Bait and switch

When Kaplan says “the war’s architects” it’s obvious he’s never worked in the building trades.
He means the framing crew, not the architects.

The U.S. has 180,000 troops–if it needs them, and if it really needs to get more, it can. Of course, the American people may not like that (either really steep enlistment bonuses or, gasp, a draft could do the trick–or even, for that matter, really riding our existing forces harder than we have)–but that’s a different matter. If the State and Defense Departments, in cooperation with Joint Chiefs, decide it’s in our national security to make Iraq work by putting more troops in, they’ll be able to do so.

Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of silenced voices in the military right now & a lot of field & flag grade officers trying to figure out how much their career matters to them right now vs. how loudly they should engage in outright protest. It’s not an easy thing. I just spent a week in Quantico and you can definitely hear the murmuring… but you can also sense two other things: a sense of mission, as long as it exists, & a very strong sense of getting it right through continued study and thought. I talked to one Lieutenant Colonel, who had already led major missions on two tours in Iraq, who not only knew FM 100-20 by heart, he also knew the history and debates behind its drafting, as well as how the Marine Corps had gone about making the original Small Wars Manual–we had a very good talk, in fact, on Keith Bickel’s Mars Learning.

Lawrence Kaplan & Irving Kristol were profoundly over-optimistic about the possibilities for liberal democracy in the Islamic/Arab world today.

We know that now. It grows clearer with every passing day.

What a strange mistake for the supposed “right” to make. I wonder if anyone on the supposed “left” really understands why it happened – or even appreciates the irony of it all.

Re #6:

Well, those who supported the war in part on democratization grounds, e.g. Wolfowitz, thought Iraq was where you had to start. Otherwise you couldn’t make headway anywhere else. If you tried to lean on, e.g., the Saudis to democratize, they would just say, “How can you ask us to change when you’re letting Saddam carry on as before?” Not saying it was right, but it’s what they thought.

Steve Burton:
“I wonder if anyone on the supposed “left” really understands why it happened – or even appreciates the irony of it all.”

Well, do you think George Galloway is on the supposed “left?” He has got your irony right here:

“You’re a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay,” Mr Galloway informed him

And it’s not like it’s an original observation or anything.

A bit more seriously, I’m not sure I see the point of all these meta-cognitive considerations in this context. If you were proved to be fucking right, there’s no point telling you that you got it right by accident. And if not, not only were you wrong, your idealogy was proved wrong too. It’s really a no-win kind of situation.

Its absolutly amazing to me that at this stage anyone still takes seriously Kaplan et al’s hope for democracy in Iraq. They don’t want democracy in Iraq…or anywhere else for that matter. Or, perhaps, I should say, they want democracy the same way the Bush family wants it, and got it, and will,I fear, continue to get it, in Florida.

Buckley and Fukuyama have said
Iraq was a mistake. When will
the rest of the NeoCons admit
the error?

Did we need 25,000 american
casualties for these idiots to
see what the real experts knew.

Christ, all they had to do was
watch “Lawrence of Arabia”

‘Buckley and Fukuyama have said
Iraq was a mistake. When will
the rest of the NeoCons admit
the error?’

Ah but you haven’t read too much about the psychology of religious cults (that wasn’t a slip of the keyboard, I really do mean cults in this particular instance). Do people renounce their religious beliefs when they find out that the Messiah is not going to appear a week on Thursday, about teatime? Of course not. Instead they REDOUBLE their efforts. They attack with renewed ferocity those who attack them. They expel ‘traitors’ in the midst with even more vigour. (Eventually the cult usually disintegrates, but a few decades down the line, after a slow process of old members slipping away under cover of night, and being unable to recruit new members to replace them).

Why?

It’s really very simple.

You can’t admit to yourself you’ve been that wrong for that long.

You just need to look at the titanic egos of many (most?) of the people who backed the war to see that they will simply be incapable of backing down and saying the simple words: ‘I was wrong, I’m sorry’. Can you even imagine Christopher Hitchens (for example) saying that? About anything?

Like McNamara these people will continue to insist: ‘i was right, i was right, i was right i was right’ over and over and over again for decades, before (probably) just before their deaths, doing a last ‘i confess all’ interview, in which they reveal what the rest of us have known for years: ‘oh yeah, I forgot to mention, you see when I said I was right? What I actually meant to say was: i was wrong’.

Agreed, Brendan has this right. It will go on and on. We will certainly see the ‘stab in back’ accusations begin to fly. And a lot of people are going to suffer because of it.

Apparently Iraq’s prime minister Ibrahim Jafari is a big fan of Noam Chomsky, 58th most dangerous intellectual in the US of A.

Buckley and Fukuyama are probably just jealous…

Brendan’s statement “You can’t admit to yourself you’ve been that wrong for that long” purports to answer the question Why the redoubled efforts etc. But it doesn’t.
Why can’t they admit to having been wrong so long? Is it stubbornness? Pride?
Some of that, but the real answer is survival. The belief system exists because it’s an asset to survival – and what threatens the system threatens the survival of its membership as well, and it will get defended accordingly.
This is hinky in the abstract realm of pure logic, and in the semi-abstract sphere of human morality, but on the ground – in the Darwinian flux of biological competition – it’s no different than camouflage or co-operation, or the secretion of poisonous sweat and consequent warning coloration.
It is the refusal to address this matter on its home turf (a home turf – biological exigency – claimed by the non-cultists) that’s enabled the astonishing sight of grown men with impeccable scientific credentials debating the nonsense tropes of creationism etc. before a public that leans every day more toward the superstitious – because it finds no comfort or support in the rational emptiness of science.
There’s no basis for a moral stance against torture or against any of the things many of us assume a consensus toward as being wrong, as being fundamentally inhuman – not in biology, and not in science generally.
There is no requirement of humane regard, nor is there a requirement of logical precision, or even sanity.
The only requirement is survival. Unless you subscribe to a belief system that says otherwise.

semanticleo– re Fukuyama. A test of how good his analysis of neocon outlook is is his prediction that Bush Doctrine is being reworked and will probably be soon abandoned. Well it would appear that Fukuyama got it wrong ( and hence his analysis is seriously flawed ) because only two days ago in his speach to the American Legion Bush formulates his BD in as uncompromising manner as ever ; no sign of ‘retreat’ etc. Fukuyama sees.

john Q– true Kaplan is saying that, but that does not imply that he is giving up neocon outlook ; its revising which is more of a twweking than a U -turn.
Secondly Fukuyama is a intellectual heavyweight and his criticisms cut deeper : see for instance his interesting claim that neocon principle of preemption cannot be universilised . So in other words it is Fukuyama that one needs to defend neoconservative stance ( if one is a neoconservative ).

Actually I’ve just read the Fukuyama article. It’s very good, actually. He is, indeed, an ‘intellectual heavyweight’. And he hits the nail on the head about the key (absolutely the core) problem with neo-conservatism which is this:

To be a neo-conservative, you have to believe in American exceptionalism.

You just have to. There is no way out. If you believe that the US is just another country, like Belgium or Chad or Venezuela, then obviously, the US has no special ‘mission’ to bring democracy to anywhere, and no special authority with which to do so. Moreover, if you don’t believe in American exceptionalism then you must believe in the opposite (i.e. internationalism), which means an emphasis on transnational organisations: NATO, the UN, the EU: all organisations the neocons famously despise.

What is the essence of American exceptionalism? It is, as Kristol and Kagan put it:

‘It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power.’

Now, unless someone can come up with an objective measure of ‘morality’: this is an essentially religious belief (or at least it’s not a scientific one). You either believe it or you don’t. If you believe it, all the neo-con policies follow. If you don’t, they don’t.

As Fukuyama puts it: ‘There were other reasons as well why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on American exceptionalism, the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court.’

Yes. This hits the nail on the head. If you believe in American exceptionalism you MUST object to the criminal court, the universalisation of pre-emption etc.

And here’s the nice little irony.

Neo-conservativism posits itself as believing in the Universalisation of certain principles: democracy etc. etc. And so they do…to an extent.

But when it comes to foreign policy, neo-cons are institutionally and profoundly opposed to universalisation, because they do NOT believe that the US is just another country amongst equals. They believe it has been given (perhaps by a ‘higher power’….certainly this is what Bush believes) a higher ‘moral calling’ and that it should have rights and powers above those of other countries.

It is clear, therefore, that, contrary to what Hitchens and Geras etc. say, that it is completely impossible to be a Marxist, or a liberal, or ‘left wing’ and a neo-con. As Kristol once put it, neoconservatism should really be called American Nationalism. And that’s what it is. It is predicated on the idea that the US is ‘first amongst equals’ (with emphasis falling firmly on the ‘first’), and that no internaional laws (including laws on trade, property rights, human rights, foreign policy etc.) can or should be created which bind the US, because the US is a uniquely moral state that is simply not comparable to other countries.

Now on this more modest view of neocon self immage it no longer follows that the key principles of neocon foreign policy cannot be universalised.

zdenek, what neocons have voiced this “more modest view”? It certainly can’t be found in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which aspires to permanent US global hegemony based on military power.

What you’re describing isn’t “neocon” at all – it has been the official view of the US foreign policy establishment since about 1946.

preference– on the contrary even in the document you cite we see distancing from any kind of triumphalism. See the ‘human dignity’ section which makes it clear US is not special in any way and that human rights are possesed by humanity as a whole.
The emphasis of the NSS document is responsibility ( by winning the cold war and emerging with greater economic/military power than anyone else )and not moral superiority.

‘Well what about the fact that Iraq has an independent judiciary now, had a free and fair ellections, women rights are enshrined in the new Iraqi constitution , that they have a free press and talk radio shows, independent central bank and emerging free market.
‘

Iraq does NOT have an independent judiciary. Here’s a quote from independent guidelines as to what to do if you are arrested by the ‘police’.

‘1- The mere fact that you are arrested by security militias would mean possible death or deadly injury, even if you were innocent. Therefore, your main goal should be to escape arrest by any means possible.
2- The phrase “We have a few questions, and you’ll be back in an hour” usually means your disappearance for months or, God forbid, your death. Therefore, do not be naive as to trust security forces.
3- Remember, your presence in detention means 11 dollars a day for prison officers to feed you; a dollar for your food and 10 for the officers. As a result, keeping you in detention is a guaranteed source of profit for security officers, even if you are innocent.’

Etc. etc. etc. The police force in Iraq act as judge jury and frequently executioner.

There is no law and order in Iraq.

Likewise, there were no free and fair elections for so many reasons I can’t go into them, but ‘elections held during a civil war’, ‘elections where there was an occupying power’, ‘elections with a widespread boycott by political parties and allegations of vote rigging’, and ‘elections where endemic violence prevented all potential voters getting access to polling booths’ seems to cover it.

Women’s rights are in the constitution. And that’s where they will stay.

Free press? Well partly, although we know the Americans plant news stories, and bribe religious leaders to spin things for the occupiers. But that’s half a point to you.

‘talk radio shows’. OK i admit defeat. Yes it’s true. Iraq does have talk radio shows. The invasion was worth it. Will the memorial to the dead who fought in Iraq say ‘they died for Rush Limbaugh’?

‘independent central bank’. Independent from whom? From the Iraqis, certainly.

’emerging free market’. Ah ha. Well, yes. Quite.

brendan– you know your sneering and scoffing attitude reminds me of the right wing Afrikaaners who said the same thing about the new Democracy in South Africa. They exclusively focused on the crime and difficulties in delivery etc. Your resentful outlook also reminds me of the Islamists who use the same line as you do to argue against US effort in Iraq. Question : what is the explanation for the fact that the left position cannot be distinguished ( we could do that sometime ago when we fought Nazis and Apartheid )from Islamofascism ??

‘‘Morality’ here refers to taking human rights seriously ; the sort of political rights that would be chosed behind ‘the veil of ignorance’. This is precisely why neocon outlook is essentially secular. And moreover this is why people on the left can perfectly plausibly embrace neoconservative foreign policy.’

Er….bollocks. As I pointed out, and many others have pointed out, Bush throws out words like ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ with gay abandon, but he rarely if ever talks about ‘human rights’.

And that’s because human rights are by definition a universal concept applying to all peoples of all races creeds and colours…and nations.

But Bush-ism (and neo-conservatism) as I (and Fukuyama, and he should know) pointed out, is based on American exceptionalism. It is therefore wholly opposed to the concept of universal human rights. Neo- conservatives believe that America should be allowed to do things (e.g. invade other countries that pose no threat to it) that other countries should not be allowed to (read the Fukuyama article again: that’s what he points out).

Incidentally, I don’t know about any ‘interventions’ that Blair carried out. I know about invasions and missile strikes etc. but not ‘interventions’. ‘”Every gardener faces choices about how and how much to intervene in nature’s processes” Dora Galitzki.’ That’s using the word intervene in its correct sense. ‘Hitler intervened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France, and attempted to intervene in the UK.’ That’s the wrong use of the word. ‘In 1941, Hitler began his intervention in the USSR….’. See what I mean?

Apart from the fantastic idea that Blair would have invaded Iraq had Bush not told him that that was going to happen, Blair’s own actions are based on a much longer tradition of liberal imperialism that goes back to the mid/late 19th century in the UK. There are strong links between this tradition and ‘neo-conservativm’: links of religion and culture, but it’s far too complicated to go into now.

Incidentally, I agree with Irving Kristol that we should stop talking about ‘neoconservatism’ and instead talk about ‘American Nationalism’ which, as he rightly argued, is a much more descriptive term.

Compare and contrast:

‘The neoconservatives want democracy in Iraq.’

‘American Nationalists want democracy in Iraq’.

Second one is a bit harder to swallow isn’t it?

Finally.

‘when we fought Nazis and Apartheid’.

Who is ‘we’?

zdenek wrote:
what neocons mean by ‘morality’. It has nothing at all to do with religion. ‘Morality’ here refers to taking human rights seriously ; the sort of political rights that would be chosed behind ‘the veil of ignorance’.

Er – are these the same folks who support torture as an option, no habeas for gitmo detainees, and prisons like abu graib, extraordinary rendition? Curious how you define moral superiority…

I take it that you mean that the Islamist criticism which is premised on the view that consensual democracy and the political culture with its belief in equality etc. is morally corrupt and inferior to sharia is the correct view.

Yes, you got it. Islamist criticism of US/UK actions in Iraq (if indeed it’s similar to criticism from the left) is valid. Yes, criticism by those same Islamist who like sharia, cut heads, etc. Is there a problem?

Incidentally, Wikipedia has a good entry on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Exceptionalism

The also demonstrate the links between this and the Frontier Thesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis

This is the idea that America’s moral superiority is built on its relationship to the frontier. The reason the US was such a good nation was the moral purification that was caused by good Protestant Christians taming the untamed, heathen wilderness.

Therefore when the frontier ‘closed’ there may well be moral collapse. The old martial, warrior virtues would decline into European decadence and immorality. Thereofore, argued Roosevelt, the US would have to seek out new frontiers to take, new heathens to Christianise. This was part of the thinking behind Manifest Destiny

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny

This led directly to the ‘annexation’ of Texas (then a separate country, of course) and the ‘Indian Removal’ before the Civil War distracted national interest. However, after this the phrase re appeared and the creation of the American Empire in the latter quarter of the 19th century, and early years of the 20th. Manifest Destiny died in WW1, but its ghost lives on: in persistent ‘interventions’ in Latin America and Central America, in the de facto colonisation of the Middle East (as the British ‘divide and rule’ policy in the Middle East was passed on to the US after WW2), and now, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In any case: American Exceptionalism and the rest of it are, clearly, incompatible with any view of a commonwealth of nations, universal human rights, international law, and so forth.

reply to zdenek (#39)

i live in south africa and lived through the time of transition, including serving as an unwilling conscript and having the shit beaten out of me, and becoming radicalised. you, on the other hand, obviously know fuck all about my country. the situations aren’t even vaguely analogous in the manner you attempt to make them. that’s merely an attempted smear (by association), and a simultaneous attempt to clothe yourself in our rectitude. it’s not an argument.

the real connection between the south african and iraqi situations comes from the peristence of the same faces and policies in the reagan adminstration and the current bush administration. my country would have had its nominal autonomy a lot sooner had your neocons spent less time propping up those self-same afrikaners you decry.
one of the most glaring ways the situations are not analogous is that the US actively asssited the national party to pevent democracy here (goodness, maybe they ARE analogous?.

how dare you conscript the history of my country, a history made worse by american involvement, in service of your puerile argument?

dale– your comment is a texbook example of shooting from the hip I am afraid. My own remarks about South Africa ( and by the way I live SA ) are intended to draw a comparison between detractors of the progress made in Iraq and the detractors of the SA progress made after the democratic transition.
The point I was making is that it is foolish to criticise what constitutes a revolution by demanding that we see fullblown democracy after 2 years.

brendan– re American exceptionalism . Clearly there are two ways of understanding this attitude and many people ( including you ) interpret it as ‘ethnocentrism’,’jingoism’ and perhaps even ‘racism’ because they see it as a claim about *Americans* ( in other words Americans as people are morally superior .)
Of course the other way to understand it is to see it as a view about *values* and institutions and not people. So on this second understanding US is in a unique position to the extend that it is able to spread freedom around the world. Focus here is not people but rather the values themselves. ( now you may think that this talk of freedom is just a pose by the neocon but that is a different debate ).
Question of course is are neocons exceptionalists in the first sense ( and hence is their foreign policy essentially racist as you seem to want to argue ) or in the second sense ? I think that the ‘racist’ interpretation is wildly implausible and is dependent on heavy dose of hard left ( or post modern ? ) ideology, but that is just me.

give me an example of any atrocities happening in south africa since 1994, that are in any way analogous to anything in iraq, or point me to the headquaters of the invading, occupying military presence in south africa, and i’ll concede you your analogy.

my point stands – your analogy is both incorrect and in poor taste. given the history of this country, the faction analogous to hold-out afrikaners in the iraq scheme of things is the neocon faction (whose set of core beliefs, including that arabs etc are inherently incapable of ‘meaningful, western democracy’ is the closest analogue to afrikaner beliefs about black south africans.)

now i’ll give you an example of some vaguely analogous atrocity that ocurred in this country in the period since 1994 – afrikaner policemen were video-taped torturing black suspects with dogs. the closest analogue to this in iraq is the behaviour of US military personnel. when reality is the benchmark, your attempts to closet anti-war commenters with anti-black afrikaners is both false and in fact the complete opposite of what obtained on the ground both in this country and in iraq.

all this, by the way is in response to your statement that you attempt to “draw a comparison between detractors of the progress made in Iraq and the detractors of the SA progress made after the democratic transition.” it is precisely this comparison that i pointed out is specious in my first comment, and which i reiterate here. had you not attempted it, you would not be having this discussion with me.

Lastly, you said: “The point I was making is that it is foolish to criticise what constitutes a revolution by demanding that we see full-blown democracy after 2 years”

the war in iraq is not a revolution, and your attempts to characterise it as one, in order to make other claims does not hold. revolutions are not foisted on people, and in iraq, least of all by the US which spent an extraordinary amount of time working to ensure that democracy never arose in iraq. the history is recent and you should learn it, as it included helping hussein *suppress* revolution on more than occasion, and through implementing a campaign of sanctions, that were reported by aid organisations as primarily rendering the iraq people docile and mutable and incapable of revolution.

in the light of this known, recent history, commenters on this thread and elsewhere find it hard to credit the invasion of iraq as being a pro-democracy move. occam’s razor would have it that it is likeliest a continuation of the longer-running strategy of dominating the region through manipulation of political power, for which there is much, much, much more evidence and far greater reason to credit.

the point i made previously, and which it seems i must repeat here, is that in the sense of *preventing* democracy, the situations are analogous, with the US playing a loosely similar role in both countries and in many others. this makes your attempt to group anti-war commenters with reactionary forces in south africa (and by implication, pro-war commenters with the forces of change here) both risible and inappropriate. since we’re in the realm of analogy, what you’re attempting is analogous to using the creation of a dedicated state for jews (Israel) as proof that the german administration during orld war two actually had jewish interests in mind (since the one contributed to the other).

there is no textbook on ‘shooting from the hip’ unless it’s a book of cliche.

sorry about the duplicate post. don’t know what happened.

again, i must apologise for the typo’s. this is all on the fly, and i haven’t integrated into my behaviour the regular use of a spell-checker.

Incidentally, as Dale points out, there are very obvious links between South Africa (and other countries) and the US, and it’s the most obvious one of all, so obvious that few people point it out or notice it. It’s this:

like the Protestants in Ireland, like the white man in Australia and New Zealand, like Canada, like the US….South Africa was a (Protestant) colonial state. In all these examples white protestants invaded a country, and then created an ideology to justify their theft of the land, an ideology based strongly on Protestant fundamentalism. (It is NOT a coincidence that the most fundamentalist President in recent years is also the most Imperialist).

Therefore an ideology had to be created, which we still live with: ‘we’ (i.e. white protestants) are ‘civilised’…’they’ (i.e. the people whose land we have stolen) are ‘uncivilised’, ‘we’ have science, ‘they’ have superstition, ‘we’ have True Christian Religion, ‘they’ have heathenism, and (after many centuries had passed), ‘we’ are democratic, ‘they’ are autocratic/totalitarian, whatever.

Therefore, the use of the word democracy which should mean…well…democracy (i.e. one person one vote) becomes a sort of weapon with which to beat the natives. Because ‘they’ did not have parliamentary democracy in the Western sense (never mind that they may have had OTHER democratic institutions that might be as good as, or better than, our own) this proved that they were culturally ‘primitive’, and that we therefore could steal their land, control them, and impose our culture on theirs in an attempt to ‘civilise’ them. Of course they would be allowed to be democratic like us…when they reached our level of civilisation which would occur at some indeterminate point in the future.

It’s not a coincidence that South Africa under apartheid was NOT a fascist state, but a state which had regular and fair elections…..for white people, obviously. Likewise, the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the invaders in Australia, the US etc. always insisted on democratic procedures and this was not a coincidence. It’s just that they were careful to ensure that the natives (and in the US, slaves) were not allowed to take part…on account of them being so primitive, obviously.

It’s too long for the comments box, but these essentially neo-colonialist attitudes are being replayed in Iraq. What’s frightening is that because of the grotesquely ideological nature of the UK/US education systems, most British and American kids grow up not realising what the Empire was about, how it was justified, have no concept of ‘manifest destiny’ or ‘the frontier theory’, and so when they hear Bush prattle on about democracy, they don’t realise that this IS imperialist discourse.

If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, there would be little in Bush’s speeches he would object to.

Of course the other way to understand it is to see it as a view about values and institutions and not people. So on this second understanding US is in a unique position to the extend that it is able to spread freedom around the world.

This goes over real well coming from a nation the publicly proclaims its right to torture and invade anybody it likes.

You may fool yourself, zdenek, but people around the world aren’t fooled. Russia is more popular than we are today.

How is this alleged great freedom mission going to be accomplished when nobody in the world outside the US believes it? We can try to force others to accept it, as we are doing in Iraq. But that hasn’t worked too well there.

The US is going in entirely the wrong direction, and your arguments are completely threadbare.

zdenek – last time, and then i really have to do other work:

your claim that:

“events such as 9/11 have ushered in a new outlook with new foreign policy and this requires a fresh reevaluation”

is factually false. there is little or no difference between current US policy and that promulgated by planners in 1946 (and perhaps even earlier) in the national security council, window-dressing to contrary. in fact, it is reasonable to see current policy as previous theory enacted on a greater a scale, with 9/11 providing a convenient trigger for its implementation. many people, including much of the american right, do. the information you need to review this claim is online, (search under ‘NSC memoranda’) and you should feel free to learn at your own pace.

you said: “As far as I can see you offer no argument to substanciate our claim that my analogy ‘is specious’ all I see is a claim to that effect , and of couse that will not do.”

I would then direct you to my comments in 49, 55 and 58, which are entirely concerned with demonstrating the falsity of your analogy, through reference to historical fact. since you seem to have overlooked these remarks, the software helpfully duplicated comment number 55 as comment number 56, I assume on your behalf. further than that i cannot really help you, other than to repeat that you have confused the roles of the parties in your analogy. this sentence (previous, bold)sums up my claim – the rest of the letters, words and sentences i contributed are in support of it, in one way or another. they constitute a sketched outline of an argument in support of that claim, appropriate to a comments field in a blog. (hint: you should look there to find what you claim is missing.)

you said: “Your argument ( this seems to be the main one ) that because US in the past supported Sadam H shows that it cannot be taken seriously now is a non sequitur.”

i did not say that – what i said loosely (feel free to check above) is that the behaviour of the US in the past has been inconsistent with bringing meaningful democracy to iraq. since the current war in iraq is equally unhelpful to the democratic cause, it is likelier that the US is pursuing the same policy as in the past through different means, than that it has had undergone a sea change, and is merely struggling in iraq to figure out how to enact its new values.

lastly, you then say that my comments are both “discredited Marxist rhetoric” and “conspiracy theory” or the equivalent thereof. i’m almost honoured at the speed with which your comments have leaped from nonsense to lunacy, in response to mine, but of course, when you make these allegations this is neither argument nor debate, it’s the same name-calling and mud-slinging that i called you on originally, and which has characterised your subsequent communication. your accuracy hasn’t improved.

i have looked long and hard at everything i wrote, and i fail to find its ‘Marxism’. Marxism is a theory of history and economics, and posits certain relationships between them. my work on this thread, inferior in length and research at the least, to marxist theory cannot possibly be called marxism. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is that i don’t deal in theories of history and economics and the (posited) relationships between them – instead my (hopefully transient) field of expertise in this body of work is your ongoing use of false analogy.

I may have included a number of references to recent historical events, events that are well-documented, and invited you to review your claims of analogy in the light of these, and this might be uncomfortable for you, but it is not ‘marxist’ whatever that means, unless by marxist you mean ‘things i don’t like’.

nor do i advance any theory, conspiracy or otherwise. i can if you want me to.

no preference:

you’re wasting your time. (and i, mine, really.) zdenek fools himself, because he wants to fool himself (or herself).

this is the milton friedmanesque world of much of white south africa, wherein the supposed meritocracy of the market has long been pressed into service as support for continuation of racist ideology by another name. since the us is the poster child for the market (in pop culture) assuming this set of beliefs requires one to assume a similarly cartoonish and limited view of the US, one in which all its actions are good, and all its deeds exceptional, and this view must be defended against everything, even reason.

this is why it is possible for zdenek to claim in one breath that the US has had a change of heart with regard to Hussein (previously supporting his dictatorship, and now, presumably, supporting democracy, whatever that means), and at the same time, argue that the US has a long history of supporting democracy (except when they don’t which doesn’t count) and always doing good (except when they don’t which doesn’t count).

evidence, schmevidence, all will be subsumed.

there’s no-one more wedded to exceptionalism than someone who feels exceptional, and colonial societies (defined as societies so organised as to place a premium on one set of cultural attributes over another, and of which south africa is one) encourage those who feel exceptional. expecting otherwise here is like asking a libertarian where they see themselves in the great meritocracy (hint: they’re never at the bottom.)

it’s always possible that i’m unfairly maligning zdenek here, by attributing attitudes to the person that she or he may not have, but nevertheless the type holds good. all i have to go on is their writing.

‘special pleading – (law) a pleading that alleges new facts in avoidance of the opposing allegations’.

I’m sorry? When was I special pleading?

Oh and please tell us all the good news from Iraq. I take it, like almost all your pro-invasion friends, you speak no Arabic, have never visited Iraq (or any country anywhere near it) have no intention of visiting Iraq, know no Iraqis, have read no books on Iraq (or any related subject) and assiduously avoid reading blogs or webpages that might challenge your myopic view of events in the Middle East.

But still, continue. It’s always good to hear good news.

Well if Nabi thinks this is the first democratic election in the Arab world Nabi is much mistaken. Likewise if Nabi thinks that the last election was the first democratic election in Iraq Nabi is much mistaken.

But, frankly, who cares? Since when is Iraq immune from the basic laws of politics? In a democracy you don’t pick some random stranger off the street and ask them what they are thinking and then assume they are typical of what the average person thinks. The whole concept is ridiculous. If you read a thing in Iraq under Saddam where some guy was picked off the street and said ‘well everything’s great under Saddam we love him’ would you immediately conclude that this was typical of what the average Iraqi thought? of course not. The idea is preposterous. You have elections and you hold opinion polls. That’s how it’s done. That’s what democracy is all about.

You know perfectly well what the last few opinion polls say about the occupation, and the state of Iraq, and I won’t embarass you by quoting from them. We also know who the Iraqis voted for. Not the pro-American candidates.

(incidentally, why are these people talking about ‘this’ election if this is from ‘today’s’ BBC website?)

erasmus
in fact, opinion polls have been showing solid majorities in the US in favour of withdrawal for at least six months now. It’s funny that the pro-invasioners keep on babbling on about ‘tipping points’ because, as the article I quoted from pointed out, there really is a ‘tipping point’ which is this: when you lose support for war, it tends to stay lost.

Here’s another opinion poll that was under reported and then outrageously spun in our allegedly free press. Anyway the money shot is this: ‘Asked what they would like the newly elected Iraqi government to ask the US led forces to do, 70% of Iraqis favor setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces. This number divides evenly between 35% who favor a short time frame of “within six months” and 35% who favor a gradual reduction over two years. Just 29% say it should “only reduce US-led forces as the security situation improves in Iraq.”’

Likewise, solid majorities in favour of a phased withdrawal have also been apparent in British opinion polls too.

It can’t be said enough that this is NOT a war that has democratic backing or democratic legitimacy. This has been a war by elites, in the US, the UK and, yes, Iraq, waging war for their own purposes, and if ordinary (real) people don’t like it, they can go and whistle.

Zdenek and his like parrot the phrases: ‘democracy’, ‘liberty’ etc. but in fact they are opposed to democracy in every fibre of their being. They wanted a government BY smug public school boys with a background in the media, FOR smug public schoolboys with a background in the media.

brendan- re your claim that neocons just parrot words like ‘democracy’.I am sure that this is just an insult, still here is a small comment : is it not you in your post # 61 who says that democracy is just a weapon used by the west to subdue the natives whom the west regards as morally inferior ? You seem to be characterising what you take democracy to be. That is it is just a western construct that is no better than other ways of governing e.g. totalitarian theocracy.
Question : if you believe that concepts like ‘rule of law’ , ‘democracy’ and so on are only instruments of western domination how can you use the fact that neocons are not real democrats against them ?

‘brendan- re your claim that neocons just parrot words like ‘democracy’.I am sure that this is just an insult, still here is a small comment : is it not you in your post # 61 who says that democracy is just a weapon used by the west to subdue the natives whom the west regards as morally inferior ? You seem to be characterising what you take democracy to be. That is it is just a western construct that is no better than other ways of governing e.g. totalitarian theocracy.
Question : if you believe that concepts like ‘rule of law’ , ‘democracy’ and so on are only instruments of western domination how can you use the fact that neocons are not real democrats against them.’

Bullshit and you know it. My point was (very very very obviously) that the WORD democracy and the CONCEPT of certain cultures that are (apparently) ‘naturally’ democratic was used as a battering ram to beat down the natives.

Self-evidently I have no problems with the actuality of democracy. In fact I strongly approve of it. That is why I disapprove strongly of apartheid. Never forget, South Africa posited itself as a democracy and part of the free world, with the ‘bantustans’ as being other democratic states that just happened to be in the worst part of the country.

Likewise, the US (until 1965) and Australia (also 1965) were not true democracies (and if you don’t know what happened in 1965, you really should). Other ‘Western’ countries that prattled on about democracy were even later: Switzerland did not give women the vote until 1971. The fact is that until incredibly recently the West was much happier giving the rhetoric and illusion of democracy than the reality. As was the case in South Africa. As is the case in Iraq.

You did not mention my point, incidentally, that at the moment Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Pakistan (and i could go on….) are currently part of the ‘free world’. Venezuela, on the other hand, apparently isn’t. Does this tell us anything about the use of the word ‘free’ by Bush and Blair?

‘3 small observations: first it may have escaped your attention that the leaders of the coalition are all democratically elected and that Bush was reelected during the war.’

It may have escaped YOUR attention that in the US the only choices for the presidence (democrats and republicans) both back the war to a greater or lesser extent so voters have no choice but to vote for the war: this despite the fact that huge and consistent majorities oppose it. Of course the fact that in, allegedly, the freest country in the world voters have no choice about what is without doubt the most serious issue facing the country doesn’t bother you. See my point about the illusion versus the reality of democracy above.

‘Second the argument which says that the war must be unjustified because it is waged by the elites and in their own iterests is a non sequitur.’

I didn’t say it was unjustified because it was waged by elites. I said it was unjustified because it was illegal (which is was). My point was that pro-invasioners continue to bleat on about ‘why is it that the left who once fought….’ etc. That’s irrelevant. it is not the LEFT who oppose the war (in case you hadn’t noticed, in the UK, the ‘left’ are in government). It is the majority of British, American and Iraqi people who oppose the occupation. It is only a tiny minority, based in the media, politics, and certain strands of the business community (not all of them) who are in favour of the war.

Incidentally I have a big problem with totalitarianism. You on the other hand support Bush and Blair as they give it succour in Pakistan, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, (etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.) and large chunks of Iraq. Bush and Blair loved totalitarianism and they still do. CF their assault on civil liberties in their own countries.

brendan– a small quibble about the justification for the war. You seem to think # 77 that legality and the fact that ‘people agree or disagree ‘ is sufficient for justification of the Iraq war. This is false and it is easy to show why. First even if going to war is not legally warranted it may be morally justified . So in Cuba for instance ( you should go for a visit sometime to get a real perspective on oppresion instead of this cheap boutique left talk of US hegemony ) it is illegal to criticise the leader Fidel Castro but obviously we want to argue that criticism of the lesder is morally justified. This shows that act being illegal is not sufficient to show that it is wrong.
Similarly with your thought that peoples vote on whether war is justified is sufficient. To see why it cannot be sufficient consider death penalty . You cannot show by voting that death penalty is wrong . This is so because it is a moral issue that cannot be settled by voting procedure and of course same applies to the war question. In other words it is posible that 100% of US citizens think that the war is wrong and and that this is not the case because there is an argument showing that the war is justified but that no one has considered that argument.This is why issues like death penalty or abortion are not setled by voting.

I’m not going to continue this discussion because Zdenek is clearly mad, but I can’t resist one more thing.

‘So in Cuba for instance ( you should go for a visit sometime to get a real perspective on oppresion instead of this cheap boutique left talk of US hegemony )’.

I know I should shouldn’t I. Things are terrible in Cuba right now aren’t they?.

On camp X-ray– having had a father jailed in socialist paradise ( former Czechoslovakia )I can confinently say that camp X-ray is like Four Season’s Hotel by comparison with Cuban jails.

Likewise, Guantanamo is paradise compared to other US jails.

‘TORTURE: QUICK FACTS

At least 45 detainees died in U.S. custody due to suspected or confirmed criminal homicides.[1] At least eight people were tortured to death. At least 98 detainees have died while in U.S. custody in Iraq or Afghanistan;[2]

At least 69 of the detainees died at locations other than Abu Ghraib;[3]

At least 51 detainees have died in U.S. custody since Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was informed of the abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16, 2004;[4]

12 deaths have led to punishments of U.S. personnel;[5]

0 CIA personnel have been charged with wrongdoing in connection with alleged involvement in at least 5 deaths;[6]

As of November 2005, over 83,000 people have been held in U.S. custody, and about 30,000 of those were entered “into the system,” and assigned internment serial numbers in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan;[7]

There have been nearly 600 criminal investigations into allegations of detainee abuse; each investigation tends to include more than one U.S. soldier, more than one instance of abuse, and more than one victim. Allegations against 250 Soldiers have been addressed in courts-martial, non-judicial punishments, and other adverse administrative punishments. The highest ranking military member judicially punished in connection with the death of a detainee is Marine Major Clarke Paulus, who was found guilty of maltreatment and dereliction of duty and dismissed from the service.[8]

Reportedly 100-150 individuals have been rendered from U.S. custody to a foreign country known to torture prisoners, including to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan;[9]

There are 6 main acknowledged U.S. detention facilities worldwide–3 in Iraq, 2 in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay;[10]

There are approximately 25 transient facilities – field prisons designed to house detainees only for a short period until they can be released or transferred to a more permanent facility-in Afghanistan and Iraq;[11]

There are believed to be at least 11 ‘secret’ detention locations used since September 2001. They are/were CIA facilities in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Poland, Romania, and Jordan, detention facilities in Alizai, Kohat and Peshawar in Pakistan, a facility on the U.S. Naval Base on the island of Diego-Garcia, and detentions of prisoners on U.S. ships, particularly the USS Peleliu and USS Bataan.[12]

Over 15,000 people are currently in U.S. detention in just Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. As of February 16, 2006, in Iraq, there were 14,389 detainees in U.S. custody; as of December 2005, the U.S. was holding approximately 500 detainees in Afghanistan; as of February 10, 2006 there are approximately 490 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and one enemy combatants held in the U.S.;[13]

36 prisoners are believed to be held in unknown locations;[14]

At least 376 foreign fighters detained in Iraq to whom the Administration has asserted the Geneva Conventions do not apply;[15]

There were up to 100 ghost detainees in Iraq;[16]

The U.S. transferred at least one dozen prisoners out of Iraq for further interrogation in violation of the Geneva Conventions;[17]

8 percent of 517 Guantanamo detainees were considered al Qaeda fighters by the U.S. Government. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection to al Qaeda or Taliban.[18] ‘

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/misc/factsheet.htm

…Korans available , prayer arrows pointed to Mecca…

Right, Zdenek. Nazis, actually, were so kind – they insisted the Jews wore mogendavid – the emblem of Judaism – at all times. Even provided them free of charge in the camps. That’s what “humane treatment” is all about.