Iraq/Vietnam

I've posted my own reply to Steven's Iraq/Vietnam analogy but it seems that just as he and I were hashing it out, Hitchens posted a column at Slate addressing exactly the same issue. As you can see from my post, I take the equation much more seriously than does Hitchens. Still, I can't help liking some of his points.

To begin with, Vietnam had been undergoing a protracted struggle for independence since before World War II and had sustained this struggle militarily and politically against the French empire, the Japanese empire, and then after 1945 the French empire again. By 1954, at the epic battle of Dien Bien Phu, the forces of Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Giap had effectively decided matters on the battlefield, and President Eisenhower himself had conceded that Ho would have won any possible all-Vietnamese election. The distortions of the Cold War led the United States to take over where French colonialism had left off, to assist in partitioning the country, and to undertake a war that had already been lost.

Whatever the monstrosities of Asian communism may have been, Ho Chi Minh based his declaration of Vietnamese independence on a direct emulation of the words of Thomas Jefferson and was able to attract many non-Marxist nationalists to his camp. He had, moreover, been an ally of the West in the war against Japan. Nothing under this heading can be said of the Iraqi Baathists or jihadists, who are descended from those who angrily took the other side in the war against the Axis, and who opposed elections on principle. If today's Iraqi "insurgents" have any analogue at all in Southeast Asia it would be the Khmer Rouge. . . .

I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism. But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's joined the choir invisible. It's turned up its toes. It's gone. It's an ex-analogy.

Giving the Purple Finger

I fully realize that many of my friends and colleagues here at OTR and elsewhere are justly worried that the events around the Iraq election give succor to those in the Bush administration who have otherwise bungled, cheated, lied, and apologized for outright immorality (torture) in the past two years.

We should also continue to be wary about replacing analysis with pure hope and exuberance. The events of the next few months will be crucial in seeing where this really leads. But I suggest that you are also mistaken not to allow yourselves some real joy, without resentiment, in the wonders and the true inspiration of the purple finger. For it may well be the case that the Purple Finger becomes an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy for some time to come. And even if it doesn't, it certainly represents that right now. and maybe that is OK.

Check out Dexter Filkins' special interactive feature at today's New York Times for some amazing pictures and reporting. The great picture of the two old Iraqi women giving the Purple Finger is for the ages.

This Op-ed, while I know it goes too far for some of my realist/skeptic pals, is still worth reading for a sense of the moment and its possibilities. We'll all come back down to earth soon enough.

Iraq as a nation never rose up against the occupation, and after yesterday it does not need to. Iraqis have just elected the only legitimate government between Istanbul and New Delhi. The prestige and moral force of popular representation cannot be denied, even by Washington. When the Iraqi government tells the Americans to leave, they will not be able to stay. Whether a little too soon or a little too late, this is the way it is supposed to be.

I write this from a rundown house in the poorest slum in the Middle East. Until yesterday, my hosts and neighbors had for three decades been among the most repressed people on earth. Yet when I walk out the door, I see a city smothered in posters and banners from a hundred political parties. Like Afghanistan last year, the country has endorsed the right to vote in percentages that shame the electoral apathy of the rich world. Let nobody tell you that this election was anything but real. Iraq's Baathists and Wahhabis may continue to bark, but this caravan is moving on.

For Morgan

Via Kevin Drum, from the New York Times. The date is September 3, 1967:

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

....A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

A Good Attitude

I'm waiting for what David Aaronovitch over at The Observer has to say about things in Iraq as my feelings about the matter have often mirrored his own: support for the intervention along Left hawkish lines, dissapointment, increasing despair and self-criticism, continued feeling that much of the anti-war camp was right for the wrong reasons, Vietnam syndrom, a nagging sense of hope none-the-less, belief in the Iraiqs themselves and support of those Iraqi leaders limping toward some form of democracy and self-rule, outright contempt for those in violent insurection as largely despicable and/or hopelessly misguided. I've toggled shamelessly between various versions of those positions all along. But somehow I still think one had to toggle when faced with facts so complicated and contradictory.

With this as preface, I would say that Andrew Rawnsley at The Observer has captured the way that I feel at this moment. I would say it is a good attitude to have toward the events as they have transpired in the last 48 hours.

Those who have pre-condemned today's elections in Iraq as a chaotic mess bound to lead to even more violent mayhem would perhaps prefer Saddam's version of elections. They were always predictable in their outcome.

I am not going to forecast what will ultimately flow from these elections, a stunningly rare event in the Arab world. I know what I would like to see unfold. The vote is for 18 provincial assemblies, a Kurdish parliament in the north and a national assembly that will establish a provisional government and draw up a new constitution to be put to a referendum before more elections in December. The embryo constitution already drafted is pretty good. It is a prospectus for a federal republic with safeguards for religious and ethnic minorities. If that can be made real, Iraq has the potential to become a confident, prospering and tolerant state advertising the merits of an open society in a neighbourhood for so long dominated by police states and potentates.

True, this is hugely ambitious. One election a democracy does not make. Much can go wrong and horribly so. To be hopeful about Iraq is to invite being straitjacketed for insane optimism. But better that than the dismal certainties of those who have already denounced these elections as a doomed charade before a single result has been returned. . . .

Some critics of the election seem to be urging democracy to fail in Iraq because they can't stand the thought that it might permit George Bush or Tony Blair to claim credit for their war. It is true that both men, the Prime Minister especially, are anxious for this to be a turning point in Iraq in order to justify the war to both history and their domestic audiences.

The hunt for weapons of mass destruction has come up so empty- handed that it has been abandoned. The occupation has been conducted with staggering ineptitude. British ministers are now candid, in private at any rate, about how ill-prepared they were for the scale and violence of the opposition.

They also accept it was an enormous blunder when the Americans, brushing aside British protests that this might not be such a smart plan, abolished the Iraqi army and by doing so fed recruits to the insurgency and deprived the country of any indigenous security structure. . . .

You can grasp why opponents of the war so loathe any prospect that Messrs Blair and Bush might be able to claim vindication from these elections. But to want democracy in Iraq to be a disaster simply to give yourself another reason to say: 'I told you so' is to put your self-righteousness before a better chance for more than 25 million people. . . .

Rather than scoff at the manifest imperfections of this election, I marvel that it is happening at all. One hundred and eleven party groupings appear on the giant ballot sheets. There is no shortage of diversity. Communists compete with monarchists. Every third candidate on a party list must be a woman. Whether you are a fan of positive discrimination or not, it means that Iraq's new assembly will be more representative of women than the Congress of the United States and many parliaments in Europe. Britain has yet to elect a House of Commons in which a third of its members are women. . . .

There are moments to be sceptical about politics and there are moments to be inspired by its possibilities. Today is a day for the latter. People prepared to risk their lives to vote deserve not our cynicism, but our respect and hope.

Skepticism?

I would be remiss to not comment on the Elections yesterday. As one who was accused of being ‘skeptical’ concerning these elections, I would like to make some clarifications. If one means by skeptical ‘cynical’, well then I am not skeptical. I take the elections in good faith, holding out the hope that a polity can be formed through an agonistic yet non-destructive political process. It was a moving, and as Dr. emile pointed out, heroic day. On the other hand, if one means by skeptical ‘serious and realistic’ well then I am skeptical. What is most bothersome to me about American politics in general is its ability to turn everything into a moral photo-op. So we had the end of the war, we had the end of ‘combat operation’, we had Sadddam’s capture, we had the installation of the Allawi government, etc. etc. At every one were told to rejoice and celebrate the dawn of freedom. Is it possible that this will actually be the turning point? It’s possible. But why don’t we wait and see? I know why the administration doesn’t, its trying to save its political ass. What I don’t understand is why so many intellectuals, men and women who supposedly take the world with deadly seriousness, continue to pose for the photo-op.

Democracy and Terror

I would like to add some comments about the inner relation between liberal democracy and islamist extremism (for this is really what we are usually talking about when we say ‘terror’). It is argued that liberal democracy is an antidote to extremism because the ‘frustrations’ that lead to such a stance have an escape value when they are expressed in a pluralistic political realm. There is something right about this idea and something very wrong. To understand this, I must say a bit about how we should conceive of liberal democracy.

One way to understand liberal democracy is through examining its necessary institutional embodiments, i.e., private law, the party system, the representational system etc. For our purposes, there is another way of understanding liberal democracy that stems from Tocqueville and more recently the great French political theorist Claude Lefort. This view sees liberal democracy not so much as a set of institutions (thought, of course, these are important as well) but as a political ethos or way of life. Lefort defines what is unique about this way of life by contra-posing it to the Absolutist state on the one hand and to its malevolent shadow, totalitarianism on the other. The absolutist state was characterized by the fact that authority and power radiated—if not totally in practice at least in the imaginary—from a center, the monarch, which had a bodily plenitude. This notion follows from the medieval idea that the King had two bodies, a spiritual body and an earthly body. While the King’s spiritual body pointed to the transcendent origins of power, authority and justice, his earthly body was the actual guarantor of the realm, i.e. it was the locus of power which bound together the hierarchical system of obligations and entitlements. With the coming of democracy, this bodily center is vacated. As Lefort put it, with democracy, ‘the locust of power becomes an empty place’. On Lefort’s view, totalitarianism is an attempt to refill this empty place after the democratic revolution has thoroughly destroyed the older absolutist solution. Because that solution is no longer available, the filling of that empty place does not descend down from the prince (a decent which significantly dampened the range and effects of princely power), but attempts, because it has no center, to radiate everywhere and nowhere. Here, we can see why Lefort (and Arendt) thought that modern democracy and totalitarianism are interrelated: they both require the destruction of princely center (and the hierarchical society that this power guaranteed) and the entry of the masses on the political scene.

If we look at democracy in this way we can see that it is a form of life is one that puts contingency at its center. (If we pan out wide enough we can see that democracy as a form of life requires a fallibalistic understanding of natural and social science as well as the differentiation of the realms of culture). Needless to say, democracy as a way of life can be very unnerving. Indeed, because the unnerving nature this form of life was not adequately dealt with by this form of life it lead to a totalitarian counter-movement. But how does this address the question that we started with, namely, the relation between democracy and Islamic extremism? Clearly it is the case that democracy does not necessarily lead to decreased extremism, because extremism is precisely the attempt to ward off the contingency that resides at the heart of democratic civilization. Indeed, Islamism as an ideology could be seen as an attempt to refill the empty place of power through re-islamization. On the other hand, it is true that for those who have been made comfortable with this form of life, it is an excellent way to integrate the antagonism of the political into non-destructive channels. (Of course, as Dr. Emile points out, liberal democracies have their own distortions and pathologies which lead to violence and terror.) Here we have a paradox: the form of life that can domesticate the pathologies which lead to political violence is itself the genesis of many of these self-same pathologies. Does this mean that we must accede to the non-islamist type of conservative who claims to be able to deliver continuity and stability? Hell no! The locus of power in the Middle East is already absent or rotting. This is why the US must not just be a status quo power in the region. However, it must also be aware that what it is peddling (not Bush’s rhetoric but a form of life based on contingency) is deeply disturbing and destabilizing. We need, as it were, to offer the fruit of democratic civilization while remembering all the while the effects of that offer. I am highly suspicious of our erstwhile democratic Leninists because they don’t appreciate in any way the delicacy of this position. And in not doing so, they are doing our planet great harm.

Now I know that many will say I am condescending to the ‘Arabs’, saying that they are not ready for democracy, etc. etc. But in fact, this complaint is itself extremely condescending insofar as those who usually make it refuse to actually engage history or culture in any serous way. Indeed, these folks condescend to existence itself, taking it as something that is merely to be cheered or booed.

A Great, Great Day

There will be much time to discuss and debate all the nuances and implications of today's historic events. For now, though, a moment simply to appreciate a triumph for humanity. It took me a few minutes to read the following post from Iraq The Model through my tears of admiration, respect, and joy.

The people have won.
We would love to share what we did this morning with the whole world, we can't describe the feelings we've been through but we'll try to share as much as we can with you.
We woke up this morning one hour before the alarm clock was supposed to ring. As a matter of fact, we barely slept at all last night out of excitement and anxiety.

The first thing we saw this morning on our way to the voting center was a convoy of the Iraqi army vehicles patrolling the street, the soldiers were cheering the people marching towards their voting centers then one of the soldiers chanted "vote for Allawi" less than a hundred meters, the convoy stopped and the captain in charge yelled at the soldier who did that and said:
"You're a member of the military institution and you have absolutely no right to support any political entity or interfere with the people's choice. This is Iraq's army, not Allawi's".
This was a good sign indeed and the young officer's statement was met by applause from the people on the street.
The streets were completely empty except for the Iraqi and the coalition forces ' patrols, and of course kids seizing the chance to play soccer!


We had all kinds of feelings in our minds while we were on our way to the ballot box except one feeling that never came to us, that was fear.
We could smell pride in the atmosphere this morning; everyone we saw was holding up his blue tipped finger with broad smiles on the faces while walking out of the center.


I couldn't think of a scene more beautiful than that.
From the early hours of the morning, People filled the street to the voting center in my neighborhood; youths, elders, women and men. Women's turn out was higher by the way. And by 11 am the boxes where I live were almost full!
Anyone watching that scene cannot but have tears of happiness, hope, pride and triumph.

The sounds of explosions and gunfire were clearly heard, some were far away but some were close enough to make the windows of the center shake but no one seemed to care about them as if the people weren't hearing these sounds at all.
I saw an old woman that I thought would get startled by the loud sound of a close explosion but she didn't seem to care, instead she was busy verifying her voting station's location as she found out that her name wasn't listed in this center.

How can I describe it!? Take my eyes and look through them my friends, you have supported the day of Iraq's freedom and today, Iraqis have proven that they're not going to disappoint their country or their friends.

Is there a bigger victory than this? I believe not.

I still recall the first group of comments that came to this blog 14 months ago when many of the readers asked "The Model?"… "Model for what?"
Take a look today to meet the model of courage and human desire to achieve freedom; people walking across the fire to cast their votes.

Could any model match this one!? Could any bravery match the Iraqis'!?
Let the remaining tyrants of the world learn the lesson from this day.

The media is reporting only explosions and suicide attacks that killed and injured many Iraqis s far but this hasn't stopped the Iraqis from marching towards their voting stations with more determination. Iraqis have truly raced the sun.

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants.
I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

Yes brothers, proceed and fill the box!
These are stories that will be written on the brightest pages of history.

It was hard for us to leave the center but we were happy because we were sure that we will stand here in front of the box again and again and again.
Today, there's no voice louder than that of freedom.

No more confusion about what the people want, they have said their word and they said it loud and the world has got to respct and support the people's will.

God bless your brave steps sons of Iraq and God bless the defenders of freedom.

Aasha Al-Iraq….Aasha Al-Iraq….Aasha Al-Iraq.

Mohammed and Omar.

Defending the Shia

The fact that the Shia look to benefit greatly from the upcoming elections in Iraq has unleashed another round of accusation and insinuation from comentators hither and tither, a few of them here at the Chronicles. Again, these are serious concerns and ought not be brushed aside.

But at the same time, it seems to me that another aspect of this turn of affairs should be mentioned. Shiites do represent the majority of Iraqis. This is the first time that they will truly be able to see that situation represented in electoral politics. And the idea that behind every Shia voter lurks a mullah pulling electoral strings is simply repellant. The Shia themselves represent a rich diversity of political and theological positions.

Perhaps Iraq will turn into a Shiite theocracy along Iranian lines. But the sheer fact that a majority population, long relegated to the political sideline, now has its opportunity to see what it can achieve within the political process might be cause for just a tiny, little, two-second long celebration, mightn't it? Cynical bastards.

This from Abdul-Ahad at Slate:

"Hopefully all Iraq will be like this," said one policeman. "This election is by the will of Allah." I asked him and his colleagues if they were going to vote tomorrow, and they answered, like a chant, with vigor: "INSHALLAH!"

I confess that after the cynicism and civil war talk in the capital, this brought a lump to my throat.

The white cloth banner proclaiming a polling station reads: "Elections are the wedding feast of the new Iraq—The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq," and there is a little drawing of two stick people with ballot papers in their hands, holding up their arms for joy. The polling stations are in schools that smell of fresh paint, whitewash, and chalk. Colored ribbons that look like celebration bunting have been strung up to organize people into lines outside. Red arrows have been taped to the walls to show people where to go, posters taped inside classrooms to show them what to do, and cardboard booths erected to give voters some privacy when they tick the box.

By Way of a Mildly Dissenting Voice

The pages of Old Town Review Chronicles have been peppered, of late, with well-stated skepticism about the meaningfullness of tomorrow's voting in Iraq. It could, with massive violence and so forth, end up a total disaster. And no one pretends that this is democracy at its best. I have been, and continue to be, a supporter of taking this step, and holding to the date, for the simple fact that it moves a political process along that is the sole hope for the future of Iraqi democracy (and its wider impact).

Some words from Mr. Ajami that consider the matter along similar lines.

It is easy to debunk these elections, to see them as an American imposition--they vote, and we begin our preparations for withdrawal. It is easy to scoff at an election where most of the candidates are afraid to campaign in public or to even let their names be known to the voters. (The votes will be cast for electoral slates.) But there can be no denying the enthusiasm that a vast majority of Iraqis have shown for the process of voting. These are not jaded people who will be casting their votes. They shall come to the polling stations past the perpetrators of terror; they will set aside the edicts of some religious preachers who have ruled against taking part in these elections. They shall be doing something unfamiliar to most Arabs in their troubled neighborhood: taking part in truly competitive elections.

Election Guide

Here's a sardonic yet insightful election guide from Bob Dreyfuss:

The main candidates are:

Iran. If you support Iran, vote for Ayatollah Sistani’s Shiite list, headed by Abdel Aziz Hakim, the commander of the Iran-backed paramilitary Badr Brigade. Chances are that this party will get the most votes and put Iraq on the slippery slope to the theocracy. It will harmonize with Iran, and Iran will probably move closer to the Sistani position. And don’t rule out the possibility of an Israeli-Shiite alliance to follow, in a year or two.

Saudi Arabia. Voters who support Saudi Arabia can vote for Allawi’s centrist party. The CIA-backed prime minister, running on a law-and-order platform, will probably come in second, and might even stay on as prime minister. Allawi is closely tied to the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, although Saudi-Gulf voters can also back Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian former foreign minister. Allawi means more the same—that is, more violence, more repression, more clashes with the Shiites and the Kurds.

Read more here.

Re: On Freedom and Tyranny

As the resident Hegelian on the list, I must vigorously disagree with the Don. Freedom for me has substance and is not just a pure potentiality that resides in the soul. Indeed, the internalized notion of freedom that the Don offers is essentally Bush’s view of freedom. This view has its origin in Augustine and was transmitted to the Protestant tradition which informed American forms of liberalism and therefore American mores. Indeed, this view of freedom is the essential philosophical presupposition of the little American thesis. Insofar as freedom does not require a certain type of life-world but just resides intrinsically in man’s soul, then the spark of freedom can be lit at any moment. Thus, insofar as this spark is the defining feature of the Human (because it shows us to have, like God, a spontaneity that nature lacks) every human is by definition a little American if America is taken to be the leading light of liberty.

To me the response to this should not be to slog freedom, but to show that it is not what Bush and the Don think it is. It is to show that freedom is something that is essentially embodied both temporally through the development of certain forms of life, and spatially in certain types of institutions. Of course, at another level, embodied freedom does rely upon the spontaneity that marks the human. Where one gets into trouble is when one takes this partial aspect of freedom for the whole.

Soviet Liberators

There is a horrible malevolvence that still lingers at Auschwitz (or Oswiecim as it is known in the original Polish). It was amazing to see people living in the town when I was there in 1994 and the camp that takes its name from it still very much preserved, full of tourists.

It's not that I aim to take away from the importance of remembering the anniversary of the day Soviet troops liberated prisoners from Auschwitz, it's just that I can't help feeling that one of the grossest injustices the Nazis plagued Europe with was to make everyone, if only for a short while, welcome the Soviets as liberators.

on Freedom and Tyranny

The response of the “responsible left” to Bush’s inaugural, as Steven has noted, has been either that Bush’s record does not match his rhetoric or that rather he makes speeches in favor of Freedom than deals with dictators. Both responses are woefully inadequate to what we are dealing with: our Commander in Chief is ill.

Bush suffers from what Nietzsche called ‘Kettenkrankheit’: intellectual ‘chain-sickness.’ He—and the ‘liberals’ who hope to piggy-back on his shoulders into a more globally democratic future—have not yet liberated themselves from the most crippling of Western illusions: the naïve notion that Freedom or Liberty is an absolute value to which every other must pay homage. How can anything so insubstantial as a mere form of possibility be regarded, in any meaningful sense, as an absolute value? What really matters is the substance. As with an empty glass, it is above all else what one pours into it that counts. This is why it is not enough to mouth platitudes about internationalism or claim solidarity with the Kurds. It means nothing to come out “against” Tyranny or “for” Freedom because Freedom, by its very nature, cannot be an end in itself. It means freedom to be nasty or benevolent, truthful or mendacious, magnanamous or petty-minded, rational or irrational.

Look you to what Bush has poured into the glass of Freedom he raised at his inaugural ball: the wine he serves says more about our host than the toast he makes with it.

Shiite secularism?

As Iraq moves closer to its first post-Saddam election, two vital political points of intense fluctuation and debate bedevil analysis: the recent embrace of the apparently-poised-to-win United Iraqi Alliance of secularism and their combined stance on US troop withdrawal. Following the conflicting statements from their leaders it is a worthwhile exercise in distinguishing between speakers and factions, which is why Dexter Filkins’ Shiites in Iraq Say Government Will Be Secular is somewhat frustrating.

“The senior leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite groups that is poised to capture the most votes in the election next Sunday, have agreed that the Iraqi whom they nominate to be the country's next prime minister would be a lay person, not an Islamic cleric.”

Which leaders? Was the leader from SCRIRI, Abdul-Aziz Hakim present? The only leader cited is Adnan Ali of the Dawa party, and maybe, further down in the article, Dr. Shahristani. Did the agreement come from a communique or press conference? On these points Filkins is curiously silent. Is this reticence due to the increased violence and threats against candidates? Regardless, a move towards secularism has some obvious benefits for the alliance. It would be a knowledgeable admission that Islamic theocracies govern very poorly, if at all, a point supported by an unnamed Shiite leader:

“One Iraqi Shiite leader, who recently traveled to Tehran, the Iranian capital, said he was warned by the Iranians themselves against putting clerics in the government.
"They said it caused too many problems," the Iraqi said.”

[An intriguing admission from the Iranians that their faltering regime is not a fungible model, and further evidence that as horrific as Iran is, it is not a strict totalitarian state, notably in its lack of an expansionist agenda. While the clerical regime is Iran has long supported Shiite sponsored terrorist groups like Hezbollah, there is a key Persian-centric aspect to their nationalism that largely excludes neighboring Arabs and is unkind to Kurds.]

Included in questions of viable governance is the realpolitik consideration that a secular regime can better reach out to Sunnis frightened by Shiite dominance, perhaps with guarantees of religious rights. Downplaying the Shiite nationalist strains and embracing secularism could be a hopeful step towards the sort of Lockean tolerance advocated by liberal Iraqi intellectuals. However, trimming the promise of even a mild form of Islamic government has drawbacks for the Alliance and many of its key constituents. Shi’a Islam is the henotic force that brought the coalition together in the first place, and as the article mentions (and as Sistani’s recent actions dictate) clerics might simply retreat to a behind the scenes role, a Richlieu in every ministry. SCRIRI is an acronym for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, not the Secular Revolution. To what degree are politicians like Hakim truly committed to secularism? Filkins states:

“During the drafting of the country's interim constitution last year, Mr. Hakim and others pushed for an expansive role for Islam in the new state, as well as restrictions on the rights of women.”

The other possible drawback is that the current focus on secularism allows radicals like Moqtada Al-Sadr, with his 14 candidates running on the Alliance ticket, to cry foul and raise the banner of Iraqi nationalism and Shiite radicalism. Sadr has already castigated Sistani, Dawa and SCIRI as Iranians (though I’ve read some reports that he’s gotten funding from Iran as well) and before his first uprising of ’03, he declared an Islamic Republic in Sadr City that no one showed up for. It will be quite a complex political evolution before he becomes a secularist.

Another troublesome consideration lies in the degree of American influence that accompanied this decision. At the end of The New Yorker profile of Iyad Allawi, Jon Lee Anderson reports the following:

“A prominent Iraqi politician, who is running for the National Assembly as a member of the religious Shiite coalition, told me that the Americans had quietly let the leading candidates know that there were three conditions that they expected the next Iraqi government to meet. “One, it should not be under the influence of Iran,” he said. “Two, it should not ask for the withdrawal of American troops. And, three, it should not install an Islamic state.”

The United Iraqi Alliance of a month ago openly defied all three, now it is publicly much closer to the American “conditions”. The relative merits of these points are ethically complicated by the unknown weight that “the Americans” put behind their expectations. Conventional wisdom, as typified by David Brooks’ essay Can We Save Iraq? No, but the Iraqis Can, asserts that the American-led Occupation effort has lost the leverage to seriously effect political outcomes in Iraq. If true, then let’s hope the “conditions” were accepted on their own virtues by an alliance of mostly religious parties who have seen the Lockean light while free of coercion.
AK

moral media

The world has gotten too big and complex. Days from the putative election in Iraq, still reeling from the most horrific natural disaster in memory, how can one find the attention for the little things? Even when those little things are getting bigger?

It took two weeks to even notice this tid-bit: Clear Channel stations in Florida (bastion of post-democracy) held an unusual contest this winter, the "Breast Christmas Ever," which awarded thirteen women, who presented their case convincingly in essay format, boob jobs. The Howard Stern show is too racey for big CC, but unnecessary surgical procedures are just ducky. As long, presumably, as the product of the operation isn't displayed during the Superbowl.

A Looming Horizon?

Morgan, in response to my post concerning the global Monroe doctrine, admits that there is a Schmittian element to the US's current stance. But he then says that in a funny way the Bush administration is advancing certain things which are necessary for a cosmopolitan order. Here he subscribes openly to a liberalized version of Hegel's 'cunning of history' thesis. As Morgan put it:

There is something suddenly looming on the historical horizon right now that was simply a fantasy even fifteen years ago. That 'thing' is a global community that reaches from the Amercia's to Africa to the Far East. It doesn't exist in any real way. But one can kind of smell it these days.

But for such a thing to exist, there are going to have to be global minimal standards for sovereignty that actually mean something. In a retarded and disfunctional way, the Bush Administration has put that standard forward as a goal for international policy. Instead of running away from it and sneering at it, I think the Left ought to jump into that space pretty quick and start taking seriously that the demands of the new Internationalism are going to mean adapting to some of these new posibilities.

To be honest, I don't smell a thing, or at least I don't smell a global community that is led and shaped by the US (See my previous post.) Morgan, In my view, still buys into the idea that even though the Bushies are power-obsessed and sometimes 'thuggish' they are still in some sense liberal. While the Bushies don't live up to the standards they themselves espouse, those standards do inform their thinking and acting (even if only partially). I think this is a total misreading of the situation. Morgan writes as if we fought the Iraq war to uphold a global standard about the minimal requirements of sovereignty. So what we on the left have to do is use this standard and apply it globally. I don't think this is a good reading of the Iraq war, but even if it were, Morgan's logic just leads us back to the Global Monroe doctrine. Morgan can't resist this conclusion because, like Bush, he sees the primary way of advancing a cosmopolitan order as the direct removal of tyranny. But this just takes on board the millitaristic distortion of politics that the Bushies exemplify. The macro position that informs Morgan's vision is this: the reduction of tyranny by the US is the condition of possibility for a cosmopolitan world community. Because a cosmopolitan order cannot do such work itself, it needs a 'tough guy' like the US to do its dirty work. Once the dirty work has been done, the US, because it ultimately is a liberal state, will then enter that order itself. But why assume that tyranny is going away anytime soon? A cosmopolitan order is not an order that must be established when tyranny has been vanquished and all nations can come together peaceably; it must be created amidst tyranny and the exercise of power by non-tyrannous states. In other words, it must be created now. But, of course, the greatest impediment on the planet to the creation of that order is the United States itself, and especially the political forces represented by Bush. (This is not because these forces are 'fascist' or some such stupid thing, but simply that they are, for historical reasons, ideologically hostile to a cosmopolitan order). And here we come back to my original point: some liberals can't seem to get their mind around the fact that Bush, despite his rhetoric, is fundamentally illiberal. Why they don't want to accept this is a very interesting question that I shall come back to at another time.

The Dispensible Nation

Via the Washington Note, a very interesting article by Michael Lind entitled 'How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation'. It begins:

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

A Global Monroe Doctrine

There have been two predominant responses to Bush’s inaugural speech by the ‘responsible left’. The first points out correctly that Bush’s rhetoric does not match his record. The second agrees with this, but adds that although this is the case, it is better for Bush to be making such speeches in favor of freedom and liberty than not. After all, now Bush can be held to his words. After some consideration I find this latter response to miss the mark. It misses the mark because it does not directly take on the way in which Bush’s vision is deeply illiberal. I think the best way to characterize Bush’s position is by saying that it is a global Monroe Doctrine. The United States reserves the right to perform any geopolitical action that in its view advances ‘freedom’. And since Bush explicitly said (reading chronicles it seems) that the interests of the United States and liberty itself are one, whatever we find to be in our interest is by definition the advancement of freedom. With this we arrive directly at Carl Schmitt’s notion of sovereignty: the sovereign is he who decides the state of the exception. What large swaths of the intelligencia have forgotten is that Liberal democratic civilization is one that hollows out the place of the sovereignty, showing it to be an empty place-holder. What takes its place is a space of contestation, of negotiation of interests in which the essential pluralism of the political can come to the fore. Of course it is the case that the US should not support tyranny, of course it is the case that the US should provide at certain key moments macro-political pressure which leads in a liberal democratic direction. What the United States should not do, and cannot do if it is to keep its republican institutions intact, is declare itself the sovereign, even if a sovereign of ‘freedom’.

Dispiriting Times

I have not been writing much lately (at least concerning politics) because I have never felt so politically depressed in my life. This is not to say that I do not have hope. In my view, Bush’s domestic agenda will be ground down, and his disastrous decisions will catch up with the Republican party at some point. They why am I depressed? To say it candidly: I find American intellectual life deeply demoralizing. The stench of moralism spreads its wings over everything, making the most elementary distinctions difficult for otherwise intelligent people to see. Now liberals, of course, call Bush on his rank hypocrisy, his inability to live up to his grand rhetoric. In this I am with them. But the claim of hypocrisy assumes that the norms that are being violated have an actually effective force upon the one being hypocritical. Otherwise, the criticism would have no force. But that is precisely the point, this charge has no force because the person who is spouting liberal rhetoric is not a liberal who cannot live up to his ideals (a situation constitutive of liberalism after all), rather he is fundamentally illiberal. If one gets beyond the realm of ideality and looks at actually effective history this conclusion is inescapable. This must be kept in mind to counter the very insidious and powerful notion that structures American public discourse: namely, that Bush’s foreign policy revolution is a liberal one that has shed the vestiges of realism. The fact that the dichotomy Idealist/Realist is the one that structures the supposedly disparate discourses of Peggy Noonan, Fred Barnes, William Kristol, Andrew Sullivan, Peter Beinart, Chris Hitchens, Thomas Friedman, etc. etc. is itself indicative of the inability of much of the thinking class to actually think.

On Iran

AK said...
Iran is a repressive theocratic regime but it is an exaggeration to call it totalitarian. There are multiple factions at play in the upper echelons of governance and occasionally some elements go rogue (e.g. the temporary seizing of the Khomeini ariport)and are withdrawn after elite protest. Music media, satellite TV and especially pirated books enjoy a circulation beyond the restraints of totalitarian.
AK

Git your head out of the books and the fanciness. Speak to any western journalist who has visited Iran, as well as other, recognizably totalitarian states, and they will tell you: Iran is as totalitarian as it gets. There are secret police everywhere. There are police monitoring the police. Citizens have been and continue to be disappeared. The state controls all media. There is a death list circulated by the government, for god's sake! The outlets you're describing are the same ones to be found in any totalitarian state, with the addition of the internet. These are samizdat outlets. Iran is a very nasty place. Do not be misled by the complexity of Persian culture and history. Modern day Iran is a very nasty place indeed.

Freedom, sapped

The brief, concise, and wholly delusional inaugural just delivered was doubtless among the most idealistic ever delivered, by a messianic troll, over the sound of helicopters, and its very enunciation was its own reversal, as the promise to include was broadcast over the struggle to dissent.

Among the countless iterations of the word "freedom," distant from any meaningful understanding of same, W. dropped allusions to his anti-abortion stance, his Skull and Bones background, and a pounding of religiousity fearful to behold. I have never heard beautiful sentiments so debased. And next, a military band!

A moment of silence, friends, for the passing of our republic.

don v po on Iran

1. Iran is about three years away from getting the bomb.

2. It has demonstrated ties to terrorist groups that would like to destroy us.

3. It is a major player in the Mideast and could really screw things up for us there.

4. It is a totalitarian state.

Any ideas?

--don


I don't pretend to be happy with the situation in or around Iran, but it is worth keeping two things in mind, at least. All of the above except for #3 are true or worse regarding North Korea. The internal situation of Iran had shown some movement in recent history, though not all of it good by any means. And three years away is better than five years ago.

Also, we have lost Iraq for the foreseeable future. The very last thing we want in the area is another suppurating wound with a long and violent border.

Also note, we don't have the forces. Unless you count those keen robots.

--po

North Korea is a totally different kettle of fish because 1) China’s there to keep it in line and keep us out. It's not about North Korea it's about China China China and 2) the Mideast is crucial to us economically (oil) and ideologically (Israel). So don't bring up North Korea as a foil to discussions about Iran. It's embarassing.
With regard to “three years away being better than five years ago,” well in some ways it's worse. Once they get the bomb we can't touch them—so it's now or never.
Also Israel has stated in no uncertain terms that a nuclear Iran is NOT acceptable.

--don

You don't need to convince me that it's a nightmare. Recent experience has failed, however, to convince me of the promise of preëmptive warfare, friend.

Maybe Iran and Israel will nuke each other, and Osama will die in the fall-out, and we'll all live happily ever after. Underground.

--po

Hmmm.
You even got the umlaut in on 'preemptive.' How nice for you.
You know I hear you on this, Senor Po. But it does seem like something of a "dilemma."
And I am genuinely curious to know how our unreconstructed hawks are responding to this situation…lessons learned and all that...

Hawks? Are you there?

In any case, I recommend scotch. It keeps the nausea down.

--don

Hersh, Anderson, Allawi, Iran, Iran, Iran

The New Yorker dropped something of a load this week with Seymour Hersh's piece on Iran and Jon Lee Anderson's piece on Iyad Allawi.

Anderson's article ends with the rather ominous:

During a final conversation with Allawi, I suggested that he seemed comfortable with the power that the Americans had bestowed on him. He replied, "It's a role that we have to have in Iraq--it's the culture. You have to be powerful, you have to project your views in a powerful way, you have to--in the face of challenges and threats--stand tall and strong. If you give way in any way, the whole society will be destroyed. When you have to deal with terrorists, you have to deal with them in a very strong way. There is no middle-of-the-road solution." He paused, then explained, "This is because of my background. You know, when you are a doctor in an operating theatre facing a sick patient, you have to make the best decision and you have to take risks. There is no middle road."

And for those who are not great fans of Mr. Rumsfeld, Hersh's article ends with the even more ominous:

"Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government's intelligence wringer," the former official went on. "The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What's missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone's priorities--in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security--are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he's doing so they can ask, "Why are you doing this?" or "What are your priorities? Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it."

There is much to be said on both issues. For the moment, I ask two things. How do we evaluate Allawi's role as interim Prime Minister? And what to do about Iran?

The Iraqi Voter

A nicely toned Op-Ed in today’s New York Times has an interesting solution to the question: Should the US pull of Iraq after the Jan. 30 elections? Answer: Ask the Iraqis.

The writers Barton, Crocker, and Cohen propose a series of referendums that would put the issue of American presence in Iraq right to Iraqi voters 6 weeks after the election and perhaps every 9 months thereafter until the US is gone for good. Allowing the Iraqis to decide for themselves “Whither the US?” could galvanize citizens to unify over a common dislike for the occupation and a desire to be independent once and for all.

A novel approach, sounds good. However, I think it’s also worth keeping in mind that the answer to the question, “Just who is the Iraqi voter?” is somewhat more vague. As our ever-vigilant A.K. points out in recent posts, and as we have discussed, it’s pretty clear that a vast number of disenfranchised Sunnis will not be able to vote in the upcoming elections (though I do not support the protest and pullout of the Iraqi Islamic Party, e.g. and think it only helps to discount legitimate Sunni voices). Yesterday’s NY Times (as well as a number of other major papers) had a couple of pertinent articles about the overseas Iraqi electorate, hailing from around 14 countries (many living in America), which may total over 1 million and have a significant impact on the elections.

Iraqi Blogger Controversy

The Iraqi blogger dust up, commented on these pages over several posts throughout the last month or so, has made it onto the pages of the New York Times.

Sarah Boxer writes a piece (registration required) in the Arts Section today entitled "Pro-American Iraqi Blog Provokes Intrigue and Vitriol."

These are the concluding paragraphs:

Using an e-mail address listed on Iraq the Model, I got in touch with Ali to see what in the world was going on. And last week I finally got to talk on the telephone to Ali Fadhil, a 34-year-old doctor who was born to Sunni Muslims but said, "I don't look at myself as one now."

Why did he quit Iraq the Model? When was he going to expose the Americans who made him feel he was on the wrong side?

He was surprisingly frank. The blog had changed him. When the blog began, he said, "People surprised me with their warmth and how much they cared about us." But as time passed, he said, "I felt that this is not just goodwill, giving so much credit to Iraq the Model. We haven't accomplished anything, really."

His views took a sharp turn when his two brothers met with the president. There wasn't supposed to be any press coverage about their trip to the United States, he said. But The Washington Post wrote about the meeting, and the Arabic press ended up translating the story, which, Ali felt, put his family in real danger.

Anyway, he said, he didn't see any sense in his brothers' meeting with President Bush. "My brothers say it happened accidentally, that it was not planned." But why, he asked, take such an "unnecessary risk"? He explained his worries: "Here some people would kill you for just writing to an American."

Ali never did expose the people who made him feel that he was on the wrong side, and in fact conceded that he couldn't. As he confided on the phone, "I didn't know who the people were." Instead, he started his own blog. He said he had always wanted to do that anyway.

"Me and my brothers," he said, "we generally agree on Iraq and the future." (He is helping his brother Mohammed, who is running on the Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party ticket in the Jan. 30 election.) But there is one important difference: "My brothers have confidence in the American administration. I have my questions."

Now that seems genuine.

Dr. King

In an interesting post a few days ago, Dr. Emile observed that:

It's the fact that when Iraqi bloggers or many pluralists in the entire region are casting about for real allies, they find that very often the American Right and the Neocons are frankly there for them in a way that the left simply is not.

He went on to say that:

The reason for this, of course, is that the left and liberals in the US are locked into an ideological battle with a very powerful and unhinged administration, and see everything through that lens.

If you look at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times today those two moods are well reflected. The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed by Roya Hakakian (registration), an Iranian who co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. It concludes:

Today, in the distant corners where terror is raging, many teenagers hold views on America similar to those I once held. The enemy has an arsenal, but also a narrative. According to that narrative, the world's superpower represents only one race, and its history is a single tale of intolerance, arrogance, and domination. The war against this enemy is impossible to win without defeating that narrative. To tell American history in its entirety is to disprove the fabrications about who an American is. To tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement is to tell the story of how arrogance was made to give way to justice by none other than a man who advocated peace. Against the grim and infallible image that is painted of America, this will be a truer portrait: colorful and human.

For the immigrant, only the physical arrival is marked by a definitive moment when ships lower their anchors, and planes touchdown. The emotional arrival is incremental, and endless. Nearly 20 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King has come to mean to me all the things that he means to all Americans. But in retrospect, it was he who helped me reconcile with America. He proved to be yet another Plymouth Rock.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes:

Never since his assassination in 1968 have I felt the absence of Martin Luther King more acutely. Where are today's voices of moral outrage? Where is the leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! We've sullied ourselves enough.

I'm convinced, without being able to prove it, that those voices will emerge. There was a time when no one had heard of Dr. King. Or Oscar Arias Sanchez. Or Martin O'Brien, who founded the foremost human rights organization in Northern Ireland, and who tells us: "The worst thing is apathy - to sit idly by in the face of injustice and to do nothing about it."

I guess the trick would be to figure out whether liberals like Bob Herbert can see 'those voices' in people like Roya Hakakian. If not, me thinks there is going to be a big problem for the Left.

Oblique Responses

As an oblique response to some of AK's and Dr. Emile's recent intelligent and feisty posts I direct your attention to an interesting article written by Lee Smith at Slate two months ago.

Dr. Emile's post brings up an interesting dilemma. How does one support Middle Eastern reformists and dissidents without looking like one has teamed up with the failed
policies and some of the worst aspects of the Bush administration. AK gives further strength to this concern with his continuing and relentless critique of both the bungling and outright immorality (death squads) of the US occupation. As we've noted before in the pages of OTR Chronicles, the situation is quite a tricky one, and not unlike the fine line that had to be tread by the anti-communist Left during the Cold War.

Really, the situation couldn't be summed up much better than it is by Dr. Emile in responding to Tony at Across the Bay. Dr. Emile writes:

The reason for this [the Left's relative lack of interest in ME liberals and reformers], of course, is that the left and liberals in the US are locked into an ideological battle with a very powerful and unhinged administration, and see everything through that lens. I can't blame them for that, really, but I think it's shameful when they take it out on Iraqi bloggers. On the other hand, the right is, in my humble opinion, not doing the bloggers any great favors either, and, I would further argue, is harvesting them for "good news" about Iraq that simply doesn't gibe with any mainstream news outlet. This is simply desperate clinging to a policy that has empirically failed, whatever one thought of it at the beginning. BUT on these grounds to give up on pluralism or pluralists in the ME or the hope of fostering real progress and opposing tyranny would be unforgiveable. I end on that note because Tony says something similar is the purpose of his web log, and in that one cannot fail to agree. How to get there? That's where the real discussion begins...

Indeed, that is exactly where the discussion begins. This brings us back to Lee Smith's article. I like his stance because it assumes neither that it is a priori impossible to use US power and influence to affect genuine positive change in the Middle East but nor does it assume that somehow American power will necessarily do so.

He writes:

Those institutions can't be built without external pressures, and right now the United States is the only nation capable of exerting enough force to make it happen and willing to do so. "Asking the Arab world to reform," says the Syrian intellectual Ammar Abdulhamid, "is dabbling with its innermost political life." That is to say, any real reform in the Arab world will have to go well beyond cosmetic changes and address the political, economic, and social structures that sustain Arab regimes and preserve the status quo. Clearly, the region's governments won't do that work if they're not compelled to do so.

Already, there have been some positive results. According to Abdulhamid, pressure from the White House--namely the Syria Accountability Act and the U.S.-co-sponsored U.N. resolution on Lebanon--"has created a crisis and loosened the regime's grip. A number of dissidents used the opportunity to raise their voice. When the regime saw this, it tried to engage with some of them. For instance, the new information minister was on Al Jazeera talking to dissidents, which is something that's never happened before. We should not be overly optimistic, but we need to plant seeds now."

And concludes, rather reasonably I think:

First we must acknowledge that there are very few real reformers in any Middle Eastern regime. There are, however, plenty of pragmatists who can be convinced, through force and blandishments, that their privileged place in the world depends on their ability to cut deals. We need to identify, empower, and threaten these people.

Next, and most important, we need to recognize that, like unhappy families, each regime is different and that each has its own needs, strengths, and weaknesses. There is no one way to peace and prosperity in the Middle East, and neither the road through Jerusalem nor Baghdad will get us there.

The reason I stress this kind of thinking is because I think it offers a window, thin as it may be, for the Left to move forward in it's support of progressive changes in the Middle East with a positive program, with some sense of hope and optimism about the matter alongside the continuing critique of the ways that US foreign policy has fallen so woefully short of its stated, but empty, idealism. This is not to say that AK and Dr. Emile should turn off the spigots of their pessimism. They shouldn't. But perhaps these two moods aren't as contradictory as they are sometimes made to seem. Perhaps, together, they amount to a clearing out of the space where an anti-fascist, anti-fundamentalist, pro-reform Left can have something to say.

Stabbed in the Back (2X)

The Neocons have been betrayed! Who slid the stiletto into spine, sabotaging the great and grand democratizing adventure in Iraq? Perhaps the prime suspects are the members of the establishment, the “realist-leftist alliance” whose fifth column within the administration includes Foggy Bottom (State Department) and Langley (CIA). Indeed, this line has long been peddled by the true believers at the Neocon flagship, the Weekly Standard, as witnessed by this recent article by Tom Donelly:

“It is, in fact, a near-ideological belief in conventional-wisdom circles that Iraq is poised on the edge of a civil war and that a truly representative government in Baghdad, reflecting the political will of Iraq's Shia majority, is a danger to the United States. One can almost hear the heavy sighs of regret at having deposed Saddam. Foggy Bottom in winter is a somber place.”

Castigating the State and CIA as reactionary footdraggers impeding the revolutionary overthrow of Saddam was a tact that spread via the Neocons to some of their new allies, like Christopher Hitchens (subscription required) and his abused acolyte on this blog, our own lost hawk, Morgan. But wait, what’s this? Another shiv beneath the shoulder blade of the Neocon crusade? Yes, and this one thrust from an ally much closer to the to the noble knights of the ‘Standard: Donald Rumsfeld. Fredrick Kagan argues that Rummy refused to give up his high mobility/high-tech transformative project . . . . at the cost of troops on the ground capable of restoring order, securing weapon’s depots, protecting oil and electrical infrastructure, and disrupting insurgent safe havens. Kagan, also writing in the Weekly Standard, concludes:

“Rumsfeld's attitude has already led to a series of mistakes that have made a difficult situation more difficult. It has put the administration on the defensive about its conduct of a policy that is vital to America's national interest. It has distracted attention from the problem of winning the current war--our most important priority today bar none. These problems don't result from the liberal media or the antiwar crowd making a ruckus about nothing. They result from Rumsfeld's stubborn adherence to a wrongheaded policy. Surely, with the election safely over, there is no longer any need to protect the architect of these mistakes.”

If one were to be uncharitable to the betrayed victim, one could group together the suspects State, CIA and Defense and simply call them the Bush administration, but then that would leave the Neocons quite alone in a very treacherous world.
AK

Elections and Death Squads

In a rumination comparing the recent Palestinian election of Mahmoud Abbas with the forthcoming (?) elections in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens draws an odd analogy:

“Given the gruesome local exigencies, and the grudging way in which the Israelis allowed freedom of movement, this cannot possibly translate into a 30 percent endorsement of the call for a boycott by Hamas and by Islamic Jihad. One might award them 20 percent at best: roughly the proportion of Sunni Muslims in Iraq who don't want to have their future (or anyone else's) determined by ballot.
Should one have postponed a Palestinian vote until these violent rejectionist forces were all "on board"?”

No, but those people were given the option to vote . . . .a fundament of democratic legitimacy. Not so in the majority Sunni Anbar province in which the entire electoral commission resigned under insurgent threat:

“In another significant blow to Iraq's upcoming elections, the entire 13-member electoral commission in the volatile province of Anbar, west of the capital, resigned after being threatened by insurgents, a regional newspaper reported Sunday.

Saad Abdul-Aziz Rawi, the head of the commission, told the newspaper that it was "impossible to hold elections" in the province, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims and where insurgent attacks already have prevented voter registration. The province includes the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

"They are kidding themselves," Rawi said about officials hopeful that the elections, set for Jan. 30, could take place in Anbar.

An Iraqi interviewed at the commission's office said the members had resigned and had gone into hiding.”

Of course, this depressing occurrence is not an isolated incident. At the end of last month:

“Three militant groups warned Iraqis against voting in Jan. 30 elections, saying today that people participating in the "dirty farce" risked attack. All 700 employees of the electoral commission in Mosul reportedly resigned after being threatened.”

Recently, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz voiced similar concerns. These incidents of deliberate disenfranchisement make Hitchens’ rhetorical ploy more than a bit fatuous. National elections seem unfeasible at present, but safer areas in the Kurdish north and Shiite south should be granted local and even regional elections with enticing infusions of international aid delivered afterwards. Perhaps that might serve as incentive for those excluded regions to begin to fight for democracy.


Iraqi Death Squads?

Hitchens, in the same article, bemoans the assassination of Hadi Salih, an officer in the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. Hitchens lauds him as a fellow traveler who met a gruesome death at the hands of savage foes:

“A somewhat "old-fashioned" kind of leftist comrade, in other words, but a huge moral and political superior of the fascists and theocrats who did him in. Now he will never vote. What will it take the affectless "anti-war," soft-on-"insurgency" Left to see that this is all the difference in the world?”

The death of Hadi Salih, whether he was all that Hitchens describes or not, is certainly a tragedy and his foul Jihadi killers are to be harshly condemned and hopefully punished, but wars are not won by sentiment alone but by method. Methods should be judged by their efficacy and ethics and even under the first criteria, the current efforts used by the US in Iraq are lacking. Are the US-led forces employing counter-insurgency methods that Hitchens endorses to get this dreadful job done? If not, then what would be the correct strategic approach? There is widespread concern within the military that the current modes of fighting are failing, which is why we have this headline from the Daily Telegraph: Rumsfeld ready to send in Iraqi hit squads. (The Newsweek article from which it is drawn can be found here.)

“The Pentagon is considering plans to train Iraqi hit squads to quash the Sunni-led insurgency and may sanction clandestine raids into Syria led by special forces.

Anxious about the course of the conflict in Iraq, the Pentagon is urgently considering extreme measures to counter the effective guerrilla campaign being waged against allied forces, senior military officials told Newsweek magazine.

"We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents," said one senior officer. "Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." [Emphasis added]

Losing, and I don’t know about Hitchens, but I will not endorse the alternative of Iraqi-style death squads. For many of my generation on the tattered remnants of the American Left, opposition to South African apartheid and Central and Latin American death squads comprised some of our first formative political experiences. Such death squads were notorious for perpetrating wholesale massacres against entire villages like the atrocity perpetrated by the US trained Atlacatl battalion upon the town of El Mozote. Let us be clear here, far from recoiling from this despicable history, the sick method of collective punishment via “hit” or “death” squads is precisely what the Department of Defense is currently considering according to the Telegraph:

“The "Salvador option" would let US special forces train those elements in Iraq who traditionally oppose Sunni dominance of the rest of the country. It would draw on the Shias' and Kurds' battle-hardened guerrilla units, which once fought Saddam Hussein's regime.

The option is apparently inspired by memories of the Reagan-era fight against Left-wing rebels in El Salvador, which was won with the help of US-trained "death squads". They killed not only guerrillas, but also many civilians believed to be offering them support.

One military source said: "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists. From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

Given the context of El Salvador, which appears to be quite explicit, that last statement is truly chilling. (Check out the Belmont Club for a right-wing blogger who finds this “tantalizing”.) The very deliberate purpose of US trained Central American death squads was to terrorize peasant populations in which insurgents could find support or safe haven. If deployed in Iraq, how can such war crimes bring the very populations they “suppress” into a democracy? Are death squads truly compatible with a “war of liberation”? As Hitchens is aware, some of the same key players like John Negroponte and Elliot Abrams that ran the “dirty war” on America’s behalf are now involved in Middle East policy; indeed Negroponte went from Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985 to eventually being the current US ambassador to Iraq, a position on which Hitchens has been silent. As much as I want to see the hardcore Islamists and neo-Baathists of the Iraqi insurgency defeated, I’ve no faith in a Department of Defense that has bungled the war so horrifically and would now actively consider training “death squads” to finish the job. Does Hitchens really have faith in the efficacy and ethics of the DoD or does he not see any other option?
AK

Plight of the Hawk

Morgan yelps:

"I will ignore AK's snide little assumption that anyone who identifies with Liberal Hawkism must thereby snoodle up to every stupid thing the Bush administration does."

If you were fool enough to "snoodle" up to the single greatest stupidity of the Bush administration then you should expect to be checked routinely for other deviant misadventures. When you compound your bad reasoning in supporting this war with applause for former Mukhabarat Assassin Iyad Allawi as a "legitimate" leader for Iraq, then your political judgment is clearly suspect for a long time to come.* Look upon the ruined policy your brand of liberal hawkism endorsed and despair.

The Bush administration employed Alberto Gonzales as an architect for our present Republic of Torture. As Attorney General he will oversee the prosecution of those who enforced the very policies he helped create! That takes some balls and they are very likely to pull off this blatantly anti-democratic stunt. It is this administration THAT YOU EMBRACED as the tool, force and inspiration of democracy in a very foreign land.

The Bushies PRIMARY means of fighting the "War on Terror" is through long-standing allegiances with tyrannies possessing police apparatuses capable of crushing Islamic insurgencies, notably: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. The pivotal question Morgan and other Liberal Hawks avoid, while giving nothing but "low marks" to the Bushies, is how this hypocrisy affects America's alleged fostering of democracy in the Middle East. This is not some "snide little assumption" but a central contradiction at the heart of the whole liberal hawk enterprise. Morgan looks deeply into the weak position of Pakistani liberals, moans, then writes of the lack of alternatives to the dictator Musharaff: "Who else is there to turn to?" Ironic that that's the logic conservatives employed in defense of Saddam, notably in authorizing the bastard to crush a Shiite rebellion under the noses of our coalition in 1991, killing as many as 300,000. You are lost, little hawk.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer. . . "

AK
* As he correctly notes in the comment below, "applause" for Allawi is something of a distortion of Morgan's opinions on Allawi's legitimacy. Allawi was employed by Hussein to kill Iraqi dissidents in Europe during the 1970's, and I believe that this disqualifies him from holding his current office, especially if "de-Baathification" was to mean anything. Morgan believed that Allawi's appointment by the departing CPA constituted some form of "legitimacy," that is was a step in the right direction -- principally owing to Allawi's moderate standing in a CPA poll. I disagreed, claiming that his past should matter and that limited polls do not constitute legitimacy. My apologies.

The Unaccountable Mr. Musharraf

AK has recently challenged Liberal Hawks to stand up and gripe about the rather lousy situation in Pakistan with Musharraf deciding that he wants to be absolute ruler after all.

I will ignore AK's snide little assumption that anyone who identifies with Liberal Hawkism must thereby snoodle up to every stupid thing the Bush administration does.

As to the substance of AK's point, it is indeed distressing that Musharraf has taken this step and the Bush administration must receive low marks for failing to express to our newish ally that being president and running the army are occupations best kept separate. Lousy.

That said, the Musharraf predicament is a tough one. I suspect, though cannot prove, that Musharraf made this move without checking too hard with the White House or the Pentagon and I'm pretty sure they aren't exactly pleased about it. Ultimately, the Bushies are stuck with letting Musharraf do pretty much anything he wants because he is their only hope.

The problem is that Pakistani liberals, a group whose members include some close friends of mine, are stuck in something like the same boat. That doesn't make it OK. It just makes it difficult to know exactly what to do.

Some interesting discussions on the matter can be found at the Frontline website from their "Voices from the Whirlwind" program. Jugnu Mohsin who runs the liberal paper The Friday Times notes that "I think it would be tragic for Pakistan if at this juncture he [Musharraf] wasn't there to lead us. I think he must lead us to the other side ... to the safe side. And then he must-- must -- hand over to the mainstream political parties." But what do you do if he is unwilling to do so? Who else is there to turn to?

And in a lovely little reflection on the predicament at Dawn, the generally delightful Ayaz Amir, in talking about political options, laments "This leaves us with a collection of paper tigers, strong on roaring, weak on meaningful action. Democracy you would think requires some sacrifice. What sacrifice is anyone prepared to make? Thus a double crisis of credibility threatens: a personal one for Gen Musharraf, a collective one for the champions of democracy."

Donate

I just donated 50 bucks to UNICEF and encourage my fellow OTR mates as well as our readers to do the same (or more than my piddling amount if you can). Right now UNICEF is the only organization allowed into restricted islands and according to today's Guardian there is a real threat of orphan smuggling into neighboring countries. Even North Korea has donated...

Shahristani vs. Hakim?

As posted a few weeks, Dr. Shahristani, a spokesman for the Shiite ticket most likely to win if Iraqi elections are held on January 30th, pointedly noted that the Alliance wanted the American troops to withdraw from Iraq:

The Alliance has a 23-point platform, Dr. Shahristani said, but he
disclosed only one point: a plan to negotiate a date for the withdrawal of American troops. The main elements of the platform, he said, are sovereignty, unity and respect for the Islamic identity of Iraq.(Emphasis added.)”

However, buried in a story about the lasted insurgent attcaks in Iraq is this odd gem, indicating, perhaps, some disagreement within the United Iraqi Alliance:

The leaders also said that if their coalition gained power, it would not demand the precipitate withdrawal of American troops, instead waiting first for a stronger Iraqi military.

"Our group believes in sharing power with all Iraqi factions," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who heads the election slate of the alliance, which is expected to prevail in the elections. "We have rejected the idea of a sectarian regime, and we believe that Iraq is for all Iraqis."

A hopeful statement from the leader of SCIRI, and one in line with Morgan’s observations posted here. As these important clues are not the focus of the article, the difference between the two leaders could be either one of semantics or a real disagreement -- typical of a coalition that is composed of 16 different parties. The latter statement by Hakim might indicate some doubts as to whether a National Assembly, predominated by the United Iraqi Alliance, could muster forces capable enough to protect the new government and crush the insurgency. Juan Cole serves as a good guide to what the Alliance is all about with this vital list of their constituent groups and their platform, which leads one to believe that an American withdrawal is desired by the Alliance sooner rather than later. Hmmm, Islam as the Iraqi state religion? That’s a concept that will need to be expounded upon a bit more.
AK

Hussein's Butt Song

The midwestern "spiritists," the Polleys, claim to be able to channel John Lennon from beyond the grave. John is in heaven, you'll be pleased and surprised to hear, and he has divorced Yoko, they assert. They put a lot of strange words in his mouth, as it were, and even worse, they are recording "new songs by John Lennon," which, if it were not just sad craziness, would be proof that it is true of talent as well: You can't take it with you.

Across the Bay

I've just come across a very impressive site by a Lebanese scholar in Near Eastern Studies, among other things.

An October post relates directly to our ongoing Anatol Lieven debate especially as that debate has been rekindled with the recently published exchange between Paul Berman and Lieven.

Here is a brief snipet of the long discussion about Lieven and his reponse to Berman at The Nation. Commenting on Lieven's attack, Tony at Across the Bay writes:

Where to start? This is such a pile of vindictive nonsense. First, let's throw the bitter, contemptuous charge leveled at Berman back at Lieven: he's "historically illiterate" and he's the one who "[couldn't] have passed an elementary exam in [Middle Eastern] history and culture." What Lieven is repeating here is classic Arab nationalist propaganda.

Yes, Berman is guilty of overly subordinating the Islamist and Arabist ideologies to European fascism, and I'll return to him later in the post. All the same, the traditional, heavily ideological (Arab nationalist) interpretive categories applied to the Baath, Arab nationalism, and their relation to Islam -- here taken as gospel truth by Lieven -- need serious revision.