"Morals of the Just War." posted by lenin

And, do you know what they do with the Iraqis they don't manage to kill?

They place a hood over their head, attach wires to their hands and stand them on a box. Then they torture them, and sexually molest them.

Cynics might suggest a connection between this sort of behaviour and the fact that "US soldiers are killing themselves at an unusually high rate" but, as General Sanchez will tell you, "There is no morale problem."

On the Run Again... posted by lenin

From The Guardian :


US marines in Falluja prepare to pull out of the city. Photograph: Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty Images
 

US forces today announced an end to their siege of Falluja, saying they will pull out immediately to allow a newly-created, Iraqi security force to secure the city.

The new force, known as the Falluja Protective Army, will consist of up to 1,100 Iraqi soldiers led by a former general from the military of Saddam Hussein and will begin moving into the city tomorrow.

Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne said the agreement was reached late last night between US officials and Falluja police and civilian representatives. "The plan is that the whole of Falluja will be under the control of the FPA," Lt Col Byrne told the Associated Press.

I believe it's called, "running away with your tail between your legs". This is, of course, not the first time that the occupiers have attempted to get locals to take bullets for them. And it should not be a terrific surprise that the FPA

would be made up of about 1,100 Iraqi soldiers led by a former general from the Saddam Hussein era.

The only oddity is that as late as this afternoon, the US was pretending that no deal had been struck and "there could still be reasons to continue attacking selected insurgent targets in the turmoil-ridden city of 300,000 people." Well, if they didn't exist, you'd have to invent them, wouldn't you?

Sullivan's Travels. posted by lenin

I don't know yer man Andrew Sullivan very well, but he seems to irradiate his most ardent readers with idiocy off the top bunk. Here he cites a regular reader who has e-mailed him about Iraq and South Africa:

"Presently, although crime seems to have abated, the country is still racked with problems. An estimated 20.1% of the population has AIDS, 50% of the population is below the poverty line, and 37% of the population is unemployed. The current life expectancy is 46.56 years.
Now, very few people on any side of the political spectrum would argue that South Africa was "better off" under apartheid. Yet, those that oppose our war in Iraq often bitterly complain that the Iraqis are not better off. Both countries, when liberated, were coming from oppressive governments with people unaccustomed to the democratic process. It has taken ten years to get South Africa to the still troubled, but gradually improving, state it is currently in. Why is so much expected of Iraq so quickly? Apparently, the left's criterion for democratic progress is a double standard."

And, do you know, Andrew never thought to mention in respect of this that a) South Africa liberated itself, it did not require bombing out of its apartheid shell and b) because of this, South Africa has no gruesome, violent war between the "liberated" and the "liberators". Elementary observation, but apparently quite above the touch of Andrew Sullivan. I suppose it is merely pedantic to mention that, of course, "by late-2002, more than 60 percent of South Africans thought the country had been governed better by the white minority" . (I'm not endorsing this view, merely pointing out that many people on whatever side of the political spectrum do think this). Sullivan, of course, memorably mistook Najaf for Fallujah, Sunnis for Shi'ites and decided that resistance in Fallujah had been quelled. This morning's headlines rather invite a different view.

Norman Geras on George Galloway. posted by lenin

Starting a new series...

NormBalls

Like the Private Eye sketch only funny. Today on NormBalls, we consult the doyen of "liberal Marxism", Norman Geras , on the notorious cigar-chomper, George Galloway:

George Galloway denies any distinction between war and what some of us call terrorism, other than that one is ordered 'by men in suits', the other 'by men in sandals'. And so blowing up a bus full of schoolchildren isn't terrorism, it's just 'a grisly aspect' of revolutionary insurgency.

This, in reaction to an interview with Galloway conducted by Tim Adams of The Guardian.

Oddly enough, Galloway does not say this - the interviewer says this for him. Galloway, for his part, says:

"'Well, occupation is ugly, resistance can hardly be pretty. I never called on people to fight. But I never had any doubt that they would either.'"

He adds:

"'Innocent civilians were killed. That was vile. But we still kid ourselves that acts ordered by men in suits is war. And that the same acts ordered by men in sandals is terrorism. There is no distinction.'"

To this latter, Norman Geras retorts:

This is similar to the can't-be-choosy option made famous by John Pilger. Here, then, is something to think about. What would these two have to say, do you reckon, to the suggestion that their logic might just as well be reversed so that from now on the US and Britain (etc.) at war may just freely target civilians? I'm predicting neither of them would approve. It's a hunch based on what they already think about civilian casualties provided these are inflicted by the 'right' countries, and even when not deliberately.

Norman Geras does not provide a single atom of evidence that either Pilger or Galloway have ever considered it correct that the Iraqi resistance or anyone else "may just freely target civilians". This is for the perfectly excellent pragmatic reason that he is making it up. Neither Galloway nor Pilger have ever suggested such a thing. Geras avers that those who opposed the war but will not oppose the Iraqi resistance in similar terms are "essentially know-nothings when it comes to the moral questions of the just war." But since he has mistaken their elementary moral stance, it does not quite sit well for him to be so aggressive.

He also complains, in a linked piece , that those who refuse to condemn Palestinian terrorism "without scare-quotes and unconditionally" are a "disgrace" "to a great historical ideal." Since he is advancing himself as an apologist for liberal imperialism, I wonder if he has any questions about his own fidelity to that "great historical ideal" or if, perhaps, he can bring himself to condemn US massacres in Iraq "without scare-quotes and unconditionally". Of course not. Bush is there to democratise the region, Blair is an avowed opponent of tyrants (except when he's not) and the (vastly greater) terror perpetrated by the "coalition" is meant well. Who but a "know-nothing" could think otherwise? It's a sad end for a sad end.

Peace in the Holy Land. posted by lenin

Schadenfreude: Part Three

The future of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. After years of dictatorship, Iraq will soon be liberated. For the first time in decades, Iraqis will soon choose their own representative government ... The day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly ... Coalition forces will remain in Iraq as long as necessary to help the Iraqi people to build their own political institutions and reconstruct their country, but no longer.

JOINT STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
AND PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR ON IRAQ,
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
Hillsborough Castle, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
April 8, 2003

"The new Iraqi interim government scheduled to take control on July 1 will have only "limited sovereignty" over the country and no authority over U.S. and coalition military forces already there, senior State and Defense officials told Congress this week ... "So we transfer sovereignty, but the military decisions continue to reside indefinitely in the control of the American commander. Is that correct?" Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, on Tuesday. "That's correct," Myers replied."

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday that the war in Iraq is going "reasonably well" but acknowledged the United States faces long-term involvement there ... "Decades is probably not unreasonable."

As the old saying goes, you can lead a dickhead to war, but you can't make him think.

And meanwhile: The New Iraq Has a New Flag! The colour scheme looks vaguely familiar. Blue, white, religious symbol in the centre... Could this be the new Islamic Israel ? And why is Syria suddenly aflame? Wasn't the Middle East supposed to be on the verge of peace ?

Election Fever in the US. posted by lenin

More Humanitarian Intervention, Only Ten Hours Away... posted by lenin

When Nato was flexing its military muscle in the FRY to the delight of liberal commentators, one of the favourite refrains of supporters of the intervention was that Kosovo was "only two hours away from Paris by plane". How the mouth moistened at that! Europe - Europe of all places! - once more gripped in racial fervour. Well, since we appear once more to have a situation of "ethnic cleansing, but not genocide" going down in Sudan, I'll just point out that Khartoum is only ten hours away by plane.

Did you hear that correctly? You can get some ethical bombing done and be back in time to watch the glowing reviews on Newsnight.

Road Map to Hell. posted by lenin

The Emperor's New Song: #It's Gettin Hot in Here, So Take of All Your Clothes...#

Boy, that road map to "peace" in the Middle East is taking its fricking time. Fallujah is up in flames again, Baghdad's taking it in the neck , especially Sadr City . Meanwhile, Israel "withdraws" from some parts of the West Bank (translation: they annexed what they wanted and tossed the crumbs to the Palestinians), assassinates two Palestinian leaders and hints that Yasser Arafat may get a bullet or two in the head, and the Prime Minister's reaction to this is to ignore the first assassination, rap Israel's knuckles for the second, but continue to flush the Middle East with arms alongside the US. His position is so servile that "More than 50 former British diplomats have signed a letter to Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy" .

And Rumsfeld says he was "surprised" by the reaction of Iraqis to their occupation. No shit. It's a quantum leap from flowers and kisses on the cheek to bombings , shootings , mercenaries , kidnappings , and rape . Yet, noone has any right to be surprised by this. Even old hand imperialists like General Anthony Zinni are scathing about the neocon misadventure:

"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus. Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"

There's none so blind as those who do not want to see, General.

Asia Minor calling Bush Junior

Yet, this is so much more than a simple bout of radical rightism in American foreign policy. The structure of US policy in the Middle East is essentially responsible for where we are today. There are three essential coordinates of US policy in that region:

1) Support for autocratic regimes against their radical nationalist/Islamist/socialist opponents.

2) Support for Israel against radical nationalists/Islamists/socialists.

3) Opposition to radical nationalists/Islamists/socialists.

I hope that boils it down for you. Basically, the US has been flooding the Middle East with weapons and military aid for decades, but especially the last decade. In 2003, 72% of US foreign aid to the Middle East was military aid. Totalling $3.8 billion, US military aid to the Middle East is 90% of the its total worldwide. Since the Gulf War, this aid has totalled $90 billion. Much of it has gone to Israel, encouraging a rapid build-up in military capacity in a country where external security threats were declining - the usual trend is that countries spend less on their military when there are fewer threats to contend with. Iraq was a wreck after 1991, Syria had lost its Soviet backer, Iran was busy chasing a writer of fiction and most of the other regimes in the Middle East are basically pro-Israel. Following the Gulf War, Middle Eastern countries spent on average 20.1% of their GDP on defense - well above the Western average. This has forced quite dramatic cuts in social spending in many of these states, even as US arms producers (their overwhelming suppliers) garner enormous profits. Moreover, since Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Morrocco and other Arab states have relied on Saudi aid for some time, the pressures causing Saudi Arabia to be less generous have reduced their ability to spend. What aid they do get is being used by Egypt to finance its arms purchases and pay off debts incurred from previous purchases, and by Morrocco to subsidise its occupation of the Western Sahara.
With this level of military spending and the population increases associated with greater urbanisation, there is now emerging a "food deficit" across the Arab world. They are not producing enough food to feed their population, because not enough is being invested in agriculture. The result is that in the slums of Rabat in Morrocco, for instance, radical Islamist groups are thriving, one of which carried out attacks on a Jewish community centre in Casablanca last year. In Saudi Arabia itself, the tale could not be more obvious or more chilling. (See, for example, Stephen Zunes, Tinderbox, Zed Books, 2003; and Anne Ashford, "The Politics of Terror: Who Are Al Qaeda?", Socialist Review, April 2004).

The Punchline

In order to control the chaos they've unleashed in the Middle East, the US have been obliged to commit most of its armed forces (yes, there are 1.4 million standing and reserved troops, but there are 400,000 committed at the moment and, since rotation is a three-phase task, this means that 1.2m troops are tied up with current deployments, leaving on 200'000 to work with - which actually means the US can only deploy a third of that - about 70'000 ground troops ). They may be planning on another war. They may try to reintroduce the draft. But, most importantly, they're having to detain many of the Iraqis they don't manage to kill. Guess that's so they don't have any room for Chalabi.

Any Answers? posted by lenin

Not a reference to the Radio 4 programme, but a genuine query for information to assist the American Leftist . He asks:

"So does anyone know what the deal was with Kimmitt fainting at the podium during a press briefing a week or so ago? Was it just stress or what?"



Indeed, it would be intriguing to learn exactly what brought on the General's sudden woozy slump into the microphone. On seeing it, I thought that it might have been a petit mal epileptic seizure, but the reports seem to rule that out:

The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq appeared to briefly lose consciousness during a news conference Saturday, bumping his face into a podium microphone. He left the room for a period but returned smiling and answered more questions.

There was no immediate explanation for the apparent fainting spell suffered by Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy head of operations in Iraq, who delivers daily briefings to Baghdad-based journalists alongside the top U.S. coalition spokesman Dan Senor.

Kimmitt had left the podium for a few minutes earlier in the press conference, which was broadcast live internationally. He returned, looking pale, to take more questions.

Just after answering a question, Kimmitt leaned toward Senor and whispered, "I gotta go."

Senor nodded and said, "OK," and then told reporters the next question would be the last.

As he listened to the question, Kimmitt's eyes rolled upward and he began leaning forward into the podium. The podium's small black microphone struck him on the right side of the mouth. After a few seconds leaning against the microphone, he slumped backward but remained standing.

Senor stepped toward him and said, "You all right?"

"No, I'm not," Kimmitt mumbled. Two aides approached the podium and led him out a side door.

Heart problem? Drugs? Stress of being the centre of loathing and fear in an occupied country? Answers in the comments boxes, please! (Of course, you could e-mail him at kimmit dot m at skynet dot be, and ask him for yourself. Just say, "What's the big fuckin deal, bitch? You sick or somethin?" I'd do it, but I have to be somewhere.)

Note: Haloscan are fixing their server, so the comments boxes may not appear periodically. Fan-fuckin-tastic.

Anyone Feel A Draft Coming? posted by lenin

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

MarxMail is currently discussing, among other things, a recent US opinion poll on whether to reinstate the draft. CNN's poll on the issue of whether there ought to be a reinstatement of the draft was both encouraging and discouraging.
Encouraging because of the results:

"Among 30 and over, 79 percent opposed, 18-29, 88 [percent] opposed."

Discouraging because the matter has even come up for discussion. The draft is a contemptible form of state coercion, one of the few forms of extreme authoritarianism to retain a modest aura of respectibility in liberal democracies.

It is amazing enough that Larry King can say on national television that "I have no basic objection to a draft" , but the re-emergence of the question reminds me of the way the topic of torture was introduced as a tacitly acceptable method of state interrogation after 9/11. It is even more insidious to say "okay, let's talk about it, who are we harming if we just discuss the possibilities" than if there was an attempt to pass legislation making such methods legal.

Why is the draft suddenly back on the agenda? Well, apart from the official 143,000 troops "inside Iraqi borders", there are tens of thousands of US troops in surrounding countries. This could elevate the total to perhaps 200,000. The US army is completely over-stretched, with commitments in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and of course Iraq. The Iraqi Resistance cannot be put down by the current troop levels. British forces have admitted that they could not possibly hold Basra if the population enacted a Fallujah-style uprising. US troops are finding themselves frequently on the run . And the loose bands of mercenaries they've got in there for "protection" are presumably not going to be up to the task either.

I would therefore expect there to be a big push to reinstate the draft. The US authorities in Iraq are presently holding out for a political solution, but that is unlikely to happen. If all else fails, of course, Negroponte can simply whip up some death squads like he did when he was "Ambassador" to Honduras. (Yeah, how did that work? "Oh, Mr Ambassador, with these drug-funded ex-Nazis you are really spoiling us!")

I hope you guys are up for it. Pack some clean underwear cos if I were you, I'd be shitting myself.

For more on this, click here or, indeed, take a look at the comments box.

The Truth Once Again. posted by lenin

Ruling Class Confessions, part II

"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the 'haves' refuse to share with the 'have-nots' by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans."

-General David Shoup [Former United States Marine Commandant, at Junior College World Affairs Day in May, 1966]

( Source ).

The Truth. posted by lenin

Ruling Class Confessions

"Rising unemployment was a very desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes.... What was engineered--in a Marxist sense--was a crisis in capitalism which re-created a reserve army of labor, and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since."

--Alan Budd, chief economic advisor to HM Treasury 1991 - 1997.

( Source ).

The Lucky Ones. posted by lenin

Ever adept at locating revealing quotes, the editors of Medialens have found a pearl:

"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy
the morale of his buddies," a Marine corporal said, "then I'll use a second
shot." ("For Marine snipers, war is up close and personal", Tony Perry,
Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2004)

In nearly two weeks of conflict in Falluja, the unnamed corporal has emerged
as the top sniper, with 24 confirmed kills. By comparison, the top Marine
Corps sniper in Vietnam killed 103 people in 16 months. ”I couldn't have
asked to be in a better place,” the corporal said. “I just got lucky: to
be here at the right time and with the right training."

"Leave it, son, leave it!"

This is liberation.

Poll Results. posted by lenin

According to my utterly scientific and valid poll, I have an odd mix of people visiting this site. To the question "How Does the Situation in Iraq Appear to You?", you replied:

Dangerous, corrupt and violent. (21) 46%
Eerily calm and charmingly picturesque. (16) 35%
Huh? (1) 2%
Sweet and juicy, like a fattened mango. (2) 4%
Allahu Akhbar! (5) 11%
Ahura Mahzda, the Wise Lord, is upon us. (1) 2%
( View Results )

This week, we have a new poll - this time about your opinion of this website. I realise I'm chancing my neck, so I'll be logging on and off this motherfucker to make sure I get the right result - did I type that out loud? Please scroll down to participate...

Kicking Up A Shit-Storm. posted by lenin

Censorship And the Iraq War

Russ Kick, editor of such glossy books as Abuse Your Illusions and Everything You Know Is Wrong, (which seem eerily close to my own planned books, Abuse Your Relations and Everyone I Do Is Wrong), has made the news with his excellent website, The Memory Hole .

What has he done that has so troubled President Bush and made the front pages (in the non-Murdoch press)? He has filed for and successfully obtained the right to pictures taken of coffins draped in Stars n Stripes flags on their way to burial back home. Under the Freedom of Information Act, he has obtained 361 such photographs. And the President is pissed off .

Russ explains it thus:

Since March 2003, a newly-enforced military regulation has forbidden taking or distributing images of caskets or body tubes containing the remains of soldiers who died overseas...

Immediately after hearing about this, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the following:

All photographs showing caskets (or other devices) containing the remains of US military personnel at Dover AFB. This would include, but not be limited to, caskets arriving, caskets departing, and any funerary rites/rituals being performed. The timeframe for these photos is from 01 February 2003 to the present.

I specified Dover because they process the remains of most, if not all, US military personnel killed overseas. Not surpisingly, my request was completely rejected. Not taking 'no' for an answer, I appealed on several grounds, and—to my amazement—the ruling was reversed. The Air Force then sent me a CD containing 361 photographs of flag-draped coffins and the services welcoming the deceased soldiers.

Score one for freedom of information and the public's right to know.

The Independent reports:

Aware of the power of these pictures and their potential to inflict political damage on Mr Bush as he campaigns for re-election, his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, is desperate that they should not be published. Under a White House directive, the press has not been permitted to photograph the return of such coffins for more than a year. But last week 361 images of military coffins being returned to Dover air force base in Delaware were released to an internet news site under the Freedom of Information Act.

This week the Pentagon decided it should not have provided the pictures after all, and barred further releases. "Quite frankly, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified," said John Moline, a deputy undersecretary of defence.
Since their release, the photographs have been published prominently by newspapers and received widespread coverage by the television networks ­ triggering further debate about the war. Only Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has declined to show the pictures or report any discussion about the White House's decision to prevent their publication...

...The images the White House wanted to censor were obtained by Russ Kick, from Tucson, Arizona, who runs a website called The Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org) and who filed a Freedom of Information Act application. Air force officials denied the request but decided to release the photos after Mr Kick appealed against their decision. Mr Kick was unavailable for comment yesterday, but on his website he wrote: "These are the images that the Pentagon prevented the public from seeing."

Well, they may yet succeed in doing so, Russ. Remember the late J H Hatfield, and watch your everloving hide.


Freedom of the Grave.

Meanwhile, General Myers has told the Duluth News Tribune that the "war is going well" - so well, in fact, that US soldiers may have to remain in Iraq for "decades". It will depend, he says, on "how quickly Iraqis stand up and take responsibility for their country."

General, you appear to be giving way to your inner termites. Iraqis stood up and took responsibility for their own country not more than a few weeks ago. They knocked you out of several towns. You sent helicopter gunships in to slaughter them. They routinely tell opinion pollsters that they want you out of their country and power handed to an elected government. Your cohorts tell us, on the quiet, that Iraqis will only be granted "limited sovereignty". Perhaps, however, you mean "Iraqis" in the same sense that Bush Senior meant it when he called upon them to over-throw Saddam Hussein - that is, the senior Ba'athist generals who will rule once more with an iron fist, and whom you are now so anxious to make welcome in "the new Iraq".

Endnote: JustiC has an excellent little piece on Melanie Phillips and Mordechai Vanunu . Go see.

City Heat. posted by lenin

Some city stuff:

If you prefer the modern, industrialised phalanx of grey and fuscous brown, then I refer you to Eamon McCann in the Belfast Telegraph .

If you'd rather have the de-industrialised slums of South America and South Asia, then Mike Davis in the New Left Review is your man.

Free, free Palestine! posted by lenin

Schadenfreude: Part Two

"Does my right honourable friend agree that, with the publication of the road map for Palestine having given real hope for the people of Palestine...there are now no valid reasons whatever for any Labour MP not to support our government tomorrow?" GEORGE FOULKES, Labour MP for Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley, 18th March, 2003.


What the Foulkes?

Yes, new Labour MPs have been tanning their noses in the glorious sunshine of Tony Blair's radiant gloriole for some years now. But, as someone else once said, I didn't think it polite to listen. But George Foulkes is a particularly odious Blairite toady, and he fully deserves the scorn that his own words heap on him. Excelsior to you, George!

England, Your England. posted by lenin

Slaying the Nationalist Dragon

My grandfather kicked the bucket in 1983. The reading of his will raised some eyebrows, to riot in understatement. To his only daughter, he left his prodigious smoking habit, while to his sons he left his many fine stomach ulcers "which I hope will bring you as many hours of pleasure as they have me." I remember this taunt from the grave whenever people speak to me of cultural heritage and such. For instance, Andrew Rosindell, the Romford Conservative MP has announced that "23rd April - St George's Day - should be carved on the heart of every Englishman." Andrew, I should be delighted to carve those words into your heart the second you present yourself to me. I have, however, one question: Why?


Andrew Rosindell: Pride of Romford.

Seems an easy enough question. The answer announces itself in every patriotic mind:

I am proud of my cultural heritage, of my roots, of the rich and elegant language which is spoken the world over, of those great characteristics which have distinguished the true Englishman down the generations, from the poetry of Tennyson to Winston Churchill, to Shakespeare, the Queen and the numinous pound.

I may not be alone in finding such an impressionistic answer singularly unsatisfactory. For one thing, Rosindell's idea of an "Englishman" may not be everyone's cup of tea - a former member of the Monday Club, which called for "voluntary repatriation" of non-whites living in Britain, he complained bitterly about "political correctness" when asked to leave by the Tory party chairman. For those not of Rosindell's racist ilk, England's cultural heritage seems not qualitatively better than those of other nations - Andorra, or Iceland for example. True, English is spoken widely but so have many other languages been - French, Portuguese and Spanish for example. Laud English culture as you must but, as Terry Eagleton once reminded an English audience, "The Irish were good enough to write some of your best literature for you". The Indians fought one of your most successful wars for you, since you mention Churchill (who was, after all, a class-conscious bigot and imperialist whose well-girded aura owes itself to his ennoblement in a war sold as "anti-fascist"). And why insist on taking "pride" in the acheivements of others who just happen to have lived in the same locality? If you want to feel proud of something, do something worth taking pride in. A couple of laps round the block, a letter to the local newspaper... your choice. The Queen is about as important in my life as the most distinguised pond-life and currencies have never set my pulse racing.


The Queen: Low German Interloper.

So, to probe this mystery further, I hit the streets with my cheap dictaphone (made in Japan, but sold in glorious Albion). Getting sensible answers from passers-by proved a considerable challenge - but anyone calling himself a revolutionary socialist in these times cannot be averse to challenge. Here is a rush transcript:

Some muffled noises, feet moving, cars racing in the background.

VOX POPULI: Why don't you just fuck off back to yer own country?

NARRATOR/LENIN: They're not eager to have me return, madam. But thanks for your time!

Yes, that is "it". Fact is, I've edited out all the insults, as well as the beating I received from someone whom I elected to call - for reasons which now escape me -an "absurd fanny-pad of a man with a face like a pissed-on pancake and a whipped dog-turd posing as a fringe." Turns out I was insulting the Labour mayor of Lewisham.
Abandoning the street altogether, I sought refuge in a nearby pub where - astonishingly - the mood was reflective, considered and thoughtful. It takes a drink or two to sober the Englishman up, I noted. For example, one retired policeman told me, through a dense fog of pipe smoke, that he loved his country passionately - but this did not mean he thought any the less of others.
"Why," I enquired, "this unrequited love? What's in it for you? Is it not better to love people and faces than races and places?
"As a matter of principle," he said, somewhat astounded by my ignorance, "and pride. I love my country out of principles that are axiomatic."
"What principles are these? Allow me to know."
"Why..." he paused, and flicked suspicious brown eyes at me. "Look, do you want a clip round the ear, sunshine?"
"You're not Dixon of Dock Green you know." I was insolent. "Do I take it that the principle to which you adhere is one of purblind service and loyalty to the state which claims sovereignty over the land mass on which you happened to be born?"
"Oh, don't be a cunt all yer life," he waved a hand, dismissing me. "Goo on, fuck off. And take Patch Adams there with you."
To this day, I have no idea who he was referring to.


Dixon of Dock Green.

Anyway, I played a few rounds of poll with some young - how to put it? - wankers in England shirts and Ben Sherman gear. I would have patronised them with perfect pleasure for hours had I not felt oddly compelled to preserve my skeletal structure and internal organs.
"Everyone always knocks England," one complained. "It's like the trendiest thing you can do now. Know what I mean? Just because it's politically correct. But you shouldn't because, you know, its your country. Its where you're from. Its your people. You never see animals shit in their own nest."
I asked him if he had ever seen a cow field.
"But seriously," I said, wiping the stupid grin from my face in deference to the stupid frown on his, "is it really all that trendy to 'knock' England? I don't hear Tony Blair or Cilla Black doing it. Neither Blue nor the Sugababes have insulted England of late and neither, to my knowledge, has any leading sports star, politicians or musician. Pubs and shops are replete with the blood-red cross of St George, the infidel-slayer. Frank Skinner still has a boner from the money he had on that stupid song that was number one when everyone thought England would win Euro '96. For Christ's sake, even the Duke of Edinburgh hasn't got round to slagging off the English yet!"
I smiled a radiant smile, triumphant at such a splendid argument.
"Yeah but," he said with a grunt that brought me hurtling to earth, "you know what I mean..."
"Yeah, yeah," I nodded, "I know what you mean."
"Know what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, that's what I'm on about."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
"Yeah."


"Ingerrrluuuuund! Ingerluuuuund!!"

I then became modestly intoxicated and remember nothing of the subsequent 36 hours and pray that noone else does either. However, not to invite doubt as to my patriotism, my jingoism and my infinite malleability, I should like to propose a patriotic toast - To St George of Galloway and Mordechai Vanunu, a Spock for our troubled enterprise. WHAT?? Not English you say? But, dear boy/girl, neither was St George of Arabia. And neither, come to that, am I.

Regime Unchanged. posted by lenin

Schadenfreude: Part One

I today begin a new series dedicated to rubbing salt in the Prime Minister's wounds, specifically pertaining to his bleat that "a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with Schadenfreude at the difficulty we find". From the mouth of an idiot comes wisdom.

In that same article, the Prime Minister described the Iraqi resistance as, among other things, " remnants of a brutal dictatorship which murdered hundreds of thousands of its own people and enslaved the rest". That sounds terrifying. Who would associate themselves with such bloodied foes?

Answer - the United States and Great Britain:

"The United States is moving to rehire former members of Iraq's ruling Baath Party and senior Iraqi military officers fired after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, in an effort to undo the damage of its two most controversial policies in Iraq, according to U.S. officials ... The U.S.-led coalition is already bringing back senior military officers to provide leadership to the fragile new Iraqi army, with more than half a dozen generals from Hussein's military appointed to top jobs in the past week alone, U.S. officials said. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of Central Command, is working to identify other commanders to bring back, officials added."

Meanwhile, back in our haven of democracy, we learn that all that bullshit we promised to the Iraqis was just PR :

"The new Iraqi interim government scheduled to take control on July 1 will have only "limited sovereignty" over the country and no authority over U.S. and coalition military forces already there, senior State and Defense officials told Congress this week ... "So we transfer sovereignty, but the military decisions continue to reside indefinitely in the control of the American commander. Is that correct?" Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, on Tuesday. "That's correct," Myers replied."

General Myers has all the persuasive skill of the recently lachrymose Ron Atkinson. He has insisted that Fallujah was a "humane" campaign:

"There has never been a more humane campaign... and that goes for operations in Falluja".

Well, General, if its okay for you to shoot at unarmed boys , and kill enough people to fill a football field, (see photo), would you care to explain the simple humanity of those bombers who took comparatively fewer lives in Madrid?



And here is the greatest Schadenfreude shot of them all - it's not working. Everything they are doing is making the Iraqis even more pissed off, even more inclined to send bullets of gratitude the way of their ersatz liberators. Or, as one Iraqi told the BBC:

"When the Americans arrived there were only about 50 guerrillas - by the end of the week there were a few thousand." Nada Rabee, Falluja resident.

Iraq: And the Beating Goes On. posted by lenin

It's becoming a mildly entertaining ritual, (ghastly bloodshed notwithstanding), for defenders of the war to insist that a) the fighting is really just localised, b) it's all over now, everthing's going to be fine and c) it's the fault of the Islamo-fascists/terrorists/extremists etc.

Well, if it is just "Islamo-fascists", the fighting now seems to have spread to Saudi Arabia . How's that for a geographical leap?



Not exactly "localised", then. And furthermore, it ain't all over.

Fallujah is once more aflame .



The truce has broken , 9 people have so far been killed by US helicopter gunships (as they went after those incorrigible insurgents, naturally).

Of course, this will all be over soon and Iraq will have a democracy (to be run by the infamous purveyor of death squad terror, Mr John Negroponte). A corrupt IGC may not have much to say if Mr Negroponte feels it necessary to once more recruit a motley crue of neo-Nazis and violent scum to deter the threat of a good example once again. He will have Ba'athist soldiers and mercenaries at his disposal too. That should put the locals in their place.

Vanunu Out. posted by lenin

Vanunu In Broad Daylight.
Who wants to take bets on the assassination date?

Basra Blast posted by lenin

Explosion hits Basra.

Yes, yes. I know. The British are much better at Empire than the Americans. We know how to treat the natives, while the vulgar yanks do not. However, it now seems that the British are hated as well. I certainly feel safer, and I hope you are not so cynical as to detect sarcasm in any of this.

The Ones That Didn't Get Away... posted by lenin

I've decided to give a boost to President Bush's re-election campaign by stoking up some jingoistic patriotism with these beautiful flags. But what's this? They appear to be wrapped around oblong figures...

Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait International Airport

On the Run Again... posted by lenin

Exit Strategy

"'The problem of Sadr is bigger than Sadr. It is the whole Shiite community and the holy shrine,' [Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq] said. 'We have just about eliminated all his influence across the south.'" (Source)

General Sanchez on why troops are withdrawing from the big tiger-fight in Najaf.

Something In The Water posted by lenin

Having intentionally destroyed Iraq's water supplies, the United States may have cause to regret what febrile disease charges unchecked through Iraqi pipelines, because it's turning parts of Iraq even Iraqis have never heard of into hot-beds of revolution :

Five US Marines were killed and nine wounded in Iraq when hundreds of guerrillas attacked American forces near the Syrian border, a sign that the rebellion is spreading to regions which have hitherto been peaceful.

The pitched battle on Saturday started when the marines were ambushed in Husaybah, 240 miles west of Baghdad, according to a reporter from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, who was with the Marines. A doctor at the nearby city of al-Qaim said 10 Iraqis were killed and another 30 wounded, including guerrillas and civilian bystanders. The Husaybah police chief, Imad al-Mahlawi, was reportedly killed by a Marine sniper.

In order to combat this growing problem, the United States have decided that those who could previously only be controlled with an iron fist will be so again - or so General Sanchez told the press :

"Well, the fact of the matter is
that some of them did very well and some of them did not...And in the
south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the ICDC
[Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], did not stand up to the intimidators of the
forces of Sadr's militia and that was a great disappointment to us...With
regard to the new Iraqi army, I think we can look for better performance in
the future once we get a well-established Iraqi chain of command. The truth
of the matter is that until we get well-formed Iraqi chains of command, all
the way in the police service from the minister of interior to the lowest
patrolman on the beat in whatever city it may be, and the same for the
army, from private to minister of defense, that it's going to be tough to
get them to perform at the level we want. The good news is, we're working
on those chains of command, and I'm confident that with work on our part
and work on their part, we'll have better performance. .... It's also very
clear that we've got to get more senior Iraqis involved, former military
types involved in the security forces. And in the next couple of days
you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key
positions in the Ministry of Defense and in Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi
field commands." (My emphasis).

Iron Fist.

Perhaps another solution is to ensure that Iraqi journalists don't get any funny ideas - by blowing their brains out . Another good way to punish the bastards is to close their hospitals :

When the United States began the siege of Fallujah, it targeted civilians in several ways. The power station was bombed; perhaps even more important, the bridge across the Euphrates was closed. Fallujah's main hospital stands on the western bank of the river; almost the entirety of the town is on the east side. Although the hospital was not technically closed, no doctor who actually believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in an empty hospital while people are dying in droves on the other bank of the river. So the doctors shut down the hospital, took the limited supplies and equipment they could carry, and started working at a small three-room outpatient clinic, doing operations on the ground and losing patients because of the inadequacy of the setup. This event was not reported in English until April 14, when the bridge was reopened.

In Najaf, the Spanish-language "Plus Ultra" garrison closed the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital roughly a week ago (as of yesterday, it remained closed). With 200 doctors, the hospital (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital) is one of the most important in Iraq. Troops entered and gave the doctors two hours to leave, allowing them to take only personal items -- no medical equipment. The reason given was that the hospital overlooks the Plus Ultra's base, and that the roof could be used by resistance snipers. Al-Arabiya has also reported that in Qaim, a small town near the Syrian border where fighting recently broke out, that the hospital had been closed, with American snipers positioned atop nearby buildings.

Add to this the sight of US soldiers shooting at ambulances and perhaps it is no longer a particular mystery why there is an uprising in Iraq, and why it is spreading to parts unknown. Even Andrew Sullivan is having trouble keeping tabs on which place is in uproar and where and why:

SADR CAPITULATES: I'm unnerved by the presence of Iranians helping to broker some kind of deal with al Sadr, but heartened by the fact that the extremist revolt in Fallujah seems to have been quelled – largely by Marine force and by moderate Shiite realism.

Sullivan: "I Wish I Was As Good As Hitchens".

As Justin Raimondo points out, "Sadr is in Najaf, not Fallujah, which is Sunni, not Shi'ite. And somebody ought to tell those rebellious Fallujans they've been 'quelled,' because they don't seem to have realized it as yet." In the meantime, the media can't seem to see the massacre for the bodies . Must be something in the water.

A Rum Affair. posted by lenin

Tales From the Script

Something of an unwelcome fugitive from the grave, the 72 year old Donald Rumsfeld is increasingly inviting accusations of senility, if not downright idiocy. Reacting to reports from Al Jazeera that the US had massacred hundreds of innocent civilians in Fallujah by indiscriminate shooting, the US Secretary of Defense (sic) launched some pretty indiscriminate shooting off at the mouth. The reports were "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" , he said before adding, "It's just outrageous nonsense." Well, he is the expert.


Rumsfeld: "Outrageous Nonsense".

The facts, as ever, make him foolish. But let's stick with some lies for a moment. According to General John Abizaid, it was a "judicious use of force", while the head of the US marines suggested that "95% of those killed were legitimate targets". Pratfall. Here are the facts.

Among the 600 to 1000 murdered in Fallujah, 300 were women and children. I know, I know. They were probably terrorists in the making, or providing succour to terrorists, or breathing the same air as terrorists. But women and children do not fight either in the Mehdi Army or in the Mujahideen Brigades. So, it is illuminating to note that the US army now regards civilian non-fighters are "legitimate targets". Further, the way in which these attacks occurred throws light on the intent behind the attacks. Ronan Bennett reports :

"Let's look at just a handful of the 5% of civilian casualties the Americans concede they have inflicted.

These include the mother of six-year-old Haider Abdel-Wahab, shot and killed while hanging out laundry; his father, shot in the head; Haider himself, and his brothers, crushed but dug out alive after a US missile struck their house. They include children who died of head wounds. They include an old woman with a bullet wound - still clutching a white flag when aid workers found her. They include an elderly man lying face down at the gate to his house - while inside terrified girls screamed "Baba! Baba!" They include ambulance crews fired on by US troops - and four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil, wounded during an air strike. The New York Times reporter who found the infant in a Baghdad hospital described him lying in bed, "his eyes wide and fixed on a spot in the ceiling". His left leg had been crudely amputated. The same reporter found 10-year-old Waed Joda by the bedside of his gravely wounded father. "American snipers shot at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," said Waed."

What? You dare to doubt the man who has written such inspired movie scripts as Lucky Break? Well, then, case your eyes on that Guardian article reporting Rumsfeld's comments:

"In the intensive care unit at Medical City hospital in Baghdad Yusuf Fayar Ali said his son Mohammad, 12, was shot through the mouth when troops attacked gunmen in his village, al-Na'amiya just south of Falluja, last week. The boy, seriously ill, is on a ventilator.

"The fighting lasted for an hour and we tried to take our women and children away out of the house," he said.

"We were hiding in the trees by the Euphrates. My son was hiding in a small furrow between the trees. He lifted up his head and suddenly a bullet hit him through the cheek. I am sure it was an American bullet."

In the next bed a young girl called Iftihal has a bullet lodged inside her skull. She was injured in the same attack when US troops crossed the river to her village, Amariya.

"The Americans were just shooting, there was no specific target," her father Ismail Obaid, 51, said. "We were inside the house - the bullet came through the door and hit her in the head."

"The Americans came to our area and were shooting randomly and that is why a lot of civilians were injured," he said.

In the next ward Sa'adia Mohammad was with her niece Noor, 11, who was injured in Falluja two weeks ago as they were taking in the washing.

"There was a large explosion and I saw Noor lying on the ground. Her face was painted with blood."

Her shrapnel wound became badly infected."

The only reason civilian casualties died down was "because many families left the city when the ceasefire began."


How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Bombed.

Hysterically Terrible

There is a perfectly plausible excuse, of course, and the Prime Minister gives it:

"Fallujah is historically a terrible place that even Saddam Hussein could not control."
Not exactly Saddam loyalists, then. How "terrible" indeed!

And in even better news ,

"An Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

"The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

"After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture from his car, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.

"Qassem Hassan, the director of Kut general hospital, identified the man as Salem Hassan, a resident of a Kut suburb. He said the man had died of wounds sustained in the beating."

Tony Blair is, as he so loves to be, correct - but not in any sense which would make his golden gloriole radiate with greater magnificence. The terrorists are indeed in the ascendancy in Iraq. The trouble is, how can the Iraqis evict them? Well, there is one encouraging possibility:

"[T]he commander of British troops in southern Iraq, Brig Nick Carter, admitted that he would be powerless to prevent the overthrow of Coalition forces if the Shia majority in Basra rose up in rebellion. Brig Carter, of the 20 Armoured Brigade, who has been in Iraq for four months, said British forces would stay in Basra with the consent of local Shia leaders, or not at all."

Belatedly, they are asking permission! Hopefully, residents of Basra will undertake the Bush doctrine and grab an historic opportunity :

Q: (Egyptian President) Hosni Mubarak is saying the new U.S. policy on the West Bank could escalate violence. How do you respond to his concerns?

BUSH: Yes, I think this is a fantastic opportunity.

A perfect Freudian shit, no?

PS: much of the material for this post comes from Left I On the News a source of incalculable value for unpackaging and dissecting the day's news. I commend all to visit.

Career Opportunities. posted by lenin

The Absurder is ordinarily given to flattering its readers into thinking they are middle-class by including lots of rather banal commentary about lifestyle, celebrities, wine, food, famous cheeses, fashion and left-field film. Perhaps the bulk of them are middle-class, but I think it's more likely that their readers just like to be addressed as if they were. Today, however, they have a rather salacious job offer - a very high profile security job:

"Are you fit and adventurous? Want to earn $500 a day? Here's the ideal job," it enthuses, before entering the caveat, "There is only one drawback - it's in Iraq." No sale. Not for me, anyway. I never got into violence, despite the best efforts of my friends and relatives.

If, however, you consider yourself among what the Absurder describes as one of the "new Klondikers", then you might be interested to know that "'The recent instability is good for anybody who is actually here. It is reducing the competition, because people are taking the Wall Street walk.'" Further, "the money can be fantastic", and "life - on both sides - is cheap". Those of you who caught my post about Iraq's mercenaries will not be astonished, but it's nice to see the liberal papers finally catching up.

Still, it's equally important to remind ourselves why this bastion of Sunday liberalism deserves pity, derision and scorn. Last weeks's editorial, accompanying Blair's article, (mailed directly from the vital Carribean), included the usual liberal self-torturing. Amid the epithets and sobriquets dispensed therein (the Iraqi resistance are "bandits", just as Jomo Kenyatta's comrades were once "savages"), editor Roger Alton reached new depths of Absurdity with this thought on the violence in Iraq:

"Optimists will say that last week's violence was to be expected. Dealing with the insurgents and al-Sadr had to be done and was never going to be easy. Pessimists see Iraq as on the brink of general insurrection, with growing bonds between Sunni and Shia radicals threatening to make the country ungovernable within months. As ever, the truth lies somewhere in between."

Between fact and fiction? Dear Roger, if the "optimists" truly believe that last week's violence was "to be expected", then they deserve to have their heads on spikes for having supported such a venture. Be upstanding, sir.


Alton: Spiked.

Sweet Serenade. posted by lenin

Well, the "coalition" have finally located the solution to their ever- and omni-present bane (the Iraqi people). They're going to play heavy metal music for them. They've been playing Jimi Hendrix, the sound of babies crying, men screaming and cars crashing. They really are trying to recreate that Vietnam feeling...

Meanwhile, Bush let slip the biggest open secret of the entire campaign:

"You see, I believe (dramatic pause, hand on chest) that free countries are peaceful countries."

You heard it here first. Iraq is not a free country. (Actually, this is a long-running Bushism, like so many of the quack sound-bites that eventually reach our screens. A google search shows that he's been saying this shit for the last year and a half).

And finally, don't be fooled by all this negative media coverage of Iraq. Things are going well. The uprisings prove it. In fact, according to General Myers, if things weren't going so well, there wouldn't be any uprisings. You are, General, beating your gums together. As even the Thinker President admits, "people don't like being occupied" . Nor do they appreciate having their cities turned to rubble, hundreds of their citizens murdered, and then being told that only bad guys got killed. Still, as a Leninist, I'm vaguely inclined to go along with the General's unique logic. The worse it gets, the better it gets.

Capitalism Explained... posted by lenin

Click here to view the image, because I don't like it cluttering up my bloody blog.

Newswire... posted by lenin

While I'm wasting time, I'll just cut and paste a few interesting news links...

The US has decided that the man chiefly responsible for implemented outrageous terrorist atrocities in Nicaragua, John Negroponte, is to be the new US ambassador to Iraq . As US ambassador to Honduras, he directed a CIA operation to train, fund and arm violent extremists in the Honduran hinterland, whereupon they were sent into Nicaragua to raid local schools and medical centres, raping and torturing as they made their merry way to destiny.

Osama bin Laden has offered Europeans a "truce" if they cease attacking Muslim countries. My advice is, invite him round for talks. Seriously. Because you have to figure that wherever he is... Of course, the last thing bin Laden expects or desires is for Europe to actually say "great, we've been waiting for this chance to make ourselves look like pansies!" He expects a bellicose reaction. I have no hesitation in predicting he will get one.

Kosovo, that island of liberity, security and nascent democracy in the neoliberalised Balkans, is experiencing something of an iron fist clamp-down by the regime, while mobs affiliated to KLA tributaries are planning the final "cleansing" of Serb minority zones.

#Hail, Hail Freedonia...#

Love to Johann Hari... "Tough Love", Of Course. posted by lenin

It’s all over, bar the shooting. John Simpson, the BBC’s man in Baghdad, is rarely comfortable without a flak jacket around his estimable girth and the ringing of distant bullets in his ears. He evinces such intimidating worldliness that when he and his camera crew were fired on and seriously injured by US jets during the first phase of the war on Iraq, he was able to flash his glittering eyes at the camera and announce that it was no more than a scratch. Such is his comportment on the news of late. Laconically, he explains that the situation (in Iraq) is really quite calm. There is sporadic gunfire, but nothing like a few days ago. People may be intimidated by the recent spate of kidnappings, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. The ebullient Mr Simpson is inured to war and turmoil, and one imagines blasts of shrapnel that could down a rhinoceros bouncing off his leathery hide.


"It's all pretty quiet, really."

I recall similar optimism about a year ago when Simpson appeared on Ruby Wax’s morning BBC show (in an indecent moment, the Beeb decided that daytime television could also be entertaining). He described Afghanistan’s recovery following the American ouster of the crazy Caliphs of Kabul. Would the Taliban make a resurgence, Ruby wondered, eyes agleam with fear of the bhurka-botherers. No! John laughed, with demonic mirth. They’ve gone. Like post-war Germany, no one has ever been a Talib, no one knows one, and few would deign to say they’d met one on the flight to Kashmir. He then recounted a surreal, but traumatic encounter with make-up wearing Taliban fighters who clacked toward him on high heels, pointing Kalashnikov rifles. Women wore the burlap sacks while their theocrat masters wore the eyeliner and spike heels, brandishing weapons and mascara as certain San Francisco dwellers are known to do. And suddenly, with a magical poof, they had disappeared into a thousand tanning salons and manicurists.

The Taliban, of course, are not gone. Instead, they fight pitch battles for control of the country with the old warlords, the very same who made the Taliban seem like a good idea in the first place. The lesson was clear. Words like “stability” are always relative terms, especially when uttered by someone who drifts to sleep to the gentle lullaby of conflagration. I feared a similar Panglossian streak had befallen Johann Hari until his recent confessional for The Independent. As it transpires, Hari has been tortured by doubt and worry, like a lapsed Catholic - he is nothing if not reflective. Hari reports that his decision to support a US invasion was consolidated in Kerbala in 2002, where he witnessed some of the bizarre cruelty of Saddam’s power. (I recall him telling an ITV news magazine show that he had known Iraqis who were ready to commit suicide if the war didn't come soon. I hope he knew a few who now no longer have that choice.) Having formerly believed that Bush was on the imperial road to Damascus, paved with malign intent, he now believed that liberation worked in mysterious ways. Whatever the motives, war would bring peace, and occupation would bring emancipation. Come 2004, the citizens of Kerbala are hearkening to a new redemption song. Armed and blessed, the Shi’ites of Iraq are belatedly giving Bush his devoutly wished for uprisings. Hari is aghast. The exact same square in which he had been touched by epiphany is now the scene of riot. The level of security and welfare is just south of that in Beirut during the wild heyday of Israeli expansionism.


Johann Hari: Glum.

Hari confesses his doubts to some Iraqi friends, ex-pats working for the Iraqi Prospect Group . One of them, a “feisty” lass, admits to similar feelings but cheerfully dispenses a pat formula for Hari to put in his column. You see, supporting the invasion doesn’t necessitate support for every US concoction and confection in Iraq. It has been, says Hari’s friend, an ABC in how to breed terrorists. One may be angered, depressed, appalled by what the United States has done to Iraq since emancipation yet still support the invasive surgery that cut out the cancer. Since the Iraqi Prospect Organisation was, according to Hari, "set up to convince the world that the Iraqi people wanted and needed Saddam's regime to be overthrown, even if that meant an invasion" and to "persuade people that the anti-war movement did not speak for the Iraqis or Kurdish people" it is not difficult to sympathise with this ideological gesture.

Would that it was so simple. Unfortunately for the imperialist internationalists of the liberal press, the consequences of this invasion were predictable to all but the congenitally purblind. The uneasy separation of motive from outcome, which Hari blithely assumes in theory, is inoperable in practise. Hari is disgusted by the extremist neo-liberalism being imposed on Iraq – the same, he notes, which has decimated much of Latin America and Africa. But did not the aggressors announce this intention quite plainly (hidden in plain view, as it were)? Hari is depressed by tales of US brutality in Iraq – should he really be cheering this on? He would like to say he doesn’t have to, but I’m afraid it is a well-established hallmark of imperial occupiers that they exert brutal authority over conquered territory if the population is not sufficiently compliant. These lessons were available in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia – the crucial difference being that there hasn’t been much of a resistance of any kind to the occupiers in these countries. Hari’s favoured outcome of a peaceful, post-war Iraq depends on Iraqi servitude.


Stay In Line, Motherfuckers.

Hari then stuns us with some “facts” which he hopes will save him from absurdity. No chance. He cites a claim from the Human Rights Centre in Khadimiyah that Saddam Hussein would have killed 70,000 people in Iraq over the next year if he had remained in power. They’ve found documents, you see. And since the occupiers have not managed to kill a total of 70,000 people over the last year, lives have been saved. Apparently, Saddam sat in his palaces, surrounded by courtiers, and with evil cackling crossed out names from the census. Further, extensive records were kept on who was to be murdered this year. We're in doubting mode, and strange to relate, I doubt Hussein’s murderous state catalogued its own sins, much less recorded exact figures for intended killings over the next year. I further doubt that if this figure is a statistical projection it has anything beyond speculative validity. I'm not saying that 70,000 is above Saddam's touch. But it would seem to contradict a trend toward diminishing human rights violations noted by Human Rights Watch recently. And it would certainly be a conspicuous jump on the previous year. (I did e-mail Johann while composing this article and asked him if there was any way of reading a first-hand report, or even an explication of these figures in some depth. He repeated that the figures had been "calculated by going through the newly opened Ba'athist archives". I had similar trouble getting answers out of John Sweeney when he made outlandish claims about Iraq's dead babies - he invited me to visit Iraq, which I took to be somewhat in the spirit of the spider inviting the fly to supper.) Still, taking the statistics at face value offers no help at all. Even if it is true, and "lives have been saved" in that dilute sense, we have yet to see what awaits us. It took a day for the US forces to kill approximately 400 in Fallujah - and the scary thing is that records are made to be broken. The trouble with utilitarianism, especially in such a heavy-handed guise, is that we are never done with consequences. The reductio ad absurdum of such a stance is the vapid phrase-mongering of Chairman Mao's CCCP chum Chou En-Lai who, asked about the outcome of the French Revolution, said "It is too soon to tell" .

Hari’s extreme utilitarianism sets him up for yet another pratfall. He reminds us of opinion polls taken in Iraq in which a majority of Iraqis say that their lives have improved since the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He suggests that the polls cannot be blighted by public apprehension of the coalition, forcing them to attenuate their criticisms of the new imperial masters because, after all, they do say a lot of bad things about the coalition. It would be odd if conditions didn’t improve somewhat upon the release of strangling sanctions. And, it is true that colonial despotism is more liberal than Ba’athist tyranny - sometimes. These axiomatic truths, Hari says, ought to be confronted by the anti-war Left. Of the former one need only say that it is over a decade too late. Of the latter, one is inclined to wonder if Iraqis might not have been better placed to liberate themselves in more propitious circumstances had the US not blocked their insurgency in 1991, then subjected them to a genocidal sanctions regime (quite on purpose, as DIA documents reveal).


Liberation.

Hari says that only 15% of Iraqis support an immediate end to the occupation. Those who marched to End the Occupation Now, he says, are supported by only 15% of Iraqis. He got this little canard from Harry’s Place, where he occasionally romps. True, some Iraqis would prefer the troops to stay until June 30th, or until security is achieved. He does not mention that most Iraqis oppose the planned long-term military occupation, or that in their overwhelming numbers they say the best way to achieve security – the number one priority – is to hand over power to an elected, accountable Iraqi government. (Not the IGC which, an Iraqi tells me, is “rotten to the bore” with corrupt nonentities with less credibility than Saddam Hussein, as Hari’s polls also reveal). But Hari is mistaken about the objection to polling evidence. It isn’t that Iraqis are simply afraid the answer negatively. It is that the poll involves a conditional – namely, the successful invasion and occupation of Iraq. Retrospective opinion polls are not a particularly good way to judge the merits of a war. Hari’s devout fidelity to what he selects as genuine Iraqi opinion becomes quite comical as he ends his confessional-cum-triumphal.

Most Iraqis, he says, don’t want the occupation to end right away. They do want a democratic Iraqi government. They don’t want Muqtadr. But they’d sooner not see him killed either. So, Hari tailors his opinion to fit theirs – or rather, tailors theirs to fit his. He speaks for “most Iraqis”. “Most Iraqis” speak through him. The war has generated good consequences, which over-ride the bad (“accentuate the positive!”). Motives are irrelevant. The occupation should hang in there, ride out the (desert) storm, and hand over the government to a free Iraq. Unfortunately, to draw on a meteorological metaphor, the tornado engulfing Iraq is the result of two fronts colliding. One must vanquish the other. Remaining in Iraq (indefinitely, it now seems) is unlikely to mean anything other than the annihilation of US opponents with extreme force – a fact which court ideologists like Hari must perforce avoid acknowledging. If only I had “doubts” as vanquishable as Hari’s! Like the bewitched Hansel, he takes many wonderful and frightening paths through the woods only to arrive back at the same damn gingerbread house.

Triumph of the Will: Corporate Religion in the City. posted by lenin

Warning: This tale was supplied by a number of former employees of Welbeck Consulting, over a series of drinks in Surrey. I was so intrigued that I took notes, went back, and asked more questions. Could be a load of shit, but it sounds accurate enough to me. Proceed...

The “mean square mile” is as secular and de-spiritualised a zone as one can imagine, a concrete conurbation of finance and corruption. It radiates hard-headed realism, icy egoism and unsentimental calculation. Why should it be, therefore, that in one of its most esteemed corporations there exists a tyranny of religious fanaticism every bit as doctrinal, rigid and ethereal as Orthodox Christianity, say, or Scientology. Welbeck Consulting, a franchise of the infamous Zurich, is for all intents and purposes a telesales company seeking to flog tax advice, life assurance, unit trusts and pensions to rich people – the generally accepted threshold being an annual salary of £100,000+. Self Invested Personal Plans (SIPPs) also rake in substantial sums, as they help the client avoid inheritance tax because money invested in SIPPs is not considered part of the client’s estate when he or she dies. In fact, a great deal of their work is tax relief for the wealthy, using perfectly legal loopholes. Higher Rate Tax relief gives the client back £22 for every £100 paid in tax. If the client is aged thirty-five, married with two children and a working wife on a similar income, Welbeck will have struck gold. Stakeholder pensions can be allocated to the kids, the wife can partake of joint life assurance, and tax avoidance can go double trouble.

Appointments are made by staff who are employed on a commission basis. They search for the names and numbers of CEOs, CFOs, investment bankers, fund managers, managing directors and others likely to be in the upper income bracket. The only wealthy clients they don’t want, generally speaking, are lawyers. Staff are obliged to seek these details themselves, because Welbeck don’t purchase databases. They are given a script which they learn, then cold-call prospective clients whom they invite to a 45 minute presentation at the office. The expectation is that a good caller will yield at least six appointments per day out of fifty cold-calls – but this is not a reliable guide to actual achievement. Naturally enough, approximately half of those who even agree to an appointment fail to attend. Only one out of three clients are likely to be “closed”. Staff begin work at 8.30am and may be compelled to stay until 9pm – depending on how soon they reach their target of six appointments.

I don’t outline these working arrangements to cast any particular pall on Welbeck. Employment in the City typically does involve long hours, and the expectation of employees is that they may make a lot of money with sufficient dedication. I am merely spelling out what ought to be obvious constraints on their capacities. Reality dictates that even the most skilled salespeople have their limits. Yet, this is a disavowed reality in Welbeck. Such thoughts are “negs”. If staff members suggest, for example, the telesales script is unworkable in practise, they are being “neg”. If they challenge apparently ridiculous working practises, they are being “neg”. If they do not have Olympian illusions in their own unlimited ability, they are being “neg”. If they mention that their clients happen to be on voice-mail over a holiday period, they are told not to discuss it. It is “neg”, and only successes are to be discussed. You didn’t fail to get through; you made arrangements to call back. You weren’t told to fuck off; you caught a prospective client on the back-foot. Your wife didn’t die; you just dramatically cut your heating costs.

Staff are encouraged to draw up a “wheel of life” in which each area of their lives are examined, and to which they attach specific long- and short-range goals, which are numbered in order of priority. They may then be asked at a later time which of those goals they have achieved. They are probed for personal details, as these are taken to be the key to motivated salesmanship. They are encouraged to have material goals which require substantial assets – again, so that they will be motivated sellers. Motivational meetings assure staff of the ease of the job. “It’s a piece of piss”, they are told. “Pigs do fly here”, it is said. If they fail to achieve it will be because they do not want it enough, they have too many inner conflicts, they are “neg”. Use of the words “don’t” and “won’t” is also “neg”. In fact, any attitude that is not rangy and cocky and game is considered “neg”. What the hell is going on?

The straightforward answer is “indoctrination”. The company presumably would not see it that way, but I’ll just venture a suggestion that if you create a corporate climate in which staff are heavily pressured to internalise values specific to that company and its leadership, and a Nietzchean doctrine of super-human will triumphing over material reality, this might be some kind of ideological control. Failure is never a matter of material fact in this world – it is a matter of the wrong attitude, insufficient adherence to the shared values of the company, personal inadequacy. In fact, there is a strange emphasis on individualism, yet the overwhelming dynamic is conformity – reinforced by the ubiquitous “neg”. It may seem perfectly natural in some senses that a capitalist enterprise which depends on the efforts and achievements of staff on commission would generate such an ideology. But it does, in fact, have a source.

Anthony Robbins , the quack guru of global repute, is the idol of staff and executives alike. Robbins runs costly motivational seminars for company executives and ambitious employees in which they are apprised of the “power of the human brain”. The mind, it seems, is an infinite source of a power which defeats reality, hands down. Problems don’t really exist, as such – it is how one views a situation that makes it a problem. In fact, Robbins promises to help you annihilate limiting beliefs and ideas. He promises to show you how to turn your company around, how to bust through mental barriers and reach peak performance. An accomplished capitalist himself, Robbins also makes much out of his many charitable and “humanitarian” works. His website enumerates the many obscure awards he has won for being nice to inner city kids and feeding an alleged 1 million people around the world. His books, about as thick and heavy as your average pile of horse apples, explain through various parables, fables, mangled quotations and homilies the infinite power of the human brain. It seems that people who want to achieve should believe in destiny, rather than chance. They should have life goals and design life strategies. They should ask positive questions rather than negative ones. He offers this advice to fatties on his website:

"If you have repeatedly tried and failed to lose weight, could it be that you were asking yourself the wrong questions? Questions like "What will fill me up?" or "What's the sweetest, richest food I can get away with?"

What if you were to ask instead, "What would really nourish me?" "What light, delicious dish can I eat that would give me energy?" "Will this cleanse me or clog me?" And, if you're tempted to binge: "If I eat this, what will I have to give up in order to still achieve my goals? What's the ultimate price I'll pay if I indulge now?"

A single change in the habitual questions you ask yourself can and will profoundly change the quality of your life."

Staff at Welbeck who have attended his seminars all attest to his power to “make you believe you can do anything”. His ideas are considered tried and proven. The reverence they nurture for Robbins defeats all objections to his prattling dogma. Staff read his books, follow his methods, even adhere to a diet they attribute to him. They each carry a “book of goals” in which goals are recorded for a 48 hour period. The “wheel of life”, too, is a prescription of Robbins. His method and madness is replicated with astonishing fidelity in the company. He is a Corporate Christ. One of the stories retailed is of how enthusiastic members of Robbins’ paying audience queue up to walk over hot coals – not because they have to, but because they want to. Quite literally, armies of poorly suited, sweaty, unkempt, red-faced execs of both genders swarm around a track of red hot embers and cheer as gormless wonders swan across on bare feet pretending not to be affected. The power of belief, you see. I believe! I believe! The truth is that many end up with aching feet for weeks. In fact, I venture to suggest that those who deny any experience of pain following this astoundingly stupid feat are simply avoiding “negs”. One just doesn’t discuss these things – and if they aren’t discussed, they don’t exist.

I suppose it is too utterly easy to patronise the Walking Brain-dead who take Robbins and his proto-Nietzchean bullshit seriously. That a market exists for such vapid wank is not a spectacular surprise. The world of selling is a particular haven of deception, and self-deception is the most priceless asset of all. What is astonishing is that such conceits become the unwritten norms and forms of acceptability and employability in a respected company. Their implementation is approximately the most absurd form of totalitarianism I have ever heard of, which would be sinister if it wasn’t so comical. I had always thought that the kind of person who would excel in the sales world is likely to be unpleasantly arrogant, self-absorbed and sleazy. It now seems that they can also be demented fanatics who are obliged to change their relationship to ordinary facts in order to sustain their success-driven outlook. Would that I could meet these people and irradiate their filthy, soiled world-view with some perfectly vile explosions of “neg”. I’d like to detonate “don’ts” “won’ts” and “can’ts” under their up-turned noses. I’d like to bring their coarse, vulgar, pea-brained skulls to the earth with a shattering thud. Fight Club was too moderate.

We Interrupt This Blog to Bring You... posted by lenin

I know I've been rather lazy the last week or so. Someone should take away my "cut n paste" privileges. Nevertheless, in view of the fact that my girlfriend is sick and expects me home in half an hour, I'm going to do it again. Some lovely quotes on advertising for you from the MediaLens message board :

“My name is Octave… I’m an advertising executive… I pollute the universe. I’m the guy who sells you shit. Who makes you dream of things you’ll never have… when, after painstakingly saving, you manage to buy the car of your dreams… I will already have made it look out of date. I’m three trends ahead, and I make sure you’re always frustrated… No one in my profession actually wants you to be happy, because happy people don’t spend.” (Frederic Beigbeder, £6.99, 2002, Picador, London, p. 5)

“These individuals have nothing but contempt for the general public. They want to keep them in a permanent, conditioned state: buying.” (Frederic Beigbeder, £6.99, 2002, Picador, London, p. 25)

“It finances the television, dictates what’s printed in the papers, governs sport, shapes society, influences sexuality and encourages inflation.” (Frederic Beigbeder, £6.99, 2002, Picador, London, p. 35)

“Advertising is essential to our economic system, because it disguises the truth and encourages forms of behaviour that maintain the system and make it seem tolerable.” – Denys Thompson (Quoted, Fred Inglis, The Imagery of Power. A Critique of Advertising, 1972, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, London, forward)

“The alienation and isolation of individuals in mass society, cut off from old loyalties and former group ties, spawns a need for new guides to behaviour and new clues to identity. Advertising must therefore sell, not only goods and services, but also definitions of life and of status, images, hopes and feelings.” (Terence. H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age, 1991, Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, Basingstoke, p.viii) – Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada


The Republic of Cancer Needs You.

“Advertisers, the missionaries of the consumer society, envisage a world in which well-being is equated with the accumulation of things.” (Terence. H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age, 1991, Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, Basingstoke, p.viii) – Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada

“It does this first by restating essential dilemmas of the human condition and second, by offering a solution to them… The general argument runs something like this: If the advertisers product is purchased, one will belong rather than be excluded, one will have happiness rather than misery, good rather than evil, life rather than death. Advertising simultaneously provokes anxiety and resolves it.” – V. L. Leymore, Hidden Myth, 1975 (Quoted, Terence. H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age, 1991, Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, Basingstoke, p.viii) – Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada


You're Still Driving This Piece of Shit?

“Advertising is, overall, a reluctant and largely ineffective initiator of social change beyond the trivia of fashion. Even as it introduces an endless array of new products, and new models of the old, it is an overwhelming conservative social force, powerful in defining and preserving the status quo… They do not encourage reflection on the underlying character or motivation of a consumer society, or of the social attitudes that sustain it. On the contrary, almost all the images in advertising contribute to the preservation of the existing order. Advertisers prosper through the perpetuation of traditional stereotypes of class, race and sex.” (Terence. H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age, 1991, Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, Basingstoke, p.69) – Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada

“Advertisers thus present two conflicting and irreconcilable claims about themselves. The first assertion, intrinsic to a liberal ideology, is that advertising does no more than provide necessary information for autonomous, rational individuals. Its persuasive powers are limited to encouraging buyers to test new products. The second argument, that advertising stimulates demand and generates new desires, seriously undermines the notion of autonomous self-determining human desires… They like to boast of their contribution to an expanding economy, and their special talents in securing a greater share of the market for their clients. At the same time they are anxious to avoid any charge of sinister manipulative power, so that when addressing the general public they tend to deny they have either the psychological insights or the technical instruments necessary to dominate thought. Advertisers want to appear enormously skilled and influential, and at the same time not particularly powerful providers of neutral information.” (Terence. H. Qualter, Advertising and Democracy in the Mass Age, 1991, Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd, Basingstoke, p.103) – Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada

If all that is far too creepy for you, let Bill Hicks settle the score:

"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags!


"Kill Yourselves."

Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"

The Revolutionary Pacifism of Will Self posted by lenin

I never thought I'd encounter anything like this in Will Self, but it strikes me as an excellent argument as far as it goes. Chris Hall, interviewing Self about his book "Feeding Frenzy", gets this response on pacifism and war:

"CH: Someone was interested in a recent Today essay that defined the boundaries of your pacifism. They wanted to know why this position is marginalised by the media?

WS: Well, I think States depend upon a component of armed force - they depend upon the notion of coercion at some level and it's very hard to find a state that hasn't had a standing army or militia of some kind. So I think the notion of armed force and violence is integral to the kind of command-based hierarchies that states have. To paraphrase Dubya, "anyone who isn't with us is against us", so if you're against all armed force you're going to be necessarily squeezed out of the discourse. It won't even be conscious, there will be people who simply cannot hear what you're saying because it's so inimical to their idea of state authority.

I think this war has rather crystallised my pacifism. I think in the past I was like a lot of people who said I've got pacifistic inclination but I'm not a pacifist because what I couldn't find in my own mind was the answer to that perennial question: 'Ah, yes, but what would you have done when the Nazis were coming?' And as someone with Jewish blood I've always found that difficult to answer, but the thing with this war which makes it so wrong in so many different ways is.that it exposes that argument about the Nazis as a specious argument, in that it assumes a conditional assumption i.e. that you are in 1939, because it can be answered with a similar kind of conditional question: 'But hang on a minute, if everyone had been a pacifist in 1914 then the Nazis would never have come to power.'

So that to me pushes up the argument to let's just be pacifists now. Maybe that's the adequate moral response to the phenomenon of violence in all the forms - I get really angry in the street like we all do. I've now taken to bicycling, so I get cut up on my bicycle and I get absolutely furious because it's so dangerous. I'm a big guy and I'm a very aggressive guy and I feel tempted to rip open cars doors and pull people out and beat them to a bloody pulp but, hey, I don't do it. It seems to me that there comes a point in your life as a moral being in society where you decide that violence is not the solution to car incidents so there can be the same kind of decision at a macro level."


"Do You Want Some?" Will Self.

Like I say, as far as it goes it is a fine argument. But supposing we accept a different conditional. I am a pacifist and you aren't. Presumably, if you begin to bash my skull in, I wouldn't be out of my moral depth to send a shattering kick to your shins and, say, ruffle your hair up a bit. Hitler, who had few impressions of political and moral realities that were not offensive or merely banal, did understand the reality of political power:

"Only one thing would have stopped our movement--if our adversaries had understood its principle and, from the first day, had smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement."

Where did I put my Kalashnikov...?

Blair's Easter Message to the Oppressed: "It's All Your Fault". posted by lenin

Tony Blair has employed former porn-writer Alistair Campbell to knock together another shoddy article for him, which The Absurder has seen fit to publish . One could easily waste hours tearing his feeble adumbrations to shreds, but I'll just pick the most revelatory and sententious nugget of bullshit from the miasma:

"The terrorists prey on ethnic or religious discord. From Kashmir to Chechnya, to Palestine and Israel, they foment hatred, they deter reconciliation..."

Anyone wonder how the coalition fucked up so badly with such an unimpeachable intellect at work? It wouldn't occur to our Prime Minister that the reason there is hatred in Palestine and Chechnya is because the aggressors have shown absolutely no interest in abating their terror. They have made "reconciliation" impossible. But then, the PM has never been known for his discrimination in handling blood-thirsty aggressors...


The Morning After.


"Tony, Are You Putting On Weight?"

Anyone seeking a more level-headed analysis of the situation in Iraq could do worse than check out Ken McLeod's assessment of what he felicitously calls the "Easter Rising":

"The uprising could fizzle. Already, however, it has revealed that the US-led occupation of Iraq is built on sand. The Fallujah insurgents and the Army of the Mahdi, few in themselves, have drawn mass - not necessarily majority - support. What must be far more worrying for the US is what props to its rule the insurgents have kicked away. The IGC puppet government, to which a very nominal 'sovereignty' is supposed to be handed at the end of June, is scurrying to dissociate itself from the US military's handling of the situation; hence the IGC negotiations with the insurgents. Given how unwelcome to the US military these negotiations must be, one can imagine what pressures the IGC must have brought to bear. Perhaps the whole arrangement might have been on the point of collapse. The IP, ICDC, and even the Iraq Armed Forces, built up over the past year, are not just unreliable but in many cases actively hostile..."

St. Barham Salih posted by lenin

The pro-war Left's favourite apostle of intervention in Iraq is Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Sulaymaniyah. Nick Cohen never fails to cite him as the exemplar of international socialism and solidarity, and uses his rhetoric to condemn voices on the Left who object to the occupation of Iraq. Even the Late Christopher Hitchens exudes enthusiasm for this apparently authentic voice of resistance. I have never had much tolerance for such pretenses. The PUK, of which Barham Salih is one of the more senior spokespeople, has sold out its Kurdish comrades time and again through its filthy civil war with the KDP. Jalal Talabani, its leader, has kissed the cheek of Saddam here only to invite the Iranians in to kill his opponents there. In the mid-1990s, in fact, the Iranians were allowed to kill hundreds of their own dissident Kurds seeking refuge in northern Iraq, in return for their support in fighting the KDP.


St Barham of Sulaymaniyah: Apostle of War.

Inconvenient facts aside, however, Salih has written an article for the Washington Post, and Harry's Place are over the moon about it.

I'll give you a flavour of some of the outlandish claims he makes (this published just yesterday, mind):

"While there is a grave and continuing terrorist threat, Iraq is not the violent disaster that naysayers depict..."

I'll let that one speak for itself.

The interim constitution "is the most liberal in the Islamic Middle East and is an achievement we can all take pride in."

Oddly enough, precisely this interim constitution has been derided as bullshit up one side and down the other by most Iraqis. It has the support of noone and the IGC will fall with its "Law of Administration" into the gutter the second US troops leave.

"More than a million Iraqi refugees have come back to their homeland, despite being told by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that it was unsafe to do so.

The refugees have returned to a thriving economy characterized by improving services. A year into the new Iraq public health care funding is more than 25 times as much than under Hussein, and child immunization rates have risen 25 percent. The supply of drinking water has doubled..."

The figure for refugees returning to Iraq since the end of the war given by the UNHCR is 10,000 . A million is considerably above that estimate, so I'd be interested to know Salih's sources, or if he's just, well, lying his ass off in the service of the occupation with which he is colluding. The stuff about the thriving economy and health-care funding, even accounting for obvious exaggeration, would be more impressive if it weren't for the fact that sanctions have now been lifted - over a decade too late.

I won't waste your time with any more of Salih's propaganda efforts, except to quote this , also noted in Harry's Place:

"I believe that most Iraqis want the Coalition to stay. This is based on many independent polls. Regrettably, a vocal minority is able to dominate the airwaves-- it seems true that bad news sell better!"

Do you know, I was sure that the last opinion poll showed that 50.9% of Iraqis said they were opposed to the occupation of Iraq, while only 39% suported it .

So there you have it. Salih, an opportunist, a collaborator with an Iranian occupation and now a US occupation, and a propagandist of the most careless order. Right up the warniks' street, then.

Iraq: It's All Under Control. posted by lenin

Or so the "coalition" have informed us. They've re-taken Kut, or so they say, and are taking the fight to "militants" elsewhere. On the other hand, having bombed the hell out of Fallujah for a week and killed approximately 450 people, they still can't maintain any peace . The fighting rages on Still, it is encouraging to note that Jack Straw is worried enough to appropriate the bullshit and sophistry of the Late Christopher Hitchens:

"Some of the tensions and pressures which were there, and would have come out in any event, have to a degree been directed towards the coalition."

All Saddam's fault then. Nothing to do with the occupation. Oh no.


Grateful Iraqi Receives Helpful Shove from Liberator.

Iraqis United At Last. posted by lenin

"Thousands of Sunni and Shiite Muslims backed by cars full of food and medical supplies headed on foot Thursday toward the town of Fallujah which has been besieged by US forces.

"The protesters answered a call by Muslim groups for a peaceful march to carry supplies to residents of the Sunni town where dozens of Iraqis have been killed since US marines launched an offensive Sunday to wipe out insurgents ...

""No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for Islamic unity. We are Sunni and Shiite brothers and will never sell our country," they chanted."



Hat tip to Ken McLeod .

On a side-note, Norman Geras complains that Seumus Milne has neglected to mention the humanitarian dimension of the war on Iraq in his critique of it. He suggests we read an article in which the case is made for privileging human rights over sovereignty. But perhaps it is Geras who is missing something - namely that Milne, whatever disagreements I have with him, is not a political fantasist. The reason he doesn't discuss this "absent dimension" is because it was absent in Washington's calculations. Washington had systematically and intentionally subjected Iraqis to a murderous sanctions regime for a decade. One would think the current situation in Iraq would give the humanitarian warriors some humility, and pause for thought. Perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps with cities falling now as fast as they fell last April, there ought to be a touch of caution about insisting on the humanitarian imperative of military invasion. Perhaps imperialism really is what it has always been. Perhaps before they inveigh on our rulers on behalf of the oppressed Iraqis, they might take the time and trouble to make a serious evaluation of the agency they are appealing to.

Massacres and Extremists in Iraq. posted by lenin

Just over a year ago, Bush and Blair were calling for Shi'a uprisings. Well, now they have their answer. Today alone, the news is reporting 300 dead in Fallujah, (and I write this at lunch time). Baghdad Burning is not surprised so much as shit-scared:

"We haven't sent the kids to school for 3 days ... The area of A'adhamiya in Baghdad is seeing street fighting: the resistance and Americans are fighting out in the streets and Al-Sadr city was bombed by the troops. They say that dozens were killed and others wounded...

"Falloojeh has been cut off from the rest of Iraq for the last three days. It's terrible. They've been bombing it constantly and there are dozens dead. Yesterday they said that the only functioning hospital in the city was hit by the Americans and there's no where to take the wounded except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time...

"Was I surprised? Hardly. This is an occupation and for those of you naïve enough to actually believe Chalabi and the Bush administration when they said the troops were going to be 'greeted with flowers and candy' then I can only wish that God will, in the future, grant you wisdom...

"And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad..."

The Palestinians fully understand the plight of the Iraqis, and say so :

""From Palestine to Iraq: one people, one blood, one enemy!" the crowd chanted, while setting alight pictures of US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon."


Puppetry Of The Penis.

According to Salam Pax, Sadr's fighters are "thugs, thugs, thugs" whose shit list all Iraqis would do well to avoid. The US, he says, are not doing themselves any favours by provoking a war with these people. On that note, Baghdad Burning adds:

"If the situation weren't so frightening, it would almost be amusing to see Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom describe Al-Sadr as an 'extremist' and a 'threat'. Muqtada Al-Sadr is no better and no worse than several extremists we have sitting on the Governing Council. He's just as willing to ingratiate himself to Bremer as Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom. The only difference is that he wasn't given the opportunity, so now he's a revolutionary..."


"All I Am Saying Is Give Jihad a Chance."

Extremism and opportunism do sit well together in Iraq, if the IGC is anything to go by. Rahul Mahajan notes that:

"[T]he Sadrists are certainly extremists. They believe in Khomeini's Vilayet al-Faqih -- Islamic theocracy. They shout "Death to America" and "Death to the Jews." Still, despite extreme provocation, they all say that they have orders not to fight back, even as the U.S. forces attack peaceful demonstrations and wreak havoc in firefights across half of Iraq. They maintain, in fact, that those who shoot back at the occupying forcess are not from their Mehdi Army but simply people from the areas -- certainly a plausible claim, although impossible to verify."

Possibly, they were awaiting some overture from the "coalition" before launching attacks. They have instead been met with bullets firing on peaceful demonstrations. Indeed, the "coalition" seems to be conducting itself with all the aplomb of traditional imperialist conquerors. All the bullshit about "liberation" and "democracy" for the Iraqis has been slowly hollowed out. The Iraqis are to have no say over their economy or their security - the two most obvious pressing issues in Iraq at the moment. They may not reverse decisions taken by Bremer. They will have to accomodate a secret police set up by the CIA, apparently as a means of ensuring long-term control in Iraq:

""The presence of a powerful secret police ... will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set," said John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at the Global Security organisation. "To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule.""

Regarding the destruction of a mosque in Baghdad , Juan Cole wryly remarks:

"It seems a little unlikely to me that Muslims around the world are going to say, "Oh, well, they only knocked some holes in the mosque wall. This isn't really so bad. And, they had every right to do it in international law.""

Quite. They seem to be deliberately opening the gates of hell, just to piss in the flames. And, what is more, this current of suppression is apparently not as reactive as it may appear. According to Iraqi Democrats Against the Occupation , this bears all the hallmarks of having been planned weeks in advance:

"There are many indications that these latest confrontations were planned well ahead by US authorities in an attempt to suppress any opposition to its plans to have a phoney government in Baghdad after June that guarantees a long term US occupation of Iraq and control of its oil. Indeed, in a confidential memo circulated to foreign companies operating in Iraq more than 6 weeks ago, the CPA has warned these companies of possible deterioration in the security situation and assured them of a place within the well-protected 'Green zone' in the event of disturbances. The targets of U.S. suppression will not only be the people of Falluja or followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, but they will also include all democratic forces who dare question the illegal U.S. presence in Iraq. These tactics seem to be a direct copy of those employed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, but the CPA, through its unsurpassed incompetence and arrogance, has miscalculated the strength of opposition to its plans and the unity of the Iraqi people."

It is certainly a credible thesis, even if the evidence they adduce is somewhat meagre at the moment. One can well imagine the vulcans roaming around the palace inhabited by Bremer, deciding that now was the time to take a tough line, take these guys out, assert our authority. Someone, nevertheless, will have to take the fall for this outrageous implosion into bloodshed prompted by the coalition. And who might that be? The almighty interior minister! The heavens themselves are splitting apart!

Israel and Iraq. posted by lenin

Benny Morris, the formerly left-wing revisionist Israeli historian, has sent a few jaws thudding against the floor with his recent revelatory comments on Israel's origins and his attitude to them. I'll let Socialist Worker explain:

IN 1987 an Israeli historian called Benny Morris published a book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. It caused a sensation at the time. Using official Israeli military archives, it confirmed the Palestinian case that the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948 had depended upon armed terror-resulting in the forcible "transfer", or expulsion, of three quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs. This was something that the Zionists-the ideologues who advocate an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine-had always denied.

They did so not least because it robbed the Israeli state of much of the moral credibility it had derived in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust. Morris's research enhanced the political and moral claims of the Palestinians, that 1948 had indeed been a "Nakba"-a "Catastrophe". Former colleagues taunted Benny Morris with the label "Israel hater". The Israeli academic establishment boycotted him.

The left embraced him. Morris was also a refusenik-he had refused military service in the West Bank and Gaza. And yet Morris himself had doubts about the left. He couldn't deny that he had strengthened the left wing case against Zionism. But he was a Zionist himself. How could he resolve this contradiction? Well, he has spent the last 17 years trying to work it out, and the results are truly shocking.


Benny Morris: Fathead.

Even Ha'aretz, Israel's main liberal newspaper, called them "chilling" after an extraordinary interview with Morris on 9 January earlier this year. Two of his former colleagues on the Israeli left, professors Avi Shlaim and Baruch Kimmerling, have attacked what can only be described as Morris's fascist conclusions.

Morris has deepened his research, in a new book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge University Press), and uncovered what he describes in the Ha'aretz interview as "far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape." He confirms the best known case of Deir Yassin, where Zionist forces massacred Palestinian villagers in 1948, and many others. He has no hesitation in describing them as "war crimes".

He reports on one operation which had "an unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion". Nor were these excesses or the chance acts of soldiers out of control. Morris insists, "Here is a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. "No one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben Gurion [Israel's first prime minister] silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.

"Ben Gurion was projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order, but the idea of transfer is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. Ben Gurion was a transferist."

At this point in the interview, the Ha'aretz reporter pauses. "I don't hear you condemning Ben Gurion," he tells Morris. Morris's reply comes as a bombshell. "Ben Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Later Morris adds, "If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you."

Morris readily uses the term ethnic cleansing and justifies it: "It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. "It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on." Actually, Morris does begin to criticise Ben Gurion. But not in the way the Ha'aretz reporter expected. The reporter is so astonished that he has to ask Morris to repeat what he has just heard.

Morris: "I do not identify with Ben Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue, he got cold feet." Reporter: "I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?"

Morris: "If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals, and the politically correct types. "But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country-the whole land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake."

Reporter: "I find it hard to believe what I'm hearing." Morris: "If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself." There was worse to come. Morris continues the interview with predictions that "total transfer" may be necessary in the future. His contempt and racist hatred for the Arab world and the Islamic religion is unrestrained:

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. Human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West. They are barbarians." If there cannot be transfer tomorrow, then "something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up." Perhaps we should thank Benny Morris for revealing to us the true character of Zionism, its fanaticism and its unreason, and for his warnings about the future. Morris: "The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948, and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. "Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live with the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."

Reporter: "If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake? Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism or the forgoing of Zionism." Morris: "Yes, that's so. You have pared it down, but that's correct."


And, in other reading, you may find this from Crooked Timber an interesting take on pro-war responses to the Iraq catastrophe.

Web Kamm. posted by lenin

I'm sure this is a waste of time. In fact, I know it is, because I've encountered the subject of this post before. Anyway...

Oliver Kamm has laid into Chomsky's blog with a few inept insults and one substantial argument. I'll bring to your attention this one insult:

"I am constantly surprised that an MIT Professor of Linguistics should produce such consistently execrable English prose."

Do I need to point out how stupid this is? Is there any connection between one's theoretical insight into linguistics and one's capacity with the English language? Does it need underlining any further?

But leaving that aside, the core of Kamm's argument - his only argument in fact - boils down to this:

"Look at that enervating prose of Chomsky’s again, and see if you can make sense of the assertion that Iraq’s population should have been ‘given the opportunity to overthrow a murderous tyrant’. It makes you wonder if they ever receive modern communications media in Massachusetts. What does Chomsky suppose the Iraqi Kurds and Shi’ah Muslims were given the opportunity and encouragement to do after the supposed cease-fire agreement that concluded the first Gulf War? Saddam thoroughly bamboozled Coalition forces and the Bush administration, which was far too solicitous of the letter of UN Security Council Resolutions that authorised only the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, and put down rebellions both north and south with a brutality that defies the imagination. In a single month (March 1991) he killed an estimated 20,000 Kurds and 30-60,000 Shi’ah. Without the courage and skill of British and American pilots patrolling the no-fly zones for a dozen years he would have slaughtered far more."

This embodies four claims which I will deal with respectively. Not, I hasten to add, with any expectation of an honest reply. Previous dealings with Kamm have revealed him to be highly adept at slander and diversionary tactics. (I discovered, for instance, that I was a plagiarist, a member of an anti-Semitic and totalitarian organisation, and much more besides). Instead, I offer this as an example either of the wilful ignorance of the pro-war lobby, or of their deliberate mendacity.

1 Iraqis were "given the opportunity and encouragement" to overthrow Saddam.

It is true that on February 15, 1991 George Bush Snr. called for Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. However, it seems from subsequent events that these worse were intended for the military. It was feared that if the Shi'ites took power, there would be a pro-Iranian government, and a Kurdish province hostile to Turkey. As one National Security Adviser put it:
"Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime." .
The United States allowed Iraq to send Republican Guard units into southern cities and to fly helicopter gunships, into the "no-fly zones" which, according to the interpretation of the Allied leaders, was an violation of UN resolutions. U.S. military officials refused to meet with emissaries of the rebels, and when Saddam’s forces dropped firebombs on fleeing rebels near the southern Iraqi city of Kerbala, American planes patrolled high above, surveilling the attack. When the insurgents sought weaponry and equipment in the care of the US, they were denied it, blocked by US troops. (Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, New York: Harper Collins, 2002, pp. 20-30.)

General Schwartzkopf, leading the coalition delegation [which met Iraqi commanders on 3 March], appeared to have little interest in the civil unrest engulfing southern Iraq. In fact he explicitly agreed, to the surprise of the Iraqi commanders, that Iraq could fly military helicopters - but not fighters or bombers - in areas where there were no coalition forces. This effectively allowed Iraq to use helicopter gunships, along with artillery and groundforces, to crush the rebellions (Graham-Brown, op cit).

The Iraqis were encouraged to revolt, but obstructed by the connivance of the United States with Saddam Hussein.


2 Saddam "thoroughly bamboozled" the Allies.

The Allies knew perfectly well what was happening, and colluded in it. The reason for this has been amply outlined by respectable sources.

Brent Scowcroft admitted at the time of the first Iraq war that when George Bush called for 'the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people' to rise against Saddam, the US actually meant a coup, because it was presumed that a popular uprising
would end with a pro-Iranian government: "We clearly would have preferred a coup. There's no question about that." (Interview on ABC news 26 June 1997 quoted in Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam. The Politics of Intervention in Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris,1999), p. 19.) This would explain why General Schwarzkopf allowed Iraq to fly helicopter gunships in areas with no coalition forces, effectively freeing them up to crush the uprising. And General Sir Peter de la Billiere obviously understood this when he said: "The Iraqis were responsible for establishing law and order. You could not administer the country without using the helicopters." (Ibid.) John Major put the matter even more succinctly: "I don’t recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection ….We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein." (John Major on ITN, 4 April 1991)
Another concern voiced by both Scowcroft and Bush Snr. was the possible fragmentation of the Iraqi state: "[N]either the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf." ("Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush [Sr.] and Brent Scowcroft, Time, 2 March 1998).
They were not, then, befuddled or out-played but acting specifically to ensure the failure of the uprisings.


3 The Allies were "far too solicitious with the letter of UN Security Council Resolutions".

The Allies were not particularly scrupulous about the UN Security Council Resolutions which, as I've noted, included the "no-fly zones" as an inevitable legal corrollary according to the US and British governments. The reasoning given leaders of the Allied attack for blocking the uprising may have included some adherence to UN Security Council Resolutions, but this is simply not credible.

4 The "courage and skill" of pilots overseeing the "no-fly zones" prevented other attacks from Saddam Hussein, who "would have slaughtered far more" if not so impeded.

This claim implies, if it does not say outright, that the reason for the "no-fly zones" was to provide safety for Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north. It is not so.

"The logic of the longer-term response to the refugee crisis was largely dictated by Turkey. It wanted the Kurds off Turkish soil as soon as possible – but not into a separate Kurdish state. The only alternative was some guarantee of safety for the Kurds within Iraqi borders, as [Turkish] President [Turgut] Ozal pointed out: “We have to get [the Kurds] better land under UN control … and to put those people in the Iraqi territory and take care of them.”" (Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991.)

US Assistant Secretary of State Robert H. Pelletreau under Clinton, in response to the question ‘Has our policy ever said that we would create a safe haven in the north?’, was blunt:

"That has not been the policy of this administration. There may have been some statements in the previous one." (Quoted in Graham-Brown, op cit).

One Pentagon spokesman insisted "The purpose of establishing a no-fly zone - and I would emphasise it's a no-fly zone, not a security zone - is to ensure the safety of coalition aircraft monitoring compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 688." (Ibid.) And again, Brent Scowcroft is there to set us straight - "Without Turkey factored in, with just television pictures, I don't know what our response would have been. We were very sensitive to Turkey's anxiety about allowing the Kurds to stay. That was fundamentally what motivated us." (Ibid.)

Nevertheless, it would still be possible to accept this and argue that they did provide substantial protection to Iraqis - if the evidence did not suggest otherwise. The already cited Sarah Graham-Brown concludes, on the basis of her time as a Christian Aid worker in Iraq, that "the zone offered no protection whatever from air or ground attacks on northern Iraq from the neighbouring states of Turkey and Iran." She refers to the northern "no-fly zone", but it is worth noting that such a zone in the south became irrelevant as far as protection is concerned as soon as Saddam's tanks and helicopters had smashed the resistance there. As the State Department put it:

"The no-fly zones continue to deter aerial attacks on the marsh dwellers in southern Iraq and residents of northern Iraq, but they do not prevent artillery attacks in either areas, [sic] nor the military's large-scale burning operations in the south." (Quoted in Graham-Brown, op cit).

But why did the northern "no-fly zone" offer "no protection whatever"?

Because the Turkish army used their cover to hunt the Kurds in northern Iraq:

"The first major Turkish incursion was in October '92, when 20,000 troops invaded northern Iraq. In late 1993, Turkish air and ground forces attacked alleged PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. In March '95, 35,000 Turkish troops backed by tanks, helicopters and F-16 aircraft remained in the no-fly zone for almost two months. In May '97, 50,000 Turkish troops invaded the area again, for another extended occupation." (IRAQ CRISIS MARCH 2001
A VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS BRIEFING, March 2001).

"Finally, the air exclusion zone applies only to Iraqi aircraft, not to Turkish or Iranian air forces ... the Turks, pursuing their war with the PKK, continue to use both air and ground troops on a regular basis inside Iraqi Kurdistan, often causing civilian deaths, injuries and destruction of property. The US has never challenged Turkey's incursions -- the latest when 10,000 Turkish troops crossed the border in December 2000 -- though the EU and UN have periodically made ineffectual protests." ( Sarah Graham-Brown, Global Policy Forum, February 20th, 2001 ).

And if Saddam himself has not been able to fly aircraft into these zones, he is quite able to move his tanks in and out of there when he feels like it. For instance, in 1996 he was invited by KDP leader Massoud Barzani to take out his rivals in the PUK controlled region, while the latter was conscripting the assistance of Iran (who in turn were allowed to kill their own Iranian Kurdish opponents seeking refuge in northern Iraq).

In short, on almost every count of his argument, Kamm has either got it flatly wrong or seriously misrepresented the facts. This does some damage to his own complaints about Chomsky being "didactic, tedious, pretentious, hyperbolic and absurd", since didacticism, hyperbole, pretentiousness and tedious absurdity abound in his own prose. He refers to Chomsky's "sophistry" - taking up a favourite Hitchens' buzz-word. Well, it would behoove him to recall the meaning of the word. It is "plausible but fallacious argumentation", about as concise an approximation of Kamm's own output as I can conjure.

UPDATE: Regular visitors to this site, who may now include among themselves the estimable Mr Kamm, will know that my favourite means of attention-grabbing is to try and elicit a brief feud with another blogger (pace Ken McLeod, Norman Geras and Johann Hari). I have a melancholy feeling that this time I won't get anything for my trouble. No sour grapes, no whine, not even a little vinegar. Kamm delights in making use of the comments boxes to make empty supercilious remarks, but has yet to venture even a modest reply to my argument. Oh well. I know he's been hoking around the Tomb for some time, so perhaps he's building up an arsenal of cheap ad hominem points with which to defend his paltry argument. I do hope so.

Christopher Hitchens' "Existential Despair". posted by lenin

In a rather foolish and self-flattering article for the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal the Late Christopher Hitchens makes interesting meat of the Fallujah atrocities. Yes, these pictures are "Dantesque", but after all, "a broken and maimed and traumatized Iraq was in our future no matter what", because of the way that Saddam and his regime had been "playing off tribe against tribe, Arab against Kurd and Sunni against Shiite", thus preparing the way for "a Hobbesian state of affairs". (The language of Hobbes in this context is rather revealing, since that is exactly the language of neocons like Robert Kagan who like to pretend that the US is the vanguard of order in a disorderly world. Does Hitchens now believe this?)

And Hitchens plays seer:

"[W]ho knows what the death-throes of the regime would have been like? We are entitled, on past experience, to guess. There could have been deliberate conflagrations started in the oilfields. There might have been suicidal lunges into adjacent countries. The place would certainly have become a playground for every kind of nihilist and fundamentalist. The intellectual and professional classes, already gravely attenuated, would have been liquidated entirely."


Who indeed knows, Christopher? Who besides Hitchens would have the chutzpah to bewail the conditions of an imaginary future (apparently unavoidable except through war) which already exist in the present, thanks to the war? Hitchens also has a complaint about the fact that we may no longer cite WMDs as a valid pre-war concern:

"Prescience, though, has now become almost punishable ... Given Saddam's record in both using and concealing weapons of mass destruction, and given his complicity--at least according to Mr. Clarke--with those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and with those running Osama bin Laden's alleged poison factory in Sudan, any president who did not ask about a potential Baathist link to terrorism would be impeachably failing in his duty."

The point would be more impressive if all Bush had done was ask relevant questions. But the administration did not simply ask. They concocted, they confected, the colluded in a miasma of deception and exaggeration. They bluntly stated what they knew to be fiction:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Dick Cheney, Speech to VFW National Convention, August 26, 2002.

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
George W. Bush, Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview, March 30, 2003.


Rumsfeld: "I Asked Him, 'Is That A WMD In Your Pocket, or Are You Just Pleased to See Me?"

"I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program."
George W. Bush, Remarks to Reporters, May 6, 2003.

(All quotations owed to Billmon .

Hitchens avers:

"It's becoming more and more plain that the moral high ground is held by those who concluded, from the events of 1991, that it was a mistake to leave Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait."

Indeed, siezing "the moral high ground" has proven something of an obsession for Hitchens as neophytic imperialist. (Ever since the Blumenthal fiasco, in fact). But I wonder if Hitchens seriously expects educated readers (which obviously doesn't include the bulk of WSJ readers) to accept that the decision to leave Saddam in power was simply a "mistake"? Could it have been related to the fact that the US preferred an Iraq that was united under Saddam as a counter-weight to Iran to a perhaps federated Iraq with a pro-Iranian government? Isn't this the reason why the US government acted so swiftly to thwart an uprising it appeared to have triggered? Why, for example, General Schwarzkopf allowed Iraq to fly helicopter gunships in areas with no coalition forces, effectively freeing them up to crush the uprising. And General Sir Peter de la Billiere obviously understood this when he said:

"The Iraqis were responsible for establishing law and order. You could not administer the country without using the helicopters." (Ibid.)

John Major put the matter even more succinctly:

"I don't recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection. We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein."(John Major on ITN, 4 April 1991)

Or, as General Brent Scowcroft had it:

"We clearly would have preferred a coup. There's no question about that." (Interview on ABC news 26 June 1997 quoted in Sarah Graham-Brown, Sanctioning Saddam. The Politics of Intervention in Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris,1999), p. 19.).

Hitchens is on even better form when defending the neocons, somewhat recycling the line Anne Clwyd tried some days ago:

"People like Paul Wolfowitz are even more sinister than their mocking foes believe. They were against Saddam Hussein not just in September 2001 but as far back as the 1980s."

If this is so, perhaps Hitchens would care to explain why Rumsfeld was busy shaking Saddam Hussein's hand? Why Richard Perle as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reagan between 1981 and 1987 offered no rebuke to the flagrant support for Saddam's atrocities? Or why Paul Wolfowitz himself was busy assisting a tyrant with perhaps an even worse record than Saddam Hussein in Indonesia? If mass murder and oppression really is his concern, I mean?

Instead of pondering the transparent (if not lucid) problems of his own position, Hitchens would rather throw some questions at the antiwar movement:

"I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein's regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam's envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered "succor" (Mr. Clarke's word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the "no fly zones" over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original "Gulf War"? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?"

Very well. The answer to the first question is no. The second question is therefore rendered null. The answer to the third question is that I did know this and, oddly enough, it has absolutely nothing to add to the American case. The apparent story is that Saddam wanted to build North Korea's missiles for them - but the North Koreans stiffed him. The only remaining mystery to be cleaned up is how such a production facility could have possibly avoided detection by American sattelites? The answer to the next question is that I can't possibly say, although I'm sure that neoconservatives like former CIA director James Woolsey and Laura Mylroie of the American Enterprise Insititute are in no way ideologically motivated when they attempt to attach Saddam Hussein to this attack. In answer to the question of no-fly zones, I don't see what difference it would have made. They had become all but irrelevant in southern Iraq following the US backed suppression of the Shi'a uprising, and in the North following repeated incursions by both Turkish forces and Saddam Hussein's army (invited in by Barzani's Kurdish faction). As to our contentedness with allowing Shi'ite and Kurdish forces to "do all the fighting for us", I don't know how much worse this would be to have them do all the fighting against "us". Indeed, many Shi'ites now longer have that choice because "we" have slaughtered them and their families while wrecking their country through sanctions and war. The last question presumes a positive answer to question number one, which I have already declined to give.

So, answering him thus, what might he reply?

"I hope I do not misrepresent my opponents, but their general view seems to be that Iraq was an elective target ... This ahistorical opinion makes it appear that Saddam Hussein was a new enemy, somehow chosen by shady elements within the Bush administration, instead of one of the longest-standing foes with which the United States, and indeed the international community, was faced."

And let us give Hitchens some merit here. It is, of course, not the case that Hussein suddenly became an enemy in 2001. No, that happened in 1990. But the circumstances of the choice to wage war are revealing in that respect. The Project for the New American Century, a far right think-tank for whom Hitchens may consider writing some time, was screaming for an invasion as far back as 1998. Indeed, the first thing Donald Rumsfeld, a signatory to the PNAC, did when confronted with the destruction of New York and the Pentagon was to exploit it for such political capital:

" ... best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. at the same time, not just UBL ... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Irony abounds at Hitchens' expense. Hussein had indeed been a chosen target of neoconservatives for some time, and they were content to usurp the agony of 9/11 to accomplish their geo-strategic goals. It was, in other words, "an elective target".

And Hitchens finishes with the sort of depraved casuistry he is always so eager to spot in his opponents:

"Fallujah is a reminder, not just of what Saddamism looks like, or of what the future might look like if we fail, but of what the future held before the Coalition took a hand."

Hitchens could do with a drink and a reminder that this is what the present looks like under conditions of apparent success. It is a direct result of a successful war, which ended with the successful over-running of an entire country, the appropriation of its political command and its economy. This was not an inevitable future, as he alleges, but a fact of life under the occupation. "Credit belongs", Hitchens suggests, to those who "accepted ... this long-term responsibility". Indeed, those who shoulder the white man's burden do "veil the threat of terror" even when "sloth and heathen Folly/ bring all your hopes to nought". They do "reap his old reward:/ The blame of those ye better,/ The hate of those ye guard". Credit to them, indeed. Credit them with Fallujah, with Baghdad and Najaf . Credit them with ten thousand ghosts . Credit them with a cluster of atrocities here, and a rifle of killings there. Why not, indeed. Credulous where it's due.

Anti-Semitic Norms and Terrorism. posted by lenin

Norman Geras has for some time scented the resurgence of something as dangerous as it is malodorous – “respectable” anti-Semitism . Given the near hysteria over this issue among a large number of Israeli apologists, one might be inclined to dismiss this as yet more paranoia. Yet, I think the weight of evidence – in Europe at least – is now such that it should be regarded as an immediate threat and danger. The latest report which puts increasing anti-Semitic attacks down to young white males in the main should put a check to the Islamophobic spin often put on this. Indeed, anti-Semitism being the European export that it is, we ought really to admit that we are not wrestling with a purely external threat with whom we have a pure antagonism, but rather an internal reality that is not as radically alien as we like to imagine. Anti-Semitism has an impeccable English pedigree, and John Bercow MP will tell you that the Tory party is still rank with aristocratic Jew hatred.


Norman Geras.

In Operation Shylock, Philip Roth’s alter-ego expounds a diasporism as anti-historical and ostensibly barmy as the Zionism it is supposed to replace. He has been in discussions with Lech Walesa and thinks it time for the Jews to return to Poland and anywhere else in Europe that can be called safe. His argument is quite simply that Israel is a more lethal place for Jews to live than modern, post-Cold War Europe. Maybe then. Maybe even now, but for how long? The return of the far right to the European mainstream has largely taken the form of immigrant bashing and Islamophobia. In France, it is related to the actions of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), who have blown up the Paris Metro in many nightmarish attacks. In the Balkans it is the KLA who have mounted armed attacks, first on Serb forces, then on Serbian civilians (and Albanians accused of collaborating with them) and finally on Macedonian forces. In general, the demonisation of Islam that has been congruent with imperial adventures in the Middle East as well as attacks on migrants has created a noxious climate not far removed at all from that which allowed Jews to be almost extinguished. This is not the Crusades, but modern racism.

Anti-Semitism does have a life in the non-European world, particularly in the Middle East. Just how lethal this is depends on how successfully it attaches itself to other causes. There does exist, in fact, a cause tailor-made for anti-Semitism. That this cause is both just and in no way inherently anti-Semitic does not entitle us to look away from this awkward fact. It simply is the case that anyone with a hostility to Jews in the Arab world (and increasingly in Europe) but who wishes to evade responsibility for their views can easily dissemble behind the mask of anti-Zionism. Let me be clear on what I don’t mean by this. I do not mean that if someone equates Zionism with fascism that this is anti-semitic. I do not mean that if someone burns the Israeli flag with its Star of David or sprays the swastika on it that this means they are genocidal Jew haters. Those tedious liberal canards have long been barred from the Tomb. I mean simply that if you’re the type of person that thinks Jews control the media, or even the whole world through various props and pulleys, you could easily adumbrate some vague thesis about the “Jewish Lobby” in America, how Jewish people have unwarranted presence in Hollywood, how they are the most successful ethnic group of the 20th Century, and how their state, the Jewish State, is an oppressive monster of a creation. The rest could be left to a naïve or paranoid imagination.

The answer to this ought to be to insist on what is inconsistent about Israel with Judaism, just as it has become necessary to point out what Islam says about mutilating bodies, about jihad and about murder. Again, the caveat – I don’t mean that there isn’t any sense in which Islam is compatible with terrorism, or any sense in which Judaism is compatible with oppression and tyranny. Religious texts and ideologies just aren’t as hermetically sealed as to allow only one interpretation. Like most systems of law, they are indeterminate, open to endless argument and counter-argument. But one should simply point out that Judaism and Zionism are not co-substantial. Some Jewish traditions, (namely Hasidic Jews, but also certain secular leftist traditions) wholly reject Zionism and denounce Israeli aggression. So, decoupling the two ought to be the most obvious gesture, and it is not surprising that this is exactly what the antiwar movement and the Palestinian movement have simultaneously attempted to do.

Likewise with Islam and terrorism. Now, this leads us to another theme Norman Geras has been making much noise on, and that is what we consider the cause and source of terrorism. Geras rejects what he considers to be the easy moral logic of the mainstream Left which says that terrorism is caused by imperialism (I don’t know what he would have to say about the rather dubious argument from Greens like Dr Caroline Lucas MEP who connect terrorism with global poverty). These explanations, says Geras, invoke causality as a means of displacing blame. Not always, but in many cases such claims have the effect of placing the blood on our hands while washing theirs. They are only reacting. We are responsible. This argument, says Geras, denies Islamism – specifically the kind Osama bin Laden proselytises for – its own weight as an ideology, a history and a movement.

Possibly. But I would argue that this is true to the extent that it is a mirror image of the kind of explanation that says we are only reacting and they are wholly responsible. When radical writers like John Pilger and Seamus Milne discuss these terrorist attacks as being essentially rooted in an anti-imperialist struggle against the American empire, they really only reverse the demonology which says they are against democracy, hate freedom, envy our wealth etc. So, perhaps the answer is to cease pretending that there is a pure antagonism between the operations of Al Qaeda and those of the United States government. Not merely by repeating the well-known argument that, after all, the CIA built Al Qaeda in collaboration with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but fundamentally by noting that they need each other more than they dare admit. As Jacqueline Rose points out, both the American right and the Islamic ultra-right thrive on the prospect of annihilation. US imperialism being what it is, it has always been necessary to have an enemy – Russia, then drugs, then terrorism. Radical Islamism being what it is, it has always been necessary to have a struggle – against Russia, then the corrupt Arab regimes, then America.

And there is, as even Geras acknowledges, an important kernel of truth in the Pilgerite explanation. There are unlikely to be any attacks on the Vatican, or in Rio de Janeiro or Calgary for instance, by Al Qaeda associates. The pattern of attacks, just as much as the propaganda and video-taped discussions of bin Laden and Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri, indeed describe an arc of resistance. Not “an arc of Muslim resistance” as Milne mis-calls it. To call this “Muslim resistance” is as foolish as to call Israeli atrocities “Jewish tyranny”. But there is obviously a perverted anti-imperialist dynamic involved in this movement. Bin Laden never fails to mention the atrocities of Russia in Chechnya, or of the US in Afghanistan or in Iraq, or of Israel in Palestine. The answer then is to properly articulate this anti-imperialist dynamic ourselves, to make it our case and our struggle, to invest it with the idiom of secular, democratic, radical resistance. This is no capitulation, for it is intended to deprive Al Qaeda and its associates of its life-blood as much as to stop the American Empire in its tracks. It is intended to re-occupy the territory so calamitously vacated by the Left of late, and force the Islamists back to their old business of hating socialists. The feeling is, or should be, mutual.

US Will "Respond" To Fallujah Atrocities. posted by lenin

Following the Fallujah atrocities yesterday, in which employees of Blackwater Security Consulting were kidnapped and burned to death, the US promises to fight fire with fire.

(Reuters) - U.S. troops on Thursday promised an "overwhelming" response to brutal killings in the Iraqi town of Falluja and vowed to hunt down those who shot, burned and mutilated four American contractors. Marines took positions on the outskirts of the restive town west of Baghdad where insurgents ambushed the contractors on Wednesday. "Coalition forces will respond," the U.S. army's deputy director of operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference...

They'll "respond" will they? They're like bloody jealous neighbours:

"Oh, now we've got to have an even bigger barbecue!"

I'm sure it'll all be done in good taste. Odd, however, the way in which these pictures have been shown on the media, and distributed on the internet and in the newspapers. Odd because, despite initial reticence, there has been no squeamishness. Whereas, during the war the BBC told us: "Many of the pictures coming from Baghdad of burnt civilian bodies were considered too dreadful to show you." Could this be related to the fact that these pictures are of Westerners killed by "them", whereas the others were of Iraqis killed by "us"? Of course not! Don't be facetious. These pictures are obviously less distressing than those other ones...

The Unbearable Liteness of Being An Idiot. posted by lenin

I Can't Believe It's Not Imperialism!

Not without justice, you might think, Michael Ignatieff dubs America an “Empire Lite” in his eponymous book on the theme of humanitarian intervention. True, it has no colonies, no Raj, no satraps and no armies breaking open markets (well, leave the last one to linger). But, it does exercise global domination of unprecedented scale through its economic and military power, strictly ordering the international division of labour in its own image. It exercises regulative rather than constitutive power, determining the destiny of nations from afar but without the burdens associated with imperial tutelage. Now, for Ignatieff, this is no rebuke. He claims he has no interest in the use of the term ‘empire’ as an epithet, but only as a descriptive term enabling a sensible discussion of American power and its limits. The key question, he avers, “is whether empire lite is enough to get the job done”. Precisely what that “job” is becomes apparent in the rest of the book. (Introduction, Page 3).


Lite Headed.

Focussing on three fronts of American power – namely Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan – Ignatieff seeks to draw out some of the ways in which a modern empire, even one in denial as America is, is compelled to dispose of its power for the general good. His style is that of reportage, getting down on the ground and talking to the people who make it all happen. So, in Kosovo he has a chat with Bernard Kouchner, the former head of Medicin Sans Frontiere, and current proconsul to the region. He acts, Ignatieff reports, as an imperial governor, quelling disputes here, banning newspapers there when they threaten a revival of ethnic tensions, trying "to create political trust where none exists; to create democracy where none has ever taken root before”. (Page 72). Kouchner’s history as a soixant-huitard and then as a Socialist Party man as discussed perfunctorily. His courtship of the media is considered as an extension of his humanitarian work, while his work for the state is treated in light of his doctrine that humanitarianism cannot be divorced from politics and government.

A heroically sympathetic treatment of Kouchner as a humanitarian functions as a displacement for actually discussing the empirical imperial reasoning behind the Kosovo intervention, and the actuality of the occupation in Kosovo, which is only discussed in apologetic terms. Yes, there are problems but, as Kouchner complains, the media are only interested in failure. (Page 75). If everything were working fine, there would be no cameras in Kosovo. Indeed, the thought that simply asking the “imperial governor” for his opinion on the matter might not provide the most balanced or insightful view of the situation hardly seems to have occurred to Ignatieff. The reason for this is not mysterious. Ignatieff was one of the most passionately exercised liberals in favour of that particular intervention, and presumably has no particular desire to depict it as having led to a dysfunctional hotbed of nationalism, ethnic cleansing, corruption, child prostitution, and racist murder. Indeed, Ignatieff simply takes the Nato case for granted. The Nato bombardment "stopped Milosevic" and put a halt to his ethnic cleansing, even if the facts say otherwise. (Page 52). It was "the use of imperial power to support a self-determination claim by a national minority". (Pages 70-1).

Never mind. Kouchner "is a doctor, an MD, and in this case, his patient is a rugged, south Balkan province the size of Connecticut that remains on life support a year after the Nato intervention". Yes, Ignatieff really does write like this. And yes, the comparison with Connecticut really is for an American audience. According to Ignatieff, Kouchner has done a creditable job under the auspices of the UN. They have provided "shelter" for returning refugees, established a national currency (the Deutschmark) and restarted the schools. (Quite whether this reflects at all well on Nato and the occupying powers is another matter. At the end of the war, the World Bank assessed the damage to Kosovo as being worth $1.2bn . The bulk of this is almost certainly urban damage to housing and schools caused by bombing.) Where the occupation has failed has been in exactly that area in which it has exerted most energy, and in which it's primary justification has lain - getting "Kosovars to live with the remaining Serbs", a "significant embarrassment". (Page 51).


Kouchner Loves Up The Media.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Ignatieff's segment on Bosnia acknowledges what he later seems to deny - that Nato intervention in Yugoslavia has "always been an imperial project" attempting to "integrate the Balkan peninsula - eventually - into the architecture of Europe, and, in the meantime, to reduce the flow of its three major exports: crime, refugees and drugs". (Page 32). Now, this explanation may seem much more compelling than those offered by Western spokespeople at the time, but it also omits the major explanation offered by Clinton for the Kosovo venture - Nato's "credibility". In fact, what Ignatieff does instead is expend several pages relating the story of a bridge being built in Mostar. It's sort of a symbol, if you like, for the attempt to build a bridge "between Croats and Muslims, a bridge between the internationals and the locals, and a bridge between the Muslim world and Europe". (Page 38). Its rebuilding will give Bosnia the "happy ending" it needs. (Page 39). Ignatieff doesn't go into much detail on the order of Bosnian rule, merely mentioning the threat of corruption here, the intervention of a "viceroy" there. There is no sustained analysis to speak of, merely impressionistic detail woven into a narrative of tedious detail and worthless prose. Consider this passage, where Michael talks to the French architect seeking to rebuild the bridge:

"So, I say, gesturing at all the loose stone gathered on the river bank below the bridge, you were going to put these back up exactly where they were? Pequeux looks disappointed. I have clearly understood nothing at all. 'We are not going to use the old stones. It's not going to be the old bridge. It's going to be a new bridge.'
'A new old bridge', I venture." (Page 42).

Comment is superfluous.


Mostar Bridge Before Its Destruction.

In Ignatieff's prose, deadpan observations pass for wit, platitudes pass for solemn vows, impressionism passes for insight. And that, literally, is the height of his narrative on Bosnia. For the truly curious, I suggest David Chandler's book Faking Democracy After Dayton.

Afghanistan: "Be Allah you can be".

The warlords may run huge swathes of Afghanistan as their own private fiefdom, and commit multiple acts of brutality but they "don't threaten the cohesion of Afghanistan as a nation. They don't threaten its existence as a state". (Page 83). But, according to Weber's definition, a state exerts hegemony over a specified territory by virtue of its monopoly of violence. "By that rule of thumb, there hasn't been a state in Afghanistan since the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 and the war of resistance began", and therefore the answer is to get "the guns out of the warlords' hands" and open up "space for political competition free of violence". (Pages 83-4). This won't happen as long as America is shoving money into the warlords' hands, but that doesn't detain Ignatieff. The trouble, as far as he is concerned, is that there aren't enough US troops in Afghanistan. "Imperial presence is the glue that holds Afghan deals together, but there is precious little of it to go around. Bosnia, which would easily fit into a couple of Afghanistan's thirty provinces, has 18,000 peacekeepers" while Afghanistan has none outside of Kabul. (Page 88).

The natives are insufficiently terrified, Ignatieff notes. "Nation-building lite looks too lite in Mazar to be credible for long. Authority relies on awe as much as one force, and where awe is missing, as it was in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, Americans die." What a lament! "The British imperialists understood the power of awe", he complains. The only thing that "keeps the peace" in Afghanistan now is "the timeliness and destructiveness of American airpower". (Page 89). Aside from the ugly racism of the remark about Mogadishu (thousands of Somali deaths merit no comment), the ideological service this provides is unmistakeable. The trouble isn't too much bombing, but not enough bombing! The problem is that America will not provide "the illusion of permanence" so central to the survival of an empire. (Page 90).

Washington ought to "help Karzai, and the only help that counts in Afghanistan is troops", Ignatieff says. (Page 92). Interestingly enough, Karzai has had a few words himself to say on what "help" would count in Afghanistan. $27.5 billion would help , especially as "the country [is] still largely in ruins and plagued by a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency and militias run by regional warlords responsible for a worsening opium cultivation problem." Naturally, little help of the kind requested has been forthcoming. Plenty of American money is going to Afghan warlords , the kind Ignatieff thinks America is insufficiently terrorising.

Naturally enough, there is little analysis of worth in Ignatieff's discussion. Once again, it's all about chats he has had with this or that diplomat, things he has seen, a few significant details from aid organisations. But the fundamental assumptions of the book come out in the course of discussion. For example:

"Imperialism used to be the white man's burden. This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn't stop being necessary just because it becomes politically incorrect ... Nation-building is the kind of imperialism you get in the human rights era, a time when great powers believe simultaneously in the right of small nations to govern themselves and in their right to rule the world." (Page 106).

Perhaps there were other grounds for objecting to imperialism other than the racist modes of legitimation that went with it? And, Ignatieff's condescdending attitudes to the locals suggests that racism is not entirely gone from our lexicon:

"It would be too much to say that the brickmaker wants us infidels here, exactly, but I would venture that he knows he needs us..." (Page 108).

Who "us" is merits some thought. Ignatieff, posing as something of an intellectual, a daring liberal willing to stand apart from the government and challenge its insufficient dedication to the causes it espouses, in fact identifies with that state to the core. His vulgar apologetics for imperial hypocrisy crystallises the point somewhat:

"The fact that empires cannot always practise what they preach does not mean they do not believe what they preach ... Those who regard imperial attachment to human rights as entirely cynical might ask themselves what price consistency?" (Page 111).

Anyone with half an education could, with time and effort, compose an encyclopedia of examples in which it would be devastatingly simple for the US government (or other imperial forces) to honour stated commitments to human rights. Namely by not colluding with the terror. Say, if the US withdrew its present support for Colombian right-wing militias, or if it had not colluded with the Turkish regime as it bludgeoned the Kurds in the South. Or perhaps if Britain had not provided Suharto with a great list of names to start his killing machine. Just off the top of my head. But this does not matter. Those examples would surely, in the mind of an Ignatieff, be constructed as "liberal good intentions", as in the case of the Vietnam war:

"What defeated the Americans in Vietnam, among many other things, was a failure to understand that liberal good intentions, even when equipped with helicopter gunships, are no match for the aroused power of modern nationalism ... Vietnam was a titanic clash between two nation-building strategies, the Americans in support of the South Vietnamese versus the Communists in the north." (Page 117).


"Liberal Good Intentions".

Delay for a second your automatic internal dialogue. The cognitive dissonance between your knowledge of basic fact and this offensive bit of fiction is understandable, but stay it for a while. Think of fluffy clouds, and deer skipping over a brook. Think of sea gulls larking about over the rocks and cliffs. Think bunny rabbits, chocolates and Valentine Cards. Calmer now? I want you to take Michael Ignatieff for his word. I want you to learn this lesson once and for all, and don't you ever forget it:

"Liberal good intentions" means mass murder.

It's official now. Ignatieff may have failed to write an single intelligent sentence in this book. He may have made unconscious mockery of his own case. And he may have been disgustingly racist in the process. But he has unwittingly made plain what only a few radicals and Marxists have hitherto suspected. For this, at least, I shall forever cherish his tawdry little polemic. Dog-eared, rambling, depositing nuggets of shit everywhere, it truly is man's best friend.

Why We Need Respect... posted by lenin

Revolting.

Not long ago, a clutch of Labour MPs rebelled against David Blunkett’s plans to cut benefits and circumscribe appeals procedures for asylum seekers. Thirty-five Labour MPs, to be exact. Well, twenty-eight Labour MPs voted against the benefit cuts and thirty-five voted against the limits to appeals procedures. So, there are some Labour MPs who think that asylum seekers should be allowed to starve, but not denied the right to appeal against being starved. I suppose you’d have to be made entirely out of jelly not to emit an enormous yawn at the latest so-called ‘rebellion’. Did anyone really expect better? How many of those Labour MPs who voted with the government genuinely believe it was the right policy? Probably a few deluded themselves sufficiently, but I guess that the bulk considered it a pragmatic policy to temporarily satiate the stirrings of racism in the working class vote. It isn’t going to work, of course. The last time Labour tried acceding to the demands of racists, fascism saw its largest post-war resurgence.


Minister Meets Labour Backbencher.

Still, it would be foolish to imagine that Labour is totally moribund or that it has no imaginative ideas for putting the excitement back into politics. Alan Milburn has announced that he wants to see a manifesto for people power, or rather “the empowerment of consumers and citizens”. His flagship idea is to give people local referenda on whether to ban smoking in pubs. Milburn’s last idea for boosting support for Labour was wider home ownership – but then they lost the Almos and so that idea has been sent back to the makers for repackaging. And what do the Labour grassroots offer? The Respect Coalition’s website highlights a story in The Guardian in which polls showed that two fifths of the Labour membership thought Blair should resign before the next election – to be replaced by Gordon Brown. The same number want to see a return to ‘traditional Labour values’. Not to be snide, but which ‘traditional Labour values’? The strikebreaking, the wage-cutting, the acquiescence to racism, the support for imperialism? Okay, that is snide, and rather unfair. The Labour leadership may be held responsible for these crimes, but the membership were bitterly divided on each of these issues, and it is obvious enough that the appeal to ‘traditional Labour values’ is an aspiration toward socialism, equality, peace and plenty for the workers.

How likely is this? Some people visiting this website, whom I gather are members or at least supporters of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, have strongly criticised my support for the Respect Coalition, arguing that the real strategy should be either to reclaim the Labour Party or to cause a split. They regard the Respect Coalition either as a return to radical liberalism with trade union support (pace Ken McLeod) or as a popular front/cross-class coalition (pace the AWL). I am not at all convinced of their reasons for thinking this, but I’ll come to that later.

Labour Of Left

In order to understand why I think Respect is a good idea (or at least a good start), it is necessary to say a few words about the present situation. First of all, the Labour Party. How likely is it that it can be reclaimed, or at least split into two factions? Is it possible, perhaps, to cleave the membership from the appalling Whigs in charge? I doubt it. For one thing, only two-fifths of the Labour Party want a return to traditional values, and even they think the best way to do this is to have Gordon Brown, the supremo of New Labour idiotology, replace Tony Blair. Blair and his allies have moved with a speed and a ferocity to devour the remainder of the Labour left that noone has so far been able to do a damned thing about it. They have boarded up most democratic vistas in the Labour Party machinery, harried out the best dissidents, evacuated the NEC of reliable left-wingers and quoshed dissent at conference. They have treated the trade unions with such contempt that Mark Dolan of the CWU has reported members asking him “why are we giving money to people who keep shitting on us?” Every elementary principle of the Labour movement has been chewed up and spat out by Blair’s shredder, and what has been done about it? Nothing, nada, fuck all.

I have spent years awaiting the awakening among Labour members, but there just aren’t enough socialists left in it. In a way, when Ken McLeod accuses Respect of resuscitating the idea of radical liberalism with some trade union support, I am tempted to reply that this is exactly what Blair’s project has set out to achieve – and it isn’t too far from that goal. The working class is under-represented in the membership, and the professional middle class is over-represented. It has become a different kind of party. On most key issues, the bulk of Labour members have supported the leadership – including on the war. Even where they haven’t, they have singularly lacked the ability to influence policy. The ever-present emotional blackmail (Blair’s constant appeals to the threat of a resurgent Tory party, made ever more likely by his policies) has apparently been enough to cow the membership, to break any sustained resistance to even a single policy tenet. The small numbers of brave, heroic dissidents in the Labour Party who guard the last flames of parliamentary socialism ought to be out setting the world on fire.

Even the old formula that the Labour Party was a capitalist workers’ party – a party committed to working within the system, but with systematic support from the organised working class – is beginning to crumble. The RMT’s expulsion is indicative of a leadership so committed to aping the US Democrats that it will sacrafice a major source of support and funding rather than stop its privatising, union-bashing policies. With the party base dissolving, and the leadership gradually cutting itself off from the organised working class, the prospects of reclaiming the Labour Party do not look good. It is tempting to simply reduce the problem to the Blair clique, but these processes have repeated themselves in various ways across Europe. It isn’t simply a question of ‘if only these Third Way leftists would be more principled, it would be alright’. The crisis of the left is real, and it really is a question of the alternative. The twin pincers of Stalinism and fascism disabled the revolutionary left for decades and rendered a large portion of both the reformist and revolutionary left dependent on the USSR for its moral and ideological sustenance. The fall of the Berlin Wall disillusioned and disoriented many on the Left, especially as it followed some of the gravest defeats for the working class in Britain since World War II.

The crisis is also one of reformism. Tony Cliff once described the Labour Party as a paper umbrella – very useful except when it rains. In a period of capitalist expansion and high profit rates, Labour can deliver because the bosses don’t mind paying (relatively) high tax levies if it provides a healthy, educated workforce. In an era of periodic contraction, crisis and low profit rates, the pressure is to reduce taxes on profits and taxes in higher incomes. Labour itself has frozen higher income tax at 40%, and any suggestion that it do otherwise has been viewed with suspicion or contempt. It has cut corporation tax and small business tax, and miniaturised even its most welcome policy, the minimum wage.


Tony Cliff: Labour Party is as useful as a paper umbrella.

David Coates makes an interesting point of analysis in Paving The Third Way: The Critique of Parliamentary Socialism (Coates (ed), 2002). He asks the reader to think of New Labour and Old Labour as permanent strands in Labourism, the former representing what he terms bourgeois radicalism, the latter social reformism. Bourgeois radicalism is that wing of Labourism which seeks to modernise industry, to propel new industries into existence and create a sufficient surplus from that to pay for modest reforms. Social reformism is that wing which aims to subordinate capital to the needs of working people through nationalisation, taxation and redistribution. The former has usually, with few exceptions, been the dominant current. It so happens that it has been more self-confident, organised and strident than ever before, and the social reformists have never been more beleaguered and never more in want of a constituency base.

So, even if we could achieve the exalted left turn in the Labour Party, what would be achieved? Doubtless, it would boost morale in the trade unions and the working class movement generally – but it would also repeat the immense error of putting the faith of working people in a Labour government with nominally radical policies. The effect of this in the Seventies was that the trade unions were unable effectively to combat the “social contract”, because the trade union leaders supported it. As inflation soared to 20%, wage rises were kept down to 5% - simply because the return on capital was so pitifully low that some business leaders would have supported a coup if it put those unions back in their place. Instead, Labour did the job for them. The lesson ought to be clear – we cannot rely on a radicalised Labour Party to defend the interests of working people.

What You Need, Baby You Ain't Gettin' It...

So, why not Respect? The arguments so far put that Respect is a cross-class alliance, or a reinvention of the popular front are based on a number of disparate facts. 1) The programme does not explicitly call for a socialist transformation of society. 2) The programme is relatively emaciated compared to the dense and detailed policy proposals of the Socialist Alliance. 3) The word socialism is hidden away in an acronym rather than proudly proclaimed as some component of the name. 4) George Galloway has said in a statement, reported on Al Jazeera, that he wants a coalition including “Christians, Muslims and Jews, socialists, liberals and conservatives”, and moreover he seems to say that this is what the Respect Coalition is. 5) George Monbiot and Salma Yaqoob were the originators of the idea of Respect, and neither of them describe themselves as socialists. 6) The Respect Coalition does not demand of its representatives that they accept no more than an average skilled worker’s wage.


Salma Yaqoob.

If Galloway’s speech is reported accurately, I can only describe it as ill judged and not representative of the politics of the membership or most of the National Executive. Tories would certainly be most unwelcome in Respect, as I suspect would most liberals. Some radical liberals could involve themselves – the Labour Party has had liberal and even downright reactionary members, so why not? The point about the programme is a little premature – it is not the election manifesto, but rather a platform of shared principles, which can be developed and improved upon. As to whether it should specifically state its aim as being the replacement of capitalism by socialism, I am somewhat torn on the matter. In principle it seems elementary, but it just isn’t worldly. The aim of the Socialist Workers’ Party is to overthrow capitalism – the aim of Respect is to repoliticise to the Left. It is a beginning and not an end in itself – it seeks to change the very political coordinates within which we are working. It does not seek to become a new Labour Party, nor a new version of the Socialist Alliance. Nevertheless, I do agree that socialism ought to be a more pronounced and prominent commitment in the programme of Respect.

The claim that Respect represents a cross-class coalition is utterly without foundation – its ideological broadness notwithstanding, it does not seek to compromise the independence of the working class, or import some middle-class ideology into it. No, that’s the job of New Labour. Respect seeks to win the support of the trade unions and if possible to get them to affiliate. But it is also an open-ended project. Depending on how successfully we can unite the Left into a serious challenge against Blair, Respect may take many directions in the future. My assessment is that a series of successes will compel Respect to eschew its temporary vagueness regarding long-term goals, whereas failure will simply push us back to square one, with every minute sect in the country fighting pitch battles over their little fiefdoms while the body politic descends into greater corruption and stench.

Some of the objections to Respect seem to derive from a formalistic way of solving problems. ‘The working class needs independent political representation, Respect has a coalition of middle class and working class people in it, it is therefore a cross-class coalition, and therefore the correct solution is either to reclaim the Labour Party as a workers’ party, or to reconstitute Labour by splitting away the Left and uniting it with other forces.’ Aside from vulgarly imputing middle-class ideologies into middle class people (Frederich Engels, anyone?) this objection involves no pertinent analysis of the present situation. It is grotesquely, disastruously wrong about the Labour Party, and it imposes an abstract answer on a concrete situation.

Bricks and Mortar

What is the concrete situation? I shall offer a brief adumbration. The first and most recognisable fact is that the condition of the working class has steadily declined over the last twenty years. Inequality has grown, as has job insecurity. Trade union membership was in serious decline until a few years ago – indications are that it may yet decline again if serious measures are not taken. A recent clutch of strike victories has been balanced by serious losses – such as the debacle of the FBU leadership’s handling of the fight with the government. At the same time, a wave of victories for the Left in the unions has combined with a resurgence of street protest to produce the most polarised situation in years. There have also been attempts to open the political fund in the trade unions, and break the link to the Labour Party – even though these have in most cases been unsuccessful, it is still significant that such moves are being suggested.

At the same time, the condition of the lowest paid is less hopeful than it has been for years. Union membership among these workers is extremely low, in large measure due to a high turnover of staff at companies employing part-time and temporary labour. As yet, the trade union movement has been unable to adapt itself to this situation, and legislation makes it extremely difficult to unionise workshops in those areas. High unemployment (as always, occluded by official statistics) means that labour is perpetually in much higher supply than there is demand for it, and this acts as a significant downward pressure on wages. In many areas, the insane housing market produced by the dearth of social housing and new house building is pressuring workers’ wages substantially. One study in the 1990s concluded that, on average, London workers forfeited 60% of their wages just to housing costs.


London Housing: Extortionate.

New Labour shows no indication that it is ready to address these problems. It will make the odd, mock attempts at amelioration (for example, offering loans to public sector workers so they can get on the “property ladder”), but the plans for housing actually look set to aggravate this appalling situation by abolishing all council housing and placing as much as possible in the hands of private companies, trusts, housing cooperatives or associations. There will be no further attenuation of the anti-union legislation, and the minimum wage looks set to creep and crawl its way up alongside the inflation line. Benefits for those not in work are being curtailed as far as possible. Insofar as poverty is being addressed at all, it is through piecemeal measures like tax credits which had the wonderful effect of pushing large numbers just above the poverty line who were just beneath it, but of making no substantial difference to the income and condition of the poor. Instead of investing in local councils, local tax rates have been pushed up (thus making residents of poor boroughs shoulder the burden of New Labour’s spending increases).

What Bob Jessop calls the Keynesian Welfare National State is deceased, and its replacement is a much leaner Schumpeterian competition state with only minimal and specific attempts at government activism, targeted reforms and inducements, and localised cost-spreading. Capital, as a class, is both self-confident and threatened – self-confident because of the absence of a challenge from below, threatened because of its own internal weaknesses. This situation makes big business, which in Britain has always been politically conservative and economically liberal, even more ambitious than usual, even more determined to suppress wages and fend off government reforms and taxes. A reformist administration can only do limited work in this situation with the best will in the world.

After decades of defeat, and only a few victories thus far to make up for it, the working class in Britain needs a serious morale boost, among other things. It needs victories. It needs to become self-confident as a class again, and it needs the kind of institutional focus that can give voice to those aspirations. In the longer run, it needs a Socialist party. In the immediate term, it needs a renewed left-wing politics with some demonstrable capacity to inflict serious body blows to New Labour. It needs a political voice that will demand an end to the bloody and costly occupation of Iraq, call for more socially affordable housing, raise the minimum wage, repeal anti-union legislation, and commit itself to a serious fight against the racism which seeks to divide the working class. The Left is not yet in good shape to form a party. Old schisms still matter, and new rivalries are making themselves felt in small ways. But the Left can agree on the fundamental tenets of an immediate programme for change. It can coalesce, and unite on a broader platform than simple single-issue politics.

Given the self-evident need for an alternative, and the opportunities provided to form one, it would be criminal for any organisation calling itself Marxist not to seek to build such a coalition. Especially if for the sake of some dogmas and half-baked formulae which would denounce such attempts as a “cross-class alliance” or a “miniature popular-front”. Respect is receiving more attention now than the Socialist Alliance did even during the obligatory coverage at election time. It has had its first full-page newspaper ad. It has had articles written about it, and generated much heat in discussions and debate. It certainly has the chance to go further and deeper than past attempts at left unity have so far dreamed of. Those pissing and moaning on the sidelines ought to be a part of that.


Let's Turn This Into Something.