Month: November 2003

Poor Bastards

You might call it blank-slatism. Colonized or occupied countries become prey to the philosophical imaginings and unrealizable political wish-lists of the home countries. Privatizing everything is a pretty hard slog at home? Let’s do it in Iraq where we control the whole show. School choice? Hey, teachers unions are nowhere to be found in Iraq. Let’s try it there.

Yo, Tom Friedman. Is this what you had in mind for spreading freedom and democracy in the middle east — fulfilling every wet dream of a bunch of ivory tower think tank extremists who can’t persuade Americans to drink their kool-aid? If it is, looks like you’re getting your wish.

Good luck to the poor Iraqi people. They have been released from the yoke of authoritarian tyranny only to be placed in a neocon petri dish to be probed, prodded and experimented upon by a bunch of failed and discredited Dr Frankensteins.

A Friendly Reminder

…lest we forget what we’re dealing with:

Bush came to office after the closest presidential election in American history in 2000, and he is taking no chances in his bid for re-election.

He has vacuumed up about $90 million in re-election funds and is well on his way to his stated goal of $170 million. The money can only be used for the primary season.

Faced with no GOP challengers, White House and re-election officials say they will use much of the money for an enormous get-out-the-vote effort – the kind that helped Republicans win important races last year and take control of the Senate.

The cash also prepares Bush for heavy television advertising, though the money must be spent by the Republican convention that begins in late August in New York. The money will help Bush court Hispanics, Roman Catholics, union members and women, White House officials say.

Do not underestimate how very, very desperate these people are to remove that asterisk nest to Junior’s name in the history books. All presidents want a second term. But, this one never got a legitimate first one and they know it. They won’t go down easily.

We have to be very, smart and very realistic.

Heartless and Mindless

So, tell me again who the enemy in this war is? Female Iraqi physicians who fall in love with American GI’s? Got it.

TWO US soldiers who marched down the aisle with Iraqi brides are to face a court martial.

“They’ve been formally charged with disobeying an order – no fraternising with the Iraqi people,” said Vicki McKee, mother of one of the soldiers.

Her son, Sergeant Sean Blackwell, 27, married a English-speaking Iraqi physician, 25, in August.

They exchanged vows during a double ceremony with Blackwell’s friend Corporal Brett Dagen, 37, and another Iraqi doctor in her mid 20s.

Both women had been working with US troops.

“How could they go to Iraq and not be friendly and fraternise?” Mrs McKee told the New York Post.

Now back to our previously scheduled program from Atrios featuring a letter from an aide to Paul Bremer who apparently believes that all the Iraqi people lived in caves and never even saw daylight under Saddam until we came along and showed them that they could walk on sidewalks and drink coffee and play cards and live, you know, life.

You’d think they’d be grateful enough that they wouldn’t let their little doctor hussies marry our boys, though. That’s taking “living life” just a little bit too far.

There is a war going on, you know.

Oh wait…not that there’s a war on…you know what I mean…it’s a liberation. But, that doesn’t mean people are free to just like, marry anybody they want…that’s fraternizing in a war zone…

never mind

Manifest Self-Delusion

All the Friedmanesque nonsense about American exceptionalism makes me want to lose my lunch. Wilsonian internationalism, liberal or neoconservative, has always had a santimonious missionary tone about American superiority that automatically makes it suspect in my eyes — particularly when it has so often been hypocritically employed to excuse our worst impulses.

Should we stop genocide and ethnic cleansing? Yes. Should we not support authoritarian dictators on behalf of greedy American busnessmen? Yes. Should we work within international institutions to create global consensus on civilized behavior? Of course. Should we lead by example? If only we would.

Should we invade foreign countries and forcefully impose American style democratic capitalism because it is the best of all possible worlds and nothing could be finer?

Emphatically, no.

Here’s a bit from Tristero, who says it much more eloquently:

American values never had, and never will have, an “exceptional” role in the history of the world, any more than Islamic values did during the great conquests that constructed the Caliphate, any more than Roman values did under Caesar, Augustus, and the others, and so on. America’s dominance of the world is a contingency of history, not proof of the rightness of our ideals. Sure, democracy is a lot better style of governance than a theocracy or a Roman Empire. But the US didn’t invent democracy and was only one of several countries and cultures that helped spread it. And today, it is inarguable that other democratic countries have fairer election systems and that other democratic countries treat both their individual citizens and their businesses in many ways that even the most gung-ho America lover would envy. And it is arguable – indeed it is a very common argument – that American economic rule is any better than any other country’s for the citizens of a third world country whose economy we dominate. The number of monstrous dictators this country has accommodated, and still does, is shocking.

Manifest Destiny and other ideas helped justify American expansionism. Today, it has resurfaced in debates about America’s “exceptionalism” and as part of the “mission” of the neo cons. As I’ll show in other posts, about Woodrow Wilson and others, it is also highly influential in one strain of American political liberalism. To say the least, in a world which has overwhelmingly rejected Bush’s overt attempts to impose an American empire through military force -and which will certainly continue to resist such attempts in many different ways- America will need to drive a stake through its narcissistic fantasy that it is “special” and its values are, or should be, everyone’s. Aside from the fact that it is patently ridiculous to believe America is exceptional, there lie monsters (example: the embarassing absence of the important nations of Europe from the Coalition of the Willing).

To recognize that the US is simply one more country that is sometimes great, sometimes mediocre, and sometimes horrible shouldn’t diminish anyone’s love of country. In my case, if anything, it increased it. Suddenly, the phony impression I had of a bromide, perfect America was replaced by wonderment at the sheer scale of this country’s achievement, both for good and ill. Suddenly, America became real. Because “destiny” is bogus teleology. But America’s interactions with its world and the challenges of doing that well while honoring America’s boundaries are profoundly exciting.

Exactly. We Americans benefit hugely from the great riches and opportunity that this (mostly stolen) land gave a bunch of immigrants cast off from all over the planet, and there is much to be proud of in what we managed to achieve. But, it is completely absurd to look at this country and not be able to see that we are a long, long way from perfection and that there is much we can learn from others, from history and ourselves. We aren’t exceptional and we don’t have to be.

The line between good and evil is within each human being, they are not characteristics of nationality or tribe. We don’t have a monopoly on either one and neither does anyone else.

Clark’s Rx

Kevin Drum discusses Clark’s views on Iraq and points to this post by Phil Carter in which he says that he’s impressed with Clark’s vision but sees a necessity for Clark to get specific on strategy and tactics, and frets that it will be extremely difficult for him to implement his vision in any case.

Kevin doesn’t think specifics are necessary because he is more interested in the candidates’ instincts and judgements, and I happen to think that fixing the problem will be surprisingly easier once Bush is defeated, particularly if the campaign has been waged in open opposition to the Bush Doctrine.

But if Carter wants some specifics, I’ve got his specifics for him, right here.

Clark appeared on the newshour last Thursday and discussed this and more at some length:

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let’s turn to Iraq. More attacks today. There have been horrific attacks this week. If you became president tomorrow, what would you do to restore some sort of security there?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, the first thing I would do is get the big picture right. And what you’ve got is a regional dynamic in which both Syria and Iran are working consciously against the United States in the region because they believe that this administration intends to handle them next.

So that a U.S. success, however it’s defined in Iraq, means that then the United States is free to put more pressure on them. So they don’t want us to have that success so the regional dynamic needs to be worked inside Iraq. We would go immediately back to Kofi Annan at the United Nations and say let’s talk again about what the United Nations or an international organization could do. I would remove that occupying power, that authority there. I’d put it under the United Nations or an international organization. I would ask the Iraqi governing council to take more responsibility for governing Iraq.

One of the things we want to do is we want to avoid the emergence in Iraq of more intense sect feelings. You have the Kurds in the North. They’re armed; they kept their army. They’re very concerned if the Turks were to come in. They’re prepared if anything should go wrong in the rest of Iraq, they’re prepared to say, okay, we have got our independent Kurdistan. You have the Shia in the South. They’ve never gotten really organized and they’re not… they have not been traditionally as radicalized as the Iranian Shia population has, but they’re organizing. There’s a 500,000 man army of god in Baghdad. There’s others and there’s jostling for position and there’s been some assassinations and assassination attempts in there. If that goes the wrong way, we could have real violence in Iraq.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let’s go back to something you just said, though. Are you saying that the coalition authority that Paul Bremer heads now, you would transfer that authority to the U.N.?

WESLEY CLARK: Yes, I would.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you retain U.S. authority over the military aspect?

WESLEY CLARK: Yes, you must do that. The United Nations cannot do the military piece, but I believe that you can put the United Nations or you can form an international organization as we did in the case of Bosnia to do the political development and the economic development, and you can take Halliburton out of the expanded nation building role it has and let it do what it normally does which is provide some of the logistics back up for the American troops.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But are you saying you would do this because you think then that would encourage foreign countries to send serious numbers of troops to help?

WESLEY CLARK: I think you do it for three reasons. First, because it takes the United States off the blame line in the eyes of the Iraqi people and especially in the Islamic world. So now it’s not a U.S. occupation. It’s a lot of the different nations who are simply there trying to help because remember it’s not only the international authority but you make the Iraqi governing council immediately take more responsibility. Then number two, I think it improves your chance of getting more significant, more immediate grant economic assistance. Number three, I do think it makes it more likely you’ll get more substantial numbers of foreign troops.

MARGARET WARNER: President Bush said in his press conference Tuesday, we’re not leaving, quote unquote, until Iraq is stable. Are you suggesting that the U.S. would ever leave militarily before the situation was stable?

WESLEY CLARK: I think we have to be very careful about leaving. We don’t want to leave prematurely. We don’t want Iraq to fall apart, but there is a window in there in which we’ve got the optimum chance for stabilizing and after which if we don’t handle things right, it could go downhill and be counterproductive for us.

MARGARET WARNER: So when you say, as you said in the debate Sunday night, you said you want the president… let me get the exact words…you’re waiting for the president, to quote, have a strategy to get out. What is your strategy to get out?

WESLEY CLARK: Well, what I do is first of all I’ve just described it. I put the international authority in. I reduce the influence of the U.S. occupying authority. I put the Iraqi governing council more in charge. I work for the constitution of the Iraqis in the long term. I keep the U.S. in charge of the security situation. I build up the Iraqi security forces. And I would… I do it all the same way we did it, let’s say, in the Balkans. We put out a matrix. You said here’s your political. Here’s your economic. Here’s your military. Here’s what you’re going to do this month, that month, so forth. Here’s where you want to be. Here’s your objectives. Here’s how much it’s going to cost. Show it to the American people.

MARGARET WARNER: Here’s what I’m trying to get at. Do you agree, for instance, with the Bush administration that until the Iraqis have a constitution and a government elected under that constitution that they can’t run the show themselves?

WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t agree that they’ve got to have a constitution. I mean it took the United States of America seven years after its independence to get a constitution finished. I mean, we started with the Articles of Confederation. So they may work for a long time on a constitution. We don’t want to be there running the show in Iraq for seven years.

There are a couple of interesting things in this. First, in the big picture, I think he has pinpointed one of the biggest mistakes of this war in his remarks about Iran and Syria.

The most obvious example of the immature intellectual psychology of the neocons was the absurd idea that the “shock and awe” of this invasion would force the other countries in the region to cower and capitulate for fear of being next. ( Indeed, their reliance on swaggering trash talk and threats reminds me of no one so much as Saddam himself.) This was always a case where leashing our power — showing cool, controlled international leadership would have been far more effective in keeping terrorists and potential nuclear powers on their guard than impetuously unleashing it for spurious reasons and thereby proving for all to see that we are not the omnipotent colossos that our superpower status implied we were.

America looks much weaker, not stronger, in the eyes of our enemies than we did two years ago when we invaded Afghanistan.

Clark points out in the interview that in the case of Iran and Syria we made a grave error in how we dealt with them after we toppled Saddam. In the embarrassing high fiving euphoria of our preordained military victory (over a 4th rate dictatorship we’d systematically weakened for 12 years) we let the neocon hawks loose in the region to threaten Syria and Iran even more forcefully than we had before. In doing so, we’ve given them reason to become more aggressive in these early days than they otherwise might have. It was stupid and useless. Had we shut the likes of John Bolton’s pie hole for him, we might have been able to keep the Syrians and the Iranians at least off balance and wondering. Instead, we threw down the gauntlet and gave them every reason to get involved from the get-go.

The other thing he said that intrigued me was this:

…you can take Halliburton out of the expanded nation building role it has and let it do what it normally does which is provide some of the logistics back up for the American troops.

What did he mean by that? Is this a reference to the military privatization issue or is there more to it? I think the Halliburton thing is a good campaign issue — it’s one of those one word symbols that, I think, can speak to the working class voters who might swing our way. (Edwards has some good rhetoric on this.) I’d be very interested in what specifically Clark was talking about because the idea of privatizing the military by giving billions to Halliburton cuts right into the patriotic, pro-military image of the GOP.

As for Clark’s ability to implement his policy prescriptions, as I’ve said, I think it will be possible for anyone other than Bush to get more international cooperation (which Clark, of all those in the race, knows full well can be like herding cats) and I agree that it is the single most important key to getting the Iraq situation on track. As long as it’s America vs Arabs, we are fucked.

Clark is very well equipped to deal with the challenges presented by a fractious international coalition. Indeed he may be the most qualified American in the country to do that as President and Commander in Chief of the military.

Too Busy With Fundraising, Brush Clearing and Napping?

“I am the one who has to hug the widows and comfort the children.”

well, not exactly….

Increasingly, this proclivity on the part of President Bush to avoid the normal duty of a commander-in-chief to honor dead soldiers is causing rising irritation among some veterans and their families who have noticed what appears to be a historically anomalous slight.

“This country has a lot of history where commanders visit wounded soldiers and commanders talked to families of deceased soldiers and commanders attend funerals. It’s just one of these understood traditions,” says Seth Pollack, an 8-year veteran who served in the First Armored Division in both the first Gulf War and the Bosnia operation. “At the company level, the division level … the general tradition is to honor the soldier, and the way you honor these soldiers is to have high-ranking officials attend the funeral. For the President not to have attended any is simply disrespectful.”

Repeated questions on the matter posed to the White House over the past week earned only a series of “We’ll call you back” and “Let me get back to you on that” comments from press officer Jimmy Orr.

This issue of Bush pissing off the military is potent. It goes all the way from the officer corp that loathes Rumsfeld’s highhanded ways to the grunts who feel jerked around and disrespected. It’s hard to say how deep this runs.

It appears to be a frustrating conundrum for Rove. This is a constituency of real importance to the GOP, but they are trying to to portray the war as going swimmingly, so they can’t acknowledge the death and carnage — and sacrifice — being inflicted on American troops. It’s quite a problem for a President whose success has depended entirely upon his Commander in Chief status.

Rove has succesfully kept the religious right from straying off the reservation (with the help of talk radio and cable news) but there is some evidence (anonymous ex-Delta force officers notwithstanding) that the military — and the large swath of American culture that identifies with it — might actually be in play. It’s something to keep our eye on.