The Dark Is Afraid of the USA

It seems that with the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial starting and the Democratic Primary drawing to a close, the occupation of Iraq is coming back into focus. I hope this is good news; I would really like to believe that the more people think about Iraq, the more likely they are to vote for a Democrat in November.

The conservative blabbershpere does not seem at all worried, though. They seem to be embracing the change, and using it to renew assurances that, no matter what one thinks about starting the Iraq "War", one has to believe in the importance of winning it. Five years in, I've still never heard a plausible description of what a victory in Iraq would look like, but I'm constantly assured that it is of critical importance. Many of the original conditions have come and gone: the fall of Saddam Hussein, a democratically elected government, a constitution. Others are no closer to, if not further from, becoming a reality: a strong Iraqi military and police force, a decline in sectarian violence, and Iraqis embracing Western democracy. What have we accomplished so far? I know the staunch faithful can point to vague stories about schools being built and can find positive trends in wildly fluctuation casualty reports, but how is Iraq better today than it was before we invaded? The people are less safe, they are less free, they are impoverished, they do not have basic utilities, and every day they wake up with the shame and resentment that comes from being an occupied people. Five years into this debacle, there is no concrete evidence of being any closer to any sort of victory. The enemy is not a government or even an organized unit that could surrender or be wiped out; it is a loose, unstructured coalition without any real central command.

What does victory in Iraq mean, outside of a meaningless battle cry to prove one's patriotism? What would it entail? Does anyone actually believe it's possible? The United States is not Chuck Norris. The boogey man does not check under the bed for it, it did not give the sun skin cancer, and it can not create a victory where victory is an impossible notion good for little more than stirring up nationalism. When do we, as a self-governing nation, become a parody of ourselves? Has it already happened?

Conservative Simplification

I became aware of this article by Adam Wolfson because my wife knew him while she was in college. She thought I might be interested to see what he had written a few years back for the National Review, and she was right. It's actually a pretty interesting article, and at least gives a much-needed break to the old stand-by criticisms of liberal motivations, like hating America and wanting the terrorists to win. That doesn't mean it isn't deeply, deeply flawed. It is, and as usual for conservative analysis of liberals, is a gross simplification of liberal philosophy.

These explanations no doubt have something to do with why the Left despises Bush. But there is more to their hatred than is generally understood — something more fundamental is at work. Almost all modern liberal thought begins with the bedrock assumption that humans are basically good. Within this moral horizon something such as terrorism cannot really exist, except as a manifestation of injustice, or unfairness, or lack of decent social services. Whether knowingly or not Bush has directly challenged this core liberal belief — and for this he is not easily forgiven.

There's some truth to this. I'm certainly not ashamed to say that I think there are a lot of shades of grey between black and white. Anyone with any sense of empathy should be able to understand that humans are very seldom motivated by classic cartoon villainy, complete with black cape and drooping mustache. We all do things that we know we shouldn't. How often are you motivated to do so by a driving desire to be evil? Did you drive to work today at fifteen miles over the speed limit to further an agenda of evil? Did you engage in neighborhood gossip to further an agenda of evil? Did you steal a newspaper, cheat on your spouse, underpay an employee or omit undocumented income from your tax returns because you are a person driven by evil? It's unlikely, even though all those actions are, to some degree, evil. Why is it such a crazy, moonbat liberal idea that humans can do evil without being evil, when we each exemplify that type of human fallibility on a daily basis?

But what should be clear and obvious is made obscure by liberal ideology. If we are to face the evil in plain sight, we must first properly fit words to facts. Bush calls the terrorists "killers" and "evildoers," and speaks of an "axis of evil." He affirms the need for the "violent restraint of violent men," and argues that military strength is necessary to keep at bay "a chaotic world ruled by force." He describes life under Hussein's rule in Iraq as a "Baathist hell." We live, the president warns, in "a time of danger."

My wife assures me that Mr. Wolfson is a pretty intelligent guy. He very well may be, but it smacks of smarmy, self-righteous ignorance to so openly and warmly embrace this kind of irresponsible rhetoric. Using broad strokes to misrepresent situations teeming with nuance isn't the calling card of a brave leader; instead, it's the embarrassing tactic of a weak politician pandering to an anti-intellectual and increasingly xenophobic base.

It's not that liberals can't deal with evil. I agree that we may view evil in different terms, but I don't believe that we can't parse it and actively ignore it. We're just not willing to let the evils of others justify evil as a response. Are the terrorists "killers" and "evildoers"? Absolutely. Does that justify hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Civilian deaths as part of the response to their actions? Was Iraq under Saddam a "Baathist hell"? For some, I'm sure it was. Does that justify an occupation that has destroyed huge swaths of that nation while funneling its money into the pockets of American corporations? These are the questions that conservatives have to ignore, because the answers are so glaringly obvious, and yet their supportive philosophy is based on leaps of logic that fly counter to those answers. Only the most callous and desensitized conservative could actually claim that killing a house full of children with a missile in an attempt to kill one terrorist operative based on faulty and uncertain intelligence is justified. But by employing words like "evildoers", "violent men", and "Baathist hell", they manage to keep things in black and white, as if seeing it that way made it so.

This kind of thinking isn't only wrong. It's dangerous. It leads to leaps of logic that jeopardize our ability to accurately assess and respond to events. In the conservative worldview, it's easy to assume Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were working together. They were both evil men, so surely they would work together, just like the Joker and the Penguin, or Lex Luthor and General Zod. That they weren't fictional characters is irrelevant, since the conservative concept of evil men is very much the same as comic book villains. Sure, we went to war to a large extent based on that fictional alliance, but that's okay. Evildoers. Killers. Violent Men. You understand, we had no choice.

That's certainly not the only example. They're incredibly frequent. Let's not forget that Dick Cheney assured us that it was "reasonable to believe" that the anthrax attacks of 2001 were perpetrated by Al Queda. And now, of course, we keep hearing that the government of Iran is aiding Al Queda, and that you don't need actual evidence, because it should just be obvious. C'mon. Evil helps evil. When can we start bombing?

I realize this article is a few years old now, but it still seems very relevant; maybe even moreso than when it was written. The entire McCain campaign seems to be based on this same sort of thinking. Liberals are to wishy-washy to trust. We need a "straight talker". Somebody who can get the job done. Somebody who won't ask pesky questions about global responsibility and social justice. Someone who knows how to handle an evildoer. Because there are countries to be bombed, civilians to be killed, nationalism to be stoked, blood money to be made and resources to be stolen. We can't be bothered with morality.

Bush Lost His +2 Sword of Vocabulary Slaying

From Georgie's stirring speech marking the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the mess he got us into in Iraq:

"No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq."

Treasure? Lives and treasure? I realize the man lives in a fantasy world, but I didn't realize he thought he was playing some sort of global-scale game of Dungeons and Dragons. Doesn't he have a staff to proofread this shit?

"Uh, yeah, Mr. President? We might not want to refer to the money spent in Iraq as 'mad lootz'."

"Oh, really? Well, howzabout 'pirate booty.' I like pirates."

"Hmmmm... I don't think that conveys quite the message we're looking for..."

"Yeah, yeah... okay, I'll call it treasure. Ya' know, like plunder. Cause we went in there and blew up all them evildoers and plundered their treasure. It's heroical and stuff."

"I don't kn... Yeah. Okay. Whatever. That sounds fine, Mr. President."

Fucking treasure.

That's Not Okay

I pointed to this video in the previous post, but I have to comment on it a bit further.



The bubble Friedman is talking about here is a fantasy. I was a staunch Republican back then, and nobody thought this way. Nobody. It's completely revisionist history. Nobody ever said terrorism was okay. It never happened. There was never even a moment during the 90's when American culture said terrorism was anything other than heinous. Even Bill Clinton was blowing up aspirin factories to appease Americans who feared and hated terrorism, even if they had no real concept at the time of where the terrorism really was.

What Friedman is mistaking for a bubble of terrorism acceptance was something different. It was compassion and empathy for people. It was an attempt to separate terrorists and the people they lived among. It was a driving desire to retain our humanity in the face of inhumanity, and not assume everyone wearing a turban or praying to Allah was a dangerous fanatic who wanted to kill us. I wasn't part of that bubble. I really wasn't. I thought that bubble stemmed from naiveté and misguided attention-seeking. Now that the bubble has burst, and all vestiges of that enlightenment have been swept into the fringes of the 'liberal America-haters', I realize that I was wrong. I was an asshole. I was the problem.

Now, we live in a country where a supposedly respectable columnist can get on television and defend the war with the same rationale most of us originally used to oppose it. It was punitive aggression. The target was chosen arbitrarily. It was just an attempt to spread fear of American force, and establish American dominance in the region. It had nothing to do with 9/11. It had nothing to do with spreading democracy. It had nothing to do with overthrowing a dictator. It was just flexing a muscle that needed flexing, even if it meant the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

And that's... Okay.

Blowing It

This is absolutely shameful. Somebody thought it would be good idea to plant a bomb at an Army recruitment center in New York City. I can't help but assume that it was some assclown anti-war protest gone way too far, and it looks like the media is already starting to assume the same thing.

This has nothing to do with protesting the occupation of Iraq. This is domestic terrorism, and whoever did it should be dropped from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, preferably with a squad of sharpshooters armed with BB guns pegging him the whole way down.

The military is not the problem. The military is full of men and women who put their lives on the line for their country. Some of them are wonderful people, and some of them are not. Those who do wrong need to be held accountable, but as a whole they deserve our respect. But most importantly, they are a tool of the government. If the military is being used improperly, and it certainly is, then it is not the fault of the military or anyone in the military, but the fault of the government. And since we still like to think we live in a representative democracy, the government is us. We're responsible. Not the military, not the Army, and not an Army recruitment center on Manhattan. Us. All of us. It's our fault. It's our problem.

I can already see where this is likely going. The right is going to use this as proof positive that the anti-war crowd is made up of a bunch of unstrung fringe lunatics. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are going to be challenged to denounce it, which they certainly will, but simply by challenging them to denounce it the point will be made; John McCain doesn't need to denounce it. We already know he's not an America-hating communist Muslim terrorist-sympathizer.

On the other hand, an event like this provides impetus for irrational troop worship, which is a serious hinderance to rational discussion and debate about the occupation. Bloomburg started it off already.

"The fact that this appears deliberately directed at the recruiting station insults every one of our brave men and women in uniform stationed around the world fighting to defend our freedoms and the things we hold so dear."

Let's not get crazy here. This attack didn't insult anyone. It's meant to create fear and stir up like-minded potential vigilantes. And can we please ban the term 'defending our freedoms'? My freedoms are not in peril from rag-tag groups of insurgents in Iraq, they're in peril from an authoritarian presidential administration, a weak legislature and an apathetic citizenry. I respect people in the military, but right now, our military is busy defending imperialism, racism, religious intolerance and corporate greed; these are not things that I hold so dear. The misuse of the military pisses me off... I suppose that should be obvious, as it is the driving force behind my abandoning the political party I belonged to for twelve years. But I'm not pissed off at the military. I appreciate the military. I'm pissed off at a government that would sacrifice the lives of its soldiers to line the pockets of the wealthy, and a culture that would let it happen because people would rather be safe than do what's right.

Michelle Malkin: Relying on Stupidity

Michelle Malkin (also Michelle Malkin) has evidently been getting some traction out of grousing about the fact that the American media never reports good news from Iraq. As irrefutable evidence, she presents an edited story, culled from an article in The Australian (brought to you by... and be ready for a shock... Rupert Murdoch). The story is meant to illustrate that violence has slowed to nearly a trickle in Iraq.

During a five-day stretch between October 19 and 23, there were no deaths among coalition forces. Although three US servicemen died from “non-hostile causes”, this was the longest period without combat deaths for almost four years. And, between October 27 and 29, there were more days without coalition deaths...

...It is beyond dispute, though, that the tide of violence in Iraq has been stemmed.

Now, I shouldn't even have to point out how stupid it is to believe that a five-day casualty free stretch is more newsworthy than, say, the continued failure of the Iraqi government to maintain order, the widespread corruption among US contractors in Iraq, or an impending destabilizing Turkish invasion into the most stable region of Iraq. That's just Michelle's usual idiocy. But what I love even more is that she assumes her readers won't go on to read the full article from the Australian. I assume she's right, of course, but then, I don't have much more faith in the intelligence of her readership than she does. Even the Murdoch-owned paper had to admit, later in the story (and edited from Michelle's version):

The civilian death toll may also have receded because of the success of ethnic cleansing in Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods, while other Iraqis have fled the country and many rarely venture out of their homes.

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3000 Iraqi families, driven out of their Baghdad neighbourhoods, returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence dropped, the Government said yesterday.

Michael White, who compiles statistics on violence in Iraq for the independent website icasualties.org, said there had been a substantial change in parts of Iraq "but I also think that this is a lull". In Baghdad, for instance, he fears that Sadr is "keeping his powder dry for when the Americans pull out".

Asked if there would be a day soon when nobody died in Iraq, he replied: "We've had low death-toll days before and then a huge pile of bodies is discovered somewhere.

"I honestly don't think violence will subside just yet."

Oh. So you mean the opinions reflected in Michelle's cropped story aren't the only ones presented, even in a paper run by a shamelessly right-wing, pro-American-imperialist corporation?

Impossible. Nobody embodies integrity like Michelle Malkin.

Blackwater Smackdown

How has the Blackwater incident been glossed over so quickly? I can not think of a more perfect example of how the American occupation of Iraq is exactly the opposite of a 'war on terror' and in the interest of regional stability and American security.

The Iraqi government, who we're supposedly 'supporting' with our presence there (It's not an occupation! Really!), has demanded Blackwater be removed from the country. While I'm sure there's a lot of back room cajoling going on, our response, apparently, is to pretend we didn't hear them.

We're either going to support the fledgling Iraqi government, or we're going to support a corporation that the Iraqi people view as cold-blooded murderers. You'd better believe that all eyes in the region are on us right now. And they're certainly smart enough to recognize our silence as a decision.

On Responsibility

I just found this article. It's been out there a while now, and I'm sure I'm not the first blogger to point it out, but I hadn't discovered it before yesterday. If you haven't read it, you need to. It's long and it's difficult, but if you're an American, an occupation is occurring in your name, and you need to be aware of exactly what that implies.

I'll also say, before quoting any of the article, that the implications of it frighten me. I think it's far too easy to blame the soldiers. Individually, some of them are to blame... we're all responsible for our decisions. Still, I have a hard time blaming them. Most of them are still very young, and they've been sent to a place they have insufficient knowledge of, to serve a duty that will make them look like an occupying enemy to those they only want to help. It would make anyone bitter, I'm sure, and when you are trained to be detached from sympathy and empathy, the results are predictable.

The important lesson here is not about individual soldiers. It's about what it means to occupy a nation, and what occupation does to the occupied and those who occupy. It is about inevitability, and how that inevitability must be weighed when the decision is made to occupy. It is about failure on the part of this administration and its supporters to do so, both before the occupation and still today.

It was just soldiers being soldiers. You give them a lot of, too much, power that they never had before, and before you know it they're the ones kicking these guys while they're handcuffed. And then by you not catching [insurgents], when you do have someone say, 'Oh, this is a guy planting a roadside bomb'--and you don't even know if it's him or not--you just go in there and kick the shit out of him and take him in the back of a five-ton--take him to jail.
- Sgt. Jesus Bocanegra, 25

[U.S. soldiers] were the law. They were very mean, very mean-spirited to them. A lot of cursing at them. And I'm like, Dude, these people don't understand what you're saying.... They used to say a lot, 'Oh, they'll understand when the gun is in their face.
- Spc. Michael Harmon, 24

It's like very barren desert, so most of the people that live there, they're nomadic or they live in just little villages and have, like, camels and goats and stuff. There was then a little boy--I would say he was about 10 because we didn't see the accident; we responded to it with the investigative team--a little Iraqi boy and he was crossing the highway with his, with three donkeys. A military convoy, transportation convoy driving north, hit him and the donkeys and killed all of them. When we got there, there were the dead donkeys and there was a little boy on the side of the road.
- Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, 29

I just remember thinking to myself, I just brought terror to someone else under the American flag, and that's just not what I joined the Army to do.
- Staff Sgt. Timothy John Westphal, 31

That occupation can lead to stability and peace is a myth. If it were your home torn apart in the middle of the night, your face guns were pointed at by people who didn't understand your language, or your 10-year-old son killed by a convoy that didn't even slow down, would you ever be willing to find peace with those responsible? And yet Americans fly into a rage when it is implied that anyone in the Iraqi insurgency is justified in their reasoning. It is hypocrisy and hubris and dangerous in the extreme when we can so easily separate our own motives from those of others.

Newsweek: The 78 Stapled Pages That Brought Down A Nation

I guess one does what one knows, and I know responding to drivel. This lovely little number is from the Letters section of Newsweek, in response to an article about Bob Woodward’s new book, “State of Denial.”

You paint a picture of President Bush as a failed politician. As I see it, he’s a good leader who has tried to do what is best for the country. He couldn’t forsee what unfolded in Iraq, but he’s working with the existing situation. Your type of thinking, so influential in shaping the ideas of Americans, undermines our ability to prevail in Iraq. We are at war. As commander in chief, Bush deserves our respect and support. Our soldiers are demoralized by the liberal-media bias and our enemy is emboldened. Do you want us to lose the war? Is that the outcome you seek?

Karen
Gainesville, FL

Now, first of all, Newsweek painted no such picture of President Bush. Certainly some Newsweek columnists, including Jonathan Alter and Fareed Zakaria, have heaped well-deserved criticism on the administration, but Newsweek has not taken to injecting opinion into news pieces. Bob Woodward is the one who painted that particular picture of the President. This follows his last two books on the topic, both praising George W. Bush, proving that Bob Woodward writes whatever he feels will sell the most copies at any particular time. I care very little about Bob Woodward’s latest attempt to cash in on social momentum, and could not possibly care less how he paints the President to do so.

Regardless, Karen does a fantastic job painting a picture of an uninformed, nationalist mouth-breather, too caught up in Bush’s cult of personality even to comprehend where criticism of the administration comes from.

The United States is not involved in a war in Iraq, and the sooner we stop letting people claim otherwise, the sooner we can get to the task of dealing with reality. We are involved in an occupation of Iraq. That makes a big difference when considering Karen’s broader point. It is impossible to win an occupation. There is no final objective, there is no measure of success, and there is no organized enemy to surrender. When will we “win” the occupation? Doubtless Karen would tell us that the occupation is won when the insurgents are gone and Iraq becomes a Western-style democracy. History shows us, however, that occupations breed insurgencies; they do not quell them. Even more importantly, you cannot bomb a nation into democracy. Democracy is a political movement, not a military one. America is independent of Britain because of the American Revolution, but we are a Democratic Republic because of popular consent at the time. There is no evidence that such popular consent exists in Iraq, all cleverly-orchestrated pictures of purple fingers notwithstanding. There is no overwhelming, dedicated democratic movement in Iraq. If there were, there would be no need to occupy; Iraqi democrats, who would fight the insurgents with all the ferocity of colonial minutemen, would outnumber the insurgents.

There is no war to lose Karen, and to what extent there was, it is already lost. The war was lost when George W. Bush sent a fraction of the troops recommended by generals on the ground. It was lost when an invasion was carried out with no solid plan for how to maintain the peace. It was lost when advisors and experts with unpopular ideas regarding the high cost of an Iraq war in dollars, troops, and casualties were ignored or fired. It was lost when George W. Bush was urged by Cheney and Rumsfeld to engage in an unnecessary conflict that his father had refused the same two men long before anyone could engage in a “post-9/11” mindset. It was lost when the first Iraqi citizen was killed for a cause they neither understood nor supported, and that loss was repeated 599,999 times afterwards. No article in Newsweek is going to lose the war, Karen. That job has been accomplished by men much more powerful than Richard M. Smith, chairman and editor-in-chief.