It’s worth reading Slate’s recent series of articles by a number of “liberal hawks” most of whom now  believe that they were wrong (or at least partially so)  in their initial support for the war.

 

What strikes me about the views expressed is the absence of anything which could rightly be called  explanation.  Certainly each  individual writer attempts to explain why he/she was personally mistaken in 2003,  but this mostly  consists of no more than  the usual shopping list of Bad Events:

• Saddam had no WMDs after all
• AQ became more active in Iraq
• large numbers of Iraqis have died
  
• the US allowed Iraq to descend into chaos
• sectarian violence erupted 
  

• democracy in the Arab world now seems like a pipe dream- give them the opportunity and they will  vote for Islamists

• four thousand US soldiers  have died
• the USA is not any safer
• the USA has lost prestige,
• the war is expensive
  

 

All this cries out for explanation.  But what we mainly get from these writers is that GWB et al have been incompetent and/ or morally degenerate. 

 

I guess that’s because liberals are in general, idealists – that is, they automatically regard ideology (beliefs, ideas, attitudes)  as the main driver of historical events.  This enables them to think that major world events can be given essentially  psychological explanations: in this case, a large amount  of the explanation has been in terms of GWB being variously dumb, morally degenerate, ignorant, incompetent. 

Although any specific historical event can be "accidental" in the sense of  not having been historically necessary (although of course also not historically impossible!) and the actual "shape" of events can be very much due to the abilities (and sometimes even personality quirks) of the people in power, the general flow of history makes sense and moves in a particular direction which can be ascertained at least in broad outline by analysis of present and past reality.  If we do this   "the phantom of a world whose events are an incoherent concourse of fortuitous circumstances, utterly vanishes" (Hegel).

Anyway, five years later we are still faced with a situation in which we need to work at spelling out and  publicising the "draining the swamps" theory.

For newcomers here are some relevant links. 

Spelling out the "Draining the Swamps" theory

Can we talk?

Draining the Swamps in 2007

Draining the Swamps

Keza, I think it was Umberto Eco who chastised Hegel for his belief that History has some direction, that there is an "arrow".

Your post teeters upon the brink of "strawmanism" but it is very interesting nonetheless. You have to show how the theory of "Draining the Swamps" (DTS) does not fit into your definition of Idealist " I guess that’s because liberals are in general, idealists – that is, they automatically regard ideology (beliefs, ideas, attitudes)  as the main driver of historical events" My reading of DTS sees it as idealist in the sense of your definition in parenthises (above).

As I see it the DTS is atavistic in that it invents a new "other" for us to hate - the "Islamofascist" a term that sits well with the extreme right nut-bags that infect cyberspace but that has no scientific meaning at all and that has clearly gained no traction at all with mainstream "liberal" opinion. Instead of moving us forward it send us back to the days of Pogroms, the Crusades and Ghettos.Surely a more "progressive" move would be to characterise the "Islamofascists" as the common criminals that they are and to treat them as such. Instead the term unscientifically galmourises them. 

The justification of the Invasion of Iraq in terms of DTS has of course to cope with the fact that sectarian/terrorist violence has become institutionalised since the invasion and that the elected government is incapable of controlling this. The elected government cannot control the situation because many of its members are up to their necks in the attacks.

The invasion certainly liberated the Iraqi people from the fascist yoke of the Saddam regime but because it was carried out by foreign "Crusader" troops  it created the ideal conditions for every jihadist and extremist to fight the "Great Satan". In doing so they side-tracked the inevitable response to Invasion and Occupation - a war of National Liberation. Instead they have a pathetically weak National Government whose writ does not go much further than the "Green Zone" and unending violence in the streets.

Dalek

it's ridiculous to describe political acts like 9/11, the Bali bombings, the bombings in Madrid and London, the actions of AQ in Afghanistan and Iraq as the acts of "common criminals"

they are part of a coherent and organised political movement which has a philosophy, long term strategy etc.

well, that's just your subjective idealism - lets eliminate the need for a political response to political actions of a real enemy by describing them as "common criminals"

Islamo-fascism has real political meaning - heads of state placing death sentences on writers, keeping women in their "place" using terror if necessary, hatred of modernity, using the technology of modernity to threaten modernity itself,  systematic use of terror to pursue political ends, violent protests against people who publish cartoons, filling the heads of people with religious nonsense, etc. These people have held political power in Afghanistan and hold it in Iran - and you want to call this a movement of "common criminals" to deny its political nature?

then dalek you use the straw men of right nut bags and Crusades to avoid the question that keza poses - how do we make sense of the Iraq invasion?

You don't answer that but just join the list of those who think Bush is loony enough to think that a Crusader mentality can work in today's world. How can that analysis have any credibility amongst people who actually think about world events?

It would be one thing to attempt to discuss the relative merits of US imperialism versus Islamofascism in a world where the coming together of WMDs and jihadi forces is a proven real and not an imaginary threat. But to deny the very existence of a real political movement, to categorise it as "common criminals" - that seems delusional to me. Give us something real to debate

btw one of the Slate writers does support the Iraq war without systematically subscribing to the "draining the swamps" theory - Hitchens, who writes:

There is, however, one position that nobody can honestly hold but that many people try their best to hold. And that is what I call the Bishop Berkeley theory of Iraq, whereby if a country collapses and succumbs to trauma, and it's not our immediate fault or direct responsibility, then it doesn't count, and we are not involved. Nonetheless, the very thing that most repels people when they contemplate Iraq, which is the chaos and misery and fragmentation (and the deliberate intensification and augmentation of all this by the jihadists), invites the inescapable question: What would post-Saddam Iraq have looked like without a coalition presence?

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say "attempt" rather than "do," which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on "a war of choice." But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

History moves slowly but it does move. Eventually something will be done about fascism in Burma and genocide in Darfur - just as something happened about the Berlin Wall and apartheid in South Africa. The world does evolve, fascism is in retreat and democracy is becoming stronger all the time. The USA, warts and all, is part of that evolution - explanations that draw direct analogies with the Crusades or assume that US leaders are insane are not going to stand up.

Kanan Makiya, in the Slate roundtable of mistakes in the Iraq war, writes:



Here he echoes my comments in the earlier lastsuperpower discussion  about the "cost" of the war, as well as anticipating the question Steve has raised elsewhere about the revolution's lack of a democratic leader, of a Nelson Mandela.

I point this out, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, to illustrate the continued poverty of debate on the subject. How can it be that, despite the permanent reversal of centuries of Sunni imperialism, the widespread embrace of democracy by Iraqis, and the destruction of a regime as vicious as any in modern history, Mr. Makiya must ask, of those "who now regret supporting regime change," what an alternative moral course of action was?

We'll find no such alternative with Richard Cohen, the closest to policy-makers, excepting perhaps Mr. Makiya himself. What we do find are a few rambling and unrelated paragraphs on the anthrax attacks, contradictory certainty that "while Iraq once had a nuclear weapons program, it no longer did" together with the knowledge that biological and chemical weapons don't constitute a threat of "mass" destruction and unpreparedness for "the revelation that Iraq had no WMD whatsoever."

This is instructive of the general level of cognitive dissonance in his response since, to the extent that the WMD argument is important to the case for invasion, he seems to be suggesting surprise at not having found working nuclear weapons in Iraq - about which all intelligence agencies were confident he didn't have - and what else could have been "WMD" if we discount biological and chemical weapons? This is a profoundly misleading series of statements, and not just from the a-historical certainty that, prior to 2003, Iraq no longer had a nuclear weapons program. Are we to suppose the regime had simply forgotten what it had learned from the very real program we know it had engaged in prior to the first Iraq war?

As absurd as this sounds, this is precisely what one often reads about the regime's supposed WMD: that it had forsaken any real development, maintaining only the appearance of it through it's systematic subversion of UN sanctions and weapons inspections, in order to intimidate it's neighboring enemies. By pretending that the regime's knowledge of nuclear weapons had vanished permanently, those who maintain the "WMD for appearances only" position mistake a short term truth for a longer one.

The importance of this temporal elision becomes clear with the one lucid paragraph Cohen writes in his apologia:



Europe - France and the Chirac government particularly - were well on their rhetorical way toward this in the years before the war. The caustic toll on society that Saddam's subversion of UN sanctions had wrought were increasingly being blamed on the UN itself, and particularly the champions of the sanctions, the US and Britain. Dominique de Villepin said  of Chirac's government in 2001, that "We believe, of course respecting the international legality, we should as fast as possible try to lift these sanctions." To an extent, the governments of the US and Britain were ready to go along with the French.

The best one can say about the motivations for statements such as made by de Villepin is that the removal of the sanctions was a necessary carrot in order to reinstate weapons inspections. But this suggests a misplaced faith in the inspections regime to do it's job effectively on the one hand, and on the other formalizes Saddam's strategy of increasing the suffering of his own citizens under the pretext of the effects of the very sanctions de Villepin wanted to lift! This puts the West in the position of simultaneously (and at least in part wrongly) accepting responsibility for Saddam's actions, implicitly legitimizing his response to the sanctions, and thereby undermining the very tool it sought to re-establish the inspection regime with.

Thus, the specter of a reinvigorated Hussein regime appears; and having won a significant victory over it's Western enemies, it would have found it's field of play greatly increased. Economically, a revitalized regime would have been freer to develop those weapons even skeptics admit Hussein needed - so much so that he risked his regime merely on the basis of needing at the very least to appear  to have them - and politically able to continue to subvert the inspections program. Add to this the failure of containment in North Korea and Iran, as well as an A.Q. Khan network that would have continued to work in secrecy, aided perhaps by the fact that West's the strategic options for containment had been significantly reduced. Taken together, these counter-factuals suggest a much more compelling reason to invade than Cohen's supposed surprise at not finding stockpiles of nuclear warheads would suggest. The issue with regard to WMD in Iraq was not the cartoon illustrated by Cohen, but the far more sophisticated picture painted by Rolf Eckeus, who described an industry being developed for WMD which remained hidden through classical counter-espionage practices as well as behind dual-use smoke screens and "just in time" production methodologies. This is now playing out in Iran, where the political efforts at containment by the West are inevitably proving useless, even counter-productive.

I think therefore that LS is making a mistake when it describes the WMD rationale as a "lie." I realize that there is, or has been, some question in the minds of some LS members about whether Bush actually believed they would find stockpiles of weapons, but the LS line holds that the WMD argument existedmerelyas a means of scaring Americans (and Europeans) into accepting the necessity of the war. But by misrepresenting the seriousness of the WMD issue (and other than making the case for a counter-factual which suggests the once real possibility that Saddam would've built a nuke, I don't have time at the moment to go into what that scenario might have meant in the eventuality that Makiya's prediction about an exploding Hussein regime came true), LS fails to understand the centrality of the WMD issue to some circles of the war's supporters.

In so doing, LS commits the double sin of failing to engage the WMD hawks on the more important issue of democratization, while adding to the confusion the democracy doves have sown about Bush's lies.

Somehow the links in my post all were changed when I submitted it.  Here they are, in order of appearance:

Kanan Makiya's article: http://www.slate.com/id/2186763/

LS discussion of the Lancet's figures: http://www.lastsuperpower.net/disc/members/419340463279?b_start:int=0

Richard Cohen's article: http://www.slate.com/id/2186766/

Dominique de Villepin's comments: http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20030424080726319

US and British going along with the French: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010225/world.htm#1

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note from keza ( 28/03/08 )

I've now fixed those links -  posting links in HTML or UBB format will not work with Epoz (our  text editor) - that was the problem.

(it's worth looking at our site user guide  - inadequate as it is... the  article entitled "How to use your folder 3 (EPOZ). Also explains how to format forum messages" explains how to post links)

---

Bill, I guess we would both agree with Dimitrov that Fascism is the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.

This definition fits with Saudi Arabia perhaps but in not to Afghanistan by any stretch of the imagination, you say that Fascism is defined by. " heads of state placing death sentences on writers, keeping women in their "place" using terror if necessary, hatred of modernity, using the technology of modernity to threaten modernity itself,  systematic use of terror to pursue political ends"

Much of of your litany of fascist acts could be said to apply to the US itself in one degree or another (sacking of Justices, suppression of Blacks in the prison system, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Grhaib, surveillance of the Internet, interception of mail and phone calls) or some of its allies.

Is Pakistan a fascist state? - If so why does the US support it? I would say that by your definition that it is. (add in the house arrest of Judges etc). Interestingly Pakistan is a classic example (by your definition) of a Fascist state that enjoys the support of the US. Sure things are changing on the surface there but I strongly suspect that the changes are superficial.

Now to apply the term "Fascist" to some tiny gang of religious fanatics such as Bin Ladens mob is to devalue the term. You render it useless as a instrument of analysis. Why not call them what they are? They certainly are not the " most imperialist elements of finance capital" where is the "open terrorist dictatorship"? They skulk in caves or live on the Riviera in luxury like others of their ilk.  Meantime a plethora of loners and misfits around the world is encouraged to emulate them by your characterisation of them as powerful "islamofascists" evil masterminds who plot to rule the world through some wierd perversion of Islam.

They are common criminals, sure they have a fanatical shtick that justifies their acts, but they are no different from that insane crew behind Timothy Mcveigh. Should they have been labelled "Christofascists"?

At least the media (for all the wrong motives) got that right, they made it appear that McVeigh was an insane loner and they denied to his backers and supporters any oxygen.

By promoting AQ as the evil and powerful empire of "Islamofascism" you do them a great service, you give them air to breathe, you in fact support them.

Dalek

 

I think this thread should discuss the sorts of issues raised by keza and lupin3 about the deeper strategic nature of the Iraq war.

Can we talk about islamo-fascism in the baathism, islamism, nationalism, secularism thread, since the term already has a history of discussion on this site?

Lupin3, unfortunately I just don't have time to engage here and have not read the Slate articles (or much stomache for liberal apologia).

This is just to confirm that you have correctly understood my position (whether or not that of others here) as being that the WMD claims were a deliberate lie.

I do believe "the WMD argument existed merely as a means of scaring Americans (and Europeans) into accepting the necessity of the war".

By "WMD hawks" I assume you mean people like Cheney and Rumsfeld who have no "neocon" rhetoric about "democracy" but concluded that if the US does not democratize the region they will eventually be faced with terrorists using WMDs for far more devastating attacks than 9/11 and with predator regimes like Sadaam's starting more wars like Kuwait.

I do not believe they had any belief that invasion of Iraq was necessary or desirable to deal with either existing Iraqi WMD programs or the certainty that sanctions would collapse and WMD development would resume. That line was sold to liberals in for example The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack. It was more sophisticated than the mass propaganda about "disarming Sadaam" but it simply wasn't what actual policy makers believed. It was just what they wanted people who could have otherwise mobilized to prevent the war to believe.

What the policy makers believed (correctly in my view) was that the invasion was necessary and desirable to launch a process of "region change" - with Egypt and Saudi Arabia as far more important long term targets than Iraq but far greater difficulties in simply announcing that the US no longer considered them "moderate Arab allies" and now considered them as enemies.

They believed that propagating that lie was necessary in order to launch a war that could not be launched on any other pretext.

The commitment of both liberal and conservative and social democrat (Blairite) supporters of the war to that line has produced the current nauseating confusion.

Policy makers still have to pretend that Iran is their target rather than their "moderate Arab allies" and Israel so the chances of finding anything intelligible for policy analysis from the sort of "opinion leaders" that dominate discussion remains negligible.

There is a need to seriously assess the most recent events in Iraq, rather than examine the entrails of the past. It seems to me that there is an emerging National Liberation Movement of which  Al Sadre is a critical part. The Maliki attack on the Sadrists was clearly a move instigated by the US in an attempt to clear the decks of an Iranian fifth column (as they see it). The move has failed and hopefully the failure will cause the US to back off in its provocations against Iran.

It is now clear that the "surge" has had little effect upon events; aside from further alienating the people of Iraq from their occupiers. It has also resulted in the the transfer of US arms and money to the very Sunni insurgents and ex Baathists that once were US enemy No2. (after the AQ and common or garden Jihadists that flooded into Iraq to fight the "Crusaders").

Maliki and his supporters are increasingly perceived by the ordinary Iraqis as US puppets and as incompetent and venal. With over 50% unemployment, essentially no clean water, or power and large scale poverty after 5 years of "benevolent" US control it is becoming increasingly difficult to simply blame it all on the Jihadis.

It is also clear that AQ plays only a minor role in events, despite the attempts by the US and its sycophants to build them up.

The Iraqis have little choice really, they will have to unite around a National Liberation program, toss the US out and get busy fixing their country or face another 5 years of death by a thousand cuts. 

Dalek 

This is my first real opportunity to respond to what dalek wrote (10 days ago)  in response to my initial post in this thread so I'm a bit late . However I don't want to just let that crude distortion of my views pass. He started by saying:

I think it was Umberto Eco who chastised Hegel for his belief that History has some direction, that there is an "arrow".

I really just have to say “so?” to this.  Unless dalek can produce an argument in support of the proposition that history is directionless, I won’t bother to engage with that remark.

But I’ll quote myself just to remind people that although I asserted that history does have a direction, I did not say that future events are determined

“Although any specific historical event can be "accidental" in the sense of  not having been historically necessary (although of course also not historically impossible!) and the actual "shape" of events can be very much due to the abilities (and sometimes even personality quirks) of the people in power, the general flow of history makes sense and moves in a particular direction which can be ascertained at least in broad outline by analysis of present and past reality.” 

The rest of dalek’s post shows that either he has failed to understand the “draining the swamps” (DTS)   theory or that he has no compunction about distorting it.   He writes: 

“As I see it the DTS is atavistic in that it invents a new "other" for us to hate - the "Islamofascist" a term that sits well with the extreme right nut-bags that infect cyberspace but that has no scientific meaning at all and that has clearly gained no traction at all with mainstream "liberal" opinion. Instead of moving us forward it send us back to the days of Pogroms, the Crusades and Ghettos.Surely a more "progressive" move would be to characterise the "Islamofascists" as the common criminals that they are and to treat them as such. Instead the term unscientifically galmourises them. “

Now that is a complete misreading of the theory.   We don’t see the enemy as “islamofascism”  and we’ve never agreed with the idea that the US is engaged in “a war on terror”.  I've written several posts to this forum in which I've made it clear that I disagree with the whole notion that the US is literally "at war"  with Islamic terrorists.

The DTS theory argues that this sort terrorism can't be defeated via direct military means  or prevented by clever intelligence. These latter methods will never solve the problem.  The answer lies in assisting and pushing hard for the spread of democracy and modernity - sometimes by military means but often in other ways.  The label "Islamofascist" is not even one that I'm especially happy with.  These people are evil, destructive, nihilistic and if they held State power anywhere would  institute regimes which might be aptly described as fascist (depending upon  how strictly we define the word "fascist"), however  they are a disorganised movement  whose  objective, historical role  seems mainly  to be one of  creating mayhem  and holding things back .  They  are a reaction (a backward and nasty  one) to the conditions of life in the Middle East (and in other places) - and these conditions of life  * are* the result of the fact that these regions have been left to stagnate due to previous US policy.  In this sense they can be partially characterised as "common criminals". However they are not the sort of common criminals who can be dealt with in the usual way.  If you have a social system which is breeding large numbers of people who are prepared to blow themselves up, killing thousands of innocent people in the process,  threatening anyone  who  is working for democratic change and opposing modernity and democracy at every turn  then you must change that social system. There is no other solution.  The issue is only superficially to do with religion (ie Islam).  It's idealist to think otherwise. The fact that many right wingers who support the war are inclined to see it as a struggle against Islam (or perhaps some mutant form of Islam) is entirely irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of the DTS theory.

The suggestion that the DTS theory has anything to do with creating a new "other" for us to hate is also a complete distortion of  my views.  My view is that as democracy takes root in the Middle East it will in fact  have an "Islamist face"  - it will initially bring groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood to power because these groups are in fact close to the people of the region. We have already seen this in Iraq.  I don't have a problem with it - in fact I think that it is the only way forward.  There will be a long period of struggle (as in all infant democracies) before we can hope to see the sort of liberal, secular bourgeois democracy with which we are familiar. To suggest that the DTS view has anything in common with the ideas of "right wing nut bags" who see Islamic terrorism as somehow traceable to the teachings of the Koran is absurd - in fact so absurd that I suspect that dalek (who is intelligent enough to understand the theory and has been obsessively reading this site for over a year), is engaging in quite deliberate distortion.

I spelt out my views in an article published in the Australian newspaper in September 2006 - and I don't see any reason to retract any of what  I expressed there.  That article can be read here.

Dalek also wrote:

Your post teeters upon the brink of "strawmanism" but it is very interesting nonetheless. You have to show how the theory of "Draining the Swamps" (DTS) does not fit into your definition of Idealist " I guess that’s because liberals are in general, idealists – that is, they automatically regard ideology (beliefs, ideas, attitudes)  as the main driver of historical events" My reading of DTS sees it as idealist in the sense of your definition in parenthises (above).

This is yet another assertion with no supporting argument (like the claim that history is directionless because Umberto Eco said so). What is there that is idealist in the DTS theory, dalek?  You need to explain why you think that we/I see ideology as the main driver of historical events.  In my view the DTS theory, while allowing for the fact that people think that they are doing things for particular reasons (and these beliefs do play a real role),  makes it very clear  that the ultimate driver (and source of beliefs)  is  the material conditions  under which they live.   Islamic terrorism  is nurtured by  a continuing lack of democracy  and modernity in a world in which complete democratization could have been achieved long ago if the bourgeosie had been prepared to  complete  its historic mission.

The sectarian violence in Iraq and attempts by AQ to capitalize on Sunni dissatisfaction at the change in their status is in no way evidence against the DTS theory.  Rather it is a clear indication of the sickness of the region and the desperate need for the democratic revolution to continue. To me it's utterly perverse to argue that an upsurge in terror and  sectarian brutality is some sort of indication that the Iraq should have been left as it was.

Keza, you state "The DTS theory argues that this sort terrorism can't be defeated via direct military means  or prevented by clever intelligence. These latter methods will never solve the problem.  The answer lies in assisting and pushing hard for the spread of democracy and modernity - sometimes by military means but often in other ways."

You have, in this statement revealed the idealist view of history that gave rise to the entire Iraq debacle and that will continue in the pending imperial adventures.

You and your ideological bedfellows, the Neocons share this strange perversion.

Engels had something to say about it: "The production of the material means of subsistence and the economic development of a people forms the basis for the social and political institutions created as well as for the legal conceptions and ideology that arises".

That you and the neocons and the entire US administration apparently believed that you could "push hard" for democracy in Iraq simply by terrorising the population with US troops and dying their fingers purple is just amazing.

No attention at all was paid to the economic development of the people. They were left to starve, without proper water or power, while the lumpen elements were encouraged to plunder and pillage whatever the invaders missed. No employment programs were instituted, the hospitals were bombed, plundered and destroyed. The "middle class" the very bourgeoisie that you needed were encouraged to flee by policies instituted by the US  (wholesale sacking of Baathists for example -even though you had to be a member of the party for middle class employment).

You created a terrifying dystopia and then have the audacity to whinge when the worst of the worst Jihadi's flock to Iraq to fight the "Great Satan". You create the conditions for sectarian violence unprecednted in recent history and then blame the sectarians for the situation that you created.

It is idealism of the worst kind to ignore "material means of subsistence and the economic development of the people".

BTW  "Idealism" is only sematically linked to Ideology, your mistake is not so much ideological as you have failed entirely to condsider the material basis of your program. It was based in wishfull thinking and fantasy, as events have demonstrated.

Dalek

 

 

   

Am sorry have got to this thread so late. Must say am quite astonished that the LSP steadfasters - while commendably valiant in holding faith - apparently know so little  about the transformation that has been happening in Iraq in the last 6 months or so.  As consequence seem just as defensive as the  Slate liberal hawks?

 

Firstly. The Sunni insurgent leadership has  demonstrably accepted - even before the  "surge"  - that their future resides in the Iraqi political process that the US set off.  They ended the insurgency in the Sunni dominated provinces of Anbar and Saluhuddin months ago! Since then  they have  been discovering and exercising  the powers that the ultra democratic Iraqi constitution and proportional representative electoral system gives to  even 20% minorities (like the Kurds and Sunnis) The lengthy haggling over the amnesty bill;  the re-employment or pensioning of ex Baathists bill and the provincial elections bill so dear to the Bush Admins heart, were finally passed unanimously after months of old fashioned, US style horsetrading.

 

Secondly. Since the surge, US troops have moved out of their bases to actually LIVE  among the population alongside their counterparts in the Iraqi army. Does this not "threaten" to create a solidarity of purpose between ISF and MNF? What would Mao say about this tactic?

 

Thirdly, the least reported aspect of the Surge was the synchronised, multi American and ISF offensives  that rapidly drove  AlqI and its allies in the insurgency out of Anbar to Baghdad to Diyala then  to Ninevah (Mosul) where they are now making their last stand.  Looking at the map, AlQ and allies next stop is Syria. How much welcome will they get there?

 

Fourthly the Iraqi government - with the support of the Kurds and SUNNI parties in the parliament  - is now going after Muqtada's power base and militias  on its own volition?

Seems to me that 5 years after the removal of the fascist Baath regime, the disbandonment of the fascist Baath commanded army and the midwifery of the most democratic constitution in the Arab world, the Americans haven't done too bad.  Given that today , the Iraqis  are starting politically to behave like  US polticians and getting used to horsetrading their differences politically as opposed to the Wild West.  And militarily the Iraqi army is being trained, equipped and educated in US style and is overwhelmingly supported by the Iraqi people?

 

The democracy caravan rolls on.

 

 

 

 

GuruJane, I suggest that you read this , here is an extract:

"America's efforts to disengage from Iraq have led to some messy compromises. After years of trying without success to wrest Sunni areas from Qaeda control, U.S. ground commanders appear to have done it at last—but only by granting sweeping powers to sheiks and local leaders who can keep the peace. Now Iraq's Sunni areas have been chopped into fragments, each one run by a different tribal ruler with different views on law and society. In some parts of Baghdad the situation changes visibly from block to block. No one can say how many of these leaders abuse their powers, or if their little sectors can ever be put back under the purview of a centrally controlled government. "We are becoming like Afghanistan was in the '80s," says Zainab Salbi, the Iraq-born founder and CEO of the activist group Women for Women International."

No doubt the plight of women in Iraq (Afghanistan as well) is of no concern to you but I really think you need to do some research before you post arrant nonsense like this " Seems to me that 5 years after the removal of the fascist Baath regime, the disbandonment of the fascist Baath commanded army and the midwifery of the most democratic constitution in the Arab world, the Americans haven't done too bad.  Given that today , the Iraqis  are starting politically to behave like  US polticians and getting used to horsetrading their differences politically as opposed to the Wild West.  And militarily the Iraqi army is being trained, equipped and educated in US style and is overwhelmingly supported by the Iraqi people?"

I guess you are correct about "the Iraqis  are starting politically to behave like  US polticians" - they are even more corrupt and venal than US politicians.

I respectfully suggest that your read this report also.

Dalek

Dalek. Thank you very much for that last link. I hadn't come across it before and it was very informative reading.

 

However it can't be taken as a serious cross section of Iraqi women's experience across the board  even though it purports to be such. In common with most western-derived organisations and bodies it is extraordinarily skewed towards the Sunnis, who only make up between 15 and 20% of Iraq's population - about the same number as the Kurds?

 

But according to this report, their breakdown of respondants was 37.9% Sunni (!), 8.5% Kurd (!), and, amazingly, only 16.6% Shia (!!) who in reality comprise about 60% of the Iraqi population and about 80% of Arab Iraq. Which of course  is why Saddam and Sunni-representing minority Baath regime had to increasingly repress them so brutally in the decades before the invasion. Just refer yourself to the 20% minority Afrikaaner regime for a parallel.

 

Furthermore, the survey was apparently taken mid 2007 before the surge took full effect? Judging by the latest ABC/BBC poll, which is also methodically skewed towards the Sunni viewpoint, attitudes re security and optimism have changed dramatically between August 2007 and February 2008 , and would seem to be still trending upwards  now that political reconciliation can be seen demonstrably to be taking place at the top?

 

And of course all of us good leftists know true reconciliation can only start from the bottom, which is how it it seems it did?

 

None of this is to miminise the views of the respondants, or in any way deny that  Iraqi women, especially in terms of being rendered widowed, has been the major group suffering the most from the effects of the invasion and  specifically from US planning failure to provide security to the population while it transitted the country from fascist totalitarianism to representative democracy.

 

But we women are used to being the  fallout as men  catch up with history, Dalek.

 

 

 

GuruJane,

The plight of women in Iraq should not be lightly dismissed on the basis of a "bias". The difficulty with your position is that Iraq is in transition from fascist totalitarianism to tribal balkanisation - not representative democracy. One consequence of this is that women are being pushed back into the worst forms of feudal dependency and opression. 

This report describes some of the worst consequences of the dis-empowerment of women that is taking place in Iraq today.

The invasion by the US and its total failure to implement the material conditions for representative democracy created the conditions for the disintegration of Iraq. The sectarians are continuing the work that the US troops began with their raping and killing of women and girls, by their parading of them in their nightdress during dawn raids. Thus the scene was set for the sectarians to return to the violent misogyny that emerges from tribal societies as "their" women are humiliated and the position of the men comes under threat.

If "representative democracy" is ever established in Iraq it must deal severely with the remnants of the appalling patriarchal mores that still infect many tribes and that are exacerbated by the more extreme forms of Islam that flourish in the adversity of invasion.

The "surge" has had the effect of  re-constituting tribal power, of dividing the country on tribal and sectarian grounds and legitimising the actions of "patriotic" clerics.

In the end the only way forward for women in Iraq lies in secularisation, only a secular society will accede to the demands by women for equality and opportunity. The US Invasion has sent the women of Iraq back into the 14th century.

Dalek

 

This post has been sent to our junk forum because it was irrelevant to this thread. It can be read here

keza