Bait and switch

by John Q on February 24, 2006

Lawrence Kaplan (with Irving William Kristol) selling The War over Iraq

The United States may need to occupy Iraq for some time. Though the UN, European and Arab forces will, as in Afghanistan, contribute troops, the principal responsibility will doubtless fall to the country that liberates Baghdad. According to one estimate, initially as many as 75,000 US troops may be required to police the war’s aftermath, at a cost of $16 billion a year. As other countries’ forces arrive, and as Iraq rebuilds its economy and political system, that force could probably be drawn to several thousand soldiers after a year or two. After Saddam Hussein has been defeated and Iraq occupied installing a decent democratic government in Baghdad should be a manageable task for the United States. (pp19-20) quoted here

Lawrence Kaplan presenting “The Case for Staying in Iraq” in TNR

The administration intends to draw down troop levels to 100,000 by the end of the year, with the pullback already well underway as U.S. forces surrender large swaths of the countryside and hunker down in their bases. The plan infuriates many officers, who can only say privately what noncommissioned officers say openly. “In order to fix the situation here,” Sabre Squadron’s Sergeant José Chavez says, “we need at least 180,000 troops.” Iraq, however, will soon have about half that. An effective counterinsurgency strategy may require time and patience. But the war’s architects have run out of both.

Maybe if Kaplan, Kristol and others had told us this in the first place, there wouldn’t have been a war.

Kaplan makes a pretty good argument that a pullout now would lead to disaster, and the latest horrific events strengthen his case. On the other hand, whereas Kaplan uses an admittedly isolated (and partial) success story to claim that the US is seen by Iraqis as an “honest broker, more peacekeeper than belligerent”, this is hard to square with a lot of evidence that suggests the opposite. As Kaplan himself says, the focus on massive military sweeps means that the “hearts and minds” strategy he favours would be starting from scratch, three years into the occupation. And the massive civilian casualties produced by military sweeps and a single-minded focus on “force protection” means that US forces have made many deadly enemies, going far beyond Baathists and jihadists.

Unfortunately, at this point, there are no good outcomes on offer. The US doesn’t have the 180 000 troops (“at least”) needed for Kaplan’s proposal, and no one else is going to supply them. If the troops were available, there’s no reason to suppose that they would be any more successful than they have been so far.

If there is a better option than setting an immediate timetable for withdrawal, ending some time next year, it isn’t on the table.

{ 87 comments }

1

rollo 02.24.06 at 6:03 pm

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.

2

Steve 02.24.06 at 6:33 pm

“In order to fix the situation here,” Sabre Squadron’s Sergeant José Chavez says, “we need at least 180,000 troops.”

Note that a Sergeant (E-5) is typically in charge of 1/2 of a squad of soldiers (say, 4-5 people), if on a tank crew may be the gunner if he’s good (but never the tank commander), may be the guy in charge of one truck in a transportation company, etc etc. They typically don’t get a country-wide perspective.

“the pullback already well underway as U.S. forces surrender large swaths of the countryside and hunker down in their bases.”
“As Kaplan himself says, the focus on massive military sweeps…”

Huh?

“Kaplan makes a pretty good argument that a pullout now would lead to disaster”
“If there is a better option than setting an immediate timetable for withdrawal”

Huh?

Don’t worry. Logic be damned. Just throw in a few BusHitlerMcChimpies, and you’ll be fine.

Steve

3

joel turnipseed 02.24.06 at 6:41 pm

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.

4

John Quiggin 02.24.06 at 6:56 pm

“Huh”

Steve, maybe you missed the line “there are no good outcomes on offer”. Or maybe you should find a blog whose teenage author thinks “BusHitlerMcChimpy” is a pretty good argument and take your comments there. At least you’d be in the right league.

As regards your view that sergeants don’t have a clue about the big picture, take it up with Kaplan, not me.

5

Steve Burton 02.24.06 at 8:19 pm

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.

6

John Quiggin 02.24.06 at 9:27 pm

Steve B, I’d count myself as a relative optimist about the general possibility of liberal democracy in the Islamic/Arab world. But I would have thought it obvious that Iraq was the least promising place in the entire region to start. This is an example of the multiple rationales problem.

7

Tom Hurka 02.24.06 at 10:13 pm

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.

8

Kenny Easwaran 02.24.06 at 10:39 pm

Re: #7. Wasn’t there also lots of talk about how Iraq had the most secularist, cosmopolitan, and educated population of any Arab country? I don’t know if that was actually true (I imagine Beirut’s status as “the Paris of the Middle East” and Dubai’s status as the Las Vegas of the Middle East mean that Lebanon and the UAE were at least candidates). But there was at least something going for that theory about where (if anywhere) to start. Of course, on similar grounds, one could suggest that Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan were the places to solidify democracy before trying to spread it into the Arab world at all. Assuming there was any reasonable way to do that.

9

WhichFerdinand 02.25.06 at 2:15 am

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.

10

Brendan 02.25.06 at 8:27 am

Since we are on the subject of resources, I thought I should highlight this story here. The point of it is that of all the iraqi army ‘units’ that have been trained and armed and so forth, the number that can now fight without US assistance is……

zero.

That’s down from a year ago. Then it was 1.

In other words, not one iota, not one millimetre of progress has been made in the US ‘exit’ strategy. Nor, despite the fantasies of the increasingly detached from reality ‘pro-war’ side, is there any particular reason to think that any progress will be made at any point in the future.

And yet Bush has stated that he will not leave until his impossible plan is achieved (notable amongst his political statements in actually bearing some resemblance to reality).

Since the Americans and British won’t leave till the plan is achieved, and the plan is unachievable, therefore…..

11

jonst 02.25.06 at 9:01 am

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.

12

Barry 02.25.06 at 9:18 am

Steve, the apparent disconnect is that a strategy of ‘say outside in bases, separated from the Iraqi people, except when we conduct large sweeps’ seems to be what we’ve got.

13

Semanticleo 02.25.06 at 9:42 am

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”

14

shpx.ohfu 02.25.06 at 10:34 am

Too bad there wasn’t a qualified person with practical experience, say like a four star general
[coughShinsekicoughcough]
to tell them in advance that their plans were half assed.

15

Brendan 02.25.06 at 10:46 am

‘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’.

16

Jim S 02.25.06 at 1:05 pm

brendan has it right. It’s a cult of personality and ideology. It’s not actual well reasoned thought, amenable to revision when it turns out the facts on the ground don’t match what you thought you’d find.

17

jonst 02.25.06 at 1:38 pm

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.

18

otto 02.25.06 at 3:00 pm

FYI:
It’s William Kristol, not Irving, who co-wrote that book.

19

abb1 02.25.06 at 3:31 pm

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…

20

John Quiggin 02.25.06 at 3:45 pm

Thanks, Otto, fixed now.

21

rollo 02.25.06 at 7:01 pm

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.

22

zdenek 02.26.06 at 4:15 am

brendan– if I am not mistaken thoughtful neo cons such as Norman Geras and Michael Ignatieff do not subscribe to their neocon view as if it was an article of faith so your suggestion seems wrong headed on that score. No much less gimmicky explanation is that many of the objectives of the neocon agenda have been acomplished ( and some have not ) and hence the war was justified and the neocon outlook is not discredited.( Fukuyama is just wrong : see his prediction that Bush is retreating from Bush Doctrine that is refuted by latest statement of it in the talk Bush gives to the American Legion two days ago )

23

zdenek 02.26.06 at 4:31 am

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.

24

zdenek 02.26.06 at 5:28 am

jim s– What is neocon foreign policy outlook ? The best condensed definition I have seen comes from Paul Berman ( Terror and Liberalism 2003): “Freedom for others means safety for ouselves . Let us be for freedom for others .”
Now it is the linking of ones’ security with promotion of freedom that gives strenghth to neoconoutlook and has appeal to some people on the left ( but clearly not on the hard left ) and will probably ( contra Fukuyama )survive change in US government i.e. it will endure because it is intellectualy satisfying outlook .

25

John Quiggin 02.26.06 at 6:23 am

Zdenek, Kaplan is a neocon and he says Bush is abandoning Iraq, so maybe you should criticise him rather than Fukuyama.

26

Brendan 02.26.06 at 7:05 am

‘if I am not mistaken thoughtful neo cons such as Norman Geras and Michael Ignatieff’

OK well hoooooooooold on a second. I don’t have much time for Michael Ignatieff, let alone Geras, but I don’t think even their worst enemies would describe them as ‘neo-conservatives’. Geras is an ageing Marxist, and Ignatieff (I assume) would describe himself as a ‘liberal’. Paul Berman may or may not be a ‘neo-conservative’ but it’s unlikely that he would describe himself as that.

In any case, I’m tired of having debates on the basis of political rhetoric. Obviously neo-conservaties, when setting out their political creed in the marketplace of ideas, put the best possible ‘spin’ on it. The fact that neo-conservatives tell themselves (and others) that they are in favour of democracy is a statement (to me) on the same level as ‘Persil washes whiter’ or ‘Carlsberg is probably the best lager in the world’.

In this world, words mean nothing. Actions and results are everything.

So: the key question is not, ‘did the neo-conservatives state that they wanted Iraq to become a democracy?’ because, frankly, I don’t care what they said.

The key question is: ‘Has Iraq become a democracy since the invasion, or, if not, is it moving in that direction?’

Key questions to ask yourself here are: how democratic can a state be with an occupying army of many tens of thousands of foreign troops, who are not answerable to the elected government?

How democratic can a state be when it is on the verge (or beyond) of civil war?

How democratic can a state be when theocrats hold many of the main positions of power, and, as they become increasingly powerful, increasingly infringe on civil liberties?

How democratic can a state be when people (on an increasingly frequent basis) simply ‘vanish’, and either are never seen again, or turn up dead, showing signs of torture, or turn up in Abu Ghraib being held on no charge for an indeterminate period of time by the Americans, or are held on the same basis by the Iraqi ‘security forces’, and when few (if any) of these cases ever come to court, and when hardly anyone is ever charged, let alone convicted, of the murders?

27

zdenek 02.26.06 at 7:07 am

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 ).

28

zdenek 02.26.06 at 7:23 am

brendan– both people I mention support the effort in Iraq : Geras makes this plain in his website ( an btw what is the remark ” he is an ageing Marxist ” supposed to show ? get real ).Ignatieff in his ‘Empire Light’.
Second observation I would make is that you dont put any pressure on the neocon agenda by showing that Iraq is not a full-blown Democracy yet. Why ? because it is understood alround as a long term project. See for instance Germany after 2nd. world war . Imagine you said two years after the defeat of the Nazis that the American project of implementing Democracy cannot work because in 1948 Germany did not yet have full-blown Democracy. In other words your question betrays misunderstanding of the neocon otlook .

29

Brendan 02.26.06 at 7:30 am

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.

30

zdenek 02.26.06 at 7:51 am

brendan– US exceptionalism need not be understood as thinking that US is *morally* superior to all other states . More plausible interpretation is that US has greater *responsibility* than anyone else ( historical reasons )and if it is supperior this extends only to rogue states .
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. This is the case because the US preeminence is construed as a temporary state of affairs; the enforcer status in other words is temporary state of affairs.

31

John Quiggin 02.26.06 at 7:56 am

BTW, Zdenek, I’m sure Norman Geras will be pleased to learn that fellow neocons see him as one of the more thoughtful members of their group.

32

No Preference 02.26.06 at 7:59 am

The Germany went up in the three years after 1945. Iraq has headed down.

Comparisons with Germany and Japan are futile. The Japanese and Germans viewed the US occupation as legitimate. They accepted our right to reorder their societies. The Iraqis don’t see that the US has the right to reorder theirs.

The factor of legitimacy is ignored or downplayed in discussions of the occupation, but I think it’s very important. I doubt that any government we leave behind can last.

33

No Preference 02.26.06 at 8:06 am

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.

34

zdenek 02.26.06 at 8:14 am

preference- important point about legitimacy but it is the Iraqis who are doing the reordering of Iraq now not the US. The US role is to help create conditions for establishment of institutions that can generate legitimacy. Again the parallels with Japan /Germany are there. The only difference of course is the insurgency and the moral support it gets from the left inside US/Europe unermining the effort in other words on the home front.

35

zdenek 02.26.06 at 8:33 am

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.

36

zdenek 02.26.06 at 8:49 am

brendan — you made an important point when you asked what is actually happening on the ground and that this is more important then political spin etc. 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.
This is not mere rhetoric but real stuff on the ground that makes difference in peoples lives and all thanks to who ? Not the left but rather to the neocons I am affraid to say.

37

Brendan 02.26.06 at 9:12 am

‘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.

38

zdenek 02.26.06 at 9:32 am

Kristol/Kagan write ” it is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with …morality ” and brendan comments “unless someone can come up with objective measure of morality: this is essentially religious belief”.
Brendan’s remark involves fairly widespread misunderestimation ( I know its silly ) of 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’. 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.
PS :Oh yes before I forget note that ( as some people have pointed out ) Tony Blair’s positively neocon foreign policy preceded Bush: air strikes on Sadam Hussein in 1998, interventions in Kossovo and Siera Leone.

39

zdenek 02.26.06 at 9:44 am

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 ??

40

abb1 02.26.06 at 10:18 am

One obvious explanation would be that Islamofascism has a more correct position on this than its brother Judeochristiofascism, represented by the troll here.

41

Brendan 02.26.06 at 10:36 am

‘‘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’?

42

zdenek 02.26.06 at 10:45 am

abb1- 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.

43

Scott 02.26.06 at 10:48 am

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…

44

zdenek 02.26.06 at 10:58 am

brendan,scott– scott you are pointing out an inconsistency at best not that neocon conception of morality is not secular; the point I was making.
Brendan see the NSS document which spells out neocon position on rights etc. First thing to notice is that the view of rights and their application is at odds with Fukuyama reading and secondly exceptionalism is of the modest sort i.e. the sort which says US has greater responsibility not that US is morally superior.

45

abb1 02.26.06 at 11:27 am

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?

46

Brendan 02.26.06 at 11:47 am

I dont know what NSS document you mean. Here’s one from 2002.

‘Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage.We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty. In a world that is safe, people will be able to make their own lives better.We will defend the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants.We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. We will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.’

Er…I don’t know how to break it to you but this IS a statement of American Exceptionalism.

‘In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage.’

In other words: the US is moral and, allegedly, never uses its strength for political or financial advantage. So if it appears to, that must be because the observer is biased, or a communist, or an islamist, or something similar.

I have highlighted the word ‘we’ in the paragraph above. ‘We’ means the US. In other words, the US (and not France or the UK or Venezuela, or NATO or the UN) will do all these things. In other words, the US and the US alone has the right to fight ‘tyrants’. And who decides who is a tyrant? Why, the US, obviously. ‘And America will hold to account nations that are compromised by terror, including those who harbor terrorists.’ Not the UN. Not the EU. America. And only America.

As the NSS ends: ‘Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilization. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s triumph over all these foes.

The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.

The US is uniquely strong, uniquely moral, and uniquely blessed. It will lead other nations, because it is a superior nation. And if you fuck with the US: ‘We will strongly resist aggression from other great powers.’….to repeat if you fuck with God’s Favourite Country it’s hasta la vista baby.

This is an extremely pure and aggressive statement of American Exceptionalism. To act on it would mean the end of the UN, the end of multi-national trade agreements, the end of the Criminal Court and the end of International Law. Is that what you want?

47

Brendan 02.26.06 at 12:01 pm

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.

48

No Preference 02.26.06 at 2:08 pm

The US role is to help create conditions for establishment of institutions that can generate legitimacy.

zdenek, the only way the US can “help create conditions for establishment of institutions that can generate legitimacy” is to leave the country.

You miss the point of the National Security Strategy as well. Don’t look at the lipstick on the pig – the boilerplate about democracy, freedom and respecting others. Condi Rice added most of that prior to publication. Look at what is really revolutionary about the document – the proclamation that the US will have absolute unchallengeable military supremacy across the planet; the declaration of our unique right to wage preventive war; the dismissal of international bodies and international law. Our current strategy is a direct descendent of Paul Wolfowitz’a 1992 Defense Planning Guidance paper, that said that military power was the only strategic area in which US power was unchallenged, and we should make the most of it.

Your comment about the insurgency getting “moral support” from “the left” doesn’t deserve a response.

49

dale 02.26.06 at 3:41 pm

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?

50

dale 02.26.06 at 3:45 pm

apologies for the typos – outrage makes the hand unsteady.

51

zdenek 02.27.06 at 2:36 am

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.

52

Brendan 02.27.06 at 3:11 am

‘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.’

Give me an example, just one, of atrocities happening in the capital city of South Africa three years (not two) after the end of apartheid that are in any way analagous to what we saw over the weekend in Baghdad.

53

zdenek 02.27.06 at 4:10 am

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.

54

zdenek 02.27.06 at 4:27 am

brendan– systematic murders of white farmers and their families. What about rape of babies which has become something of a sport in SA ? There are no car bombs but to many right wing people in SA the examples I provide are proof that Democracy is a sham .

55

dale 02.27.06 at 4:39 am

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.

56

dale 02.27.06 at 4:40 am

zdenek:

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.

57

dale 02.27.06 at 4:41 am

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

58

dale 02.27.06 at 4:56 am

zdenek:

the usual white south african standards won’t do:

“systematic murders of white farmers and their families.”

“What about rape of babies which has become something of a sport in SA”

while abhorrent, neither is related to the presence or absence of a working democracy. to claim that they are is to claim that new york and sydney, where violent crimes occur, have their political process thereby invalidated. this is simply obviously inane.

i am aware that you are claiming NOT to hold these positions yourself, but that they are held by SOME people, and these SOME people might erroneously draw invalid conclusions from such rhetoric, whihc you OBVIOUSLY don’t. again, however, you are wrong in your basic attempt to make the situations as analogous, and therefore wrong in everthing you subsequently attempt on that basis.

both claims you make are *race-based* in south africa – they are hauled out to demonstrate that black people are incapable of meaningful civic association, and THEREBY inherently incapable of democracy, a form of goverment held to be the domain of white folk.

the closest analogue to this set of beliefs about people, in the context of iraq, is the hard-line neocon position in the united states, which holds that arabs, ingherently incapable of civilisation, require the civilising might of the US hammer. samuel huntington provides the urbane version of same, if you want to look it up. ann coulter provides the less urbane reprise.

by the way, to claim that raping babies is something of a sport in south africa is to vastly overstate the case, and it makes me wonder where your political sympthies might lie.

59

dale 02.27.06 at 4:58 am

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.

60

Brendan 02.27.06 at 5:24 am

‘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.’

This point is worth pursuing, because many people find it difficult to understand how the US, which goes on (and on and on….) about democracy etc. can pursue a foreign policy orientated mainly towards preventing democracy.

The fact is that the two options you have posited are not an either/or. American exceptionalism IS about values, but it’s also about nationalism (remember Kristol’s highly accurate description of neoconservatism as ‘American Nationalism’). The thinking goes thus: the US ‘invented’ democracy (this is in itself a highly dubious argument but let’s pretend it’s watertight for the meantime). Moreoever, the US is ‘uniquely’ free. And the US, being a ‘land without a people, for a people without a land’ (I know I know…let it pass…..) is, as it were ‘born without original sin’: i.e. it does not have the old, traditional, ‘decadent’ practices of Europe to hinder its ‘progress’. Therefore the US is ‘uniquely’ moral and good, and therefore, it can (and must) lead ‘all’ good nations in the battle against Evil etc. etc. etc.
This is one of the three main tributaries of contemporary American Imperialism. The other, which is very very strong nowadays but which I simply don’t have the space to discuss here, is the explicitly religious conception of the US as being the ‘promised land’ the ‘city on the hill’, a uniquely good state set apart by God to work as a ‘light unto nations’. Bush undoubtedly believes this. These two ideas clearly have very different routes, one secular, one religious, but they end up in the same ‘place’: the idea that the US is uniquely placed to lead other nations and can (and must) take the lead in spreading ‘democracy’ etc. etc. etc.

The problem with this mentality is that it is self-contradictory. You cannot on the one hand, (as the NSS document argues) agree that democracies are morally superior to totalitarian states (which is probably true) and THEN go on to argue that the US is morally superior to all other states. It’s gotta be one or the other. And in practice it’s the latter. During the Iraq war, the US didn’t care that Spain and France and Germany were (technically) part of the ‘free world’: their views were simply ignored. Likewise, in practice, international law, international institutions etc. can be and are simply ignored if they conflict with US interests.

The third ‘stream’ of American Exceptionalism is almost dead now, but its ghost lives on in a variety of unacknowledged way: explicit biological racism, based on social Darwinism. This was the view that the white man was uniquely civilised, moral and good, and that the ‘lesser breeds’ were indeed ‘without the law’: wicked, immoral, undemocratic. Therefore democracy would have to be imposed on them by the superior white race. This view has become very very politically incorrect to state explicitly, but it lives on in subterranean fashion: in the racist chants used by American soldiers when they think no one is listening, in the obscene outbursts of genocidal fury we sometimes hear on LGF, and so forth.

To repeat: I sorta agree with you. The two views feed off each other , but they also clash. And how is the clash resolved? Generally in terms of American Nationalism. So, the ‘free world’ which SHOULD be a phrase merely describing the democracies of the world, ends up merely being a euphemism for ‘friendly to the United States’. So at the moment, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and Equatorial Guinea are part of the ‘free world’. Venezuela, on the other hand, and (perhaps) Bolivia, are not.

61

Brendan 02.27.06 at 5:39 am

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.

62

zdenek 02.27.06 at 5:42 am

dale– re the analogy point. As far as I can see you offer no *argument* to substanciate your claim that my analogy ‘is specious’ all I see is a *claim* to that effect , and of couse that will not do.
re the question whether US is involved in helping Iraqis to implement Democracy. 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. ( events such as 9/11 have ushered in a new outlook with new foreign policy and this requires a fresh reevaluation ). Your other claims about US motivation etc. is just tired ( half baked in your case ) and largely discredited Marxist rhetoric ; really no better than conspiracy theory we see on the extreme right. This offers no insight into anything let alone evnts that are occuring in Iraq.

63

No Preference 02.27.06 at 6:40 am

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.

64

zdenek 02.27.06 at 6:45 am

dale– re the progress detractors. What is the line that the hard left takes when you point out that there were elections , that the country has liberal ( all things considered ) constitution and that women have equal rights to men in Iraq ? The line is to special plead and concentrate on the shortcomings.That is to say it denies that these are acievements. This is precisely what the communists did in Czechoslovakia in 1920s( the first republic )Nazis during Weimar and communists again now in Czech Republic. In my opinion the south african right wing neonazi criticisms of SA government and the type of critique we see comming from communist party/cosatu and their fellow travelers is similar .
So it is tempting to ask ( as many have asked see Berman , Ignatieff, Hitchens, Geras , Kamm and others on the left )why is it that left traditionally opposed to Nazism and other types of totalitarianism finds itself ( in an upside down fashion ) supporting the ‘enemy’ as it were ? Why is it aligned with the women hating , gay hating ,secular values hating fundamentalist right ?

65

dale 02.27.06 at 6:53 am

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.

66

Brendan 02.27.06 at 7:15 am

Oh that’s a shame. I thought Zdanek was a serious commentator, interested in real debate, and then his last post showed he was just an average pro-war drone after all.

Anyway there is no point in arguing along the lines of ‘elections’ (as though there weren’t elections under Saddam) and the ‘Constitution’ (remember: Stalin’s Soviet Constitution was one of the best and ‘liberal’ in the world….on paper).

Anyway let’s hear the joys of liberated Iraq from an Iraqi dentist, who, I believe, supported the war.

‘The daytime curfew in the capital, and surrounding governorates of Salah Al-Din, Diyala and Babel has been extended to Monday morning…In Karbala, a remote controlled car bomb explosion killed 4 civilians and injured 10 close to a popular market, according to police officials. A suspect was arrested at the scene with no further details. In Buhriz, south of Ba’quba, gunmen broke into a Shi’ite residence and killed 13 men from one family, Ba’quba police said….The situation seems to be getting worse at night. I was relatively able to move around my neighbourhood during the day, to visit some friends and neighbours, and to buy cigarettes. Fuel for the generators is running out, and the local neighbourhood generator is used for less than 5 hours a day. Now that it’s dark, I can hear nearby gunfire again, but not as bad as yesterday night. I’ll try to update again if something comes up….
Fierce streetfighting at my doorstep for the last 3 hours. Rumor in the neighbourhood is that men in black are trying to enter the area. Some armed kids defending the local mosque three blocks away are splattering bullets at everything that moves, and someone in the street was shouting for people to prepare for defending themselves.

There’s supposed to be a curfew, but it doesn’t look like it. My net connection is erratic, so I’ll try to update again if possible. The news from other areas in Baghdad are horrible. I don’t think it’s being reported anywhere. My father and uncle are agitatedly walking back and forth in the hallway, asking me what we should do if the mob or Interior ministry forces try to attack us in our homes? I have no answer for them.’

Now just imagine yourself, as a middle class professional, living in circumstances, day in and day out, in which there is erratic fresh water, erratic electricity, gun battles outside your front door, in which if you go and get cigarettes you run the risk of being shot, or injured, or just ‘vanishing’, a world which, (like Orwell’s 1984) on a regular basis people simply vanish and are never seen again, friends, family, you name it.

That’s the reality of Iraq ‘The Model’.

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/

PS since the major beneficiaries of this invasion has been Iran, it is actually YOU who is on the side of ‘the women hating , gay hating ,secular values hating fundamentalist right’. Whenever you hear Hitchens and Kampf bleating you about secularism, you must always remember that (‘objectively’ as the Marxists used to say) they are on the SAME side as Iran and the Shias generally.

67

dale 02.27.06 at 7:23 am

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.

68

zdenek 02.27.06 at 8:45 am

brendan–you obviously mean well but when you try to support your view by an argument try an argument that actually works instead as in this case special pleading. In particular try to look at good stories as well as bad and then formulate a position; what you do when you just site cases that support your case really should be avoided in serious discusion.

69

Brendan 02.27.06 at 9:09 am

‘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.

70

zdenek 02.27.06 at 10:00 am

brendan– here is Nabi Haithem , 22,tea house worker: ” I am very happy with the election.. I am very proud that for the first time in our history -in Iraq and the Arab world , free democratic elections are taking place”. Here is Suad Mizban 32 poultry seller “We will vote…but still it is much better than Sadams time..” Muhamad Salman 38 civil servant ” we will participate ..when we had elections before it was a big joke …”
Thse are examples from todays BBC and there are many others. As far as my special pleading rebuke is concerned I appologise fot the condesending tone. Special pleading involves selective use of evidence and is seen as not providing proper support for the conclusion one is trying to establish. I.e. an argument cannot be a sound one ( true premises and valid logical form ) if it involves such use of evidence .

71

Brendan 02.27.06 at 10:16 am

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?)

72

Erasmus 02.27.06 at 9:53 pm

According to the latest NBC poll, support for the war is down to 30% of Americans. Does that mean that the other 70% of us are inadvertantly siding with the terrorists, zdenek? You should run for office on that platform, and see how far it gets you.

73

Brendan 02.28.06 at 4:25 am

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.

74

zdenek 02.28.06 at 4:53 am

erasmus–my position is not that everyone who opposes the war is pro islamist because there are some good criticisms that make anti war position a perfectly reasonable one and I accept that. The line I have taken in these comments rather is that *hard left* criticism of the Iraq war is both bad ( in a sense that the arguments used to support the position dont work ) and *tacidly pro Islamist* ( see Pilger , Holloway, Moor, Pinter and so on ).
Also note that the hard left position we encounter here is indeferent to how much suffering Iraqis are experiencing or how many elections have been held . Because this is strictly irrelevent from their point of view. ‘Elections’ , , ‘rule of law’, ‘democracy’ and so on are western notion only and are presented as having universal scope and appeal ; but this, so the line goes, is a ploy in a power move .
So actually US has no right *ever* to make a move like an intervention even when it has a good outcome ( or when its motives are altruistic ) because of what US is viz. essentially evil machine that needs to be destroyed .( it is evil because it is capitalist , racist ,sexist , hegemon and so on , you know the script ).
P.s. note the similarity that the Leftist secular vision has to the Islamist demonization of US which depics US as a satan and morally inferior entity .

75

zdenek 02.28.06 at 5:42 am

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 ?

76

zdenek 02.28.06 at 6:15 am

brendan– before I forget I must respond to your suggestion that Iraq war is elite’s war for their own purposes.
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.
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. It just doesnt follow because the war may have consequences that are good all round and in the non elites interests ( to show that this is not the case you need another argument ).
Thirdly your criticism is not made in good faith ( this applies generally to leftist arguments that criticise US for being hegemonic ) because ideologically you dont actually have problem with totalitarianism so you cannot consistently criticise US for not being democratic.( you are like a fundamentalist who favours censorship on principled grounds who nevertherles objects when his views are censored.)

77

Brendan 02.28.06 at 6:35 am

‘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.

78

zdenek 02.28.06 at 8:16 am

brendan– ok so these cool discoveries ( democracy , rule of law etc ) have indeed universal appeal you seem to think but the west cannot be trusted with them because the west is bunch of crooks and liers ; they invented this set of political values and the discourse that goes with it but now they just want to use it to exploit and exploit and exploit.
On this view of the universe the entire history of western civilization is a history of oppresion and exploitation of the ‘other’ then right ? Sorry , sorry not quite because there are also people like you ( real heroes ) who see through the disguise and pretence and are able to look behind the mask of all the pretence and see the truth : racism , sexism , exploitation , selfishness , greed that is western civilization and you guys are here to first expose the west and then fix things.
No problem lets just ask : you know this because of some superior theory that provides this insight ( I also want some please ) or is it unlike all the corrupt us you are pure ? Again how do you manage that since you are part of the western degenerate culture ? Never mind the arrogance and pretenciousnes ,these are obvious problems for you , what I want to know is whether you see that this picture is incoherent ?

79

zdenek 02.28.06 at 9:10 am

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.

80

Brendan 02.28.06 at 9:12 am

And now you are getting angry. How tiresome.

Anyway the joy of democracy is that it doesn’t MATTER what I think. It also doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is what the majority thinks.

‘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.”’

‘Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq. ‘

‘The war in Iraq has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks around the world and U.S.-led coalition troops should withdraw from the Middle Eastern nation, according to the majority of people polled in 35 countries in a British Broadcasting Corp. survey. ‘

‘AN overwhelming 85 per cent of people blame the Iraq invasion for the London bombings, a Daily Mirror/GMTV poll reveals today.’

‘An October poll of six Arab nations indicates 78 percent of respondents thought “there was more terrorism because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, with four out of five saying the war had brought less peace to the region.”‘

Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

so: how can the vast majority of ordinary people round the world ‘see through the disguise and pretence and are able to look behind the mask of all the pretence and see the truth : racism , sexism , exploitation , selfishness , greed.’

Well I don’t know mate. The question, perhaps, is how can ordinary people see this when assimilated Borg like conformists like yourself CAN’T see these things?

Perhaps cos ordinary people aren’t completely fucking stupid?

Do you think?

81

Brendan 02.28.06 at 9:44 am

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?.

82

zdenek 02.28.06 at 9:56 am

Ah thats a shame . I thought brendan was a serious commenter and instead he has just showed that he was an everage anti-war drone. :-/

83

zdenek 02.28.06 at 10:05 am

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.

84

Brendan 02.28.06 at 10:19 am

Trolls aren’t as funny as they used to be are they?

85

Brendan 02.28.06 at 12:01 pm

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

86

zdenek 03.01.06 at 3:21 am

brendan — Yes I agree with you on most of the facts but how does one draw the following conclusion ( not saying you necessarily do but not sure ) Senator Durbin ” you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime that had no concern for human beings “.
Why is this over the top you ask ? because in many ways it is opposite to Stalag : Korans available , prayer arrows pointed to Mecca, visits by US congressmen, inmates voracious readers, Middle Eastern food available.
This suggests humane treatment towards terrorists often cought in combat , always out of uniform and not subject to the Geneva Convention. ( ok torture if it takes place puts a different complection on things I agree ).

So the conclusion you want to draw ( that these are gulags ? )is not supported by balanced look at the evidence I am affraid. The conclusion you want to draw follows only if one selectively picks evidence that one likes. What does this remind you of ?

87

abb1 03.01.06 at 2:25 pm

…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.

Comments on this entry are closed.