Friends:

Infinitely many right-wing hacks ply their trade in the States. -- For one case in point:

"In Iraq, liberals flip on genocide," Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2007

Notice that the theme of the commentary, from its opening sentence on, is a set-up and nothing more: The world cannot truth the Democratic Party to command American Power.

Leaving aside the author's use the term 'genocide' (i.e., we're simply assuming the fact that he used it, and making no judgment about its appropriateness -- itself an immense and largely abused topic), the author alleges that, because they now say they wouldn't keep the U.S. military committed to Iraq to "prevent genocide," prominent members of the Democratic Party are morally suspect, and hypocrites. 

But nothing about the elementary fact that, if this were true, then the Washington regime, led by the Republicans of the executive branch, would be guilty of having triggered, precipitated, caused or perpetrated the very genocide the author accuses the other party of not being serious enough to stop.  And this, despite the fact that the author concedes that, "if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren't at least partly to blame."

Nevertheless. In the author's hands, this concession becomes:

Yes, the mass murder would have more immediate authors than the United States of America, but we would undeniably be responsible, at least in part, for giving a green light to genocide. Obama offers precisely that green light in his proposed Iraq War De-escalation Act.

Yet, about the crime the author decries (even though he regards this mass murder only as a possibility after the U.S. military departs, rather than a reality occuring for the past 48 months under the U.S. military's occupation, or the past 16 years under the UN sanctions), coming as a result of the "supreme international crime" perpetrated by the Republicans of the executive branch when they sent the U.S. military to invade Iraq in March 2003, the author is silent.

The Democrats are guilty of "flipping" on genocide.  But the Republicans aren't guilty of causing the "genocide" for which the Democrats are guilty of "flipping"!

And American Power causes nothing.  It's only a solution.

A hatchet-job from top to bottom. 

"Obama: Don't stay in Iraq over genocide," Philip Elliott, Associated Press, July 20, 2007 
"In Iraq, liberals flip on genocide," Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

SK:

Yeah.  Pretty remarkable.  But heartening to see that Judith-WMD-Miller landed on her feet in right place to ply her trade once again.

And how did she handle Israel's elder statesman and current president, Shimon Peres?

During our 90-minute interview and subsequent lunch, at a hotel not far from the Knesset, Mr. Peres seemed to revel in his role as presidential provocateur.

Was he worried about an Iranian atomic bomb, I asked the man who led Israel's successful, once-secret effort to acquire nuclear weapons?

"Terrorism and the warming of the earth are the two great threats to Israel," he began.

Global warming?

Yes, he insisted, the warming of the "earth's refrigerator" ranks second only to terrorism in terms of threat. One day, Israeli homes, factories and cars will run on solar energy. "Better to depend on the sun than the Saudis," he said.

Israel's top threat, however, is nuclear terrorism. Now that President Bush has "boldly and courageously" toppled Saddam Hussein -- he declined to give advice about whether, how and when Mr. Bush should bring American forces home -- the theocratic rulers in Tehran are Israel's greatest challenge. Iran "wants to destroy all that is modern. But it is a failed state," he said. When the mullahs seized power after the 1979 revolution, Iran had 30 million people; today it has 70 million.

"The regime cannot feed them," Mr. Peres said. There is corruption and drugs, and Persians are barely 50% of the population." The regime, like the Soviet Union, will eventually fail.

But would it do so before acquiring atomic weapons?

"Will the Muslim world enter the modern age before Iran and terrorists get the bomb?" he said, answering a question with a question. No one knows, he continued.

The prospect of nuclear arms controlled by fanatical mullahs and the terrorists they support threatens not only Israel, but all states. "So the world will unite against them," he said. If there is a united front against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "he will lose."  

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Guess who's writing conventional wisdom (for these pages) now?

Friends:

FYI: An outstanding commentary in a local Chicago-area newspaper:

"Water find threatens creeping peace," Marlene Lang, Daily Southtown, July 22, 2007 

Letters to the Daily Southtown: letters@dailysouthtown.com . 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. For a bit of news coverage about the "water find" Lang uses for her commentary (shorn of the standard hysteria about "genocide" in Darfur, I hasten to add), as well as the climate-change background that, to date, appears to be exacting its heaviest toll on the continent of Africa, see Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program, 2007).

Also see "A Climate Culprit In Darfur," Ban Ki Moon, Washington Post, June 16, 2007; "Darfur conflict heralds era of wars triggered by climate change, UN report warns," Julian Borger, The Guardian, June 23, 2007; and, last but not least, "A Godsend for Darfur, or a Curse?" Lydia Polgreen, International Herald Tribune, July 21, 2007.

I should add that the second-half of Polgreen's question -- "a curse?" -- ought to be unimaginable.  There is only one constituency for whom the news released last week -- to near silence, as far as I can tell -- of the possible existence of a "vast underground lake the size of Lake Erie…beneath the barren soil of northern Darfur" could count as a curse, and this is the "genocide" and "humanitarian" war industry among the Western governments and their lackey non-non-governmental sectors.  (For a snapshot of some of the members of the industry -- in particular, its celebrity-witnessing cadre -- see "Not on our watch -- how Hollywood made America care about Darfur," Dan Glaister, The Guardian, May 19, 2007.)

Last, for perhaps the single best assessment overall: "The Politics of Naming," Mahmood Mamdani, London Review of Books, March 8, 2007.

Remember: In the States, and wherever Big $$$$$ spreads, the demand for charlatans is near insatiable.  ("Saving Darfur or Salvation Delusion?" Steve Fake and Kevin Funk, Foreign Policy In Focus, June 20, 2007.)

So it is very good to find voices that counter those bought and amplified by $$$$$. 

 

Cyrano:

It was clear by the spring of 2004 that the "Crisis in Darfur" had been constructed with the intent of placing it at the top of the agenda of the "international community" (i.e., the Great White North -- no state or organization indigenous to Africa is a member of the IC unless it tags along with the GWN).  By then the IC had already blasted its was into Afghanistan (Oct. 2001) and Iraq (March, 2003).  As with the former Yugoslavia the previous decade, the "Left" led the charge in promoting the "Crisis in Darfur" in the English-speaking countries.  Don't be fooled by the fact that this is 2007: Black Africans exist to be made examples of by the IC.  Either they are pathetic objects towards which "solidarity" is to be expressed or they are objects of scorn. 

When I first caught wind of the fighting in the western Sudan, it was because the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq had succeeded in pointing the UN's principal humanitarian organization towards it.  At the time (the fall of 2003), nobody was using the name of the three Darfur states to designate the crisis.  ("Humanitarian and security situations in western Sudan reach new lows, UN agency says," UN News Center, Dec. 5, 2003.)  Nevertheless.  Virtually all of the mainstream Western media reporting on the Sudan remained focused on the civil war in the south, "where decades of war have left most villagers living in Stone Age conditions," and "forced millions of southerners to the north, where most live in squalor and protest that they are treated like second-class citizens."  ("Sudan expecting deal to bring peace, democracy," Declan Walsh, Boston Globe, Dec. 19, 2003. -- Also see, e.g., the extensive ReliefWeb pages devoted to the Sudan, Updates, esp. p. 266. ) 

It was almost two months between UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland's news conference when he called the "humanitarian situation in Darfur...one of the worst in the world" and when The Guardian turned to reporting on what it called the "unexpected new war in Sudan's vast western province of Darfur" ("Thousands flee war in Sudan," Jonathan Steele, Jan. 30, 2004.)  Although the Washington Post had blurbed the fighting in the Darfur states on three occasions in 2003 (July 13, Oct. 27, Nov. 3), it wasn't until the Post published Smith College professor Eric Reeves's "Unnoticed Genocide" on February 25, 2004 that this fighting began to receive the heavy-duty purple treatment in the mainstream.  "[S]o far as most of the world is concerned, it isn't even happening," Reeves wrote.  To reproduce his commentary at length:

  Despite efforts by the regime to stop it, a widening stream of information is reaching the international community, from tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Chad (which shares a long border with western Sudan), and according to accounts from within Darfur. Amnesty International has led the way in reporting on Darfur; one of its recent releases speaks authoritatively of countless savage attacks on civilians by Khartoum's regular army, including its crude Antonov bombers, and by its Arab militia allies, called "Janjaweed." 
  An especially disturbing feature of these attacks is the clear and intensifying racial animus. This has been reported by Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group and various U.N. spokesmen. The words "ethnic cleansing" have been used by U.N. officials and diplomats. This term, which gained currency during the breakup of Yugoslavia, is another description for genocide. But whatever they are called, the terrible realities in Darfur require that we attend to the ways in which people are being destroyed because of who they are, racially and ethnically -- "as such," to cite the key phrase from the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide.
  Darfur is home to racially and ethnically distinct tribal groups. Although virtually all are Muslim, generalizations are hard to make. But the Fur, Zaghawa, Masseleit, and other peoples are accurately described as "African," both in a racial sense and in terms of agricultural practice and use of non-Arabic languages. Darfur also has a large population of nomadic Arab tribal groups, and from these Khartoum has drawn its savage "warriors on horseback" -- the Janjaweed -- who are most responsible for attacks on villages and civilians.
  The racial animus is clear from scores of chillingly similar interviews with refugees reaching Chad. A young African man who had lost many family members in an attack heard the gunmen say, "You blacks, we're going to exterminate you." Speaking of these relentless attacks, an African tribal leader told the U.N. news service, "I believe this is an elimination of the black race." A refugee reported these words as coming from his attackers: "You are opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs." An African tribal chief declared that, "The Arabs and the government forces . . . said they wanted to conquer the whole territory and that the blacks did not have a right to remain in the region."
  There can be no reasonable skepticism about Khartoum's use of these militias to "destroy, in whole or in part, ethnic or racial groups" -- in short, to commit genocide. Khartoum has so far refused to rein in its Arab militias; has refused to enter into meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups; and, most disturbingly, has refused to grant unrestricted humanitarian access. The international community has been slow to react to Darfur's catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction.  

Reeves was able to become one of the leading spokespeople in the States against the "genocide" because its alleged perpetrators not only aren't the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, but rank among Washington's official enemies.  The essence of the "Crisis in Darfur" is that it has enabled the moral hucksters to condemn Khartoum's civil war with segments of its own population, and to organize and sustain large-scale movements in the States and Britain and elsewhere against the "genocide" in Darfur, while avoiding any condemnation of Washington's and London's aggressive wars against other countries and their populations, and keeping any movement to oppose these wars largely bottled up.

"'Fill Full the Mouth of Famine'," John Laughland, Sanders Research Associates, July 29, 2004 (as posted to the Scoop website)

"Where anti-Arab prejudice and oil make the difference," Roger Howard, The Guardian, May 16, 2007
"Not on our watch -- how Hollywood made America care abour Darfur," Dan Glaister, The Guardian, May 19, 2007

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

wow, after re-reading david post and links, I am in disbelief.. I was freakin unaware of genocide in Congo! http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=284&Itemid=37

 

How can this be possible?

there, some links on oil, I am unable to find Bush executive order 13303 for which I have an excerpt:

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that the threat of attachment or other judicial process against the Development Fund for Iraq, Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations, or any financial instruments of any nature whatso-ever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, obstructs the orderly reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq. This situation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.

Bush executive order immunizes US oil Companies from any legal challenges..

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Mineral/cement03.htm

Oil industry uses military power over the defenseless and inflict torture

http://www.notortureforprofit.org/cases.asp

At any rates Iraqis natural resources have been privatized, what once was nationalized and to their benefit is now under the control of the US oil companies, yet Iraqis have no legal binding for the compensation of their loss..In term of barbarism, it could be said that the US is TORTURING Iraqis for their OIL

sk , we could always add that the only thing that was protected by the US as opposed to the population was the oil fields.. For Dick Cheney, Iraq is a success..

Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War is a bracing breath of fresh air after suffering the self-righteous and selective moralizing of a propagandist like Gourevitch. Lucidly written, great examples, and worth the cost for the Preface alone.

SK:

We are so deep into "propaganda model" - territory here that finding that single little crevice on the side of Mount Agitprop where we can get even a toehold and catch our breaths is daunting.   

When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Mahmood Mamdani (Princeton University Press, 2002)
Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, Robin Philpot (E-Text as posted to the Taylor Report website, 2004)

But in a sort of macro- or overarching sense, Africa remains the Dark Continent.  And whether it's Rwanda, the Congo, or the Sudan (and so on), the people are largely objects of ridicule, whichever second-order role is assigned to them according to the constructive, benign, nefarious, and mythical bloodbaths categories.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Postscript. Personally, I believe that writers such as Philip Gourevitch are moral hucksters. (See, e.g., the page titled "Rwanda and the International Response" in the hyperlink that you provided.)  But the U.S. market can't seem to get enough of the moral huckster.  The demand for them appears insatiable.

Consider how brave Gourevitch is.  Happy to accuse the U.S. Government, the UN Secretary-General, and the "international community" of failing to prevent some other power from engaging in mass killing, and thus of failing to live up to "Never again" - type injunctions associated with the Nazi's treatment of Jews and other lives-unworthy-of-life.

How might the fabled "international community" put a stop to mass killings in different theaters of conflict around the world?  By being even more aggressive and better killers? 

Gourevitch-class hucksters are marked by the fact that, for all their songs and dances about the Western failures to prevent mass killings by other powers, they're never willing to accuse the U.S. Government, the Secretary-General, or the "international community" of actually perpetrating mass killing -- much less of demanding that "Never again" - type injunctions apply to them. 

Let's lift a single paragraph from the Gourevitch interview ("Rwanda and the International Response"):

In the intervention debate, I'm a journalist -- obviously, I'm an opinionated journalist to some extent, after I've looked at a situation. One tends to react rather strongly when a lot of people are at risk like this. But I'm not a policymaker. I don't have a 100% position on intervention. I think probably it's true that one has to look at it case by case, and I don't say we should always be intervening every time somebody's getting killed. What I do say is that the most pernicious story of the nineties has been the consistent habit of the United States and its partners in the so-called international community of making false promises of protection and then abandoning endangered peoples to annihilation, when push comes to shove, because we don't mean to stand behind those promises. That's revolting. That's scandalous. It makes me embarrassed, it makes people dead, and it doesn't do anybody any good. And it weakens our word, our word is no good.

Now.  An elementary response would be: Who does Philip Gourevitch believe should have protected the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (or Iran, going forward) against the United States and its partners in the international community?   After all, there hasn't been any false promises of protection here.  No callous abandonment of Afghans and Iraqis to annihilation at somebody else's hands.  For the simple reason that the annihilators have been the United States and its partners in the international community.  

Is this revolting?  Scandalous?  Does it embarrass Philip Gourevitch?  

Do questions like these even turn-up as blips on his "Never again" - radar screen? 

I suspect some coverage could be accorded to the Congolese Civil War if it can somehow be instrumentalized for the sake of some higher cause that has needs to be sold in places like DC or London. After all Philip Gourevitch's "smugly dispassionate" We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda wouldn't have been noticed much either had it been about "just another tribal conflict".

SK and Everyone:

Really should post this one to the very top of the ZNet Blogs.  But for now:

"A Tale of Two Genocides, Congo and Darfur: The Blatantly Inconsistent U.S. Position," Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report, July 18, 2007 

In fact, the actual U.S. position is perfectly consistent, and has been for generations.  But this is just a glitsch in the otherwise important questions that Ford raises. 

Wonder how Ford's criticisms will go over in the Great White North?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Paul:

As always within B.F. Skinner's ideal world, all these jokers in the States understand is "costs" and "benefits."  

I wonder how much of what passes for "antiwar" sentiment in the United States -- let alone "peace" -- is nothing but, or little more than, canalized reaction to the fact that the other side never understood that it isn't supposed to shoot back?  Well.  It certainly is shooting back now.  Live by the sword, die by the sword.  And I long ago had grown sick and tired of regarding these States-based civilians who take-up arms as anything other than enemies of peace.     

We must be absolutely on our guard that any so-called "withdrawal" proposal for the U.S. forces inside Iraq entails withdrawing all U.S. forces from the Middle East over time.  Not just re-deployment, as the U.S. political establishment will have it.   

And where is the call for armistice over the skies of Afghanistan?  Are we supposed to mistake calls for re-deployment of U.S. troops to encampments where the other side can't shoot at them as a change of policy?  As a victory?  A victory for what?  The frickin' peace movement?

What kind of suckers do they take us for?

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Edson:

You ask a superb question: If Iraqi forces were occupying the United States, would there be any clamor about the methods used by the U.S. resistance to the occupying forces? 

My own view is that there ought to be, as, for example, a subset of defining the responsibilities of military occupying powers, which has been a major branch of Hague- and Geneva-type conventions for the past century or more; also, nobody should want violence and victimization to increase rather than decrease.

But at the same time, nobody would deny the U.S. resistance its right to resist "alien subjugation, domination and exploitation."  More revealingly, nobody among the enlightened classes in the United States and other NATO powers would excoriate the "internationalists" and "cosmopolitans" for shows of verbal and material support for the U.S. resistance.  Nor would anybody adopt a checklist of preconditions that the U.S. resistance had to meet, before it was regarded as sufficiently enlightened and moral to be worthy of support.    

And when was the last time the States-based adopters of checklists and preconditions for the Iraqi resistance adopted any kind of checklist for the invaders? 

My god.  The July 30 issue of The Nation is devoted to documenting and publicizing the brutality of the occupation.  ("The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness," Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian.)  I wonder if Katha Pollitt is a subscriber?

We must never forget that the process of human liberation is reversible; and that reversing it has been the uninterrupted U.S. policy for generations.  

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

Postscript.  Honestly don't know what's "liberal" about the belief-system that Katha Pollitt's criticisms of Alexander Cockburn betrayed.  Unless the word means simply pissant weak and imperial-serving.  (If this is what the word means today, I'm happy to use it in this sense.) 

"What if there had been no resistance in Iraq?" Tariq Ali asked in 2005 "The warmongers would have claimed that the occupation was a triumph, established a collaborationist regime and moved on to change the regime in Syria and, possibly, Iran. Dissent in the U.S. and Britain would have been neutered, the media would have remained friendly and the lies used to justify the war would have been happily forgotten. The means, we would have been told, justify the ends. And the snapshots of Iraqis being tortured would have remained a family secret"

 --- Tariq Ali and David Barsamian, Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations With Tariq Ali (NY: New Press, 2005), p. 220, quoted in Anthony Arnove, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (NY: New Press, 2006), p. 63.

Sadly, dissent in the U.S. (where much of "antiwar movement" is pathetically captive to the corporate neoliberal and imperial Democratic Party) has been largely neutered anyway (there are multiple and interrelated reasons and the absence of a draft is certainly a big part of it) and many of the lies used to justify the war live on despite the general discrediting of the original WMD lie.  Still, Ali had a good point about how there would have been no chance for any kind of relevant anti-war sentiment without determined resistance by the Iraqis - violent resistance included.

 

SK:

I am quite impressed by Reuven Kaminer's stuff.  ("The Emir from Afghanistan," Political Affairs, September 17, 2006.) -- However, I am continually put-off by the notion that both Afghanistan and Iraq lived under "reactionary domination" when the soldiers and machines of the United States attacked them.  The reason is that, in exactly the same sense, but globally rather than locally, the people of our planet live under reactionary domination -- namely, under the United States, under its allies, under the NATO bloc, under the IMF and World Bank, under financial capital, and so on.  I also think that much too much has been made out of the U.S. decline.  It certainly isn't 1948 any longer, when the United States possessed "about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 % of  its population."  But policymakers today every bit as much as then seek to maintain what disparities do exist "without positive detriment to our national security" -- what got the White House in hot water with the generals.  Take a look at a map of the Northern Hemisphere.  How much of this turf belongs to, or at present lives under the boot of, the United States and NATO?  

The anecdote from Robert Fisk is lovely.  ("How can the US bomb this tragic people?" The Independent, September 23, 2001.) 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

They do appear more courageous than americans, I mean some of them fight with no weapons.. a lot of americans dont have the courage to reform their health care system, they also voted for GWB and for the invasion of another country, in the the light of the US military supremacy, any resistance fighter is probably a better person thanthe one who is directly responsible and directly voted for the barbarism inflicted upon other countries..

Here's one bunch of self-described resistance fighters whose exploits--such as blowing up of buildings--are publicly admired and commemorated.

Ajit:

This sentence of yours puts the matter pretty well, I think: "[Katha Pollitt] doesn't get the point that supporting the right of resistance is different from supporting all acts of resistance." 

Still.  One can't help but wonder what percentage of Americans simply don't get the point that, between the two sides -- the invader and the resistance -- it is the latter that has the right to take up arms, while the former does not, and never did?  So Pollitt excoriates Alexander Cockburn for wondering why the "antiwar" movement in the States does not feel any concern for the fate of the Iraqi resistance (i.e., just about everybody inside Iraq), while back in the States, the antiwar movement (aside from the margins, I mean) lavishes concern on the footsoldiers of the invaders.  And Pollitt is unaware that they are committing exactly the sin she accuses Cockburn of committing.  Only on behalf of the aggressor's troops.

Go figure. 

The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,  Office of the Director of National Intelligence, July, 2007
"Fact Sheet: The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 17, 2007 

"The Return of Al Qaeda," Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, July 12, 2007 

"Risk of terror strike grows," Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2007
"Terror group as strong as before 9/11, Bush warned," Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, July 13, 2007 
"Al-Qaeda again capable of U.S. strike, report says," Colin Freeze, Toronto Globe and Mail, July 13, 2007
"Why US sees Al Qaeda as a growing threat," Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 2007
"Report warns of rebuilt Al-Qaida," Siobhan Gorman, Baltimore Sun, July 18, 2007
"White House gauges 'persistent' al Qaeda threat," Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2007
"Intelligence report cites Aal Qaeda threat," Greg Miller and Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2007
"Pullout proposal lacking a Plan B," Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2007
"Bush Aides See Failues in Fight with Al Qaeda in Pakistan," Mark Mazzetti, and David E. Sanger, New York Times, July 18, 2007
"6 Years After 9/11, the Same Threat," Scott Shane, New York Times, July 18, 2007 
"Al-Qaeda's Gains Keep U.S. at Risk, Report Says," Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus; Washington Post, July 18, 2007
"Intelligence Puts Rationale For War on Shakier Ground," Michael Abramowitz; Washington Post, July 18, 2007 

David Peterson
Chicago, USA 

jonas wrote: What is "fundamentally wrong" is the equation of resistance with the agents of terror and mayhem who are laying waste to any hope of Iraqi civil society; we are certainly playing our part, but we are not the ones wantonly mutilating, car-bombing, beheading, etc. Why should anyone interested in peace lend solidarity with such a resistance? The US created this equation the minute it set foot into another sovereign country. Iraqis were able to live before US agression, the majority still want you out..

See here...This is what the American Soldiers are doing in Iraq.

 http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/03/05/uncomfortable-questions/

http://www.macleans.ca/world/global/article.jsp?content=20070205_140356_140356

  An Excerpt.

 "

Then something happened that haunts my dreams to this day. All the women were led back inside the house and our entire platoon was ordered to stand guard outside it. Four U.S. military men entered the house with the women. They closed the doors. We couldn't see anything through the windows. I don't know who the military men were, or what unit they were from, but I can only conclude that they outranked us and were at least at the level of first lieutenant or above. That's because our own second lieutenant Joyce was there, and his presence did not deter them.

Normally, when we conducted a raid, we were in and out in 30 minutes or less. You never wanted to stay in one place for too long for fear of exposing yourself to mortar attacks. But our platoon was made to stand guard outside that house for about an hour. The women started shouting and screaming. The men stayed in there with them, behind closed doors. It went on and on and on.

Finally, the men came out and told us to get the hell out of there."

Katha Pollitt's response to Cockburn is typical of Liberals. She doesn't get the point that supporting the right of resistance is different from supporting all acts of resistance,

 It also appears her opinion about Iraqi and Afghan resistance is only based on what she heard and read from Corporate Media and nothing else. Quite a strange thing for someone on 'Left'.

   There is lot of information about Iraqi Resistance over internet but You have to get through a lot of garbage to read informative and credible articles about Iraqi Resistance. In other words, You have to devote time to understand Iraqi Resistance. Which is plainly not possible for people like Pollitt. Their speciality is crank out words and words to fill up their alloted spaces.

    Iraqi resistance is divided into 12 different groups , only 2 or 3 groups are Al Qaeda Types. Others are mainly Baathists and others.

   There was a  report on Al Jazeera sometime ago where a reporter joined Iraqi resistance on their invitation,

 http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2006/09/at-invitation-of-iraqi-resistance.html

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2005/07/who-is-fighting-in-iraq-part-ii-after.html

 

  Even in Afghanistan, the Taliban which ruled the country is dead. What you have is Neotaliban which is a loose coalition of Remnants of Taliban , smugglers of various stripes, People who are simply sick of Americans bombing them etc.

 My point is if you are really interested in finding out about Resistance you can find out. But people like Pollitt obviously are interested in denouncing any one who deviates from Party Line.

 

Friends:

FYI: The celebrated wingnut raises (and advocates for) an ominous threat: A full-scale U.S. invasion of -- not Iran, but Pakistan.   

"Al Qaeda and the 2008 Presidential Race," Bill O'Reilly, FOX News, July 18, 2007

A major difference is that whereas the Iranian military would fight back against a U.S. attack on Iranian territory, the Pakistani military has since late 2001 been helping the United States attack the peoples living in western Pakistani territory.

As they say in the hate-speech-filled cable TV and radio programming in the States: Nuke 'em all.

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

Friends: Great cartoon.  No exaggeration, either.  Imagine the flagship of U.S. debauchery taken over by the king of corporate media debauchery.  For example, the United States launches cruise missiles against Cuba.  Next day's page-one headlines: Castro Terrorist Plot to Blow Up Washington Thwarted. And: U.S. Presses International Criminal Court for Action on Darfur.  And: New Study Finds More Sex Offenders Live in Your Neighbor's House than You Thought. (Tom Toles, Washington Post, July 18.)

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

 

 

Jonas:

Thanks for noticing that the 'a' had been omitted from 'fundamentally' -- now corrected.

But your ellipsis tells all.

If the myriad Afghan and Iraqi "resistance" fighters and bombers aren't embraceable, presumably, there is a reason for this.

Whatever this reason, either it ought to apply to the U.S. footsoldiers they are fighting against or not.

Katha Pollitt excoriates Alexander Cockburn for wondering why the U.S. "anti-war" movement doesn't concern itself with the fate of the "resistance" to the American wars.  But not a peep from Pollitt (or scores of others who opine on a professional basis) about the U.S. "anti-war" movement's concern with the U.S. footsoldiers.  (And what does anyone think that "Camp Casey," Texas, August 2005, was?)

In categorical contradistinction to the people who advocate for non-violence and peace, the U.S. "anti-war" movement is monopolized largely by people who embrace the U.S. footsoldiers, and don't like bad events befalling them.

This, I'll bet, is what the polls are registering.

How can anyone embrace the U.S. footsoldiers but not the Afghan and Iraqi "resistance"?  What sets them apart?  (There are real differences, after all.)

Unless, that is, one is a homer?   

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

"radical Islam AND its totalitarian supporters." You truncated the quote. Nice try though.

You write: "...the resistance inside places like Afghanistan and Iraq (and elsewhere, too) do indeed practice beheadings, and kill and maim innocent people. Also, the majority of them appear to profess beliefs about this world that I do not share. But unless ... embracing the resistance to the U.S. wars and occupations applies with equal force to embracing the footsoldiers of these same U.S. wars and occupations ... there is something fundmentally [sic] wrong with Katha Pollitt's thinking."

No. What is "fundamentally wrong" is the equation of resistance with the agents of terror and mayhem who are laying waste to any hope of Iraqi civil society; we are certainly playing our part, but we are not the ones wantonly mutilating, car-bombing, beheading, etc. Why should anyone interested in peace lend solidarity with such a resistance?

I can't understand your comment, "I'm posting the CounterPunch version of Cockburn's commentary because The Nation's is sequestered behind a $$$$$ curtain." The two articles are not at all different; the one in the Nation is simply truncated because, in CounterPunch, Cockburn goes on to ramble about the Bohemian Grove. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with whatever a money curtain means.

The first few paragraphs of this article by the creator of the Guide to the Perplexed carry interesting insights.

btw, not many were locked on the horns of an unbearable dilemma when the Red Army invaded Afghanistan. The nature of the resistance was well known even then as journalists like Robert Fisk were writing about it in mainstream media:

I was working for The Times in 1980, and just south of Kabul I picked up a very disturbing story. A group of religious mujahedin fighters had attacked a school because the communist regime had forced girls to be educated alongside boys. So they had bombed the school, murdered the head teacher's wife and cut off her husband's head. It was all true. But when The Times ran the story, the Foreign Office complained to the foreign desk that my report gave support to the Russians. Of course. Because the Afghan fighters were the good guys. Because Osama bin Laden was a good guy. Charles Douglas-Home, then editor of The Times would always insist that Afghan guerrillas were called "freedom fighters" in the headline. There was nothing you couldn't do with words.

Arundhati Roy had some worthwhile advice on the topic years ago that probably never made it to the inner recesses of Katha Pollitt's brain:

Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allies government to withdraw from Iraq.

An excerpt from a 215 year old speech wouldn't be out of place here either:

The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.

First, to say there is a neo-liberal colonization of the middle east is to make baseless accusation rooted in anti-western/socialist thought. The presence of troops in the mid-east is not proof of your accusation. Colonialism is much more complex than that and the burden is on you to prove it is occuring.

Second, perhaps the reason so many Americans are against the casualty count but not protesting the war is because Americans are smart enough to know that if radical Islam and its totalitarian supporters are to be stopped, Iraq and Afghanistan are the starting points. The defeat of the Islamists and their brethren in Iraq and Afghanistan will have reprecussions in Iran and Syria which can only be good.