Informed Comment

Parliamentarian Assassinated

Guerrillas assassinated a member of parliament in Baghdad on Tuesday. They cut down Dhari Ali al-Fayadh, along with his son and three bodyguards. Al-Fayadh had run for office as part of the largely Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. The oldest member of parliament, he served as speaker of the house when it first met. He is the second member of parliament to be killed.

Reuters reports:

“In other incidents on Tuesday, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up in a hospital in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 13. A car bomb killed two bodyguards in a failed assassination bid on the chief of traffic police in the ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk and police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the southern city of Samawa wounding seven.”

US forces began a new campaign at Haditha.

45% of Americans in a new poll say that the US will never succeed in Iraq. Some 49% thought it could, but most of those believed it would take five years (a very optimistic time scale).

Iraq’s new government is trying to get out of a United Nations-imposed program that subtracts 5 percent of its oil revenues to pay compensation to Kuwait and others for damage done by Iraq in the 1990-1991 invasion of Kuwait. Iraq wants the ability to negotiate bilateral deals rather than being under the UN thumb on this. The Iraqi government is only able to pump about 1.4 million barrels a day because of sabotage, and needs every cent to run the government and work against the guerrilla movement. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and others, however, want the payments to continue, figuring Iraq owes them $50 bn. for damages.

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Guerrillas Shoot Down US Helicopter
Bombings in Baghdad
Bush Presses Blair for More Troops

Guerrillas using a shoulder-held missile launcher, probably an SA-16, shot down a US Apache helicopter Monday north of Baghdad, killing both servicemen aboard. AP reports, ‘ “Witness Mohammed Naji told Associated Press Television News he saw two helicopters flying toward Mishahda when “a rocket hit one of them and destroyed it completely in the air” . . . Heavy gunfire was heard at the time of the crash and shots also were heard afterward, the AP reporter said. ‘ If this is the future of the guerrilla war, US casualties will rise dramatically.

In another attack on Monday, guerrillas detonated a massive bomb aiming at a US military convoy in Baghdad during the early evening, but missed. It went off between the al-Bida’a Cinema and the Sunni al-Samarra’i Mosque, killing at least four Iraqi by-standers and wounding 16 others. AP says people were shopping in the New Baghdad area “before the curfew.” There’s a night-time curfew in Baghdad?

Elsewhere in the capital, guerrillas targeted a police patrol in the northern Azamiyah neighborhood (largely Sunni), but appear to have missed, killing two innocent by-standers.

Wire services report, “Seven Iraqis were also wounded when a rocket slammed into a restaurant in the centre of the capital as attacks continued in Baghdad despite a security clampdown. The seven, three waiters and four customers, were wounded when a rocket exploded in Al-Yassir restaurant near a busy taxi and bus terminal off the capital’s central Museum square.”

Former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi admitted in Cairo recently that Syria is not actively backing the jihadi infiltrators coming into Iraq across the Syrian border. Allawi will have been in a position to see the intelligence on this matter when he was in office, so this is a crucial admission. It contradicts the charges bandied about by members of the Bush administration and the Neoconservatives in the US.

A Two-Front War

Tony Blair and the British military are caught between Iraq and a hard place. The Bush administration is putting enormous pressure on the British to send more troops to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are regrouping and launching an Iraq-style guerrilla war. So the British began making noises about reducing the number of their troops in southern Iraq (around 10,000) and shifting them to Afghanistan.

But no. Bush recently told Blair that Iraq is on the brink of disaster, and that the British need to send more troops to that country, in addition to sending new units to fight the Taliban.

The Scotsman reveals that

‘ Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster – more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein – during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month. Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a “complete strategic failure” in the effort to rebuild the nation. ‘

If the Pushtuns turn against the Karzai government in large numbers, rallying around neo-Taliban, the country could fall back into war. This danger was always the hidden cost of Bush going on to Iraq before stabilizing Afghanistan.

I don’t think the British public will put up with being dragged into a two-front hot war, and you wonder whether the Blair government might fall over such a development.

The mystery to me is why the Americans think they need more British troops in southern Iraq. Most of that area has fallen into the hands of religious Shiite militias anyway, and I doubt the British get out of their barracks all that much. When they do, they appear to be angering a lot of the Shiites, as in Maysan, the provincial government of which yesterday launched a non-cooperation campaign against the British. Do the Americans want to move the British up to the hot zone in the Sunni heartland? Is the South more unstable than it looks on the outside (e.g. is the Mahdi Army reconstituting itself down there?)

Ironically, even as the Afghanistan venture appears on the verge of collapse, Dick Cheney instanced it in his Wolf Blitzer interview on Sunday as evidence of the undue pessimism of his critics and a reason to be optimistic about Iraq.

About three quarters of Americans believe that the guerrilla movement in Iraq is either maintaining its strength or growing in strength. Only 1/4 agree with Dick Cheney that it is weakening.

Arundhati Roy reports from the mock tribunal in Istanbul trying George W. Bush for the Iraq War.

The Egyptian cleric kidnapped by the US Centeral Intelligence Organization from Milan in February of 2003 was involved in Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group, and was preparing false passports and aiding in other ways the transport of radical volunteers to go to Iraq, where the group had a base in the north. An Italian magistrate has issued arrest warrants for the CIA personnel involved. It is not entirely clear why the US couldn’t get the Berlusconi government to move against the cleric itself.

I’m posting this a little early because am traveling on Tuesday, but will try to post more late afternoon.

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Rumsfeld on Vietnam and Government Secrecy

These quotes from Congressman Rumsfeld, circa 1966, are amusing and tragic in retrospect.

‘ A 1966 article in the Chicago Tribune quoted Rumsfeld as saying the following: “The administration should clarify its intent in Viet Nam,’ he said. ‘People lack confidence in the credibility of our government.’ Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say, he charged. ‘It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy,’ he said. ‘With the secrecy, it’s impossible. The American people will do what’s right when they have the information they need.” [Chicago Tribune, 4/13/66] ‘

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50 Killed in Guerrilla Violence
Al-Hakim: Sectarian War Could Engulf Middle East
Al-Akhbar: Internationalize Iraq Crisis

Guerrilla violence killed at least 50 persons in Iraq on Sunday and left a similar number wounded, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat. Among the killed was a US soldier killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad (two other US servicemen were wounded in the incident).

The biggest death toll came in Mosul. The casualties in the bombing of the police station mentioned here on Sunday rose to 12 dead, two of them civilians, with 8 wounded. Later, a suicide bomber killed 16 persons and wounded 7 — mostly civilians — in the parking lot of an Iraqi army base at the edges of Mosul. Yet another attacker with bomb belt blew himself up in Mosul’s Jumhuri Teaching Hospital, targeting a room used by police guards and killing 5 and wounding 8 of them, and wounding 4 civilians, as well.

Outside Sadiyah, an hour and a half’s drive north of Baghdad, guerrillas shot down 6 Iraqi soldiers at their base.

There were two bombings in Kirkuk, one of them using a booby-trapped dog, which left 6 persons injured.

Al-Hayat: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and of the United Iraqi Alliance that controls parliament, warned Sunday that “the launching of a sectarian war in Iraq would mean the outbreak of war in the entire region.” He called on Arabs and Muslims to “stand decisively against those who spread terror” to Iraq. His statement was distributed at a wake held for the victims of attacks last Wednesday and Thursday on the largely Shiite neighborhoods of Shu’lah and Karradah in Baghdad.

He said, “Zarqawi– the criminal and the wreaker of corruption in the land– and his helpers and supporter from among the sectarians, and the orphans of the dead-and-buried Saddam regime, and the excommunicators, have unveiled the ugliness of their visages more and more by targeting innocent civilians from among the Shiites.” He added, “These criminal groups have openly announced to the multitudes their sectarian war against the Shiites in Iraq, and have issued Islamic legal rulings declaring them excommunicated and unbelievers, saying that it is a duty to kill Muslims who follow the family of the Prophet, after having initially hidden for the previous span of time behind the pretext of confronting Occupation and those who collaborated with it.” He affirmed that the Iraqi people “will not be drawn into these criminal, terrorist plots, rather Sunni and Shiite organizations will strengthen their bonds.”

Then there is this item:

‘ Iraq’s Al-Hakim Praises Egyptian Grand Imam for Condemning Terrorist Attacks
MENA (MIDDLE EAST NEWS AGENCY)
Sunday, June 26, 2005 T19:03:23Z

BAGHDAD, June 26 (MENA) – Chairman of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim hailed Sunday the stance of Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi on Iraq.

Sheikh Tantawi had condemned attacks targeting innocent Iraqis, Hakim told a ceremony mourning those recently killed in a cluster of bombings in Al-Karada and Al-Shuala districts in Baghdad.

The SCIRI leader asked Muslim scholars and religious authorities to make public their stances on attacks against Iraqis.

He stressed that Iraqis need to unite in the face of terrorist attacks. ‘

Al-Hakim was glad for the denunciation of the killing of innocent Muslims by the Rector of al-Azhar, who is among the foremost religious authorities in the Sunni world. Tantawi has also forbidden Sunnis to excommunicate Shiites, i.e., to allege that they are not really Muslims. His statement calling on Muslims in Iraq to unite across the sectarian divide came after he had met with former interim PM Iyad Allawi.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the provincial Governing Council of Maysan province, along with political parties and civil society organizations, has called for a boycott of British troops and a non-cooperation drive with regard to them. The non-cooperation movement comes in protest against what the GC calls the continued “excesses” of the British troops against inhabitants of the province. They cited home invasions, one of which cause a pregnant woman to miscarry, the incarceration of “a number of innocents,” and mistreatment of government bureaucrats from the circles of the minitry of trade. The governing council also lodged a complaint about these incidents with the national parliament. Maysan politics is dominated by the Sadr movement of nationalist Shiites, many of them influenced by Muqtada al-Sadr or by his rival, Muhammad Yaqubi.

Egypt’s government is afraid that the US will withdraw, leaving Iraq a mess in the Middle East that will blow back on other Arab states.

At the same time, the government-owned al-Akhbar in an editorial urged the United States to seek international help in Iraq in a way that it refused to do in the past. (This reference may be to the United Nations or the Arab League– it isn’t clear). Via FBIS:

‘ Cairo Paper Says Washington Should Ask for International Help in Iraq Editorial
The Difficult American Option in Iraq!”
AL-AKHBAR
Sunday, June 26, 2005 T21:52:23Z

“This is a fact proven by the rising number of Americans killed in Iraq, the continuing Iraqi bloodletting, the incessant explosions that claim tens of Iraqis every day, and the size of the terrifying destruction that has turned this Arab country into wrecks and ruins.

Perhaps the only way to come out of this fix is an admission by the United States of the dimensions of the Iraqi predicament and a very determined quest to involve the international community in searching for a solution–even if this solution meant Washington’s adoption of some difficult decisions it had not taken into consideration when it took this dangerous decision to invade Iraq.

(Description of Source: Cairo Al-Akhbar in Arabic — State-Owned Daily) ‘

George Hunsinger warns of a Thiry Years’ War on the part of the US in the Middle East.

I share al-Hakim’s fear that civil war in Iraq could ignite the entire eastern portion of the Middle East. He is a man of the region and attention should be paid to him on this. Likewise, I agree with the Egyptians that a precipitate US withdrawal would very likely spark the sectarian war that al-Hakim warned about. I also agree with the al-Akhbar editorial that it is time for the US to bring in the international community. The Egyptians know Iraq and know the region. The Americans, who have shown themselves incredibly ignorant of both, should listen carefully to what they are saying.

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It Depends on What “Throes” Is

It started when Cheney went on “Larry King Live” last month and said this:

‘ “I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time,” Cheney said. “The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” ‘

This is the man who “knew where exactly” Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction were and who was sure Iraqis would deliriously greet the US military as liberators.

Virtually nobody agreed with Cheney. Senator John McCain, when asked if it was the last throes, sighed “No.” Senator Chuck Hagel suggested Cheney was disconnected from reality.

Then there was this exchange at a senate hearing between Sen. Carl Levin and General John Abizaid, the Pentagon’s senior officer in the Gulf:

‘ Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.: “General Abizaid, can you give us your assessment of the strength of the insurgency? Is it less strong, more strong, about the same strength as it was six months ago?”

Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf: “In terms of comparison from six months ago, in terms of foreign fighters, I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago.

“In terms of the overall strength of the insurgency, I’d say it’s about the same as it was.”

Levin: “So you wouldn’t agree with the statement that it’s in its last throes?”

Abizaid: “I don’t know that I would make any comment about that other than to say there’s a lot of work to be done against the insurgency.” ‘

In other words, a lot to be done and no progress in the past 6 months.

So then Wolf Blitzer at CNN came back to Cheney and asked him again about the last throes.

BLITZER: The commander of the U.S. Military Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid has been testifying on Capitol Hill.

CHENEY: Right.

BLITZER: He says that the insurgency now is at a strength undiminished as it was six months ago, and he says there are actually more foreign fighters in Iraq now than there were six months ago. That doesn’t sound like the last throes.

CHENEY: No, I would disagree. If you look at what the dictionary says about throes, it can still be a violent period — the throes of a revolution. The point would be that the conflict will be intense, but it’s intense because the terrorists understand if we’re successful at accomplishing our objective, standing up a democracy in Iraq, that that’s a huge defeat for them. They’ll do everything they can to stop it. [Cheney then invoked the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944.]

Cheney contradicts himself here. On the one hand he redefines “throes” as capable of lasting a long time. Then he goes back essentially to predicting that the Iraqi guerrilla war will be over in about six months. Isn’t that the implication of his invoking the Battle of the Bulge?

Then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld goes on Fox Cable News and says this:

‘ Rumsfeld said: “We’re not going to win against the insurgency. The Iraqi people are going to win against the insurgency. That insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.” ‘

So now not only has there been no progress for six months, not only is there a lot of work to do, but we are not in December, 1944 of WW II at all. We are in 1963 of the Vietnam War, with 12 years to go, and we can’t win. The Iraqi ARVN has to win.

But my real question is whether “throes” can mean what Cheney alleges.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a “throe” as

‘ 1. A violent spasm or pang, such as convulses the body, limbs, or face. Also, a spasm of feeling; a paroxysm; agony of mind; anguish. ‘

That just doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing that could last for several years at a time. A spasm has to be over with pretty quickly.

The Bard gives us this: “Their pangs of Loue, with other incident throwes That Natures fragile Vessell doth sustaine.” [SHAKES. Timon V. i. 203] So here a throwe [throe] is a pang, as in a pang of love. (Spelling it without the “w” seems to be a seventeenth century practice that only arose late in Shakespeare’s lifetime; i.e. it is a late innovation).

A lot of early modern writers used “throes” to refer to a mother’s birth pains:

Milton says, “My womb..Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.” [1667 MILTON P.L. II. 780]

And Pope writes, “Her new-fall’n young..Fruit of her throes.” [1715-20 POPE Iliad XVII. 6]

Defoe has, “Frequent Throws and Pangs of Appetite, that nothing but the Tortures of Death can imitate.” [1719 DE FOE Crusoe (Hotten's repr.) 408] Again, a pang, as in a pang of appetite. I wouldn’t say a pang of appetite could go on for years ordinarily.

But Cheney didn’t just speak of a “throe.” He said “the last throes, if you will.” Apparently we won’t. But in any case, the last throes are the spasm of a dying body, of the sort that actors find it so difficult to do convincingly. Afficionadoes of classic silly comedy movies will remember when the dying prospector kicks the bucket in “A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” I mean, his foot actually strikes the bucket as he dies. That’s the throes, Dick.

OED says the Scottish spelling of this was deid-thraw. I thought that had an ominous ring to it, sort of like something you’d find in Frank Herbert’s Dune books. “The deid-thraw of Abu Musab.”

Spenser in the Faerie Queene gives, “O man! have mind of that last bitter throw.” (I. x. 41)

I thought this entry rather good: “The agony of . . . outrage transcends the throes of dissolution.” [1833 H. MARTINEAU Tale of Tyne vi. 113 ]

In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s how just about everyone feels about Cheney’s assertion about the throes in Iraq.

Cheney is wrong to mix up two separate usages of “throes.” The “last throes” are the “paraxysm of death,” and imply a quick end. The “throes of revolution” are a different sense of the word.

The OED gives, “When a nation is in the throes of revolution, wild spirits are abroad in the storm.” [1856 FROUDE Hist. Eng. (1858) II. ix. 373]

You can say that again. Also watermelons and dogs rigged up with bombs.

The throes of a revolution is a figurative sense of throes, drawing on its meaning of “convulsion, paroxysm,” and perhaps invoking its archaic connotation of the pangs of childbirth. It just isn’t the same as “the last throes” unless you actually were speaking of “the last throes of the revolution.”

So, I have to reject Cheney’s explanation to Wolf Blitzer of what he meant by the “insurgency” being in “its last throes, if you will.” He wasn’t talking about the throes of revolution. He was talking about kicking the bucket. Pretty soon. And the guerrilla movement in Iraq just isn’t in the last throes of anything. It is in throes all right, of some sort. But there’s no death rattle to be heard except that of its victims. And we can expect this to go on for years (I’m agreeing with Rumsfeld! Help!)

The OED on etymology or the origins of words is sometimes hard to follow. But I waded through what it had to say about “throe.” And I conclude that the whole thing is probably a series of mistakes, something like Bush’s malapropisms. Throe as a word was given to us by a series of people very like Bush. It should probably be the “thrawes of death.”

[Throe is a late alteration (noted first in 1615) of the earlier throwe, throw (which survived as late as 1733). The origin and history of ME. {th}rowe (found c 1200), and its northern form {th}raw(e, {th}raw, thrau (known c 1300, and still in use in Sc.) is not quite clear.

It may come from the verb throwen or thrawen, which early on (i.e. when the Buyids of northern Iran ruled Baghdad) meant “to twist, rack, torture.” That works for me. But there are apparently reasons to think it got mixed up with other verbs over time.

Such a series of linguistic errors is hard on dictonary makers. Bush produces them by the bushel.

Bush has refered to America as the world’s “pacemakers” instead of “peacemakers”. Or he has spoken of the need for the Americas to be an “economically vile hemisphere.” He has called for “the end of terriers,” which appears to be a mongrel dog made up of “tariffs and barriers”. Or he said, “I understand there’s a suspicion that we—we’re too security-conscience.” Or “Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?” (Jan. 10, 2005)

In the same way, some Bush ancestor seems to have messed around with thrawen and thrawe and turned it into throw and then later on misspelled it throe.

And then Dick Cheney came along and reinterpreted it as something that could last for twelve years in a row.

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Al-Hayat on US contacts with AMS
Chalabi Favors Timeline for US Withdrawal

Gilbert Achcar writes:

Quite interesting excerpts from an article written from Baghdad by Basil Muhammad in today’s Al-Hayat, reporting on an interview he made with Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a prominent leading member of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the most respected Sunni group vocal against the occupation.

Excerpts:

‘ …On the dialogue with the Americans, he said that the contacts that the AMS had with them were “interrupted,” explaining that “the previous dialogue between the two parties was very obscure and we don’t know whether it was a tactial dialogue or a strategic one.” He added that “the dialogue that we hear of between the dissolved Baath party and the Americans seems different.” He also added that “the ground on which the AMS stands in any dialogue is patriotic whereas the Baathists have different choices, including their return to power; the AMS doesn’t want any power, but seeks a specific goal that is the withdrawal of occupation forces.”…

He described the meeting held recently by Iraqi Vice-Prime Minister Ahmad al-Chalabi with the leadership of the AMS as “a step toward the dialogue with al-Jaafari’s Government.” He said also that “al-Chalabi agrees with our position calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops… We told him that we won’t join the political process as long as State terror is carried on in al-Qa’im, al-Anbar and Baghdad districts.”

He maintained that “the patriotic camp calling for the withdrawal of occupation forces and for quickly establishing a timetable for their withdrawal has become larger than anytime before.”

Al-Hayat has learned from other sources that there is a current within the Government holding a position in favor of a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops.

This current, of which al-Chalabi is a prominent member, has accused American parties of refusing the idea of concluding an agreement on the status of foreign troops, and of wanting to preserve the current status quo. ‘

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Ahmadinejad Uses Bush’s Tactics

Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei gloated Saturday that the Iranian public had “humiliated” Bush by electing hard liner Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president. But in fact, the campaigning style of the two men suggests that in some ways they are soul mates.

Newly elected Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad won in some part by using the same electoral tools as George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

1. Smear Tactics

Ahmadinejad’s supporters smeared his chief rival, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by spreading all sorts of false rumors about him. Negative campaigning is illegal in Iran, but complaints to the rightwing judges went nowhere because they support Ahmadinejad. (See below).

Bush supporters in South Carolina in the 2000 elections smeared his Republican rival for the nomination John McCain by falsely suggesting (via a phony telephone poll) that he had had an interracial affair that produced an illegitimate child. In the 2004 campaign, the White House directed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to smear John Kerry as a liar and coward with regard to his distinguished military record, while chicken hawk Bush, who did not even properly serve out his time as a reservist back in the US, was depicted as some sort of war hero.

2. False Consciousness

Ahmadinejad, a rightwinger, poses as a champion of the common people, and once dressed up as a street sweeper. He thus got a lot of working class people to vote for him, even though he will do the bidding of billionaire clerical hardliners who have done little for ordinary folks.

Likewise, George W. Bush affects a southern drawl (he is from Connecticut) and makes himself out to be a friend of the common man, with his “tax cuts” and program to “save” social security. In fact, everything Bush does primarily benefits the rich and actually hurts the interests of workers and farmers. Nevertheless, as with Ahmadinejad, he gets many in the working classes to vote for him.

3. Posing as a Critic of the Government You Run

Ahmadinejad is allowed to attack the Iranian government because he has impeccable credentials as a rightwinger and loyalist to Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. He can therefore complain about state corruption without being pilloried or punished. His anti-government rhetoric struck a chord with many Iranians and helped him get elected. If a liberal reformer had spoken that way about the Iranian government, he would have been accused of disloyalty and lack of patriotism.

Likewise, George W. Bush affects a rhetoric of “cleaning up Washington” and breaking the gridlock and overcoming partisanship. In reality, corruption has flourished in his regime, with severe questions constantly being raised about lobbyists essentially bribing Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham and others. The grandson of a senator and son of a president who calls the white-tie corporate crowd his “base” represents himself as an outsider to Washington and a critic of the government! Yet liberals like Dick Durbin who criticize the government are pilloried as traitors.

4. Benefitting from Dominance of the Judiciary

Ahmadinejad was supported by the clerical rightwing judiciary and Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. When other candidates complained about ballot stuffing, the rightwing judges backed Ahmadinejad.

Bush: Five words: Florida and the Supreme Court.

5. Religious Congregations and the Military

Ahmadinejad was supported by many mosque preachers all over the country, as well as by religious volunteers for a paramilitary called basij. Some 300,000 basij all over Iran essentially acted as a political party to support Ahmadinejad.

Bush depends heavily on the support of evangelical and fundamentalist churches in the United States, which abuse their tax-exempt, non-partisan status by actually becoming foot soldiers for the Republican Party. The US military is also disproportionately Republican and supports Bush. Air Force cadets are apparently put under enormous pressure to become evangelicals, under the Bush regime.

By the way, speaking of cadets, Space Cadet Michael Ledeen over at the American Enterprise Institute alleged last week that hardliners brought two million Pakistanis over to vote for Ahmadinejad. Presumably they would have been brought in to Zahedan in Iranian Baluchistan from Quetta.

Ledeen fancies himself a Middle East expert and is trying hard to get up a US war on Iran, having been helpful in getting up the Iraq War, which he promised us would go so well.

Let me explain a few basics to Mr. Ledeen.

1. You can’t move 2 million people through the Baluchistan desert in a short period of time. A population movement that massive could even be seen by satellite.

2. Pakistanis are largely Sunnis. They don’t like the Iranian regime, which is their rival. They would not go vote in Iran. Even the Shiite minority would not, and it wouldn’t vote for Ahmadinejad if it could.

3. The voting rolls for Iranian Baluchistan show about 800.000 voters. Where are the two million Pakistanis?

4. Baluchistan voted for reformist candidates. (Most Baluchis are Sunnis and are afraid of the Shiite hardliners).

Can you imagine that people like Ledeen are actually allowed to come on television as “experts” or to publish in political journals despite spewing complete nonsense? If your son or daughter gets drafted and sent to die in Iran, it will be in some part because of the propaganda spread by people like Ledeen, who, by the way, has some sort of weird relationship both to the more fascistic elements in Italian military intelligence and to the Likud extremists in Israel. NB: The false Niger uranium documents were forged by a former agent of Italian military intelligence . . .

All that said, it is probably true that there was some ballot stuffing by Ahmadinejad supporters. It was alleged by clerical moderate Karrubi, and it is plausible. These presidential elections are the least free and fair since the early 1990s, though all along there has been a problem of the exclusion and vetting of candidates by the clerics. On the other hand, it seems undeniable that Ahmadinejad’s campaign struck a chord with many Iranians tired of corruption and economic stagnation. He may well have won the second round even without those “extra” ballots.

By the way, rightwing US commentators often slam Iranian elections because the candidates are vetted by the clerical Guardian Council for their loyalty to the Khomeinist ideology. In the past two years, the vetting has grown ever more rigorous, excluding relative liberals from running for parliament or president. The commentators are correct.

However, in the United States the “first past the post” system of winner-takes-all elections and the two-party system play a similar role in limiting voters’ choices of candidates. Neither libertarians nor socialists are likely to be serious contenders for the presidency in the United States, since neither of the two dominant parties will run them. The US approach to limiting voter choice is systemic and so looks “natural,” but US voters have a narrower range of practical choices in candidates than virtually any other democratic societ

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