As seen from Just Above Sunset

Tuesday, 6 April 2004

Topic: Iraq

Things looking bad in Iraq over the last three days?
Oh heck, it'll only get worse.
British Pessimism Here!

Robert Fisk writing in The Independent (UK), Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Reaping the Whirlwind
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
Reprinted in Counterpunch (US)

Well, this fellow is a Brit so he thinks back many years to how this all went way back when the Brits faced similar problems in the same place. After reporting on our siege of Fallujah he adds this:

The British took three years to turn both the Sunnis and the Shias into their enemies in 1920. The Americans are achieving it in just under a year.

Anarchy has been a condition of our occupation from the very first days when we let the looters and arsonists destroy Iraq's infrastructure and history. But that lawlessness is now coming back to haunt us. Anarchy is what we are now being plunged into in Iraq, among a people with whom we share no common language, no common religion and no common culture.

Officially, Mr Bremer and his president are standing tall, claiming they will not "tolerate" violence and those who oppose democracy, but occupation officials--in anticipation of a far more violent insurrection--have been privately discussing the legalities of martial law. And although Mr Bremer and President George Bush are publicly insisting that the notional "handover" of Iraq's "sovereignty" will still take place on 30 June, legal experts attached to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council have also been considering a delay of further months. Many Iraqis are now asking if the Americans want disaster in Iraq.

No, we certainly don't. We seem to be getting it anyway.

We're just hoping for the best and doing what we do - when attacked, counter that attack. Try to restore order, or establish order. Knock some sense into these people.

And all over the press today Bush's team is spreading the word - this is temporary and localized (sort of) and the result of the efforts of one bad man, this Sadr fellow, who we want to arrest for murder anyway. Get him behind bars, or quite dead and show his body to the world press for everyone to photograph, and things will settle down. Remember Saddam's two sons? Remember Saddam himself all scruffy being checked for lice?

So it's simply a matter of removing the one bad guy. And we're told that's the truth of what's happening.

Fisk doesn't agree with Bush and Bremer - and adds this detail -

... Yet they are still not confronting that truth. For the past nine nights, for example, the main US base close to Baghdad airport--and the area around the terminals--has come under mortar fire.

But the occupying powers have kept this secret. "Things are getting very bad and they're going to get worse," a special forces officer said close to the airport yesterday. "But no one is saying that--either because they don't know or because they don't want you to know."

Our government not understanding the situation? Many don't want to believe that. Our government not wanting us to know the situation? Many don't want to believe that either.

Time to chant... It's only one bad guy. It's only one bad guy. It's only one bad guy. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home. (Now click your heels to return to Kansas.)

So what about this one bad guy?

As for Sadr, he will, no doubt, try to surround himself with squads of gunmen and supporters in the hope that the Americans will not dare to shoot their way in to him.

Or he will go underground and we'll have another "enemy of democracy" to bestialise in the approach to the American elections. Or--much more serious perhaps--his capture may unleash far more violence from his supporters.

And all this because Mr Bremer decided to ban Sadr's trashy 10,000-circulation weekly newspaper for "inciting violence."

Well, that's not ALL, surely? A trigger perhaps....

And sometimes you have to shut down newspapers - to allow democracy to work. No, that can't be right, can it?

This is beyond the reach of irony.

Posted by Alan at 21:16 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Topic: Oddities

Language in the service of snarky irony...

Back in February, Lambert over at the blog Corrente worked up some anagrams for the Bush campaign's 2004 slogan -

"Steady Leadership in a Time of Change."

If you rearrange the letters you get these -

? I'm a hypertense, death-dealing fiasco
? I am a deathless deafening hypocrite
? I am a tone-deaf, highly-paid erectness
? I'm the fanatic, grandiose sleepyhead
? Oafishly indecent pig's ear meathead
? Slimy, cheapish deafening toadeater
? Oedipean cheating defames trashily
? Flag hype, eh? Administration decease
? I feel anger! I say, shitcan the mad dope
? The famed ace is lying, Oedipean trash

You might want to drop by this anagram server and work out some of your own.

Posted by Alan at 20:28 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Topic: Iraq

Piling on...

You will find, the Rant of the Day over at COUNTERSPIN.

It goes like this:

SOME THOUGHTS ON IRAQ: I want to make something clear. I regard al-Sadr as a thug, and a fascist. I have no sympathy for him, whatsoever.

In fact, the faction he commands is guilty of, among other things, ethnic cleansing.

But, the rise of al-Sadr, or someone just like him, was predictable. The belief that a country as diverse, and psychologically scarred as Iraq could be reconstructed and governed effectively without hundreds of thousands of troops, and a better grasp of the culture and sensitivities of the populace, was just suicidally stupid.

The whole June 30th deadline was an artificial construct from the beginning. Designed, primarily, to give George W. Bush political cover going into the election. So he could show "progress" being made in Iraq.

Even if the hand-over of sovereignty is largely symbolic.

I have made this point before, but I believe it's necessary to state it again.

If you are someone who supported this war, and want to see Iraq brought out of the darkness...you MUST get rid of George W. Bush in November. You have no choice. He's absolutely incapable of fixing the problem. He's not flexible. He's not temperate. He's not PATIENT. He's not humble. He's not willing to admit mistakes, and take responsibility.

It may turn out that John Kerry is no better. But that is a guess at this point. Not a certainty. Bush is a certainty. And we know he's a failure at this. And he will continue to fail. At some point, you must put aside your political goggles, and look at this from a realistic point of view. How best to solve the problem and advance U.S. security and interests.

You may have agreed with Bush's decision to invade Iraq. But it is very clear that he has no idea how to finish the job. Abstract declarations that we will not "cut and run" from Iraq mean NOTHING.

What is the plan? What is the goal? What is the roadmap? Where are we going? How much will this cost in lives and treasure? Has he answered ANY of these essential questions in earnest? Or has he mouthed nothing but soundbites and tough-sounding rhetoric?

I sometimes get the impressions that people are so invested in this war and its aftermath, that they refuse to listen to reason, or accept basic reality and facts.

They are more worried about having to admit a colossal error in judgment...either about the advisability of the war itself, or in their unwavering and sycophantic support of George W. Bush.

But, admitting that you were wrong, and that you want to fix things, is a sign of STRENGTH, not weakness.

And, adhering to the preposterous notion that any criticism of Bush or his incompetent and dishonest handling of this whole policy is somehow lending "aid and comfort" to our enemies is worse than weak. It's evil. It tells us that you are devoid of any moral compass or willingness to argue on the merits. It says that you are conniving, sniveling cowards, unworthy of respect or notice.

It tells us that you would rather doom, this country to a tragedy in Iraq, than admit you are wrong. That is an unpardonable sin. And, in my view, the height of treachery to your nation and your fellow citizens.

So, rather than fighting the enemies of our republic, it is you, not we, who have become their enablers.

Your idiocy, arrogance and obstinacy is the crack cocaine upon which they are addicted.

And it contains hyperlinks to back up any claims.

Curious.

As I said in yesterday's post - now what?

Pull out now? Let them be happy we're gone, then later fight it all out in a giant civil war among themselves - while the Kurds sit up north and laugh their asses off? We'd look bad, and not get the oil.

Bring in the UN? They've already said no, we should get things stabilized first. They lost enough people last year, and one of their best, when we couldn't protect their Baghdad headquarters building. Boom. No thank you.

NATO? They've already said no, as they're close to being overcommitted in Afghanistan, helping us out there. That well is dry. They don't have the warm bodies to lend us.

It doesn't matter. Anyone can suggest anything. Bush has committed us to pacifying Iraq by brute force and turning over the place to someone or other on June 30 of this year. And that man does NOT change his mind. He calls that leadership.

Kerry may win, and he's already said we cannot walk away from this. But he may be able to build an international coalition - a real one this time - to try to figure out what to do now. And he may be a slightly more flexible man, willing to consider all options, willing to listen to others without sneering at them. We'll see. If he wins.

Right now. Buckle up. This will be a rough ride.

Posted by Alan at 09:37 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Monday, 5 April 2004

Topic: Iraq

Sunday, Bloody Sunday... Events beyond Fallujah

Matt comments from up near Canandaigua -

Fallujah is the graveyard of America...

Or as political commentator Mark Shields put it - "Fallujah in '04 is not Paris in '44."

It seems to me there is only one principled stance with regard to Iraq: US troops should get out.

We are an invading and occupying force. Straightening out the mess we have made there should be turned over to the UN. The US should pay for it. More particularly, Cheney, Bush and Halliburton should pay for it.

But that won't happen.

What I fear will happen is that John Kerry will get elected. He won't have the nerve to pull US troops out. It will become his war. It will be the reasons he is unable to cement a left-center coalition in this country. And he will serve one term.

Well, in the middle of last week I thought the Fallujah episode was the tipping point in the war, as did so many others. What were we to do now?

We are now in the process of cordoning off the city - a cordon sanitaire, allowing only food and medical supplies to pass trough. Seems we are soon going to go in "in force" and clean up the place, whatever that means. I guess we'll create a number of new martyrs and many more angry insurgents. And I mentioned I did come across a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times (not available on the web) that argued that we incinerated hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and we fire-bombed Tokyo killing maybe even more civilians that we did with the nuclear weapons, and we fire-bombed Dresden, and, well, after all, we WON. Why not do the same to Fallujah? A lot of that talk is floating around the web, particularly over at TWONHALL.COM and other "right" sites.

To repeat myself... These are options? The first - the cordon sanitaire - won't satisfy our need for closure, as it is often put. Closure? Vengeance? Whatever. The second, suggested by that fellow from Santa Monica in the Times seems a bit over-the-top. And there would be, with that apocalyptic response, some diplomatic fallout (no kidding!) and further calls for revenge from the bad guys.

But then there was this last weekend - Bloody Sunday. We lost eight or ten more guys. What's that about?

Well, the business in Fallujah was the Sunni folks trying to suggest we get out of town, now. We expected that, really. But this last weekend was the Shiite folks, an entirely different crew, suggesting we get out of town, now, or sooner. And the Shiite folks were, up until this weekend, being halfway reasonable. Their leader, Sistani, was a pain in the ass at times, but trying to work things out with us. His rival, Moktada al Sadr, with a private army - the Mehdi Army of ten or twenty thousand - gave us this weekend's uprising. The whole southern half of Iraq was (is) rising up. Damn.

With three months to go before sovereignty is handed over to a provisional government, things spiral further out of control. It was clear that elements in the Sunni minority would resist the reconstruction in one way or another - and we were told by the Bush crew this Sunni Triangle was unusual, an anomaly, the single part of Iraq where there would be trouble. But we could handle it.

Now we also have the extremists among the Shiites, under Moktada al Sadr, unleashing a war of resistance against the occupation. Riots nationwide. And this morning we announced we plan to arrest Moktada al Sadr for murder, if we can find him. Last week we shut down his newspaper for being anti-American. Now we have an APB out to get him.

Isn't putting any Islamic cleric in jail and humiliating him somehow... counterproductive?

All choices now seem counterproductive.

And if this is the state of affairs now, what will happen to "civil order" when our military guys take an even more passive role after June 30?

As one commentator says, and that would be Andrews Sullivan, a right-side Bush guy most of the time ...

More and more, it seems hard to avoid inferring that we made one huge mistake: not in liberating Iraq, but in attempting to occupy it with relatively few troops. You have to have unquestioned security before any sort of democracy can begin to function. But, under the Rumsfeld plan, we never had the numbers or resources to do precisely that. So the extraordinary gains that have been made since the invasion are constantly at risk of being overwhelmed by violence.

Yep. Joe Biden and Richard Lugar - the Democratic and Republican senate foreign affairs heads, are saying send more troops and screw then June 30 deadline. Bush this afternoon said the June 30 deadline is firm. He won't change his mind on that.

So we apply more brute force.

And as I commented here regarding Fallujah on Thursday, 1 April 2004 -

Perhaps there are other, non-military options...

I'm not sure we do those any longer - that political, diplomatic stuff. We don't believe in that any longer, or at least our government doesn't believe in such things any longer. Just as Ariel Sharon has brought peace to the West Bank and Gaza, and made the Palestinians love and respect him and leave Israel safe, so we will do the same in Iraq.

Mao knew that power comes from the barrel of a gun, and Ariel Sharon knows peace comes from targeted assassinations, and we know that Jeffersonian democracy comes from the belly of a B-52 (The BIG Pacifier) whether you want it right now or not.

Well, perhaps these angry Iraqis will have an attitude adjustment. It could happen.

It is a reflection of my own bad attitude that I'm skeptical about such a change of heart.

But at the White House they have faith this could, maybe, possibly, perhaps happen. I guess you do have to admire their optimism.

Yeah, well, this from a fellow writing from Baghdad this afternoon...

A coup d'etat is taking place in Iraq at the moment. Al-Shu'la, Al-Hurria, Thawra (Sadr city), and Kadhimiya (all Shi'ite neighbourhoods in Baghdad) have been declared liberated from occupation. Looting has already started at some places downtown, a friend of mine just returned from Sadun street and he says Al-Mahdi militiamen are breaking stores and clinics open and also at Tahrir square just across the river from the Green Zone. News from other cities in the south indicate that Sadr followers (tens of thousands of them) have taken over IP stations and governorate buildings in Kufa, Nassiriya, Ammara, Kut, and Basrah. Al-Jazeera says that policemen in these cities have sided with the Shia insurgents, which doesn't come as a surprise to me since a large portion of the police forces in these areas were recruited from Shi'ite militias and we have talked about that ages ago. And it looks like this move has been planned a long time ago.

No one knows what is happening in the capital right now. Power has been cut off in my neighbourhood since the afternoon, and I can only hear helicopters, massive explosions, and continuous shooting nearby. The streets are empty, someone told us half an hour ago that Al-Mahdi are trying to take over our neighbourhood and are being met by resistance from Sunni hardliners. Doors are locked, and AK-47's are being loaded and put close by in case they are needed. The phone keeps ringing frantically. Baghdadis are horrified and everyone seems to have made up their mind to stay home tomorrow until the situation is clear.

I have to admit that until now I have never longed for the days of Saddam, but now I'm not so sure. If we need a person like Saddam to keep those rabid dogs at bay then be it. Put Saddam back in power and after he fills a couple hundred more mass graves with those criminals they can start wailing and crying again for liberation. What a laugh we will have then. Then they can shove their filthy Hawza and marji'iya up somewhere else. I am so disappointed in Iraqis and I hate myself for thinking this way. We are not worth your trouble, take back your billions of dollars and give us Saddam again. We truly 'deserve' leaders like Saddam.

Fallujah last Wednesday, and now much of the rest of southern Iraq is falling apart - and this fellow says chaos is near in Baghdad. Great. Did you see the shots of our helicopters doing strafing runs? Cool.

We're screwed.

And check out this news report -

Immediately after the Kufa firefight, representatives arrived to consult with Sadr officials from the Badr Organization, the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and a delegation from the Dawa Party, the two most prominent Shiite parties represented on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.

But armed men from Fallujah and Baqubah -- centers of resistance in the Sunni heartland west and north of Baghdad -- also appeared at the mosque, offering support.

What's that - the Sunni and Shiite guys are hooking up? And Sadr last Friday had announced that he was opening Iraqi chapters of Hezbollah and Hamas. One big happy party.

Yep, George Bush told us he was a uniter, not a divider.

Now what?

Pull out now? Let them be happy we're gone, then later fight it all out in a giant civil war among themselves - while the Kurds sit up north and laugh their asses off? We'd look bad, and not get the oil.

Bring in the UN? They've already said no, we should get things stabilized first. They lost enough people last year, and one of their best, when we couldn't protect their Baghdad headquarters building. Boom. No thank you.

NATO? They've already said no, as they're close to being overcommitted in Afghanistan, helping us out there. That well is dry. They don't have the warm bodies to lend us.

It doesn't matter. Anyone can suggest anything. Bush has committed us to pacifying Iraq by brute force and turning over the place to someone or other on June 30 of this year. And that man does NOT change his mind. He calls that leadership.

Kerry may win, and he's already said we cannot walk away from this. But he may be able to build an international coalition - a real one this time - to try to figure out what to do now. And he may be a slightly more flexible man, willing to consider all options, willing to listen to others without sneering at them. We'll see. If he wins.

Right now. Buckle up. This will be a rough ride.

Posted by Alan at 19:41 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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Topic: The Culture

Invoking Roland Barthes can make you famous and respected and all that stuff...

I see today that the Los Angeles Times won five Pulitzer Prizes, the second most ever won by a newspaper in a single year, for coverage that included wildfires, wars and Wal-Mart. Note this - Dan Neil won the Pulitzer for criticism.

Andrew Bridges of the Associated Press adds detail:

Auto critic Dan Neil won after joining the paper in September. He previously had been a freelancer and wrote promotional stories for the advertising department of a North Carolina paper.

Neil, 44, said the Times was required to submit 10 columns to qualify for Pulitzer consideration, but at the time he had published just 16.

"They didn't have a lot to choose from," said Neil, whose reviews were singled out as "one-of-a-kind" by the Pulitzer board.

Hey, a star is born.

My readers might remember his riff on semiotics and SUV ownership and much else from reading this from Wednesday, 18 February 2004 in these pages: What would Roland Barthes drive? - and the guy is a hoot! You might recall he progressed from a discussing the Kama Sutra to an HBO series to the Toyota Prius being a both the automotive equivalent of corrective shoes and a clear declaration of sexual security.

And this on pickup trucks vis a vis Roland Barthes:

"America's love of pickups: Like the soft-handed Parisians who bought up Millet's peasant paintings, pickup poseurs would find rural virtue a different thing entirely if they spent a day in the fields.

"Barthes loved to flog the petite bourgeoisie with their own illusions."

I'm glad he won.

Oh yes, in Volume 2, Number 8 (Monday, February 23, 2004) the same item on Neil's observations appeared in Just Above Sunset Magazine. And it had this photo of a car Barthes philosophized about, with the appropriate irony, courtesy of Ric Erickson over at MetropoleParis, as he had just visited the R?tromobile show over at ParisExpo, Porte de Versailles.

Posted by Alan at 17:22 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
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