It can hardly be stressed too much that this argument (which a few years back I would probably have agreed with) only holds if there is no civil war.

It should also be stressed that comparisons with the British and American civil wars are misleading. Geographically, there was no question but that the US and the UK would actually stick together as countries. But Iraq might well break in three, in the same way that India broke into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. A quick look at the death tollls this process involved (and how long it took) might be instructive.

It took me a bit to realize you were needling me. But seriously, though, your very post gets to my 2) point above:

I’ll quote it again:

he complete unwillingness to engage the invasion’s larger context or to deal in any way with global politics, economics, the way politics actually function in third world countries (indeed in any countries), etc.. The invasion can’t and doesn’t exist in a kind of moral vacuum of your choosing and simply cannot be reduced to the conflict you want it reduced to.

Now there’s this group in Washington called the Project for the New American Century. Google them. They’re really quite explicit about their aims. Oh, and a good chunk of them are high ranking Bush administration officials. Kinda diff’t than the SWP. Indeed, I don’t think I need to tell you what nation in the world has upwards of 40 military bases in the region. Now an argument, a good argument even, can be made that US hegemony in the Middle East is a postive good for the world. People like the PNAC folks, Niall Ferguson, Tom Friedman, and others have made this argument quite clearly. I don’t necessarily buy it – indeed, at best, I see US hegemony as a kind of least bad option (from an American point of view). But lets be a bit more realistic from now on.

Ben P: they already seem to have spun their magic on you:

“historians are going to view this invasion as an example of a warmed over 19th century liberal imperialism” + “the larger US hegemonic project”

I might be going a bit far here. What I am certain of is that this will not be viewed as a “good conflict.” As it happens, I also don’t believe it is the “complete disaster” that many, strangely, on the anti-war side already see it as well as much of the American pro-war punditocracy (Friedman, Ignatius, etc.. – “losing in Iraq would be unthinkable!”) if the US doesn’t somehow “stay the course” and “turn things around.” Indeed, Iraq will muddle through as a poor, corrupt, illiberal, but at least somewhat democratic society for the time to come, with the center of the country essentially remaining a war zone. What you see right now is what you get: and I don’t really see – from a completely amoral perspective – how that is a “disaster” for the US.

Indeed, maybe it is reading Friedman that makes me think of the 19th c.. Tom Friedman embarasses himself every time he talks about Iraq: the guy basically treats the people there as juvenile savages who have to be “taught democracy.”

The CIA’s links with Saddam are well known and I simply can’t be bothered linking to them. They are well known to everyone who knows anything about the region…er…except you. Please read a book. Any book will do.

Incidentally, so you actually are claiming to have visited Iraq? Sorry in the depths of my ignorance, I can’t penetrate the awesome layers of your irony.

(Why are the pro-warriors so keen to impress on everyone how brilliantly intelligent and knowledgeable they are, in the face of much contrary evidence? Do you have to have have your self-deprecatory faculties (not to mention your sense of humour and basic sense of intelligence), surgically removed before you can join this tiny (and rapidly shrinking) club?)

Ok, not so much ignorant as out and out delusional.

If you want to learn about the ‘facts on the ground in Iraq’, why don’t you go there and find out, incidentally?

I am impressed with your ability to trace my ip address, and cross-reference that to passport records. Impressive work, how long did it take you to do all that?

Or, could it be, you are talking with certainty about something that you have no way of knowing, and somehow confusing your delusions with fact?

If so, I rather see a pattern.

soru

All of which provides reasons for wanting the occupying forces out as soon as possible – zero American military in Iraq in six months would be cool – but to remember that America will be engaged in this area as long as American cars are run on gasoline. The goal of the antiwar movement, in my opinion, has to be integrated into thinking about American relevance in the region. And that means thinking about how America, Iran and Syria can achieve détente.

I have no idea where point 3 comes from (in fact I don’t really understand it) but my argument about Iraq is very similar to John Pilger’s argument about Cambodia. Are the Iraqis all evil armed nihilists? Hardly. BUT, with the psychological, sociological and political pressures brought about by the American installed and run Saddamite regime, then the first war, then the sanctions, then the second war, invasion, and occupation, and now the three (or is it four?) way civil war currently raging (in which the US is an active participant, and is not in any way ‘above’ the conflict), the political situation may disintegrate to the extent that extremists may be able to seize power: in the same way that the Khmer Rouge were able to seize power as a direct result of the American invasion of Cambodia.

Over excitable pro-warriors might have tempered their enthusiasm for invasion if they had spent a little less time frothing at the mouth about ‘Islamists’ and a bit more time taking a long hard look at what happened to the last three (major) countries the US invaded: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

If you want to learn about the ‘facts on the ground in Iraq’, why don’t you go there and find out, incidentally?

1. Bush is rather remarkably lacking in basic managerial competence when compared to almost all other recent US presidents.

2. Hitchens sometimes gets rather carried away with himself and talks a bunch of crap.

3. The people of Iraq are irredeemably violent nihilists or something, and so cannot possibly ever come to any political settlement that can be traced back to the invasion.

You can argue 1 and 2 as strongly as you like, and I won’t dissent, but I don’t see how from them you can deduce 3.

The sayings of political commentators in the USA are unrelated to facts on the ground in Iraq in much the same way that tea-leaves are unrelated to whether you will meet a tall dark handsome stranger.

soru

Ben P: they already seem to have spun their magic on you:

“historians are going to view this invasion as an example of a warmed over 19th century liberal imperialism” + “the larger US hegemonic project”

And are you seriously arguing that George Bush, given a blank map of the world, would have been able to identify where Iraq was in, say, 2002? (Here’s a clue: the answer is ‘no’). Are you going on to argue that George Bush (“But Iraq has — have got people there that are willing to kill, and they’re hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future.” —George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005) has or had a profound knowledge of Middle Eastern history? Does his obvious ignorance of these matters give you ‘a certain tendency to think the opposite’ when he argues that ‘we’ are ‘winning’ in Iraq? If not, why not?

In any case, I really don’t care what you think. That’s the great thing about science: issues of IQ, gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc. are all irrelevant.

Either your predictions are correct, or else they aren’t. Either things will get better in Iraq.

Or else they won’t. After all: “Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?” —George W. Bush, at the white House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005.

Is it ok if I freely translate that as ‘I know nothing about the history of the middle east, and could not find, say, Algeria, Lebanon, Iran, Syria or Oman on a map’?

Predictions, especially when expressed as certanties, from those so profoundly ignorant of what they are talking about do have a certain tendency to make me think the opposite.

soru

Incidentally, I do not have to tell any lies to make this point. I just have to turn on the news.

However, a few weeks ago you were foolish enough to give your own idea of how Iraq will turn out by 2009, so we will all be able to check back then and find out whose predictions were correct, won’t we?

To my mind, this judgement of the likely future has rather more to commend it as a prediction:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1807088,00.html

I have no doubt that, providing we can keep the training and the security sector reform going, and providing some of the reconstruction will continue at the present rate, we’ll reach a point where we can see an Iraq that is self-governing, providing its own security and has a democracy of the form that the Iraqis want

Now there’s some caveats and weasel-words in there, but not as many outright lies as would have to be used by anyone who tried to say that, if things did work out that way, the war was an unmitigated disaster completely without justification or value.

soru

having read only two of your comments I’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t read anything carefully enough to make a judgement.