Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
?The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is." ?Dick Cheney the Experienced Liberator, 1996. (Quote from the excellent collection of war-related documents and evidence, cooperativeresearch.org. Thx to Schwartz)
The war plows on as Americans are forced away from every major Iraqi city. Lacking the popular favor to safely attack ancient Arab cities, they have been forced into waiting and firing blind missiles and bombs... You can say they are smart and that they minimize civilian casualties. ONLY PEACE minimizes civilian casualties.
So how can we perceive what is going on? Media chickens ride along with the American troops, unable to describe the random tactics of the Anglo-Saxon "coalition." They cannot directly expose the flip side, the lives of people who are actually getting the life bombed out of them by American planes. The media plays elusive games, obsessing over rumors of Saddam's duplication while ignoring what he has to say. With all these reporters driving around the desert in humvees, there have often been vast stretches of time where human interest stories flood out everything else. Because Iraq is not turning over like the neocon 'idealists' predicted. So what do you do to get the real story? One excellent site is The Agonist, with constant news updates from all sides. Want to know how smart YOU are? Take the Iraq quiz. Thx again to Schwartz!
Un-embedded and longtime war reporter Robert Fisk covers Baghdad, outside the walls of media censorship. From the scene of at least 20 dead innocent Arabs in Baghdad:
It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still smoldering car. Two missiles from a single American jet killed them all ? more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be ?liberated? by the nation which destroyed their lives.It is all too likely that we have stumbled badly in managing the political climate of the Middle East prior to engaging Saddam. Robert Fisk reported yesterday from outside Baghdad:Who dares, I ask myself, to call this ?collateral damage?? Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm that covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of red and yellow dust and rain yesterday morning. It?s a dirt poor neighborhood ? of mostly Shiite Muslims, the same people whom Messers Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against Saddam ? a place of oil-sodden car repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafes.
A senior Iraqi business executive wanted to explain how slender was the victory the Americans were claiming. "Throughout history, Iraq has been called Mesopotamia," he said. "This means 'the land between the two rivers'. So unless you are between the two rivers, this means you are not in Iraq. General Franks should know this." Alas for the businessman, the US Marines were, as we spoke, crossing the Euphrates under fire at Nasiriyah yesterday as hundreds of women and children fled their homes between the bridges. But still, by yesterday evening, only 50 or so American tanks had made it to the eastern shore, into "Mesopotamia". It didn't spoil the man's enthusiasm.Fisk also had an excellent interview with Democracy Now on March 25th. How experienced do TV reporters sound, really? How much do they bother considering a history that is longer than 12 years?"Can you imagine the effect on the Arabs if Iraq gets out of this war intact?" he asked. "It took just five days for all the Arabs to be defeated by Israel in the 1967 war. And already we Iraqis have been fighting the all-powerful Americans for five days and still we have held on to all of our cities and will not surrender. And imagine what would happen if Iraq surrendered. What chance would the Syrian leadership have against the demands of Israel? What chance would the Palestinians have of negotiating a fair deal with the Israelis? The Americans don't care about giving the Palestinians a fair deal. So why should they want to give the Iraqis a fair deal?"
This was no member of the Baath Party speaking. This was a man with degrees from universities in Manchester and Birmingham. A colleague had an even more cogent point to make. "Our soldiers know they will not get a fair deal from the Americans," he said. "It's important that they know this. We may not like our regime. But we fight for our country. The Russians did not like Stalin but they fought under him against the German invaders. We have a long history of fighting the colonial powers, especially you British. You claim you are coming to 'liberate' us. But you don't understand. What is happening now is we are starting a war of liberation against the Americans and the British."
....As the Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said a few hours ago, I was listening to him in person, the Americans expected to be greeted with roses and music- and they were greeted with bullets. I think you see what has happened is that -- and as he pointed out -- the American administration and the US press lectured everybody about how the country would break apart where Shiites hated Sunnis and Sunnis hated Turkmen and Turkmen hated Kurds, and so on. And yet, most of the soldiers fighting in southern Iraq are actually Shiite. They?re not Sunnis, they?re not Tikritis, they?re not from Saddam?s home city. Saddam did not get knocked off his perch straight away, and I think that, to a considerable degree, the American administration allowed that little cabal of advisors around Bush- I?m talking about Perle, Wolfowitz, and these other people?people who have never been to war, never served their country, never put on a uniform- nor, indeed, has Mr. Bush ever served his country- they persuaded themselves of this Hollywood scenario of GIs driving through the streets of Iraqi cities being showered with roses by a relieved populace who desperately want this offer of democracy that Mr. Bush has put on offer-as reality.In a critical development, an Iraqi Shi'ite leader declared that the United States must leave the country immediately after Hussein is toppled, or they will soon face armed resistance. The leader of the Iraqi Shiite Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, declared that "The world does not approve of any colonialism or occupation, and we will take peaceful measures in this respect at the beginning but we will use force later." So much for those multi-year Halliburton contracts that have already been signed.And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn?t matter whether that?s carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba?ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I?m sure, but they don?t want to live under American occupation...
...Very soon, the Americans are going to need the United Nations as desperately as they wanted to get rid of them. Because if this turns into the tragedy that it is turning into at the moment, if the Americans end up, by besieging Baghdad day after day after day, they?ll be looking for a way out, and the only way out is going to be the United Nations at which point, believe me, the French and the Russians are going to make sure that George Bush passes through some element of humiliation to do that. But that?s some way away. Remember what I said early on to you. The Americans can do it- they have the firepower. They may need more than 250,000 troops, but if they?re willing to sacrifice lives of their own men, as well as lives of the Iraqis, they can take Baghdad; they can come in.
But, you know, I look down from my balcony here next to the Tigris River- does that mean we?re going to have an American tank on every intersection in Baghdad? What are they there for- to occupy? To repress? To run an occupation force against the wishes of Iraqis? Or are they liberators? It?s very interesting how the reporting has swung from one side to another. Are these liberating forces or occupying forces? Every time I hear a journalist say ?liberation?, I know he means ?occupation?. We come back to the same point again which Mr. (Richard) Perle will not acknowledge; because this war does not have a UN sanction behind it?I mean not in the sense of sanctions but that it doesn?t have permission behind it, it is a war without international legitimacy, and the longer it goes on, the more it hurts Bush and the less it hurts Saddam. And we?re now into one week, and there isn?t even a single American soldier who has even approached the city of Baghdad yet. And the strange thing, looking at it from here in Baghdad, is the ad hoc way in which this war appears to be carried out.
You need to read this: Thank God for the Death of the United Nations by Richard Perle:
...For Lady Williams (and many others), the thumb on the scale of judgment about this war is the idea that only the UN security council can legitimise the use of force. It matters not if troops are used only to enforce the UN's own demands. A willing coalition of liberal democracies isn't good enough. If any institution or coalition other than the UN security council uses force, even as a last resort, "anarchy", rather than international law, would prevail, destroying any hope for world order.Yes, if you believe that 3 of 5 permanent members of the Security Council will never agree to your aggression and advocacy of military hegemony, then the UN has little value. But is Perle after Israel's regional hegemony, or America's? Is there a difference these days? Posted by HongPong at March 26, 2003 09:19 PMThis is a dangerously wrong idea that leads inexorably to handing great moral and even existential politico-military decisions, to the likes of Syria, Cameroon, Angola, Russia, China and France. When challenged with the argument that if a policy is right with the approbation of the security council, how can it be wrong just because communist China or Russia or France or a gaggle of minor dictatorships withhold their assent, she fell back on the primacy of "order" versus "anarchy"....
This new century now challenges the hopes for a new world order in new ways. We will not defeat or even contain fanatical terror unless we can carry the war to the territories from which it is launched. This will sometimes require that we use force against states that harbour terrorists, as we did in destroying the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The most dangerous of these states are those that also possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is one, but there are others. Whatever hope there is that they can be persuaded to withdraw support or sanctuary from terrorists rests on the certainty and effectiveness with which they are confronted. The chronic failure of the security council to enforce its own resolutions is unmistakable: it is simply not up to the task. We are left with coalitions of the willing. Far from disparaging them as a threat to a new world order, we should recognise that they are, by default, the best hope for that order, and the true alternative to the anarchy of the abject failure of the UN.