Ruminatrix
...more recent posts
Friday, Apr 11, 2003
Buruma on Berman
Ian Buruma has a nice critique of Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism in the current NYRB. Tom has assailed Berman's formulation of "islamo-fascism" as water-carrying for the neocons
Buruma assesses some differences between European and American liberalisms, and where the analogies between radical islamism, Ba'athism and fascism break down. "Islamist groups may be able to do us much harm, but are not about to invade our countries, infiltrate our institutions or take over our governments," whatever you hear to the contrary. And even a nuclear-armed Iraq couldn't have won a war with the US.
Even as the stated aims in the Iraqi war are to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, other dictatorships (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and an assortment of other Stans) are coddled as prized allies; the Russians are barely criticized for demolishing Chechnya; human rights in China are hardly even mentioned anymore; and when Turks or Brazilians exercise their democratic rights to vote for leaders or policies that the American administration doesn't like, they get chastised for doing so. Clearly democratic revolution is rather a selective business.Worth a look as our masters contemplate reshaping the world in their image.
This is sometimes unavoidable. Even, or indeed especially, the United States, as a superpower, needs to make shabby deals, bribe unsavory leaders, and compromise to protect its interests. It would, of course, be desirable if the US did more to promote freedom and democracy, wherever and whenever it can, but it is precisely the penchant of the current administration to blur realpolitik with revolutionary zeal, to bribe and twist arms with trumpeting blasts of self-righteousness, that provokes so much resistance in the world. The idea, moreover, that democracy can be established by military invasion is not bolstered with much historical evidence.
Apologists for the current US government keep on reminding us of Germany and Japan, but these examples are widely off the mark. To start, both countries attacked the US with their own military forces first. The Allies did not fight to build Japanese and German democracies, but to defend themselves. Secondly, the US did not create German or Japanese democracies from scratch. Both countries were modern nation-states, which once had flawed but functioning democratic institutions, with parliaments, political parties, independent judges, vigorous newspapers, and so on. Things went horribly wrong in the 1930s, to be sure, but what was needed in 1945, and indeed carried out with great American humanity and skill, was a restoration job, not a revolution.
Again, one does not have to be a hard-boiled "realist" to see that bringing democracy to Iran, Saudi Arabia, or North Korea with military force would be a very different proposition. The US may be exceptional in many respects, but the belief of its more zealous officials, and intellectual cheerleaders, in a national destiny to dispatch American armies to remake the world in its own image is by no means unique. Others have been down that route, and not everything they did was ignoble: think of Napoleon's emancipation of the Jews. But eventually such missions always come to grief, leaving ruins where they meant to build utopias.
Thursday, Apr 10, 2003
Ah, sweet liberty! In Najaf a senior Shia cleric is killed (and he was an an ayatolllah's son, too!) -- because elements of a crowd thought him too pro-American. In Baghdad troops attack a mosque because "a meeting" was due to take place there. Meanwhile the let-'em-have-their-fun looting is at the point where Baghdad's hospitals are all either closed or picked clean by looters. Mopping-up operations, anyone? They haven't even started summary executions of Baathist cadres yet...
Things are going swimmingly well, aren't they? At a time when many in the world believe the US is implacably hostile to Islam -- even though Saddam was hardly what you'd call devout -- this sort of thing doesn't make the US look good.
As a spokeswoman for the Red Cross says:
"I want to really stress that it's the responsibility of the forces in charge to ensure hospitals and supply stations are safe and that people can get access to medical care. They have to ensure access to civilian infrastructure."Indeed. Would the Defense Department care to comment? Other than to say "it's not our problem, we're not cops"...Oh yes it is and yes you are -- for now at least.
But the domestic media (and polls, no doubt) don't care about anything but when can we declare victory and move on to the next target, and would all you wimpy war oppponents apologize like right now. Bragging rights stuff.
Metaphoric contagion: The slow steady advance of SARS on the news horizon has a strange synergy with war headlines and bio-terrorism. Let's see:
* China, like Iraq, has covered up or at least vastly understated the extent of its public health crisis to the WHO (read "international inspectors") and declined to invite help from the CDC.
*SARS isn't yet causing mass death -- the admitted toll is still around 100, who knows what the real number is? -- but it may be too late to impose effective quarantine measures preventing deaths overseas. (potential for "mass destruction")
*Planes are a major threat vector ("security problems") and it's already hurting international busuinees and tourist travel.
Isn't it time for us to draft an ultimatum, Dick? Colin will get on board later after he's tried the UN gambit.
Kirkuk, Open City...Kurdish guerillas replicate yesterday's demolition of a Saddam statue. Kurds disagree, but it's not a Kurdish city per se -- many ethnic groups live there, including the Turcoman minority so dear to Ankara. Watch out.
"Liberated" Baghdad is still in violent chaos...looting and arson are widespread and at least one Marine has been killed in one of many so-called "pockets of resistance," which sound more like civil-war zones. Under international law (the Geneva Conventions), the US/UK coalition is now the "occupying power." Its armies are therefore responsible for law and order, protecting and providing for the civilian population. It's not enough to say: "We don't do policing, somebody else can deal with that." You took it, it's your responsibility, deal with it.
Theories about the whereabouts of Saddam and his sons --if they're alive -- fall into four camps: Baghdad, Tikrit, Syria, Russia. Tikrit is certainly possible and the likeliest place for a Last Stand within the country. The Russian option (i.e. a diplomats' convoy took 'em along when they left their embassy three days ago) is plausible, more so than the Syrian one beloved by Pan-Arabists and the Likud alike.
But this would require the collusion of the US at some high level. And such a deal would imply intermediaries within the Iraqi power structure, most likely the Iraqi Army. Maybe that's why it was so quiet during the past eighteen days as to be almost invisible. That's Teheran's preferred theory (via Agonist): Washington wants Saddam in controlled exile, not on trial. Killing Saddam achieves a similar objective -- blocking inquiries into US support for his regime prior to his invasion of Kuwait.
We'll see if the Iraqi Army now reappears to offer its services as a political "security force" -- it's probably the Sunnis' best chance of retaining leverage over Kurds and Shiites. If such a deal was made, when did it happen, one wonders....
Baghdadis loot government buildings...a small crowd (and a flock of journalists) prepares to topple a massive Saddam statue in Firdoz Square, with assistance from an American tank... The Baathist regime is finished in Baghad, even if there are still "loyalist" snipers in parts of the capital, as well as diehards in Tikrit and elsewhere in the North...
There are ironies galore in the US armed forces standing aside to permit looting, even at the DGS (secret police) building. Keep in mind that much uglier retribution -- lynchings most likely -- will not be far behind. Who is responsible for public order in Iraq tomorrow?
But it's always fascinating to see a crowd at such a turning point, delirious, unsure of what comes next, teeming, confused, with all the potentiality of a historical moment of flux, in a collaborative act of symbolic demolition. It's so rarely seen. Toppling statues and symbols of former rulers is something human beings need to do -- and it's no, it's not the same thing as iconoclasm or outright vandalism (Banyam, Ayodha). And it's not as ugly as the deaths beforehand or the retribution afterwards. This is Iraq's day, no matter what comes next, and no matter how unwise the war that preceded it.
Street-fighting in Baghdad continues as US armored columns gradually move into nabes on the East bank of the Tigris. It's largely a psychological ploy, say the press officers, to convince Baghdadis that despite what they might hear, the Yanks are indeed coming. So where is the fine line between:
i) taking Radio Baghdad off the air to prevent the Baath from urging resistance;
ii) striking Al Jazeera, which broadcasts footage not approved by CentCom;
iii) accidentally killing other correspondents?
....And how does the liberation of Iraq resemble that of Afghanistan? The 1979 one, not the 2001 one.
Military tribunals are ready to roll for Guantanamo's 640 Afghan POWs, reports the NYT. There is a catch, of course:
Despite the fact that there will be a system in place, many officials said that there might not be an actual proceeding anytime soon. The Pentagon hopes that the first handful of prisoners charged will be persuaded to accept plea bargains in which they could plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for providing new information about Al Qaeda.Gooood morning. I'm Captain X, your attorney, and I advise you to sign this......
In essence, the first tribunal is supposed to serve as a continuation of the plan to get as much information as possible out of the detainees, with the actual prosecution of any crimes as a secondary goal.
"The priority has always been to gather intelligence from these people," one official said. Another official cautioned, however, that there was no guarantee that the defendants would go along with this plan. In that event, the military would be obliged to go ahead with a proceeding.
Monday, Apr 07, 2003
Too busy for long entry today...news of a possible Iraqi sarin stash will wait. So just a quote from a GI in Baghdad outside one of Saddam's palaces: "This is a nice place --they should turn it into a Six Flags." (This has been removed from Yahoo news, along with reports of US soldiers crapping in Saddam's bathroom and looting "souvenirs" therefrom).
Want a Russian equivalent to Israel's Debka, try www.iraqwar.ru, for a Russian perspective on the Iraq war. Link via Guardian UK and the newly-married Agonist.
Meanwhile another French-American dispute is growing on the horizon: and it's all about whose is bigger...from today's NYT (login/password: fmhreader). Kowabunga!
There's a summary of an odd LA Times poll over here. I haven't seen the questions they asked, but then again those answers (Osama/Saddam/Yo Mama) are what you get in wartime when people's heads are full of propaganda. (Lovely whitehouse.org stuff, graphics- heavy)
My technique is more -- dare I say it -- scientific: I dial a number at random, sing a couple of verses of Randy Newman's Political Science.
No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them...
And listen carefully to the response received...
Speaking of pulverizing things, the latest ordnance now ready for (re-)use over Baghdad is the concrete bomb. These improved wonder-weapons (no explosives, just fins and steering vanes) are "precision bombs that are considered effective against fixed targets while minimizing risk to nearby civilian structures," says Reuters. In an old England idiom, That's about as subtle as a flying mallet.
But don't worry about the above-mentioned poll results: they don't count any more. This President is on the record as being not about to set policy based upon a focus group. Therefore he should logically ignore this poll's results. One can go further and say the President must ignore them on firm moral principle, I think -- unless God were to tell him otherwise. But I'm asking God not to -- just in case He is looking at the numbers.
Now I have some polling work to do.
It's not about OPEC oil, is it? A Kurdish spokesman (PUK and KPD) says:
"We are going to 'demonopolise' the oil," Dara Attar, an Iraqi Kurd oil consultant told AFP after two days of meetings in London.In other words -- cheap oil until the end of the world....
"The government is going to be a federal state, therefore the economy will be different. It's going to be done in a way to serve the federal state," said Attar, one of a 15-strong body charged by the US State Department with planning Iraq post-war oil policy.
Iraq will remain a member of the Organisation of Petrolium Exporting Countries, but will not limit its production to stabilize the international oil market if it can produce more -- once its installations have been repaired.
There is some pretty sensible analysis of Iraqi Shi'a wait-and-see politics over at Daily Kos. "While they clearly need Saddam gone from power, they certainly have no intention to exchange a Sunni dictatorship for an American viceroy." Or if you prefer, Please declare victory over the Ba'athists now, so the real contest can begin.
A Puzzle
Evidence: They're long dead, probably from around 1991.
Evidence: Many have gunshot wounds to the head.
Evidence "found at the scene suggests many of the deaths occurred on the premises." So who are they?
i) Iran says they're Iranians (can we tell from the uniforms perhaps, dogtags?)
ii) Human Rights Watch thinks they're Iraqi opponents of Saddam.
iii) Baghdad claims they're corpses of Iraqi troops killed over in Iran and shipped back home for burial.
I didn't realize it yesterday how much it echoes Katyn. Katyn. No-one wanted to believe the Nazis, but they were indeed being truthful. And it took the Russians fifty-odd years to admit it. On a point of personal interest: one of my grandfathers narrowly escaped those quicklime pits in the pine forests near Smolensk. He wound up in a Roumanian internment camp instead and later escaped westwards. But that's another story.