I imagine that a lot of us have picked up our copies of “The Guns of August” in recent weeks. There is a sense of things hurtling out of control, nothing going quite the way anyone conceived it. Hubris and belligerant confidence seem to overrule rational analysis in much the same way that the great powers miscalculated and overreached in the early days of WWI.
Vaara points out in a very interesting essay that this is not surprising — that our feelings of deja vu are because the coming invasion, rather than being a “Project For A New American Century,” is really the final chapter of the last one.
It’s a very provocative and interesting piece.
* Phrase also coined by Vaara, but I plan to use it liberally.
I received an e-mail this morning from blogger Centerpoint who kindly pointed me to his site where I could learn how to make my print more readable. Being HTML impaired, I appreciate all the help I can get.
I learned that blogger does not require me to set the font size, which means that everyone can adjust the font on their browsers to the size most comfortable for them. On the larger and largest font sizes on Explorer, the print is quite large and in bold. I hope this helps.
I also changed the font to Ariel, which is the font that I have always preferred for letters. I hope this helps, too.
Monkey Media Report has a very interesting post up about the alternative to war:
Not sure why I haven’t seen more discussion of this one in the blog world: With Weapons of the Will: How to Topple Hussein Nonviolently by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall. It’s a ‘must-refute’ for those in favor of a costly U.S. invasion/occupation. Originally published in Sojourners magazine last September (and linked approvingly in a fascinating 3-part analysis at One Hand Clapping), the article points out that civilian populations have risen up a number of times to overthrow dictators who were at least as willing to engage in mass murder as Saddam:
“It’s essential to understand that unless a regime wants to murder the entire population, its ability repressively to compel a population’s compliance is not infinitely elastic.”
According to the authors, the key to sparking the kind of resistance that overthrew Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu in Romania and Augusto Pinochet in Chile is breaking the stranglehold of fear that keeps the people in check. Once that happens – look out, dictator:
“No one doubted the willingness of Pinochet’s regime, in the 1970s and early 1980s, to use terror as an instrument of repression in order to assure the regime’s control: Disappearances, brutal killings of dissidents, and arbitrary arrests had silenced most dissenters. But once that silence was broken in 1983 in a way that the regime could not immediately suppress — through a one-day nationwide slow-down, followed by a nighttime city-wide banging of pots and pans in Santiago — the regime was no longer able to re-establish the same degree of fear in the population, and mammoth monthly protests were soon under way.”
In the case of Romania in 1989, it was the population of Timisoara that lit the bonfire:
“[Shoot to kill orders] arrive in Timisoara that afternoon. At 17:00 water cannons and tear gas are used against the people, tanks and APD’s enter the streets and the shooting begins at about 18:00. They fire indiscriminately into the crowd. This was the watershed of the Revolution – differentiating it from previous demonstrations such as strikes in the Jiu valley and the 1987 riots in Brasov. News spreads quickly, especially by foreign TV and radio transmissions from neighbouring countries. The scale of the massacre becomes more and more exaggerated with reports of up to 60,000 dead in Timisoara…That same night there are sporadic anti-Ceausescu riots in other towns…”
Yep, that’s how successful popular revolt usually works. It’s interesting that when President Bush went to Romania last November, he called upon the memory of Ceausescu to drum up support for invading Iraq. “From that balcony, the dictator heard your voices and faltered,” Bush said, while failing to mention that no foreign army had been necessary. (It should be added that Soviet hands were probably pulling strings behind the scenes in 1989, just as U.S. hands would pull them in Iraq today).
Ackerman and DuVall also note a key point about Saddam’s rule that may make it easier to bring down than the regime of someone like Pinochet:
[“Saddam’s] hold on power is even more reliant on personal loyalties and their reinforcement by material rewards and mortal penalties. As such, the frequent reports of his repression should be seen not only as a sign of his brutality, but as evidence of the disaffection that his capricious, personal style continues to breed: He would not have to crack down if there were no one who might be disloyal.”
In other words, if Hussein started ordering mass executions of crowds in broad daylight – a likely move – a military mutiny like the ones that took place in Romania and Chile would be an even more likely countermove. And it turns out there’s also a strategic advantage from the perspective of a hawk like Rumsfeld:
“[If a campaign began with] civilian-based incidents of disruption that were dispersed around the country and that did not offer convenient targets to shoot at, any attempt to crack down would have to depend on the outermost, least reliable members of Saddam’s repressive apparatus”.
Why is this not the plan on the table in the White House? Why are we spending billions of dollars and endangering the lives of, for instance, my roommate’s brother-in-law? The authors’ final paragraph says it all:
“Regimes have been overthrown that had no compunction about brutalizing their opponents and denying them the right to speak their minds. How? By first demonstrating that opposition is possible, peeling away the regime’s residual public and outside support, quashing its legitimacy, driving up the costs of maintaining control, and overextending its repressive apparatus. Strategic nonviolent action is not about being nice to your oppressor, much less having to rely on his niceness. It’s about dissolving the foundations of his power and forcing him out. It is possible in Iraq.”
Sound like pie in the sky?
Tell it to Nikolae and Elena
This would have worked. With modern media and a concerted effort in other countries in the region, it would have worked. But, it would not effectively establish our reputation as the meanest muthafuggahs on the planet and that, after all, is what this is all about.
“You Will be democratic, and I mean now” is an interesting, if completely incoherant, concept.
Read the entire post. He has many great links to the subject. This, it seems to me, was the real alternative to war.
Matthew Yglesias has an interesting post up about the propaganda efforts headed up by Westwood One in the mid-east. He says:
You want to convince people that the United States is not determined to destroy their traditional values, and that democratic procedures and basic human rights are compatible with a variety of cultural forms, and this program sounds like it’s doing the exact reverse.
The problem, of course, is that the only values the United States has been very interested in promoting are the values of capitalism. And those values, while fine as far as they go, without an equal emphasis on democracy, freedom and opportunity have helped to sow the resentment and hatred we are now seeing. Everytime we broadcast about our opulent way of life to a bunch of poor people with little hope living under a tyrannical despot, we are asking for their rage to be turned toward us.
The Westwood One executive is quoted as saying:
When we play a song by Jennifer Lopez, we talk about all the difficulties she has overcome,” he says. “Those are great stories about the kind of things that can happen to you when you live in a democracy.” As long as ratings are Pattiz’s first and last concern (“don’t lead with what makes us unpopular,” he lectures me), METN will do little more than pander to the lowest common denominator in his trademark, Pepsi-Generation style.
Sad to say that because of their circumstances and experiences in life, the average youth in the mid-east is a much more serious person than that. And we should be much more serious about giving them something more than consumerism because they don’t have the money or the inclination to buy if that’s all we’re selling.
Which brings me to this most disturbing article from today’s LA Times. If this is any indication, Richard Perle is gonna have some splainin’ to do when we are greeted with terrible hostility rather than a road to Baghdad strewn with rose petals.
[…]
Here, in the middle of the desert, closer to the Saudi Arabian border than to Amman, Jordan’s relatively cosmopolitan capital, it is easier to hear the unvarnished sentiments and frustrations of this Arab country.
“Maan is a case study for Jordan. It reflects how we think in this country,” said Taher Masri, an urbane former prime minister who remains close to the government. The confrontational statements, he says, are part of a complex philosophy common in this part of the world.
“Saddam is not liked for himself. He is liked, if he is liked, because he stands up to America and Israel — and it has developed that the source of power for Israel is America and this is, of course, what” Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden has been saying.
“And what you will see in the streets is not support of Saddam, it’s anti-American, anti-Israeli feeling,” Masri said.
The confrontation in Maan also suggests how far even moderate Arab governments might go in responding to further unrest that could be ignited by a war in Iraq. It demonstrates that when moderate Arab countries repress the most vociferous Islamist voices, they run the risk of inflaming anti-American sentiments because the repression appears to be in the service of U.S. interests.
[…]
They love us. They really love us.
What a terrible, terrible mess.
3/4 – I apologize for the misspelling of Yglesias’s name again. I know someone with the “I” spelling and it seems to be a block. But, I’m sure that a guy who occasionally makes a typo or two, as Mr. Yglesias does, won’t hold it against me.
Atrios links to this article by Michelangelo Signorile on the Koufax matter and his comments section has a very lively debate going on the subject.
I think that Signorile and some of the commentors are dancing around another issue, but I’ll get to that.
First, I don’t agree with whole “public figure” aspect of this argument at all. If somebody makes an issue of their sex lives, then it becomes an open topic. Similarly, if you make public pronouncements about other people’s sex lives then you have opened up your own for scrutiny. But, if you are just living your life, (as a long retired athlete, for instance) you have a right to have keep your sex life private, period. The issue with the media is sexual privacy no matter what the gossip item refers to, whether it has to do with being gay or having blow jobs in the oval office.
Tabloids are exploitive, lying, piece of shit rags that feed the base nature of everybody who reads them and as much as I believe in free speech I can’t say that I wouldn’t feel gleeful at the sight of a pile of New York Posts going up in flames. They are a destructive force in our culture and if you don’t believe me then just turn on
television news for 10 minutes and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. It is no coincidence that Bill “Enemy of the State” O’Reilly came from that bastion of respectable journalism, “Inside Edition.” It is a pervasive influence in our politics and has been instrumental in the dumbing down of our national media and the trivializing of our political system to such a degree that an ignorant sock-puppet could be elected President because the news media were obsessed with the superficialities of the candidates to the exclusion of everything substantive.
The argument should not be about whether there exists a double standard, but why there aren’t more standards to begin with.
But, with the case at hand, there is more to it than that, isn’t there? From what I can tell, people are dismayed that the issue was blown up because of the nature of the “charge” — that is that he was accused of being gay and it was treated as if he had been a “child molester.” This is true. But, there’s a little Claude Raines action going on here, too. It is wholly unsurprising that in the macho world of sports that an item like this would gain attention and approbation. But, it’s not fair to say that the sportwriters across the board find it “contemptible” that someone would be accused of being gay. After all, they didn’t react to the original blind item at the time and the reaction to the Mike Piazza rumor was far less energetic.
Part of what they are reacting to (and I don’t doubt that there is quite a bit of homophobia involved as well) is that this is Sandy Koufax, a legend and notoriously private man, who has been falsely accused of making a deal with an author contingent upon her not revealing that he is gay. It’s not just the gay thing, it’s also the idea that he was portrayed as an underhanded liar. A lot of people admire Sandy Koufax, for more reasons than his pitching arm, and that hurt. But, to be fair, they also reacted strongly when Koufax quit the organization and a lot of them said that it was “wrong” for him to be accused of being gay by using rather obtuse language.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. In some of the commentors’s arguments the idea is bubbling that because there is nothing wrong with being gay, that a public figure of integrity should not object to being called gay, whether he is or not. One could correct the record for accuracy’s sake, but it really shouldn’t be much of a concern because, after all, there’s nothing wrong with being gay so what’s wrong with people thinking you are?
This is a fatal error, I think, because it supposes that people, gay or straight, should not mind if others misrepresent their sexual orientation. If it is not ok to force gay people to publicly live as if they are straight, is it really much different to ask straight people to behave as if it doesn’t matter if they are perceived as being gay?
I realize that there are many people who have an ambiguous sexual orientation and that is a perfectly natural state for them. But, for many others, sexual orientation is an intrinsic part of who they are and it is fundamental to their identity. To assume that it should not matter to people how they are perceived in that way is asking to change something very basic in human nature. This seems to me to be the very essence of the gay rights movement. It’s not just about being who you are — after all, you have no choice in the matter — it’s about being seen and accepted for who you are.
Sandy Koufax, rightly or wrongly, will now be the Hall of Fame pitcher who will be known for his blazing fastball and also the guy about whom it will be said “he was gay.” The truth or untruth of that is certainly not relevant to his standing as a legendary athlete. But, to him, as a person it might matter a great deal if it is not true, not because he finds being gay “contemptible” but because it is a fundamental misrepresentation of who he really is.
One should not have to be willing to have the world believe one is gay, in order to be completely open and accepting of homosexuality. I don’t think we can ask people to live a lie, or to acquiesce to lies told about them, no matter what cause it purports to serve. Nothing good can come of it.
(For the record, I’ve been called gay by wing-nuts in comments sections and in e-mail many, many times. When idiots call someone “gay” on the internet, it is so stupid that one can only laugh in return. I don’t consider morons hurling “gay” as an epithet the same as normal people misperceiving someone as being gay when they are not. A fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless.)
Update:
In retrospect, I think I was unfair in categorizing Signorle as one who thinks people should accept a designation of gay to further the cause. He clearly states in his article an admiration of the way Mike Piazza handled the situation, which was to deny that he was gay and shrug it off while offering support to gay players. And, he further stated clearly that he thought one of the issues that needed tending was the sensitivity of athletes. To that I can only agree, but one couldn’t confine it to the gay issue. Jocks are about the most insensitive humans on earth. It’s a big job.
Seth Michaels was at the George the First speech at Tufts and gives us a rundown. It’s very interesting that Senior is in a bit of a defensive posture as he tries to explain why he didn’t “finish the job” as the neocon imperialists accuse him of 20 times a day all over the media. He had some very good reasons, one of which was that they would never have been able to fulfill Madrid if they had exceeded the UN mandate.
And, Madrid and the peace process managed to ratchet down the violence in Israel for almost 10 years and was very well worth trying. It’s one of the main keys to future peace in the region and at least Poppy had the brains to see that.
I’m not a big fan of the guy in general, but I have to admit that the press treated him unfairly today by only highlighting his rude joke:
“We’ve now found another real good reason to use duct tape”
It’s a typical Bush smartass remark, but according to Seth he’d also said this:
“I understand where they’re coming from, and I hope they’ll listen and understand where I’m coming from…I hope those demonstrators, who are speaking from their hearts, understand this…what we seek is not hegemony, but compliance with a wide variety of UN resolutions. I think there is such a concept as a just war…the 43rd president shares the innately human desire to avoid conflict that might kill innocent people.”
Seth says: Pretty classy for a 78-year-old guy who just got the finger from a 20-year-old. Also worth noting is that he did not, as his son and his son’s administration have done, try to link Iraq directly to Al-Qaeda:
“Today we have another ingredient we didn’t have in 1991 – Sept. 11. I’m not saying that there’s a conspiracy between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, but the U.S. must protect its citizens and friends.”
It’s always been my contention that the bitchy, Dowdian KewlKidz style of political reporting started with Bush and that supermarket scanner. It was misrepresented at the time and then used against him as if what they’d said was true. Needless to say, Clinton and Gore suffered from the same treatment.
I naturally assumed that any president would be subjected to this treatment going forward, but I was wrong. President FratBoy was exempted from any serious scrutiny from day 1. I can only assume that the Republicans became so good at manufacturing these scandals and embarrassments that the press forgot how to do it for themselves. Today, they were reminded by seeing ole’ 41 and they fell back into step. I can’t think of how else to explain it.
This guy used to be a dyed in the wool reactionary but I’ve noticed that lately he’s been well…pretty sensible and rational. I hate to make too big of a thing about it because he’ll probably lose his children’s slots at Sidwell Friends or get drummed out of the segregated country club, but it’s so rare these days that a pundit escapes from the underworld and lives to tell about it. (And you can’t really blame them since the brilliant 12 year old marketers are convinced that anyone who is “anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives” is, like, such a total loser.)
Anyway, I’d like to propose a toast to Jim Pinkerton, former Republican lackey. To Courage and Integrity!
Les Dabney at Testify! reminds us of that strangely ignored little scandal called Iraqgate.
I know that the republic will never, ever recover from the high crime of 12 furtive hallway blowjobs, but this little scandal seems to have led to 12 years of non-stop regional blowback. The mediawhores sure are on the ball, aren’t they?
UPDATE:
Robert Parry of Consortium News also has a new article online about the Missing US-Iraq history
Before George W. Bush gives the final order to invade Iraq — a nation that has not threatened the United States — the American people might want a few facts about the real history of U.S.-Iraq relations. Missing chapters from 1980 to the present would be crucial in judging Bush’s case for war.
But Americans don’t have those facts because Bush and his predecessors in the White House have kept this history hidden from the American people. When parts of the story have emerged, administrations of both parties have taken steps to suppress or discredit the disclosures. So instead of knowing the truth, Americans have been fed a steady diet of distortions, simplifications and outright lies.
This missing history also is not just about minor details. It goes to the heart of the case against Saddam Hussein, including whether he is an especially “aggressive” and “unpredictable” dictator who must be removed from power even at the risk of America’s standing in the world and the chance that a war will lead to more terrorism against U.S. targets.
Fuggedaboudit. It’s the premiere of Survivor: Iraq and nothing must stand in the way of our new show.
Back in the late 90’s while most of us were watching the bimboes of the Barbizon School Of Former Prosecutors dissect the legal strategy behind Ken Starr subpoenaing Monica’s pedicurist, others were noticing that a foreign policy debate was taking place and they wrote about it:
To sum up, then: foreign fears of a hegemonic America imposing its will on others are misplaced. The U.S may have the raw military power to attempt such a role and some influential Americans call for it but the country has not developed the necessary will, temperament or strategy to succeed as a hegemon. It spends a great deal on international affairs, but does not allocate its resources wisely. It is overcommitted in the military field and undercommitted in the diplomatic field. It proclaims strategic doctrines that are designed more to win the next election than to secure international support. Its leadership groups enjoy the aura of world leadership, but they are unwilling to make any sacrifices themselves in pursuit of leadership. Any quest to establish a Pax Americana that involves sacrifice will therefore lack legitimacy. It will be deprived of the political and moral underpinning that makes a sustained effort at global hegemony possible.
The danger in fact lies elsewhere. The world is unlikely to see a Pax Americana but, depending on political fortunes, it might see an effort to attempt one. The effort would fail — but with it would also die the commitment to internationalism that is a prerequisite for American leadership. And no one should be in doubt that the loss of that leadership would be extremely harmful.
They didn’t even try to use 9/11 to call for sacrifice, they completely ruined our diplomatic relations with the world and they have allocated our resources so ineffectively that we are going to have the equivalent of the Argentine economy in a matter of a few years. In pursuit of their absurd fantasy, they have exacerbated every single weakness the U.S. had and yet they persist in allowing those like the Jesse Helms acolyte, John Bolton and the delusional Richard Perle speak for this country and take us to the point of no return.
The failed attempt at Empire is going to cost us far more than doing absolutely nothing would have done.
