Iraq Round-Up for Saturday
Eric Black's interview with me about the upcoming Iraq elections is at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Clerics are using the mosque to try to get out the vote for the parties they favor on December 15.
Iraqi Academics are at severe risk.
A recent poll in several Arab countries shows that the region is deeply suspicious of Bush's motives and unimpressed by his alleged promotion of democracy in the region, according to Jim Lobe.
Mahan Abdin explores the possibly sinister role of the Iran-trained Badr Corps in the new Iraq.
Knight Ridder broke the story of the US military paying to place stories in the Iraqi press.
Nir Rosen argues for an immediate US withdrawal from Iraq in the Atlantic. Nir has been on the ground in Iraq a lot, speaks Arabic, and reports accurately on the mindset of Iraqis. I don't agree with him, but I admit to being from the generation that lived through the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, the Afghanistan War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Kashmir Civil War, etc., etc., and the world looks darker to me and I can imagine more catastrophic scenarios than are presented here.
Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter in his Nobel Lecture lets Bush and Blair have it.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/10/2005 12:30:00 AM
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10 Comments:
More can be added to Mr Rosen excellent arguments:
The danger of a Sunni or Sadrist take over does not come from large formations invading Baghdad -which can be taken out from the air - but from millions of Baghdadis who can surround the Green Zone within hours (a la Tehran 1979 but with a huge arsenal of guns and anti-aircraft missiles.) What exactly would the Americans do then?
The independence of Kurdistan, as well as being an absolute right which nearly all the Kurds want, is increasingly demanded by the rest of Iraq, fed up from seeing the detested Talabani and other Kurds in Government. The elite Iraqis see the Afghan-like Kurdish system as a major obstacle to Iraq joining the emerging countries.
The American presence is not only military. There are 6000 mostly fanatical neo-cons civilians who think that they won Iraq fair and square and resent any Iraqi 'interference'. The domineering relationship with the exiles who now run Iraq allows them to pick up the phone and give orders to the highest authority.
There are also 25000 foriegn Rambos and KBR, Bechtel, Parsons and others wreaking havoc in Iraq, all empowered by the US forces. They will all have to go ahead of the American withdrawl just to stay alive.
Iraq is very different from Lebanon ..etc in that the civilians collectively make one of the largest armies on the planet. The ex-soldiers sold them millions of guns before they went home. This is not just a theory. In April 2003 the Americans "gave" Mosul to the peshmergas. For around 24 hours they looted and planted Kurdish flags everywhere. Armed civilians then repelled the outnumbered and outgunned peshmergas almost effortlessly. Vigilantes then turned Mosul into the safest place in Iraq bar none until Peteraeus arrived. 6 months later he left it with curfews and an average of 40 deadly attacks a week. He also introduced the Democracy = fair distribution of (strickly vetted) turbans which both Iraqis and Americans are paying dearly for.
A lot of the religous crimes (killing barbers ..etc) are committed by fundamentalist who are outnumbered locally by 100's to one. The oppressed are kept at bay by their fear of being labelled collaborators if they respond. Once the Americans leave, these locally known tormenters will be wiped out by the locals in no time.
"...and the world looks darker to me and I can imagine more catastrophic scenarios than are presented here."
You could have said the same thing about Vietnam (why did you leave that off your list, by the way?) and you would have been right. The problem is that something catastrophic is going to happen whether we leave now or in 10 years. I think it's likely that it will be worse farther down the road. Even getting into this argument is a diversion for the Bush Administration from the real issues: Incompetence and lies. If one truly thinks that we should stay in Iraq, then certainly it should be with a new President and Secretary of Defense in charge (and Lieberman is not at the top of my list). Bush should resign or be impeached.
Thank you, Professor Cole, for linking to the excellent article on Iraq by Nir Rosen.
As one who lived through -- and served in -- the American War on Vietnam, I subscribe to the author's prescription (i.e., "cutting and running") and reasons for offering such a sensible proposal. Given that the American people do not consider war in Iraq worth even a single dollar of tax revenue to pay for any of the fighting and dying, it seems only obvious that America will leave Iraq soon or bleed to death: physically and/or fiscally.
The question for America no longer concerns Iraq's survival as a unified, independent nation, but America's own survival as a democratic republic worthy of the name. Kurdistan and Arab/Iranian Iraq will each go their separate ways and find some modus vivendi to live as neighbors. America, in any event, has more than enough serious problems of its own to straighten out and should cease making any more disastrous problems for others.
Abdin's article on the Badr Corps's operations blew me away.
We paid for it America..
Not terribly meaty Juan but
Sheesh
The best I can do. We are indeed in deep do. We've prepared a government that is too weak to anything but be the pawn of who ever wants to be puppet master.
All of which is fine I suppose if the plan is to be the dividing and conquering occupier ad infitem but Bush has no more than 6 months.
Please don't tell anyone though. We wouldn't want the Badr Corps or the Baathists or the salafis to know what the timetable is.
Thank you for posting the link to Harold Pinters speech.
Fred
Ashes and Diamonds
Politics aside, Pinter's Nobel lecture /1/ is a beautiful piece of prose, his poem 'Death' is unforgettable. The way I understand Pinter's notion of death is that questions of guilt, innocence, freedom, slavery, etc, are of no real concern. What really matters is abandonment, everything else is politics.
I am not particularly enthusiastic about the middle, political part of the lecture. To avoid standard criticism of intellectocracy, we need to admit that great artisits are entitled to noble errors. In particular, they have no authority to interpret international law. The tragic irony is, Pinter, hardly knowing this, fights against Solzhenitsyn's misconception of international law.
Back in 1970, Solzhenitsyn made a seemingly insignificant methodological blunder when he declared that only "non-oppressive" states deserve the place in international community /2/. The problem is, now neoconservatives take this as a cornerstone of their ideology - and we know how it works in real life!
However, with all this in mind, for all that I, insignificant blogger, can say about the giants, Bush and Blair are in bad trouble with history after Pinter's address.
Now their followers and defenders have to fight against the very Western culture they proclaim to defend. This especially clear with Hari's anti-Pinter rant /4/ in the Independent. This article is both noisy and ignorant, all it shows is that Mr.Hari has absolutely no idea about art and its theory. The problem is, Pinter and Beckett are surrealists only in Hari's dull dreams!
1. Harold Pinter. Art, truth and politics
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London....
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body
2. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Lecture
It is not a United Nations Organization but a United Governments Organization where all governments stand equal; those which are freely elected, those imposed forcibly, and those which have seized power with weapons. Relying on the mercenary partiality of the majority UNO jealously guards the freedom of some nations and neglects the freedom of others. As a result of an obedient vote it declined to undertake the investigation of private appeals - the groans, screams and beseechings of humble individual PLAIN PEOPLE - not large enough a catch for such a great organization. UNO made no effort to make the Declaration of Human Rights, its best document in twenty-five years, into an OBLIGATORY condition of membership confronting the governments. Thus it betrayed those humble people into the will of the governments which they had not chosen.
3. GU. Michael Billington. Passionate Pinter's devastating assault on US foreign policy
4. Johann Hari. Harold Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize
Harold Pinter has one literary accomplishment: he imported the surrealism of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Luis Bunel into the staid English theatre.
5. Henry James. The Falcon blog (it keeps the current version of this post)
One Little Fatwa Away from an Exit Strategy
In What if America Left Iraq
The Case for Cutting and Running Nir Rosen looks at the situation on the ground in Iraq.
A few things can be said more or less for sure about the events of 12/15.
-- Neocons will celebrate yet another "victory of democracy".
-- Guerilla war will go on. This means that any effective reconstruction will be blocked. Everything of any practical importance will happen outside of elected bodies.
-- Without effective army, future government will not have much power. All real power will still belong to occupation authorities, warlords, clerics, mafiosi and oligrachs. MPs will do whatever they are told.
-- Voting will be done on ethnic / religious / tribal grounds. Any uncertainties are likely to be resolved by fraud and direct orders from local power figures.
-- To call these "elections" dirty will be an understatement, all kinds of dirty tricks will be used to get proper people elected.
-- Anyhow reasonably, there should be certain limitations on election monitoring. When situation is too unstable and violations are obvious, it does not make sense to send represenattives, it will discredit the whole idea!
-- In Afghanistan and Iraq, any meanigful election monitoring is apparently unapplicable. Still EU gets infolved in this sham:-(
-- Although purely symbolic and politically understandable, this move undermines credibility of the EU diplomacy.
1. Juan Cole. The elections in Iraq
2. AJ. EU to send observers to Iraq polls
Dear Mr. Cole-
As a way of commenting on your views on Iraq I am notifiying your readers that i have compiled an Exit Strategy for iraq.
It can be found on my blog-sevenpointman
Feel free to read and comment on it.
No, this is not just "planted stories" in the Iraqi media! What we really have is a black PR machine.
The problem is, Iraqis are not Fox viewers who take "fair and balanced news" pretty much literally. They take media manipulation as Americans take baseball - with full understanding of its rules.
1. JEFF GERTH. Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
2. Slate. All familiar stuff
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