Keith Addison wrote:
(Iraqi forces)
There wasn't much left of them by that time, which I think was the idea.
This was one of my contentions in the lead up to the war.
How can a nation whose armed forces have been decimated constitute a
threat in the traditional, military sense? Our "solution" to the
Iraqi "problem" was quite conventional from a soldier's point of
view. If they'd REALLY been a threat, wouldn't they have put up a
more effective fight?
Trouble was, they weren't really a threat, so we had to come
up with another story to cover the first lie. How many versions of
"truth" have we been fed thus far?
There are some web pages that have tried to keep count, but it's a
tough job. Funny how people don't notice, isn't it? I suppose
Lakoff's explanation holds good (though he's not in very good odour
right now, and he wasn't at all the first to observe this:
"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people
think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures. The
frames are in the synapses of our brains - physically present in the
form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the
frames are kept and the facts ignored." -- George Lakoff
Hey, here are some more:
"It is the nature of humans to ignore what is true but uncomfortable,
and accept what is known to be false, but comforting. " -- H L Menken
"It is impossible to reason someone out of something that they did
not reason themselves into in the first place." -- Jonathan Swift.
"Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting
convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day." --
Bertrand Russell.
:-)
And hence the bizarre results of the US opinion polls.
But does anybody welcome illegal invaders? I don't think many
Iraqis were under many illusions about that.
This is a point I've made to many warmongers over here. They
say things like: "When there's a war going on, civilians should get
out of the way!" Or: "Those people are supporting the insurgency."
As indeed they would be, if they had any sense - and as you say, as
Americans would be too.
But it's the hallmark of the kind of thinking you're having to
contend with NOT to put yourself in the other man's position. You're
special, after all, and if the powers-behind-the-powers-that-be have
done their jobs properly, you've already dehumanised the other guy to
scumbag status, beneath your contempt, let alone your powers of
empathy. But just who is then dehumanised? It's perhaps only our
imaginations that keep us human, and that's exactly what they're for
- to put yourself in the other guy's position.
Such sentiments are easily maintained whenever we're
discussing someone ELSE'S home. I don't think many Americans would
appreciate being "liberated" by foreigners. We have a lot of guns
too, and many of us know how to use them.
"Actually I agree that the elections were a success ... of
opposition to the United States. What is being suppressed - except
for Middle East specialists, who know about it perfectly well and
are writing about it, or people who in fact have read the
newspapers in the last couple of years - what's being suppressed is
the fact that the United States had to be brought kicking and
screaming into accepting elections. The U.S. was strongly opposed
to them. I wrote about the early stages of this in a book that came
out a year ago, which only discussed the early stages of U.S.
opposition. But it increased. The U.S. wanted to write a
constitution, it wanted to impose some kind of caucus system that
the U.S. could control, and it tried to impose extremely harsh
neo-liberal rules, like you mentioned, which even Iraqi businessmen
were strongly opposed to.
Do you have any additional references that support Mr.
Chomsky's view? (He is not well regarded by conservatives in the
U.S., who tend to dismiss anything he says as nonsense.)
Well, that's their problem, isn't it? And, to put myself in the other
guy's position, it's not quite the same as my dismissing people like
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins as dangerous maniacs, that's easily
demonstrated , and it's easily demonstrated that Chomsky does not
talk nonsense. Conservatives in the U.S., or at least the sector of
them that we're talking of, are now famous for being unable to abide
any views that differ from their own, as you've remarked, their
intolerance is extreme (and most unAmerican, or anti-American).
Elsewhere Chomsky is highly respected, whether he's agreed with or
not.
Anyway, okay, it's also your problem, you have to deal with these
guys. I don't have additional references to hand, though I'm sure I
could find them. I think this has been fairly well charted by folks
like the BBC and the Guardian etc - it's on my hard disk, but I'd
have to search. I should think Chomsky referenced his book though.
I get my news from the radio, so this is the first I've heard of
this kind of problem. When I was in California a few weeks ago, I
saw a Newsweek headline proclaiming the birth of democracy in the
Middle East.
:-)
(It showed a rather attractive young woman protesting Syrian
involvement in Lebanon.) Daniel Schorr, a journalist whose
perspective is generally more "left" than is mine, made a statement
that his opposition to American Middle East policy is being
challenged by the positive outcomes the Bush administration has been
attaining in that region.
My word, he needs to do some homework.
I wondered where Mr. Schorr was getting his information.
It's fairly clear where he isn't getting it.
The headline in Newsweek totally ignored an even larger pro Syrian
protest that followed a few days after the one they cited as an
example.
Virtually the entire US media ignored that, and were heavily
criticised for their bias.
I would find it hard to believe that my government would accept any
electoral outcome in Iraq that essentially opposed American
objectives there.
Well, as you pointed out, military power is a blunt weapon. "When the
only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a
nail." - Abraham Maslow. (Sorry, I seem to be full of quotes
tonight.) Sistani is not someone you can deal with with a hammer, and
as Chomsky says there's a lot more to it than Sistani. Your
government "accepts" the fact that their soldiers get shot at and
mortared all the time, don't they? No choice. They don't have to like
it. Same with Sistani perhaps, without the bullets.
I just heard a feature on NPR concerning graft and corruption in
Iraq; problems never effectively overcome, even with American
involvement.
Um, especially with American involvement, with all due respect, on a
much bigger scale than Saddam ever had the resources for. The whole
thing is corrupt, all the way from the lies you mention to
Halliburton et very much al to the imposition, or attempted
imposition of all the one-sided neoliberal pro-corporate "rules" to
rip the place off and all its resources. And they talk about
democracy! LOL! Barefaced cheek is not something they seem to be
short of.
The Iraqi people need officials who are accountable to them.
Given our current situation in the United States, however, I
remain pessimistic that this will happen soon.
(The shifting strategy of NeoCon perspective)
A common view in the hopelessly spun US, but very rare everywhere
else, where there's generally more and better coverage and less
disinfo afoot. Don't you just hate saying "I told you so"??? It
would be so much better to've been wrong sometimes. Often!
I've found that being suspicious about people and their
motives leads me to correct conclusions more often than not. (Sorry
Keith! You have way more faith in human nature than I do!)
I'm sceptical, Robert, I'm a journalist after all. But I don't find
much or any conflict between due scepticism/realism and optimism. Is
it people you're suspicious of, or their institutions and
organisations and corporations? They're not the same.
It's also said that the ground forces call in the air support when
they've lost control, which would mean they don't have much control
anywhere, much.
But this IS the point of using "force multiplication". We
have fewer troops on the ground because we can obliterate opposition
from the air.
Did you read that piece? It's worth a read:
Incident on Haifa Street, by Tom Engelhardt, September 20, 2004
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/09/09_518.html
A "pinpoint" air strike makes for better news coverage in the U.S.
than does the "Red Badge of Courage" worn by a Marine or Army
soldier.
But the war, Robert, is in Iraq. Do the Pentagon's post-Vietnam
media-coverage horrors go so far as to forget that?
In addition, we're getting very good at "patching up" our wounded
soldiers; a skill which tends to deflate the death count and make
the conflict appear less deadly to American ears.
As yet - but perhaps surviving paraplegics and so on are even more
difficult to hide in the long run than body bags. A point about that
is that people with horrific injuries who'd have died previously are
surviving now - there are two sides to that when it comes to PR. And
the psychological casualties are very high indeed. A Department of
Veterans Affairs analysis of nearly 50,000 combat veterans returning
from Iraq and Afghanistan, published in The New England Journal of
Medicine, found that up to 17 percent have been diagnosed with major
psychological disorders.
"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our
nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs
of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home
from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and
psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice
and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual death." -- "A Time to Break Silence", Rev. Martin Luther
King
(Bludgeoning resistance)
If it's even possible at all. Has anyone else ever managed to do it?
What about the Brits with the Mau Mau?
Yes, the Mau Mau failed, but a few years later one of their leaders,
Jomo Kenyatta, was the first president of independent Kenya. The
mighty South African military held the upper hand at all times but
eventually concluded that there was no military solution to the black
uprising in South Africa, and look at the place now. I guess we could
argue about it forever, but I'd say it's only a matter of time.
There's no winning - every military action you take is like sowing
dragon's teeth, it will rebound on you in the end.
Insurgencies have been put down in the past, but generally with
ruthless brutality and great loss of life. We Americans don't like
to see ourselves in that light.
A lot of other people do though, including a lot of Americans. But in
a major arena such as Iraq has become it couldn't go that far, it's
not a colonial world any more.
This word "insurgency" is a strange one. Literally speaking, the
Americans are the insurgents, the so-called "insurgents" are
indigenous, despite all the attempts to cast them as foreign
jihadists and so on. Very few foreigners involved, as even US
commanders have admitted.
That isn't the story we're hearing over here.
Probably not, but I believe it's been reported in your newspapers.
There's a good case for the argument that these are not insurgents,
that it's the Baath government of Iraq that the US is fighting, or
at least mostly. Which would put what at first seems to be the
inept resistance of the Iraqi army at the time of the invasion in a
different light. Why blow up bridges to halt the invading forces
anyway? There was no hope of stopping the invasion, and those are
their bridges after all - wouldn't a policy to limit the damage
have been sensible?
Then why damage the oil fields?
Perhaps so the US can't have the oil, if so it's been very effective.
Why loot the Iraqi museum?
Did they? That's still a bit mysterious, quite who was responsible
for that. And why. Rather suspicious, I think.
Why use Mosques and hospitals as firing positions?
Turns out to be good anti-US PR, doesn't it? But I don't know whether
that's been deliberate or not. There's been some senseless and
hamfisted US military desecration of mosques that were not being used
as firing positions.
Why kill Iraqi policemen who are trying to maintain order?
Aren't they often seen as turncoats, perhaps with some justification?
Why attack the power infrastructure?
That also makes sense - good anti-US PR, much has been made of the
fact that despite all the reconstruction billions power supplies are
more unreliable now than they were before the invasion, like a lot of
other things.
I can't say, Robert, I'm just trying to paint the other side (not
take sides, please note). But Chomsky's point about a very
significant non-violent resistance is a good one, and the idea that
the "insurgents" are just a bunch of foreign fanatics is nonsense.
The armed resistance has evolved considerably. The case for the Baath
Government being behind it makes some sense, more so than many other
explanations.
Does this stalling of economic recovery and spreading of
discontent serve the purpose of liberating the Iraqi people,
There's a conflict between liberating the people and fighting the
occupiers, it's not a simple matter. Omelettes and eggs.
or is it a lashing out at targets my country's soldiers simply can't
protect? (There aren't enough of them to do so!)
I don't think so. It is confused, and confusing, but I don't think
that what's happening is haphazard.
Perhaps, by disbanding the Iraqi army, we've simply created a pool
of discontented, underemployed young men for whom destroying things
is a spectacular distraction.
Possibly, but I think more likely they've been ready and willing
recruits. There are some good interviews with insurgents, have you
seen any for them?
I don't have answers. I think it was stupid to go into Iraq
in the first place.
Yes, as we were all saying at the time and well before that too.
Total vindication for war-opposers, and much more to come.
Rather fight the occupation, much more possible and more effective
- make life impossible for them. It's reasonable to assume that
they had a strategy planned out before the invasion, they're not
dumb.
No, they're not. Their strategy, however, seems
counterproductive to me.
You really need to look beyond the US for that.
if wars are truly won or lost in people's living rooms watching TV
then, barring a bunch of misinformed rightwing kooks and crazed
religionists in America, the US has lost already. Even in the US,
it's mounting up steadily, the tide will turn, it's only a matter
of time - how long can people blind-eye stuff like Abu Ghraib and
the rest of that extremely ugly iceberg, how long can you go on
hiding the casualties away, as well as the body bags?
The disinformation campaign from the "misinformed right wing
kooks and crazy religionists" seems pretty effective from over here,
Keith.
I'm well aware of that, but for how long can it fly in the face of
reality? It's shrinking, on all fronts. There are many indicators of
that.
The NeoCons have a stranglehold on all debate. There's a lot of red
faced screaming, denial and accusations of treason against anyone
who is not applauding our current policies. I certainly hope you
are right in this, but I have a bad feeling. . .
I didn't say it would work out well. For instance, when these people
lose their popular support, as such, when reality starts hitting home
in the end, do you think they're going to hand over the reins of
power in good grace and retire from the scene?
Meanwhile they're digging in for the long haul, building bases and
so on. "Cloud Cuckoo Land"? I think so.
Until we deal with our energy issues, this will continue.
Yes.
(North Korea)
What a mess that would be! The Koreans, both North and South, are
very tough, very well trained, well armed, well commanded, very
dedicated. And VERY tough! You couldn't beat them.
We've already tried, once. That was a long and bloody
conflict that did nothing to resolve the strong desire of the Korean
people to reunify.
That's right.
We went in there to "stop the spread of communism", but the
armistice that halted the shooting didn't solve the underlying
issues.
No.
I think "complications" with China are a given, you'd put South
Korea in an extremely difficult position, probably beyond certainty
of their support, and the same goes for Japan. Talk about dominoes,
wow!
The Koreans with whom I've discussed this issue (I've had a
number of Korean clients) speak very carefully.
I'm sure they do! :-)
They would like peace and reunification, not continued conflict. We
would damage our relationship with the Korean people with further
warfare.
Irrevocably perhaps.
My experience with them has been a real eye opener; they are very clever
Oh yes.
and remain leery of American motives.
Indeed.
I don't think any of this is lost on the folks in Washington, or
some of them anyway, though there's been a deal of hamfisted neocon
blundering there already. Perhaps most important is that North
Korea's military capacity hasn't already been reduced to ruins as
Iraq's was (or seemed to be perhaps). And, critically, that Kim
Jong Il and North Korea don't feature strongly in the Gospel
According to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.
Well, there is that verse in Revelation about "kings from the
East". . .
LOL!
Perhaps even more critically, I've seen quite a few people saying
that Saddam Hussein's real problem wasn't that he had WMDs but that
he didn't have them, a message not lost on many other governments.
What do you think, Robert?
My eldest son has a classmate whose parents are from Iran.
This boy's mother has spoken to me about American involvement in her
country. She says: "I think Iran SHOULD have nuclear weapons. That
way if you Americans invade us, we'll send you to Hell where you
belong!"
Well, she's not alone in that.
Mind you, this is a very difficult sentiment for me to hear.
Very difficult!
(She's very passionate about this issue, yet I'm confident she makes
a distinction between me and my government's policies.)
Almost certainly, I'd say.
However, at its core, her argument about nuclear deterrence is a strong one.
Yes it is.
It's dangerous ground, for certain.
And who has brought us here?
(Korean inspired mushroom clouds. . .)
Play hell with the next election results, wouldn't it?
It would put climate change into a much more urgent category
for most of us. . .
It's such nonsense. If any of this WMD crap is to be taken
seriously, as well as all the cant about freedom and democracy,
then how to explain the US treatment of Pakistan? For starters.
Don't confuse us with facts, Keith. We're Americans. We're
the "good guys".
:-)
Yes, I can see that, though calling it a "perspective" is
stretching it a bit. As you and Gustl keep saying, it's essential
to seeing the picture clearly - the real perspective.
None of the people with whom I attend church are
dispensationalists, but I've read much dispensationalist
"literature" and I've listened to proponents of their eschatological
view--preachers like Jack Van Impe--for many years. Without
understanding how these folk view the world, it's difficult to
appreciate the lengths to which they will go in their striving to
prepare the world for Armageddon.
I have to say they're doing a very effective job.
There's no doubt about that. What puzzles and annoys me is how long
it's taken people to wake up to it, those few that have. This
scenario has been terrifying me for 20 years.
Meanwhile they've built up their strengths, laid their groundwork,
with virtually no opposition. The same goes for the Neocons. Why
haven't Americans been defending their freedoms and their great
traditions, now so sadly eroded when they're so badly needed? You've
all been fast asleep, dreaming your unassailable dreams that you're
the good guys and so all's well and all the other comforting myths
and cherished notions, oblivious to the evaporating realities behind
them.
The answer that comes to my mind is the horrific erosion of the
fourth estate that's happened during that time, along with the rise
in PR and spin, and, of course, the underlying rise of corporatism.
You're all doped to the eyeballs on sheer pap that's supposed to
represent the world you live in but bears little resemblance to it. I
tend to see that as the underlying ill, and the neocons and
dispensationalists as symptoms. Yes, I'm aware that symptoms left
untreated can become more lethal than the cause.
Regards
Keith
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=9782>
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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