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Thread: Bush Rebrands Irak - Page 18







Post#426 at 06-18-2006 10:55 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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"Ethnic cleansing"..."in almost every province..."

Quote Originally Posted by Editor and Publisher
NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees."

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, "the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government."

It's actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women's rights, and "ethnic cleansing."

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from "AMEmbassy Baghdad" on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: "Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord."

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, "An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq."
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#427 at 06-28-2006 02:05 PM by Zarathustra [at Where the Northwest meets the Southwest joined Mar 2003 #posts 9,198]
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
"Ethnic cleansing"..."in almost every province..."

Quote Originally Posted by Editor and Publisher
NEW YORK The Washington Post has obtained a cable, marked "sensitive," that it says show that just before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, "the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi employees."

This cable outlines, the Post reported Sunday, "the daily-worsening conditions for those who live outside the heavily guarded international zone: harassment, threats and the employees' constant fears that their neighbors will discover they work for the U.S. government."

It's actually far worse than that, as the details published below indicate, which include references to abductions, threats to women's rights, and "ethnic cleansing."

A PDF copy of the cable shows that it was sent to the SecState in Washington, D.C. from "AMEmbassy Baghdad" on June 6. The typed name at the very bottom is Khalilzad -- the name of the U.S. Ambassador, though it is not known if this means he wrote the memo or merely approved it.

The subject of the memo is: "Snapshots from the Office -- Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord."

As a footnote in one of the 23 sections, the embassy relates, "An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militiast are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals all over Iraq."
But Iraq is a success! :wink:
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.







Post#428 at 07-04-2006 05:37 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Everyone should read this eye-opening piece in the American Conservative by an infantry officer who returned home from Iraq last year.

Money quote:

Quote Originally Posted by Joe W Guthre
"I returned home in September 2005, grateful and safe, but stripped of the illusions I had taken with me. My experience proved that contrary to countless official pronouncements, the Bush administration has no interest in the Iraqi army training program. We were fighting a war to establish permanent bases in Iraq to better manipulate the flow of Middle East oil."
The piece implicitly lays waste to one of the liberal hawks' favorite nostrums about the Iraq War, that we might have restrained or even forestalled the growth of the insurgency and sectarian violence by putting the poor, huddled masses of Sunni and Shiite kids to work sweeping the streets, rebuilding the country.

As Mr. Guthrie observes, unless Americans were going to oversee every level of every project funded with taxpayer dollars, the Iraqi contractors hired to do the job were - how to put it? - unlikely to actually do the job.

The trouble with this project is that it has always depended on a certain pride we assumed Iraqis took in their own country, and the fact of the matter is that few Iraqis have such pride. It is not that they are biologically deficient in this regard, but that Iraq is simply a young geographical fiction that never (as in didn't have enough time to) cohered around a strong set of national institutions, national culture, and national identity.

Iraqi self-identity has reverted to its pre-modern Ottoman self (or at least become a postmodern version of it). In some sense, it probably never stopped being fundamentally a province of the Ottoman Empire. Iraqis feel a connection to tribe, and to a lesser extent religous sect (although the insurgency has obviously succeeded to some degree in arousing inter-sect tensions that were never too strong), and Islam has for more than a millenium been the unifying glue, but we are nearing the end of the age of the nation-state, and Iraq is probably never going to have the cohesion of Poland or Ireland today, even if it survives as a unitary nation-state for a generation or two (before all the oil runs out).

Part of the chaos we are seeeing in Iraq today is the region reverting to the hustle and bustle of its former, Ottoman self, but lacking the relief valves that existed for a thousand years, namely open borders, and the free frow of goods and people; the Turks left the Arabs alone to do their own thing. So should we. What Iraq wants to be is a province (or two, or three) in a wider Arab union, with local governance, open markets, and open borders, not a walled fiefdom with a strong sense of nationhood. Of all the neoconservative delusions, this one may be the most corrosive.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#429 at 07-10-2006 11:30 PM by salsabob [at Washington DC joined Jan 2005 #posts 746]
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Good context report from AP reporter --

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation..._Fake_IDs.html

"Some Iraqis recall having false identification papers to avoid persecution during Saddam's rule, but the practice was rare until recently because the former regime kept tight control over its subjects.

"Under Saddam it used to be shameful, but now everybody's doing it," the bookseller said.

A newspaper commentator mockingly suggested Iraqis should turn to the Bible instead of Islam to find names for their children.

"According to the present sectarian concepts, fathers should choose 'neutral names' such as Jesus, Adam, or Abraham that have nothing to do with the two sectarian camps," Sabah al-Lami wrote in the independent al-Mashriq newspaper."

Seattle Post Intelligencer
Harrowing analysis from well-respected former DIA -

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

Over the Edge

I think this is it. This weekend we crossed over a divide into territory where reprisal is its own reward and death is the automatic price of ancient group enmity in Iraq. It appears to me that random executions based on the mere PROBABILITY that a name indicates communal membership have now become the norm in "sectarian violence". Further reprisals will follow, amd then further reprisals and then further reprisals. It will go "all the way down" as Friedman said of the civil war in Lebanon. (That was before the world became flat) It is fortunate that we are not facing actual civil war in Iraq. (irony) We insisted in our vision of a "brave new world" to come in the Middle East that such outmoded distinctions as group identity would lose effectiveness and would quickly die out in a universal joy brought on by an abundance of individual rights. (you can almost hear the "Ode to Joy" in the background.

Now we are at the place in Iraq in which religion as philosophy and hope of salvation no longer matters. What matters now is religion as SECT, religion as GROUP identity. Iraq is going to bleed like a river and howl like a hyena, and it is our government's fault.

In the midst of this emerging chaos we will have the US armed forces still dutifully trying to comprehend, still trying to do its duty, still agonizing over unspeakable crimes done by its children.

It will become increasingly hard to focus on that as we watch this Juggernaut role down the slope.

Who is going to pay for this folly? Who?

Pat Lang
"Che l'uomo il suo destin fugge di raro [For rarely man escapes his destiny]" - Ludovico Ariosto







Post#430 at 07-20-2006 09:10 AM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Snip and Jog (not Cut & Run)








Post#431 at 07-24-2006 04:10 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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"Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admit officials"

Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn
"The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.

A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Independent in an interview, before joining Mr Maliki to fly to London and then Washington, that in theory the government should be able to solve the crisis because Shia, Kurd and Sunni were elected members of it.

But he painted a picture of a deeply divided administration in which senior Sunni members praised anti-government insurgents as "the heroic resistance".

In the past two weeks, at a time when Lebanon has dominated the international news, the sectarian civil war in central Iraq has taken a decisive turn for the worse. There have been regular tit-for-tat massacres and the death toll for July is likely to far exceed the 3,149 civilians killed in June.

Mr Maliki, who is said to be increasingly isolated, has failed to prevent the violence. Other Iraqi leaders claim he lacks experience in dealing with security, is personally very isolated without a kitchen cabinet and is highly dependent on 30-40 Americans in unofficial advisory positions around him.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#432 at 07-25-2006 04:24 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Quote Originally Posted by salsabob
Harrowing analysis from well-respected former DIA -

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/

Over the Edge

I think this is it. This weekend we crossed over a divide into territory where reprisal is its own reward and death is the automatic price of ancient group enmity in Iraq. It appears to me that random executions based on the mere PROBABILITY that a name indicates communal membership have now become the norm in "sectarian violence". Further reprisals will follow, amd then further reprisals and then further reprisals. It will go "all the way down" as Friedman said of the civil war in Lebanon. (That was before the world became flat) It is fortunate that we are not facing actual civil war in Iraq. (irony) We insisted in our vision of a "brave new world" to come in the Middle East that such outmoded distinctions as group identity would lose effectiveness and would quickly die out in a universal joy brought on by an abundance of individual rights. (you can almost hear the "Ode to Joy" in the background.
I seem to remember a time, back in the last millennia, when conservatives would complain that Clinton's peace keeping missions were over stretching the armed forces, depleting our capabilities. I also remember conservatives making fun of the song 'kumbayah' a lot.

A strange millennium, this, and it is not just a problem with taste in music.







Post#433 at 07-25-2006 09:30 PM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Will the Democrats dare?

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Jonathan Weisman in the Wa[i
Po[/i]]Discussions in Congress yesterday, however, revolved not around the civilian carnage dominating diplomatic debates but Democratic lawmakers' threats to boycott a speech by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today if he does not renounce his denunciations of Israel's actions.
Will the Democrat Party decry the hate-speech of the Mesopotamian Minister? Will the GOP accept this insult to Israel? :shock: :shock: :shock:







Post#434 at 07-26-2006 02:06 AM by Cynic Hero '86 [at Upstate New York joined Jul 2006 #posts 1,285]
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It Seems to me that the GOP is currenty more concerned about the israeli interests than even the war in iraq. However pressure as of th type you were suggesting would likely erase any legitimacy the new iraqi government would hope to gain.







Post#435 at 07-26-2006 07:54 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86
It Seems to me that the GOP is currenty more concerned about the israeli interests than even the war in iraq. However pressure as of th type you were suggesting would likely erase any legitimacy the new iraqi government would hope to gain.
I agree. If the Iraqi PM is forced to kowtow to Congress, it will be the end of his limited effectiveness in Iraq. He's playing to his home audience. Those offended by this should say so, and leave it at that.

Stupidity seems to be a requirement for public office these days.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#436 at 07-26-2006 07:27 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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CNN just reported that the deployment of at least one unit in Iraq may be continued beyond their contractual commitment. I assume this is one of the National Guard units whom deployment rules require be returned home at the end of July.

One has to imagine that this isn't the way to boost enlistment, or endear the men and women of these units to this administration. My sense is that if there was a window for the reinstatement of the draft (at least for the Iraq War), that window has closed.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#437 at 07-26-2006 07:42 PM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,116]
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
CNN just reported that the deployment of at least one unit in Iraq may be continued beyond their contractual commitment. I assume this is one of the National Guard units whom deployment rules require be returned home at the end of July.

One has to imagine that this isn't the way to boost enlistment, or endear the men and women of these units to this administration. My sense is that if there was a window for the reinstatement of the draft (at least for the Iraq War), that window has closed.
The practical window for restarting the draft ended with Katrina. In reality, there never was any plan for a draft for it would have raised too many questions about who served in Vietnam and who didn't. A friend of mine, who had been a Bush supporter until early this year, who believes that we need a draft, told me that, in his view, politically it would take a Democrat to renew the draft. It's sort of like the "only Nixon could go to China" situation. Although I personally oppose a draft, I agree with his assesment about the political realities of a draft.







Post#438 at 07-27-2006 03:37 AM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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The UK Independent's Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad...

Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn
"Parents dare not let their children wander the dangerous streets of Baghdad alone, but until a few days ago they could give them a treat by taking them to al-Jillawi's toyshop, the biggest and best in the city, its windows invitingly filled with Playstations, Barbie dolls and bicycles.

They go there no longer. Today the shop on 14 Ramadan Street in the once-affluent al-Mansur district is closed, with a black mourning flag draped across its front. The three sons and the teenage grandson of the owner, Mehdi al-Jillawi, were shutting down for the evening recently, bringing in bicycles and tricycles on display on the pavement in front of the shop. As they did so, two BMWs stopped close to them, and several gunmen got out armed with assault rifles. They opened fire at point-blank range, killing the young men. ...

More people are dying here -- probably more than 150 a day -- in the escalating sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the continuing war with US troops than in the bombardment of Lebanon. ...

Iraqis are terrified in a way that I have never seen before, since I first visited Baghdad in 1978. Sectarian massacres happen almost daily. The UN says 6,000 civilians were slaughtered in May and June, but this month has been far worse. In many districts it has become difficult to buy bread because Sunni assassins have killed all the bakers who are traditionally Shia.

Baghdad is now breaking up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni or Shia, heavily armed and living in terror of the other side. .... I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and -- most surprising of all -- this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut so many miles away."
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#439 at 07-27-2006 08:03 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
The UK Independent's Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad...

Quote Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn
... "Baghdad is now breaking up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni or Shia, heavily armed and living in terror of the other side. .... I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and -- most surprising of all -- this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut so many miles away."
Bush may actually accomplish his mission of igniting the entire region in a multi-ethnic holocaust. I wonder what the oil-guys think of this. Are they planning on picking up the pieces?
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#440 at 07-27-2006 04:01 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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I stumbled across this interesting article (from 2003) on cousin marriage in Iraq, and how the bonds of extended family supercede the bonds of citizenship in the Arab world.

The piece is I think (like any number of things published in the American Conservative) half-right, and perceptive (as well as kind of eccentric).

Cousin marriage was persistent in the Protestant west until the eighteenth century (not least because of the limited number of marriage-age people in many places, and the difficulty of relocating), and after that in specific areas, but one can hardly say it undermined national loyalty, and the emergence of strong nation-states.

But the author gets at something important I think (which has been the theme of most of my posts on this thread): any number of the nation-states of the Arab world are immature political and geographical fictions that have never cohered around a strong set of national institutions or national identity. What this means I think on the ground in Iraq and potentially elsewhere as well (if and when democracy comes) is that people have little sense of civic responsibility, they take the funds slated for reconstruction and buy new homes and SUVs. Their loyalty to sect, tribe, and yes extended family still supercede their loyalty to country, which is why I think that a decade - maybe two or three from now - the map of the Arab world may be reogranized along sectarian lines, much like the former Yugoslavia.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#441 at 07-28-2006 10:34 AM by scott 63 [at Birmingham joined Sep 2001 #posts 697]
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
I stumbled across this interesting article (from 2003) on cousin marriage in Iraq, and how the bonds of extended family supercede the bonds of citizenship in the Arab world.

The piece is I think (like any number of things published in the American Conservative) half-right, and perceptive (as well as kind of eccentric).

Cousin marriage was persistent in the Protestant west until the eighteenth century (not least because of the limited number of marriage-age people in many places, and the difficulty of relocating), and after that in specific areas, but one can hardly say it undermined national loyalty, and the emergence of strong nation-states.

But the author gets at something important I think (which has been the theme of most of my posts on this thread): any number of the nation-states of the Arab world are immature political and geographical fictions that have never cohered around a strong set of national institutions or national identity. What this means I think on the ground in Iraq and potentially elsewhere as well (if and when democracy comes) is that people have little sense of civic responsibility, they take the funds slated for reconstruction and buy new homes and SUVs. Their loyalty to sect, tribe, and yes extended family still supercede their loyalty to country, which is why I think that a decade - maybe two or three from now - the map of the Arab world may be reogranized along sectarian lines, much like the former Yugoslavia.
Until they moved recently, a Palestinian family lived next door to us. Their older daughters, aged 6 and 8, told me quite matter-of-factly, that their mom and dad were cousins. It is no big deal to them. The scuttlebutt around the neighborhood is that the marriage was arranged but I don't have any confirmation. Sadly, the wife has not been very happy living in the states. I don't know if adjusting to the culture or being away from family has been hardest.
Leave No Child Behind - Teach Evolution.







Post#442 at 07-28-2006 05:08 PM by Virgil K. Saari [at '49er, north of the Mesabi Mountains joined Jun 2001 #posts 7,835]
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Pottery Barn-ism

Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Paul Cella at Redstate
I wrote, also, that “I am frankly fed up with the fanciful, even utopian schemes of some conservatives about a huge and comprehensive democratic revolution in the Arab world.” This point, which comprised the bulk of my article, stands today as all the more pressing. There have been occasional salvos on the question of Democracy here at Redstate over the past few months, but the quarrel has hardly diminished in importance or controversy. Two days ago a collection of the ever-earnest politicians of the Democratic Party boycotted a historic speech in the House Chamber by the Prime Minister of Iraq — precisely because this representative of Iraqi democracy was insufficiently hard-line in is pronouncements about a terrorist organization. There was certainly cynicism afoot in this ostentation, and the irresponsibility of a frustrated opposition as well; but it points again to the problem we have wrestled with at regular intervals — a problem that can be adequately summed up in the question, What if democracy in Islamic lands issues in solid victories for our enemy? What if totalitarian Islam, against all the cherished and hoary universalism of our idealists, is actually popular? What then, my dear enthusiast of Democracy? I have on occasion thrown at my interlocutors in this quarrel a quotation from Edmund Burke: his definition of Jacobinism as the idea “that all government, not being a democracy, is a usurpation.” Burke, who was once held in the highest esteem by the progressives of his day, made himself a lonely and largely friendless man by the end of his life, by bringing all his power of oratory and fulmination to bear against the Jacobin movement. Burke is, of course, the father of Conservatism; and here in America he is afforded a particular affection because he delivered in the House of Commons two speeches in defense of our Revolutionaries of unparalleled brilliance.
Quote Originally Posted by Paul Cella
This passage here is one of my favorites; no one in England knew America better than Burke, and here in one flourish of genius, he shows why England’s policy was folly:

Quote Originally Posted by Ed. Burke
The temper and character which prevail in our Colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.
From Burke we Conservatives have learned a hard principle: the “temper and character” of a people are “unalterable by any human art.” It matters not that the party which has been for twenty-five years the bearer of Conservatism in America has of late announced its repudiation of this principle: the Conservative must stand by it. The temper and character of Islamic peoples are indeed unalterable by human art; but in their veins not the blood of freedom but of piety and honor circulates.



...I see that I have ranged too far afield. My point is that the political theory behind the war in Iraq is, to my eye, a sloppy admixture of Christian sentimentality and a theory of politics subversive of Christian and Conservative teaching. How Conservatives — even if they thought Saddam was an imminent threat — can in good conscience sign on to this, is hard to understand; unless we stipulate that either (1) they do not know their political theory or (2) they do not know their history. Of the partisans of Democracy — or at least a particular class of them — I deployed a biting quotation from Cardinal Newman: “they ‘are so intemperate and intractable that there is no greater calamity for a good cause than that they should get hold of it.’” This strikes me as uncharitable, but perhaps there will be some allowance for the irritation a man feels when his cherished doctrine is rather awkwardly conflated with a dogma antagonistic to it — and everyone acts as if there has been no change.
A fragement on Iraq







Post#443 at 07-29-2006 08:14 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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Democracy has certainly not resulted in the election of liberal governments in Nigeria (where Sharia is the law of the Muslim north), or more famously in Palestine. For the moment, it seems that the government of Iraq has no monopoly of force, which makes it (and its posture toward America) more rather than less beside the point.

And democratization seems more likely to lead to sectarian conflict, chaos and the disintegration of immature nation-states (which are most of the nation-states of the Arab world and Central Asia) than the emergence of pluralistic liberal democracies, to say nothing of the catastrophic humanitarian cost, and the potential disruption of oil flows.

I fear we have already unleashed a generation of bloodletting in the region, and it will be little consolation to the people suffering through it that it will all be over one day, as every war is. I tend to suspect that at the end of the day the Arab world (and perhaps Central Asia as well) will arrive at a more natural state, with the lines of the map redrawn along sectarian lines, open borders, local governance - a postmodern version of the premodern Ottoman world.

In one sense, the neoconservatives will get their wish: the end of all these Arab dictators. But in another sense the Islamists will get theirs: Islam will be the glue that binds together peoples from Morrocco to Afghanistan. It will be a new kind of caliphate but a caliphate nonetheless.

And if America succeeds in maintaining bases in the region, manipulating treaties and trade agreements with the new Arab world in its favor, and enforcing their compliance with international law while opting out itself, the new states can't be said to be nations, but protectorates of a triumphant American empire.
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#444 at 07-29-2006 08:33 PM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,116]
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
Democracy has certainly not resulted in the election of liberal governments in Nigeria (where Sharia is the law of the Muslim north), or more famously in Palestine. For the moment, it seems that the government of Iraq has no monopoly of force, which makes it (and its posture toward America) more rather than less beside the point.

And democratization seems more likely to lead to sectarian conflict, chaos and the disintegration of immature nation-states (which are most of the nation-states of the Arab world and Central Asia) than the emergence of pluralistic liberal democracies, to say nothing of the catastrophic humanitarian cost, and the potential disruption of oil flows.

I fear we have already unleashed a generation of bloodletting in the region, and it will be little consolation to the people suffering through it that it will all be over one day, as every war is. I tend to suspect that at the end of the day the Arab world (and perhaps Central Asia as well) will arrive at a more natural state, with the lines of the map redrawn along sectarian lines, open borders, local governance - a postmodern version of the premodern Ottoman world.

In one sense, the neoconservatives will get their wish: the end of all these Arab dictators. But in another sense the Islamists will get theirs: Islam will be the glue that binds together peoples from Morrocco to Afghanistan. It will be a new kind of caliphate but a caliphate nonetheless.
One problem with the neocon mindset is the belief that 'democracy' will automatically work with textbook certainity regardless of local conditions. Many third world countries are artifical creations from the european land grab during the pre WWI period. When you have two or more groups within a 'nation's' boundries who view their long term interest as mutually exclusive to each other, the above is what you get.

I had a co-worker from southern Nigeria years ago. He came from a christian tribe and he had nothing good to say about the moslem tribes in northern Nigeria. And that's just one country. The third world is loaded with more cases like this.







Post#445 at 07-30-2006 02:32 AM by Cynic Hero '86 [at Upstate New York joined Jul 2006 #posts 1,285]
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07-30-2006, 02:32 AM #445
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Neocons and Democracy

Yes, the neocon assumption that democracy can always work is unfortunately already proving itself to be a failure in iraq, this is no means the problem of only the neocons, but with the the political mainstream in general.

The current political order in america, particularly since 9/11 is becoming increasingly unwieldy and hubristic. I see many disturbing similarities between present day America and France circa 1780's and Russia in the decade before WW1; in all these cases the goverment became increasingly incompetent, unwilling to implement any serious reforms to the political order, in all these cases the nation's faced increasingly hostile neighbors, and finally the government became increasingly deadlocked and ineffective.







Post#446 at 08-01-2006 04:28 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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You know that the Republicans are in trouble when the Nation makes more sense about national security and foreign policy than the Washington Post editorial page.

Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Schell
"Here at the core of the riddle of American power in the nuclear age was the very image of the pitiful, helpless giant, a figure grown weak through the very excess of his strength. But the source of this weakness, which was very real, had nothing to do with any domestic cowards, not to speak of traitors, or any political event; it lay in the revolutionary consequences for all military power of the invention of nuclear arms, even if--with a hint of defensiveness, perhaps--the United States now called itself a "superpower." (The H-bomb was first called "the super.") Here was a barrier to the application of force that no cultivation of "will" could change or overcome. But the policy-makers did not accept the verdict of paralysis without a struggle. Within the precincts of high strategy, the "nuclear priesthood" mounted a sustained, complex intellectual insurrection against this distasteful reality of the nuclear age. Even in the face of the undoubted reality that if the arsenals were used, "mutual assured destruction" would result, they looked for room to maneuver. One line of attack was the "counterforce" strategy of targeting the nuclear forces rather than the society of the foe. The hope was to preserve the possibility of some kind of victory, or at least of relative military advantage, from the general ruin of nuclear war. Another line of attack was advocacy of "limited war," championed by Kissinger and others. The strategists reasoned that although "general war" might be unwinnable, limited war, of the kind just then brewing in Vietnam, could be fought and won. Perhaps not all war between nuclear adversaries had been paralyzed. Thus, the impotent omnipotence of the nuclear stalemate became one more paradoxical argument, in addition to those drummed into the public mind by McCarthy and his heirs, in favor of American engagement in counterinsurgency struggles. And this time the United States, unprotected by the prudence of a George Marshall, did go to war.

The results are the ones we know. American military might was no more profitable when used against rebellious local populations in limited wars than it was in general, nuclear wars. This time, the lessons were learned, and for a while they stuck: Peoples, even of small countries, are powerful within their own borders; they have the means to resist foreign occupation successfully; military force will not lead them to change their minds; the issues are therefore essentially political, and in this contest, foreign invaders are fatally disadvantaged from the outset; if they are not willing to stay forever, they lose...

...By the late 1970s adverse experience sufficient to illuminate the utterly novel historical situation of the United States in the late twentieth century was in hand. Undoubtedly, it had the biggest heap of weapons of any country. Without question, they were the most varied, sophisticated and effective in the world at their job of killing people and blowing things up. The question was what the United States could accomplish with this capacity. Certainly, if a conventional foe lacking nuclear arms arrayed itself in battle against the United States, it could be handily defeated. That was the mistake that Saddam Hussein made in 1990 when he sent his army out into the Kuwaiti desert, where it was pulverized from the air. But few wars in fact conformed to this conventional pattern any longer. Of far greater importance was what happened to two kinds of war that had historically been the most important--wars of imperial conquest and general, great-power wars, such as the First and Second World Wars. During the twentieth century the first kind had become hopeless "quagmires," owing to the aroused will of local peoples everywhere who, collectively, had put an end to the age of imperialism. The second were made unfightable and unwinnable by the nuclear revolution. It was these two limitations on the usefulness of military force, one acting at the base of the international system, the other at its apex, that delimited the superiority of the superpower. (The paradox of impotent omnipotence was even more pronounced for the other superpower, the Soviet Union, which actually disappeared.)
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#447 at 08-02-2006 08:23 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by herbal tee
Quote Originally Posted by Linus
Democracy has certainly not resulted in the election of liberal governments in Nigeria (where Sharia is the law of the Muslim north), or more famously in Palestine. For the moment, it seems that the government of Iraq has no monopoly of force, which makes it (and its posture toward America) more rather than less beside the point.

And democratization seems more likely to lead to sectarian conflict, chaos and the disintegration of immature nation-states (which are most of the nation-states of the Arab world and Central Asia) than the emergence of pluralistic liberal democracies, to say nothing of the catastrophic humanitarian cost, and the potential disruption of oil flows.

I fear we have already unleashed a generation of bloodletting in the region, and it will be little consolation to the people suffering through it that it will all be over one day, as every war is. I tend to suspect that at the end of the day the Arab world (and perhaps Central Asia as well) will arrive at a more natural state, with the lines of the map redrawn along sectarian lines, open borders, local governance - a postmodern version of the premodern Ottoman world.

In one sense, the neoconservatives will get their wish: the end of all these Arab dictators. But in another sense the Islamists will get theirs: Islam will be the glue that binds together peoples from Morrocco to Afghanistan. It will be a new kind of caliphate but a caliphate nonetheless.
One problem with the neocon mindset is the belief that 'democracy' will automatically work with textbook certainity regardless of local conditions. Many third world countries are artifical creations from the european land grab during the pre WWI period. When you have two or more groups within a 'nation's' boundries who view their long term interest as mutually exclusive to each other, the above is what you get.

I had a co-worker from southern Nigeria years ago. He came from a christian tribe and he had nothing good to say about the moslem tribes in northern Nigeria. And that's just one country. The third world is loaded with more cases like this.
The sad part is, most of the colonial constructs were purposely created with these internal tensions. It's a lot easier to control a population that can't or won't unite to oppose you. Now, we live with the mess they created until we or they can find a way out.

Africa is far and away the worst case. It may need to remap itself.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#448 at 08-03-2006 07:03 PM by Linus [at joined Oct 2005 #posts 1,731]
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08-03-2006, 07:03 PM #448
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Quote Originally Posted by William Patey, British Ambassador to Iraq
"The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy,"
That about says it.

(I just heard Chucky Krauthammer on Fox News blithely suggest that the real problem in Iraq was now Sadr, as if turning the guns on him would not lead Shiites to rally behind him.)
"Jan, cut the crap."

"It's just a donut."







Post#449 at 08-03-2006 07:34 PM by herbal tee [at joined Dec 2005 #posts 7,116]
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08-03-2006, 07:34 PM #449
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
Quote Originally Posted by William Patey, British Ambassador to Iraq
"The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy,"
That about says it.

(I just heard Chucky Krauthammer on Fox News blithely suggest that the real problem in Iraq was now Sadr, as if turning the guns on him would not lead Shiites to rally behind him.)
The neocon mindset is much like that of an ideological communist. That is to say, the theory itself is never wrong. They may turn on Bush and their other leaders as being ineffective advocates for their polices. They may turn on the military for being unable to force a solution favorable to their policies. But the theory behind the policies itself is beyond question.







Post#450 at 08-04-2006 12:11 PM by salsabob [at Washington DC joined Jan 2005 #posts 746]
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08-04-2006, 12:11 PM #450
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Quote Originally Posted by Linus
(I just heard Chucky Krauthammer on Fox News blithely suggest that the real problem in Iraq was now Sadr, as if turning the guns on him would not lead Shiites to rally behind him.)
A couple hundred thousand rally in Sadr City and in other key Shitte cities



Burning not only Israeli flags --



And clearly showing allegiance



Coming to a town near you?

The connection?

...And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children...OBL 11/01/04 transcript
Beirut Towers before demolished by '82 Israeli bombardment.




Hold on, the elevator to faith-based hell is about to drop another floor.

"Lost in a roman.... wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane."
"Che l'uomo il suo destin fugge di raro [For rarely man escapes his destiny]" - Ludovico Ariosto
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