible. The Scots did not paint themselves blue or wear kilts (at least, not in this era, not remotely). The English did not exercise the droit de seigneur (first rights to deflower a new bride) anywhere in the British Isles, Robert the Bruce– of whom we do know plenty– was the real hero of the Scottish fight for independence, and so on and so on and so on. So it’s not the case that Gibson merely fudged a few facts to make a better story: he simply completely and ruthlessly ignored every possible fact about the entire historical era– because he doesn’t care about facts: he is promoting patriotism and religion.

And he does adore flagellation, blood-letting, and eviscerations.

Oh heck, just read THIS.

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Blue Like Putin

For all of the lovely, lovely speeches about liberty and democracy and freedom and all those great American values those unreasonable Iraqi’s simply refuse to thank us for, George Bush stands by, completely oblivious or ignorant or just plain complicit as Russia slides back into dictatorship.

Under Putin, the Kremlin has steadily been increasing its ownership or control of television, radio, and internet news outlets. It just took over the Russian News Service (through proxy), and called a meeting with the journalists employed there. From now on, they were told, no coverage of the opposition. No bad news about the economy or politics within Russia. The United States is our enemy. And at least 50% of the newscast will be devoted to “happy news”.

And George Bush stands by and smiles and appears completely uninterested.

How on earth can Bush continue to declare that the goal of the war on Iraq is to bring freedom and democracy to that nation, while clearly conveying utter indifference to the state of democracy within Russia, or Egypt, or Libya, or Saudi Arabia?

Well, that’s not difficult at all to understand, unless you ever really believed the statements about democracy.

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John McCain Takes a Leisurely Walk Through Peaceful Downtown Baghdad on a Bright Sunny Day in Iraq

According to the New York Times, John McCain and other members of a congressional delegation recently took a walk through a Baghdad Market, browsing, drinking tea, haggling with the merchants, and getting their shopping done. Afterwards, all smiles, they reported that great progress was being made in Iraq. It was now safe to shop.

Mike Pence, a Republican from that centre of cosmopolitan diversity, Indiana, reported that it was just like taking a walk through a market down home. Of course, in Republican America, eventually he will be right.

What they did not report to the media was that they were accompanied by 100 American soldiers in Humvees, sharpshooters, attack helicopters, and bullet-proof vests. They didn’t report that traffic had been diverted away from the area for their visit, and access to the delegation by Iraqi citizens restricted.

The merchants themselves, after hearing McCain’s comments, were incredulous. They thought he was out of his mind. They reported that they were being driven out of business by the failure of the Americans to provide security.

This is more than just an interesting anecdote. Bush accuses congress of sabotaging the Iraq project by linking funding to a time-line for American withdrawal. Congress says, we don’t see that there is any progress. Rather than stay for another five or ten years and another 3,000 American lives, let’s get out now.

McCain supports Bush on this issue. It is rather striking that, in his search for some symbolic act of confidence, to show that there is real progress in Iraq, the only thing he could hit upon was this– a exercise in fakery and deception. This is a supporter of the war, remember. He wants us to believe things are getting better– there is progress.

McCain has also announced that he will copy George Bush’s campaign fund-raising strategy of lavishing side-splittingly hilarious adolescent nicknames upon donors of especially large amounts of cash. They will be called-…. wait for it… the McCain 100’s or McCain 200’s.

Doesn’t quite have the pizzazz of “ranger” or “most honored and lavishly-sucked-up-to-crony now, does it?” No wonder he is beginning to trail… wait for it… Mitt Romney! Yes, the only Republican candidate who has never cheated on his wife! The Mormon! Could it be that the fundamentalist wing of the party, that cohort that still thinks, given enough time, Iraqi’s will be lining up for macjobs at local fast-food outlets, has finally spoken?

It is very, very sad to see a man like McCain, who once seemed like such a promising alternative to all of the sold-out, compromised politicians of both parties, go down in flames.

Like Colin Powell, he has learned that it almost impossible to be honorable and a Republican.

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get down on your knees behind someone like Dick Cheney and in front of someone like Jerry Falwell or James Dobson– those apostles of intolerance.

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Defending the Invested Policy

Without the slightest doubt, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a failure. Even if you give the most generous room for interpretation and the most optimistic spin on the future, nobody who advocated this strategy believed that 3,000 people a month would by dying by now in sectarian violence.

The lamest argument in defense of Bush’s Iraq strategy is that, if even more people die and more things are blown up, eventually, there might be a moderately stable democracy. Might. Moderately stable. Like who? Like what? How deeply will the families of dead Iraqi’s appreciate the blessings of their new democracy? Will they ask themselves, what is the point?

So, it is difficult to defend the strategy, if you want to confine the discussion to actual facts and issues. The solution is to describe the brutal sacrifices’ made by individual U.S. soldiers and then argue that it would not be honorable to not sacrifice more in order to ensure that George W. Bush never has to go on TV and say, “our policy on Iraq was foolish and it failed and we have made a bad situation much worse. We are now faced with making very difficult decisions. I am responsible for the wasted deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen. Life sucks. I suck. I resign.”

Eventually, it Won’t be a Mistake

How the debate has shifted. It should tell you something very important about Iraq policy when the argument for staying is that, if we leave now, it will be an even bigger disaster.

The miracle is that George Bush gets to make this argument while casually skipping over the intermediate step, the one in between “piece of cake” and “cut and run”, and that step is, “we failed”.

The deck here is stacked against prudence. If the strategy of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein was stupid, the only way to not have to admit it is to argue that if we keep making the same mistake over and over again, eventually it won’t be a mistake.