Ruminatrix
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Sunday, Apr 13, 2003
Rules of War; Spinning Shi'ite politics
Two notes from today's Sunday NYT: An interesting article in the magazine on the history and evolution of the Rules of War from Grotius through the Hague and Geneva Conventions. The current rights of non-uniformed forces and the question of who is entitled to POW status remain very much in flux. US military lawyers will no doubt be writing extensively on the same topic shortly.
Also, the mystery of why a prominent Shiite cleric was killed in Najaf.
Mr. Khoei, accompanied by at least two former Iraqi Army officers, had been flown into the country from London by the American military on April 3. He was taken to this Islamic holy city by United States Army Special Forces hoping to win support among the country's Shiite majority, Army officers said today.*Bakr al Hakim is the leader of the Badr Brigade, a Teheran backed Shiite military force.
He was killed along with Haidar al-Refaei, the hereditary custodian of the mosque, when an angry mob attacked them. Four other men were also reported killed in the melee.
Many people interviewed here insist that Mr. Khoei's murder was a spontaneous act, set off by the presence of Mr. Refaei, who had long collaborated with the government of Saddam Hussein. But others suggested that the murder was part of a broader power struggle between clerics vying for control of Najaf after Mr. Hussein's fall from power.
That power struggle extends to the United States and Iran, both of which want influence over Iraq's Shiite population. Iranian influence in the city is already strong.
"Our true, real leader is Bakr al-Hakim*," Abu Jafaar, a 22-year-old engineer, exclaimed Friday near the Imam Ali Mosque. He was referring to the Tehran-based leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution In Iraq.
He called Mr. Khoei an "infidel," who had stolen money from a seminary in Najaf to set up his charitable foundation in London. "You know when they stabbed him, thousands of dollars were found on his body hidden under his robe," Mr. Jafaar said...
...If Iraq is eventually to have a democratically elected government, analysts say it is critical for Washington that the Shiite majority be closer to the United States than to Iran, which has been ruled by Shiite clergy since the Islamic Revolution there overthrew the shah in 1979.
Pottery lessons
Donald Rumsfeld is an embarassment to civilization. The stupidity of the defense secretary's alleged remark -- on seeing video of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum -- that he didn't "know there were that many vases in Iraq" only goes to show that the defense secretary shouldn't run Iraq. Maybe he can take up pottery when he retires. He has no clue.
The archaeological ruins and art of Mesopotamia (covering several millenia) are of much more value to world history than much of what has been produced in this country since the arrival of Columbus. Not preventing the wholesale destruction of the collection (something that could have been done with a platoon or two) is a form of vandalism on the scale of the removal of the Parthenon friezes by Lord Elgin, or the pillaging of Byzantium by the Fourth Crusaders in 1204. Or the Mongols who levelled Abbasid Baghdad in 1258. Two years later they were decisively defeated at Ain Jalut by the Mamelukes, mercenaries from the Black Sea area, and the horde went home. [It is said that in Europe Te Deum masses were given to thank God for granting this victory -- a very unusual event, as Christians rarely found themselves allied with Muslims against a common enemy. The Mamelukes went on to rules Egypt until 1798].
I only hope that when looted items are offered to sale to Americans in Iraq (civilians or military) -- as they inevitably will be -- that some have the decency to return them. The argument of conquerors and "acquirers" such as Lord Elgin, who shipped the Parthenon friezes to London where they are still, has always been that "we can take better care of this stuff than you can." Bullshit, as Mr Rumsfeld has so eloquently demonstrated.
Saturday, Apr 12, 2003
Six Points
WNYC's Brian Lehrer has six points for a post-war antiwar movement to put to the US Government. They're not online yet:
1. large-scale humanitarian aid to Iraq now, internationally administered;
2. a public plan for real democracy in Iraq;
3. details of the "road-map for Middle East (i.e. Israeli-Palestinian) peace" announced last month;
4. addressing the short-comings of American-backed regimes in the Arab world (Egypt and Daudi Arabia in particular);
5. a pledge of no more pre-emptive wars -- i.e. Iraq was a special case;
6. announcing strict limits to US profits from Iraqi oil; i.e. a sunset provision on any American administration of the Iraqi oilfields;
I didn't get it all, but at least it's different from the unrealistic "Troops Out Now" line of such groups as International Answer...
Why We Don't Fight
Mosul abandoned to looters...Kurds pull out of Kirkuk as Americans prepare to arrive...It's not over, the President says, until General Franks tell him that "the certain objectives I've set out" have been reached. But we are already hearing a lot of spin on how the war was won -- this is a culture that loves to hear from the winners, buy their books, the souvenirs, get stuff on ebay...
The Pentagon line is that there's a new way: new technologies have revolutionized warfare. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they (as the English say) -- and it's probably true up to a point -- but it's also a strategic: intimidating any potential enemies by making yourself appear invincible.
There are two more traditional reasons for the way things turned out the way they did: old-fashioned heavy bombing "softened up" troops, just like in 1991. And then there's oldest reason of all: the Iraqis didn't want to fight if they were left a way out. A Republican Guard colonel, at home in Baghdad, tells BBC's Andrew Gilligan.
"From the beginning, I think that the balance of the air power is not equal. Something hit us. The aircraft... destroyed our tanks and equipment," he said.
He said he did not force anyone to stay with the unit. "Every day, one, two, three. Every day one, two, three. Everyone he want to go, leave his gun and go away," he said...
He revealed that Iraqi soldiers had not wanted to fight in the streets of Baghdad because it was their city and home to their families...
In the end, he said, the officers gathered round a fire and decided it was not worth fighting. The unit's troops changed into civilian clothes which they had with them, and went home.
Our correspondent says he increasingly believes Iraqi officers followed orders, but did not really want Saddam Hussein to win and so did not make any serious attempts to defend Iraq.
Of course, he would say that. But it has the ring of truth. The war was "easy" because Iraqis didn't want a fight. Keep it in mind when planning "rolling regime change" in other lands.
Could tunnel-ridden Tikrit on the other hand become another Waco [pdf]...i.e. a standoff siege followed by a fire? Correspondents will be on hand to let us know.
I'm Free
Defense Secretary D Rumsfeld on the days of looting and violence in Baghdad:
It's untidy. And freedom is untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.
What can one say, except..how true, how true.
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.
