All opinions posted. None too pathetic or contrived. Everyone gets their say.

"...even the wicked get worse than they deserve." - Willa Cather, One of Ours

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Not in my city

Iraq the Model (Iraqi Sunni Doctor fm Baghdad)
By Mohammed & posted by Omar
My last trip to Samawa was short but full of events...Baghdad is the most civilized place in Iraq and there’s no way one can compare it with the rest of the governorates not to mention the ignored villages in the south.

I set off with a number of passengers heading for Samwa. The road was quiet despite the troubles in Kerbala and Najaf, which are both on the road. We had to use the old road as the new one (the high way) is closed because of the current fights in those two cities.

My arrival day was the day when a rally of support and gratitude to the coalition passed the streets of Samawa. The scene was very delightful for me. I, who believe in the necessity of establishing a strategic partnership with the free world represented by the coalition, because this the only way for Iraq to rise again, prosper and join the modern, free world. Such partnership, the way I see it, is vital for the free world in its war with terrorism, the corner stone of which is to establish peace and stability in the ME. Yes, we should put our hands in each other’s because we have a common destiny. It was a very encouraging thing to see that the simple people there understood the case and this is probably the first time where people go out to the streets to thank and support our allies in the coalition, but strangely it came from ordinary, simple people not from those who claim to be civilized intellectuals.

On the road to the residents’ house we passed near the coalition base in Samawa; the striking and ugly feature of this base, like any other one is, the concrete wall that surrounds it...The coalition forces here invited all the kids-and their parents-in the neighborhood for a special festival, the kids were given paints and brushes and a definite area of the wall was assigned for each kid to paint on whatever he likes and to sign his painting with his/her name. I leave it for you to imagine how this hateful wall looked like after this festival. It became a fascinating huge painting that gives a feeling of brotherhood and friendship. These paintings eliminated all the psychological walls between the folks and the coalition here. At the end of the festival, gifts were given to each kid; toys, clothes, candies…

You can’t imagine how happy the kids were when they stood proudly pointing at their paintings; flowers, birds, hands shaking and the flags of Iraq and the coalition countries, and then pointing to their names; Zahra, Mohammed, Sajjad, Fatima… together with phrases like; yes for peace, Saddam has fallen and many others. No one can watch this without having tears filling his eyes and I feel sorry that I couldn’t take pictures for this carnival, as I wasn’t there when it happened, but the people there told me the whole story.

I reached my destination, which is a small town about 35 km away from the center of the governorate. It’s a very simple town that suffered from Saddam’s neglect like many other southern cities but what pleases me in every trip is the appearance of a new foundation in the town. Last time I was surprised to see a new water treatment plant (or the so called RO in the south) near the river distributing clean water for the whole town for free, with four brand-new automobile tanks to deliver water to the remote villages twice a day. Everyone is grateful there as our major health problems are caused by polluted water. Now, this new processing plant will help rid the city of many health problems.

...The other new foundation that is being constructed now is an Internet Center. Who would dream to see Internet service available in a southern village? This is more than a dream coming true, it makes me feel proud and it makes people believe more and more that the change is in their interest.

I always talk to the people there and the accelerated rate their consciousness and understanding are growing at, often surprises me. In one of the meetings I asked them about their opinion about the government and the president they would like to have in the future, here, a man said “ I’d prefer a Christian president” as a matter of fact I was shocked as I wasn’t expecting to hear such a perspective in an almost exclusively Shei’at village. Here the others agreed and clarified their friends point “we mean that we don’t want an Islamic or Shei’at government” “see, the SCIRI party established a library and a school to give religion classes that no one attends despite it cost the party thousands of dollars and occupied one of the towns’ buildings. Take a look at the water treatment plant that the coalition established, people gather around it every morning”. “We want those who know what we need, not those who tell us to do what they want” another man added”.

I totally agreed with their perspective because at the end, the one who provides more services for the people is the one who wins their trust.

The saddest incident for the citizens during my last visit was the death of a coalition soldier from Netherlands in a grenade attack. The small town was shocked and I could hear everyone say, “who did this crime is a stranger and he’s not of us for sure”.

Many of the town’s known figures, officials and tribal leaders headed to the coalition base to declare their support to the coalition and to condemn the crime, one of those men said-with apparent affection-during the funeral ceremonies “our loss is big and we feel ashamed; you’re our guests but we couldn’t protect your men’s live; we’re terribly sorry”.

The pictures I see are so many and they bring hope, I remember the last day I spent there before I returned to Baghdad, and I was watching Al-Samawa local TV (now they have their own local station) and it was broadcasting one of the sessions of the district’s council when a woman stood up wearing the traditional costume and behind her was a group of women, she started to yell in the face of the chairman of the council saying “Listen to me! You can’t ignore our voice anymore. These women elected me and put their trust in me and I demand authorities like those of men. My voice will not stay low from now on and I have to give those who elected me what they need”. I don’t think you can realize the meaning of this picture. It simply means that we have moved tens of years forward in a matter of months and we have broken the chains of a long dark past. The cry of this woman was enough to awaken me to the great progress that happened.

...on our way back to Baghdad where we were delayed for a few hours after the coalition forces blocked the road, we didn’t know why but one of the passengers started to complain saying “those Americans always put obstacles in our way and make our lives difficult” the driver couldn’t hold himself from answering this comment in a sharp tone as he said “NO, it’s not the Americans. It’s because of those bastards who plant bombs on the roads. You must thank the Americans for delaying you for a couple of hours to save your lives”.

The point behind all these pictures and stories I mentioned is that the people started to speak out and express their feelings and here we’re in great need for support from the free world to back the progress. Moving back is absolutely unacceptable; we’ve put our feet on the right way and we need help from the others. Never let the bad pictures lay their heavy shadow on the good, bright ones. The negative media want our eyes to pause on the bad events...and to make us forget the good pictures that encourage us to keep the momentum. This includes most of the major western media.

They are ‘unconsciously’ supporting the terrorists and the totalitarian regimes in the region to stop this great progress. The media have managed to create some distrust and hate between some Iraqis and some of the coalition and the west in general. Well, not in my city, it seems to be immune to their poison. The road is long and hard but together, we can do it.
I suppose the reason the western journalists in Iraq don't write stories like this is because they don't speak Arabic and they are afraid to travel. This inevitably makes their reporting highly negative and one-dimensional.

Understanding our Enemies

Political Animal (Kevin Drum)
To say in one breath that we must not succumb to the temptation to turn those who express sympathy for Osama bin Laden into alien, hated, one-dimensional OTHERS; and then say in the next that those who express sympathy for Paul Wolfowitz are alien, hated, one-dimensional OTHERS...
[...]
I agree that the stance he...targets is untenable, but what's the preferred solution here?
Moderation

The fact is that pretty much any intellectual principle becomes absurd and unusable when taken to extremes ...history is littered with the corpses of movements that had a single overarching vision that metastasized over time and eventually led them to their doom.

The reason for this is simple: ideas have to reflect reality to have any power, and the actual human world doesn't run according to a single overarching principle. At a certain point, even if an idea continues to make some kind of logical sense, it no longer makes human sense as it starts coming into conflict with other human principles and desires that are equally strong. If you insist on taking your ideas past that point, you have essentially become a fanatic.

If you want to get things done in the real world, you have to understand how humans react to things and how far an idea can go before it becomes mere looniness and loses its power to persuade. So the answer to Matt's question, I think, is that you should seek to understand alternative views up to a point and you should also be intolerant of alternative views up to a point. What point? Good judgment and trial and error are about the only ways to figure it out.

This isn't a very satisfactory answer, but I think it's the correct one.

...I'd argue that modern conservatism is an example of an idea that has been taken to unreasonable extremes and thereby lost touch with reality. In the same way that liberalism arguably overreached in the 60s and 70s and suffered the backlash of Reaganism, I think that Reaganism has overreached under Bush and is due for a liberal backlash sometime soon.

...this also demonstrates one of the primary strengths of liberal democracy as a political system: it's very hard for extremism to take hold. Various viewpoints ebb and flow, but they very rarely get to the catastrophic point that is sadly common under authoritarian systems. This institutional moderation allows societies to grow steadily over long periods, rather than crashing and burning periodically and having to start over nearly from scratch.
The Golden Mean is reborn. No, I am not being sarcastic here.

I think that this is true wisdom.


MLK on Pulling out of Iraq vs Vietnam



DB wrote to me saying:

"I think you may learn something if you were to read this masterful speech from MLK. Everything he says here applies to the situation in Iraq.
Here is the link: MLK speech

Respectfully,
DB"


This is a serious critique of the war and deserves a serious response.

Many with a greater grasp of history than myself have completely shattered the facile comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam (moral purpose - liberation & democracy vs colonial oppression based on the refusal to allow elections; nature of the enemy - a true revolutionary people's movement vs the remnants of a totalitarian elite & a fascist theocratic movement; etc.)

Let me only speak of practical matters. When MLK gave this speech he was referring to a war fought by a reluctant draft army that had been fighting for six (6) brutal years. By the moment of this timely, brilliant and most appropriate speech, America had suffered combat casualties of 16,250 killed and 93,342 wounded. Our current combat casualties in Iraq are 658 killed and 4,327 wounded.

If we assume that the American public could only bear with 10% of those casualty figures (and I think that for a war such as this one, which was started by an attack on American soil, the public would be far more steadfast than that), that would still mean we are less than half way to the breaking point. Also, we have at least 2-3 more years before we reach an equivalent chronological point in the two conflicts (somewhere around the spring of 2006). You must also take into account that King was far ahead of the public. The public approval of the war did not reach less than 50% until 1968 after the Tet Offensive, in which we lost 1,536 killed and 7,764 wounded in a 2 week period. At this time, if you ask the public the straight question - "Do you still support the war in Iraq?"; then according to the latest polls (last week), the public is responding with a 67% approval rating.

Before you ask yourself "How can he be so callous with the lives of others?", I assure you I am not. I am a veteran of the first Gulf War, but I do not expect that this gives me some special right to argue this way. I say that Americans realize that this must be done because we would not want others to die in our place.

The war must be won because we owe the Iraqi people a moral debt that must be paid. If we sacrifice the lives and future well-being of tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, just to protect ourselves from the sacrifice required by our own actions, then we will be rightly condemned as moral lepers.

We must not think of our own national interest, but the interest of Iraqi citizens. We owe a debt to the Iraqi people and we must pay it.

In any case, your despair is premature. This mission can still succeed. What would success look like? A democratically elected anti-American government. That would be victory.


Is Pulling Out The Bush Administration's New Strategy?

The New Republic
by Spencer Ackerman
This afternoon, Colin Powell, whose State Department is taking over the Iraq portfolio from the Pentagon-created CPA come July 1, echoed Paul Bremer's statements on whether we would leave Iraq. In a press conference, Powell addressed the issue of withdrawal, saying, "Just to make sure I'm not ducking the hypothetical ... and causing any confusion, were this interim government to say to us, 'we really think we can handle this on our own; it would be better if you were to leave,' we would leave."

...Powell was flanked by the foreign ministers of Britain, Italy, and Japan...and they agreed, too. Said Jack Straw: "Were [the Iraqis] to ask us to leave, we would leave." Added Japanese FM Yoriko Kawaguchi: "We would go back to Japan if requested." All of the principal foreign-policy ministers of the coalition are saying they can see themselves pulling their forces out of Iraq in short order.

The real question here is if Powell's trial balloon--or Bremer's--comes with Bush's approval, tacit or otherwise...Bush has repeatedly said we will stay the course in Iraq...but his favored formulation about the duration of our commitment is "as long as necessary, and not one day more."...

...Bush needs to say whether he agrees with Powell and Bremer...The consequences of pulling out of Iraq will be catastrophic, not only for the future of U.S. foreign policy, but for the bloodbath that Iraq will become as it falls into failed statehood--and 9/11 should have taught us what failed states mean for our national security...
If this were to happen, we would pull out of Iraq...and our forces would immediately move north to protect the newly declared Republic of Kurdistan. No one should doubt that in this scenario the Kurds would bolt and declare independence.

That is the implicit threat of Bremer's statement. I just don't know if the Iraqi Arabs are perceptive enough to pick up on it without it being explicitly spelled out for them.

The moderate Iraqi leadership are certainly rational enough to realize that if we pull out too soon, they will all be lined up against the wall and shot by the forces of whichever warlord wins the day.

Bush Approval Ratings

Professor Steven Ruggles

Here is a graphic of Bush's approval ratings that speak for themsleves:



W is doing better than his old man was doing at the same place in the election cycle (46% for GWB & 42% for GHWB), but he's still doing pretty lousy.

Via Political Animal

Hypothesis


“The greatest tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

Thomas H. Huxley