The Ramadan phase

I'm trying to get ahold of this sudden turn of events in the war, this monster that keeps crashing one way and another. The daylight savings time change has extended the everlasting winter night, which easily turns into brooding sort of time which gave us Bob Dylan, for example. I'm watching the elections though, and it would be so much more enjoyable if things weren't going wrong all over. At least I've got some more time to hide at college until things blow over, unlike these poor bastards who have to work for a pittance at department stores and other shitty service jobs. Then there's the whole strike over at the U, and the ongoing madness elsewhere in the world...

As an ardent atheist, religiously motivated violence bothers me, beause it clearly stems from factors besides the religion. The violence can reveal intractible spiritual illnesses, and the choices that Bush makes are somehow never capable of containing the sickness. The whole Boykin "smash their idols" thing, who could possibly say anything more foolish while handling the Pentagon's counter-terror agency?

More waves of ghastly violence sweep Iraq on the first day of Ramadan. The hated Baghdad curfew was finally eased for after-dark ceremonies. The day after trying to kill Wolfowitz with a barrage of rockets (and a helicopter shot down), someone bombed four police stations and the Red Cross headquarters, killing at least 30 and wounding around 200 Iraqis, including plenty of police. That's about as horrible as anything I could possibly imagine...

Salam Pax said Oct. 19 that

Iraqi Police kick major ass. Much respect. Wherever you go now and open up that subject you will see a lot of sympathy with those brave men and women and a total incomprehension to what this so called resistance is doing. They are killing Iraqis now. They say Jihad against the Infidel Occupier and they go kill those Iraqi police men. The Baghdad Hotel, the Turkish embassy and many more.

It is not the Infidel the attackers are killing but Iraqis and this just might be good because the general sentiment now is "what the fuck do the Jihadis think they are doing?". I wrote or said some time ago that most Iraqis are just sitting on the fence, well the last couple of attacks are tipping the balance against the Jihadis because they are killing all those Iraqis, they are putting bombs in streets and in front of schools, threatening to bomb banks where Iraqis are standing in line waiting to get their new Iraqi Dinars.

So as we say here [biha saleh ? something good will come out of it] maybe the people who are dying in those attacks are helping us understand that what those saboteurs are doing is just pure evil, telling people they are Muslim Jihadis doesn?t cut it anymore because they are killing civilians indiscriminately.

Besides the 25 attacks on American forces a day, what about the growing violence between religious sects?

"We've seen many similar cases in this area," says Saddam hospital doctor Muhammad Dahham. [but] "It has never reached the level of murder before this morning." Dr Dahham is referring to the simmering inter-sect tensions in the teeming slums of western Baghdad, which in the last week appear to have taken a bloody new turn....

The two bodies in the freezer belong to Sheikh Ahmed Khudeir and his brother Walid Khudeir, who were killed walking back home in the Washash neighbourhood early on Sunday morning after dawn prayers. The dead teenager - Taisir Falih - used to act as eyes for the 40-year-old sheikh, who was blind. Brother Walid was also disabled....

The deaths have shocked the poverty-stricken Washash slum, but the manner of their killing has added to their anguish. Fifteen Kalashnikov rounds for the sheikh, 13 for his brother and nine for the young boy, according to people in Washash who had gone with the bodies to Saddam hospital. "The gunmen killed them first and then emptied the magazines into the dead bodies," said one resident....

As far as the mosque faithful are concerned, there is only one explanation for what happened on Sunday morning. Ahmed Khudeir was a Sunni sheikh at a Sunni mosque and he was killed by members of the local Shia militia, they believe. The militia they have in mind - the Badr brigades - belongs to a leading Shia political party which has a seat on the US-appointed Governing Council.

Newsweek is now reporting that Mr. Douglas Feith, Neo-con Pentagon baller, has been kicked out of Iraq reconstruction meetings. The CPA, on the whole, does not measure up too well today. (DKos)

...contractors in Iraq complain that the CPA?s staff consists largely of political appointees who don?t understand the process. "CPA is run by a bunch of political hacks and incompetents who have no idea what they?re doing," said a project manager for a firm working on a major USAID contract. "Every time we turn around there's a new order coming from CPA, 'Do it this way?no, do it that way instead.' It?s just unbelievable." Privately, some CPA officials admit the staff is less than the best the United States has to offer. Right now, "we're not talking A-team, even B-team. We?re talking C-team," says one official with the CPA. The Bush administration denies that any major changes are afoot, but all these problems have prompted a new reckoning back in Washington: Douglas Feith, Rumsfeld?s policy chief and a key official involved in postwar planning, is no longer sitting in on reconstruction meetings, NEWSWEEK has learned, and the White House has wrested oversight from the Pentagon.

Prof. Juan Cole speculates on Ramadan and possible bombers:

US officials actually came out and said that progress in Iraq cannot be measured by a few bombs going off! Uh, without security nothing else follows, friends. Not financial investments, not NGO aid, not more troops sent by allies. The Red Cross is needed for Iraq's reconstruction, but it is likely more or less to get out of Iraq now. The UN has already largely been chased out....

That the driver was foreign indicated to some observers that the attack was pulled off by al-Qaeda-linked foreign Mujahidin. It is also often alleged that Ramadan is seen by Muslim radicals as a particularly auspicious time to attack. Of course, I do not have any idea who planned the car bombings on Monday, but I don't think this reasoning resolves the problem. The regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen is Arab nationalist; so is that of Syria. There are lots of Arab nationalists in both countries. Arab nationalism is not dead as a sentiment, and for those devoted to it, going to Iraq to fight now makes as much sense as defending Abdel Nasser during the Suez Crisis of 1956. That is, the Western press equates foreign fighters with Sunni radicalism, but Arab nationalism is international, too.

As for Ramadan, I'd be interested in knowing if Sunni radicals have actually ever struck then. In Arabian society Ramadan was a truce month... It is not as if there is any mandate that one must or ought to fight in Ramadan; quite the opposite, the default would be to avoid fighting in that month and spend it on spiritual meditation. On the other hand, a secular Arab nationalist like Sadat was perfectly happy to fight the 1973 war during Ramadan.

I suspect that Sunni Arab nationalists are actually the most logical suspects, as they have been all along. The Coalition forces don't have a single proven al-Qaeda operative in custody in Iraq, but have lots of ex-Baathists.

On the topic of Wolfowitz, he points out that Wolfie's visits always have overtones of political domination, as he deems it necessary to visit touchy cities like Tikrit and Najf, rather than stick to real military business.

Wolfowitz's trip was an unadulterated disaster. His announcement that he was sleeping in Tikrit was clearly a dig at Saddam and the Baathists; but then a Blackhawk was downed there while he was at the US base in Tikrit (one US soldier was wounded). And then his hotel was struck in Baghdad, with a US colonel killed and 17 other persons wounded, several of them military. Wolfowitz was visibly shaken, his voice quavering, immediately after the attack. US personnel were forced out of the hotel, perhaps permanently. The colonel was probably the highest ranking officer killed in Iraq so far.

....The last time Wolfowitz went to Iraq, he inadvertently provoked huge demonstrations in Najaf and Baghdad by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who feared that the extra security measures in Najaf preparatory to Wolfowitz's arrival indicated that al-Sadr was going to be arrested. Wolfowitz got out of Najaf just ahead of the demonstrations.....

The problem with Wolfowitz's trips to Iraq is that they are clearly political, requiring visits to touchy places such as Najaf and Tikrit, to make political points about US dominance of the country. But the Deputy Secretary of Defense should only be visiting Iraq for military reasons, and his visits should be conducted secretly so he can see military commanders and troops. If Wolfowitz goes on campaigning to be mayor of Tikrit, he is liable to get himself killed.

The Red Cross may pull out much of its foreign staff, like the UN did.

Before they attacked the Red Cross, the story was the awful treatment of wounded Americans, whose numbers the Pentagon avoids talking about. There are now about 2,000 injured American troops. Apparently Cher anonymously called in to a show on CSPAN today and the host figured out it was her. Cher went to Walter Reed hospital and was terribly upset that Bush tries to hide the wounded. Fortunately someone has already made the Cher CSPAN T-shirt. That's what I call news cycle culture.

Today in Iraq, a site which links every violent incident reported in the media, is staggeringly awful to look at.

Will this new month of violence taper off in a few days? Could the toll on local people weaken their support for resistance activities?

Can the U.S. handle things this month, or will chaos rule Iraq's long November nights?