Topic: Iraq
Making Iraq a Model Democracy

A few posts down I was discussing our invasion and occupation of Iraq and how this was a neoconservative project of installing our idea of what we think they should have as a government, and what its policies should be. That would be a secular democracy, with a deregulated totally privatized capitalist economy, few if any social services (to require personal responsibility), friendly to multi-national corporations like Wal-Mart, Starbucks and KFC (and Exxon-Mobil and Arco and the rest), and so on and so forth. Schools would be private, not public. Abortion would be totally illegal.

This is the standard Republican list of how things should be in a well-run nation. Iraq is kind of a "great experiment" in creating this ideal state.

What about freedom of the press?

Well, our president doesn't like the press, "the media" as it were. He claims they filter the truth. Bush told Brit Hume on Fox News that he never reads any newspapers, nor does he watch any news on television. He relies on "unfiltered" news from two of his key subordinates, who summarize events for him.

Given that view of the media, what would a "free press" look like in a nation we get to build pretty much from scratch?

Well, the press would be "responsible" - not reporting things that would cause people to lose faith in their government. You know, kind of like Fox News, only much more disciplined.

You don't believe it? The government we have selected and installed in Iraq has now warned both CNN and the BBC they will face sanctions if they continue reporting things that raise too many questions.

Read this from the Toronto Star:

In another sign of a harder line coming from Baghdad, the Washington-appointed Iraqi Governing Council pulled the plug on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network yesterday, saying it would no longer be allowed to report from Baghdad until it agrees to stop "encouraging terrorism."

Its crime appeared to be airing an audio tape purported to have come from deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It aired the audio tape, in which a voice calls for a holy war against occupying troops on Nov. 16. The CIA said it could not confirm the voice was, in fact, Saddam's.

"I would like to you know that we are serious in fighting terrorism and the Governing Council will exert more efforts," Jalal Talabani, current head of the council, told reporters in Baghdad. "We will have an active political, media and military role against terrorism."

CNN reported yesterday that it and the BBC had also been warned that they, too, could face sanctions if they did not toe the line.

Well, the current administration hasn't yet been totally able to reign in the press here. I'd say they're three-quarters there, but still face some uppity reporting here and there.

But now we have a model for how it should be done. The "it" here is how the government should work with the press. A short leash.

This is from a section of a longer item -
Resolve won't be shaken: Bush
Vows to avenge soldiers' slayings
$401 billion U.S. defence bill signed
Tim Harper, The Toronto Star, posted Nov. 25, 2003. 06:32 AM (EST)

Topic: Oddities
Film Notes:

For those who like the hot chocolate at Cafe Angelina in Paris (226, rue de Rivoli), or like movies about Paris, consider this news from l'Agence France-Presse (AFP).

New Guide Reveals Paris Settings for Famous Films

PARIS, Nov 25 (AFP) - For people curious to find "Amelie"'s cafe or the little Paris bistro where Audrey Hepburn and Walter Matthau grabbed a bite to eat in "Charade", a new tourist guide makes it all easy.

"Paris Vu au Cinema" (Paris, as seen at the movies) digs into the French capital's rich history as the setting for many films to give readers step-by-step itineraries to finding the real-life addresses glimpsed on the big screen.

Thus the book points the way to the charming Montmartre locales inhabited by Amelie in the 2001 French movie of the same title - locales that have already drawn thousands of Americans, Japanese and Germans struck by the impossibly magical Paris depicted.

Other harder finds can also be traced, including the Cochon a l'Oreille restaurant graced by Hepburn in the 1963 film "Charade", or the museum that stood in for the presidential palace in the French movie version of "Absolutely Fabulous".

Many of the 300 films referenced in the guide are titles only the French know and love, but tracking them down can be rewarding, such as those tracing Sophie Marceau's footsteps in "La Boum 2" to Cafe Angelina - a gourmet's paradise specialising in a divine hot chocolate.

There's also the restaurant l'Escargot Montorgueil that served as the model for the studio decor for Shirley MacLaine's turn as a prostitute in "Irma la Douce", and the commercial yacht used by director Tim Burton in his yet-to-be-released movie "The Big Fish".

The guide's writers, Francois de Saint-Exupery and Marie-Christine Vincent, plan to follow up the book with a whole series about films set in other regions of France.

Buy the book here (site is in French) - it's 14,25 ? (93,47 FRF).

PARIS VU AU CINEMA
de : Marie-Christine Vincent et Fran?ois de Saint-Exup?ry
Editeur : Movie Planet
Genre : Guide Touristique
Date de Parution : 15/11/2003
ISBN : 291524300X - EAN : 9782915243000

Topic: Iraq
Okay, choose sides. Coulter and Ed Gillespie or this fellow in The Nation today.

Ann Coulter at Northwestern University. From a recent lecture on the war and what it's all about:

"This is a religious war, not against Islam but for Christianity, for a Christian nation. When this nation was founded, there was nothing like it. Our founders said there is a God and we are all equal before God. The ideal of equality and tolerance is like nothing that has ever existed in the world before. That, too, is a Christian value. The concept of equality, especially when it comes to gender equality, was not invented by Gloria Steinem. It was invented by Jesus Christ. As long as people look long enough, they will always come to Christianity."

David Corn in The Nation today: Ann Coulter's Religious War - Republicans and conservatives say the darnest things

"Are equality and tolerance historical Christian values? (Note she does not bother to use the more PR-friendly and inclusive phrase "Judeo-Christian values.") Ask the victims of the Inquisition or the Crusades. America's Christian founders may have preached equality, but they hardly practiced it. See slavery. Did the `ideal of equality and tolerance' only appear with the birth of the United States? Check out the preceding Age of Enlightenment. (Locke celebrated a state of nature in which people were happy, tolerant, free and equal.) And Jesus invented feminism? Then why did the `Christian nation' of the United States deny women the right to vote? Why has the Catholic Church refused to ordain female priests? Why do certain fundamentalist Christians insist that women submit to their husbands?"

Ah, all these pesky questions! So some mistakes were made. Big deal.

"And where currently is this tolerance that Coulter speaks of? Her Christian supremacist comrades - such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell - blast away at Islam and other religions. General William Boykin, a top Pentagon official, derided Islam while giving talks before evangelical Christians. And when George W. Bush last week commented that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, fundamentalist Christians howled in protest. The Reverend Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a frequent visitor to the White House, said, `The Christian God encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The Muslim god appears to value the opposite. The personalities of each god are evident in the cultures, civilizations and dispositions of the peoples that serve them.' How's that for tolerance?"

Yeah, well, at least Bush got his theology right. Not only the same God, but Christians, Jews and Muslims all claim to be descended from Abraham.

"Robertson has even accused Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists of representing "the spirit of the Antichrist" and repeatedly called Hinduism `devil worship.' And Coulter showed little tolerance when she wrote of anti-American Muslims in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, `We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.'"

Well, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists might be evil. One never knows. I always wondered about Baptists. But is Hinduism devil worship? There is no God, per se, in Hinduism, nor is there a devil. It's more of an ethic, not one Robertson likes very much, I suppose. And Ann didn't really mean that "kill their leaders" stuff did she? Well, we are working on Saddam and Osama - working to find and capture them - but all our guys say killing them is just fine. No one is talking about making them in evangelical Methodists. Ann can get a bit excited.

As for the Republican Party?

"Now, we turn to the GOP. Rather than theologize the war, the Republican National Party and its chairman Ed Gillespie have politicized it. There's nothing wrong with that. Bush's conduct of the war on terrorism and his actions in Iraq should be electoral issues. He should run on his record, and there would be nothing unfair about GOPers telling voters to vote Republican if they're satisfied with developments in Iraq and encouraged by Bush's handling of the terrorist threat. But that's not what the Republicans are doing. In its latest--and much-noticed--television ad, the Republican Party claims, `Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists.... Some call for us to retreat, putting our national security in the hands of others.'"

So saying the administration could be wrong about something means I support Saddam and Osama and think nothing should be done? Hey, we're not attacking the administration for attacking the terrorists. We're attacking the administration for doing a half-assed job, alienating most everyone but the Brits, and making things a whole lot worse. And also for lying a bit.

Topic: Iraq
I'm glad I'm not a teacher these days, but it's even harder to be a teacher in the new, free Iraq.

Here's a UPI report that U.S. occupation administrator Paul Bremer recently fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as punishment for their former Baath Party membership.

Analysis: Iraqi CPA fires 28,000 Teachers
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 6:40:58 PM EST By RICHARD SALE, UPI Intelligence Correspondent

America's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, last week fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as political punishment for their former membership in the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baath Party, fueling anti-U.S. resistance on the ground, administration officials have told United Press International.

A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high." He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total.

The Central Command spokesman attributed the firings to "tough, new anti-Baath Party measures" recently passed by the U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of administration hawks in the White House and Pentagon.

"It's a piece of real stupidity on the part of the neocons to try and equate the Baath Party with the Nazis," said former CIA official Larry Johnson. "You have to make a choice: Either you are going to deal with Iraqis who are capable of rebuilding and running the country or you're going to turn Iraq over to those who can't."

Facing a spreading insurgency, this was "not the time to turn out into the street more recruits for the anti-U.S. insurgency," Johnson said. ...

[ ... see link for full text ... ]

This probably doesn't need comment. I guess these were bad people who deserved punishment. But it does seem an odd way to rebuild a nation. The conservative right has always inveighed against public schools, saying vouchers for private schools made more sense that a "socialistic" public school system - but they prefer unregulated home schooling over all other kinds of education. Is Iraq part of a grand experiment to see how this works in building a country? We'll see.

Also from the UPI item: "'It's an incredible error,' said former senior CIA official and Middle East expert Graham Fuller. `In Germany, after World War II, the de-nazification program was applied with almost surgical precision in order not to antagonize German public opinion. In the case of Iraq, ideologues don't seem to grasp the seriousness of their acts.''"

Ah, but I expect they do. This is a show of force, to put these people in their place, to show who's boss now.

And the treasonous US State Department, the guys who question the Rumsfeld approach and still stubbornly believe in diplomacy and all that kind of thing, have a problem here:

"'The anti-Baath edicts, all of which are ideological nonsense, have been an outright disaster,' a State Department official said. `Whatever happened to politics as the art of the possible?'"

"'All we have done is to have alienated one of the most politically important portions of the Iraqi population,' another administration official said."

Whatever happened to politics as the art of the possible? That's for wimps and sissies, one would assume.

Consider this also: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld months ago moved to get rid of sixteen of twenty State Department people because they were seen to be "Arabists" - overly sympathetic to Iraqis. One of our guys was quoted in last week's Newsweek as saying the vetting process for Iraqis "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion" - and that's important in the Bush administration. When Secretary of State Colin Powell protested directly to Rumsfeld, he ignored Powell, the Newsweek source said.

But things are going well. Things are going well.

Topic: Iraq
The Moral Case for the War: It Was a Moral Imperative
"A superpower has moral imperatives? Really?"

So Scottish Nationalist MP Pete Wishart last Wednesday in the weekly open session in the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister has to answer questions posed by the opposition, was pestering Tony Blair about where these damned weapons of mass destruction might be - these weapons of mass destruction that had to be eliminated, thus justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and justifying installing our idea of what we think they should have as a government and what its policies should be.

Blair's response? Change the subject. "What everyone should realise is that if people like the honourable gentleman had had their way, Saddam Hussein, his sons and his henchmen would still be terrorising people in Iraq. I find it quite extraordinary that he thinks that that would be a preferable state of affairs."

There's a lot of that going around - that "change the subject" business. Blair hears the question and implicitly dismisses it as really the wrong question, because even if he said something many months about what you're asking, you have it all wrong because what he said many months ago is kind of old news - not worth talking about. So he answers a question you didn't ask because, well, you asked a foolish question, you twit!

George Bush, by the way, cancelled his address to the House of Commons last week, as these guy do get a bit unruly what with impertinent questions and jeering and all that. Bush's advisors did the right thing in canceling the talk. It would not have been pretty at all.

But as for what are the real questions folks should be asking, and leaders gladly answering - because all this is easy to explain and quite defensible - well, herein lies the problem: no one is asking good questions, much less giving good answers.

"...in debating the war, those of us who opposed it find ourselves drawn into this fairytale. We are obliged to argue about the relative moral merits of leaving Saddam in place or deposing him, while we know, though we are seldom brave enough to say it, that the moral issue is a distraction. The genius of the hawks has been to oblige us to accept a fiction as the reference point for debate."

George Monbiot has a column in today's Guardian (UK) in which he says things that have occurred to us all, but does so in that dry British fashion - terse, to the point and in well-formed, elegant sentences, in logical progression. He is no Ann Coulter.

You will find it here:

The moral myth
George Monbiot, Tuesday November 25, 2003, The Guardian (UK)

I particularly like his opening:

"It is no use telling the hawks that bombing a country in which al-Qaida was not operating was unlikely to rid the world of al-Qaida. It is no use arguing that had the billions spent on the war with Iraq been used instead for intelligence and security, atrocities such as last week's attacks in Istanbul may have been prevented. As soon as one argument for the invasion and occupation of Iraq collapses, they switch to another. Over the past month, almost all the warriors - Bush, Blair and the belligerents in both the conservative and the liberal press - have fallen back on the last line of defence, the argument we know as `the moral case for war'."

This is good:

"I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.

"But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war.

"A superpower does not have moral imperatives. It has strategic imperatives. Its purpose is not to sustain the lives of other people, but to sustain itself. Concern for the rights and feelings of others is an impediment to the pursuit of its objectives. It can make the moral case, but that doesn't mean that it is motivated by the moral case."

As for the current White House and its war policies:

"When it suits its purposes to append a moral justification to its actions, it will do so. When it is better served by supporting dictatorships like Uzbekistan's, expansionist governments like Ariel Sharon's and organisations which torture and mutilate and murder, like the Colombian army and (through it) the paramilitary AUC, it will do so.

"It armed and funded Saddam when it needed to; it knocked him down when it needed to. In neither case did it act because it cared about the people of his country. It acted because it cared about its own interests. The US, like all superpowers, does have a consistent approach to international affairs. But it is not morally consistent; it is strategically consistent."

You might want to read the whole thing.