Lazy blogging

Uncle Noam has a bit to say on the president-elect:

By usual indicators, the opposition party should have had a landslide victory during a severe economic crisis, after eight years of disastrous policies on all fronts including the worst record on job growth of any post-war president and a rare decline in median wealth, an incumbent so unpopular that his own party had to disavow him, and a dramatic collapse in US standing in world opinion. The Democrats did win, barely. If the financial crisis had been slightly delayed, they might not have.

You can find the article here.

The Failure of International Law

Professor Quiggin asks why charges of war crimes cannot be brought against Bush and friends.

This piece of legislation is one reason.

Rewriting History

At Australia's very own Department for Historical Truth and Ideological Purity, one Michael Costello has responded to Brendan Nelson's gaffe about oil by blithely asserting that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with oil:

If control of vital oil supplies were to end up in the hands of our enemies, who
choose to use it to blackmail us and our friends and allies, or to further
causes hostile to us, that would be a disaster for us and many others.
What
is weird, however, is the ludicrous leap of illogic that says that to state this
self-evident proposition is to automatically imply that the real reason we went
to war with Saddam Hussein's regime in March 2003 was oil.
If oil were our
dominant interest, we would have done exactly the opposite. We would have done a
deal with Saddam that accepted the continuation of his brutal regime and we
would have turned a blind eye to his return, with renewed vigour, to the pursuit
of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Recall that while no evidence
of such weapons was found by inspectors after the 2003 attacks, evidence was
found of Saddam's determination to resume those programs as soon as he could
complete the undermining of UN sanctions and remove the UN inspection regime.
What would the US have got in return for accommodating Saddam in this way?
Oil, as much as it wanted, at discount prices.

Costello also cites Bob Hawke, out of context, in defense of the Coalition of the Drilling. In response, I posted a reply to this latest piece of asshattery. I provide it here, in full, should it fail to see the light of day on the News Limited website:

This is an extraordinarily disingenuous article, even by The Australian's standards.

Firstly, Hawke's comments were in a rather different context to the present day, or 2003, for that matter. The invasion of 2003 occurred after years of sanctions, against a country with a heavily-depleted military, surrounded by no-fly zones, and who, in contrast to 1991, had not issued any violent provocation.

Secondly, Saddam was planning to trade oil in Euros, not the greenback, which could have been expected to have had significant ramifications for the US economy.

Thirdly, unlike the other despots with whom the US coquettes, US interests were not in a position to simply make a deal and receive 'discount oil'. The oil was already contracted to a number of nations who opposed the US invasion, such as France, China, and Russia.

Clearly, oil was not the sole motivating factor for Iraq's liberation - other factors include geo-political strategy, the neoconservative ideology of 'failed states' and 'democracy building', and US domestic politics. Nonetheless, to suggest that Iraq's invasion had nothing to do with oil, that it would have been of 'interest' if its chief export were bottle tops, is a monstrous piece of revisionist fiction, the likes of which would make even Stalin blush with shame.

It is not for nothing that Howard, Bush and Blair have all been subject to widespread public cynicism. Irrespective of Howard's frantic back-pedalling, the gaffe-prone Nelson was only confirming what many Australians take as self-evident.


We shall see if it appears.

On Liberty (At Gunpoint), and Collaborators

Only the fanatics and die-hard ideologues persist in apologetics for the Iraq War any longer. Not so in the case of Afghanistan, whom many, including the 'cruise missile liberals', believe is a 'just war', a legitimate response to the events of 11/9. Americans were justifiably upset; unfortunately, the wounds of the terrorist attack quickly festered until somebody, somewhere, hat to be hit. The War on Terror would commence, but to kick it off, some brute vengeance was needed. Afghanistan served as the piñata.

After the crime of September 11, the Taliban, presumed to be hiding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, were given a series of ultimatums by Bush (20/9/2001):

By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And
tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban:
-- Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who
hide in your land.
-- Release all foreign nationals, including American
citizens you have unjustly imprisoned.
-- Protect foreign journalists,
diplomats and aid workers in your country.
-- Close immediately and
permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every
terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate
authorities.
-- Give the United States full access to terrorist training
camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.
These demands are
not open to negotiation or discussion.

Understandably, the Taliban requested some proof of bin Laden's involvement in the crime, prior to opening their borders to foreign troops. This supposed recalcitrance on the part of the Taliban, and the alleged lack of a non-violent means of securing bin Laden, served as the pretext for war. It is now clear that the Taliban were, in fact, prepared to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan for prosecution, a fact usually lost on the Eustonites, and other apologists for murder. The Taliban even offered to try bin Laden under Afghanistan's (Islamic) laws, as the US would no doubt seek to do with its war criminals.

By October 7, 2001, Afghanistan was being bombed. The Taliban again attempted to negotiate with the US, offering to hand over bin Laden should American bombing cease. Bush preferred to keep bombing than to have bin Laden, and added, in relation to the Taliban's request for proof of bin Laden's guilt:'There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty'.

So the war continued, and has to this day, with thousands of civilians killed, and no signs of the imminent capture of bin Laden. Even Al-Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed; this is more or less the equivalent of bombing the Fox News Network of the Arab world, assuming that Fox had actual journalists.

Yet what a history lessons when a war is 'just', particularly a good, democratising, humanitarian war? With shades of Noel Pearson's comments last week, namely, that critics of the Iraq war were 'willing failure', so too did Christopher Hitchens aver that America's Democratic Party, and other critics of the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are apparently 'defeatists' who are 'rooting for bad news'.

It is in that light, then, that the past few days have brought more bad news, and certainly more 'rooting'. US and NATO forces have even killed more Afghan civilians this year than the insurgency:

Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance
Force, blamed the insurgents for hiding in areas populated by civilians, who are
then killed during attacks against militants, but he said "that does not absolve
ISAF of the responsibility of doing all it can to minimize civilian
casualties."
On Saturday, [Afghan President] Karzai accused NATO and U.S.-led
troops of carelessly killing scores of Afghan civilians and warned that the
fight against resurgent Taliban militants could fail unless foreign forces show
more restraint.
"Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as
such," Karzai said angrily.
The mounting toll is sapping the authority of the
Western-backed Afghan president, who has pleaded repeatedly with U.S. and NATO commanders to consult Afghan authorities during operations and show more
restraint.
Karzai also denounced the Taliban for killing civilians, but
directed most of his anger at foreign forces. (source).

More humanitarian intervention was evidenced during recent air bombardments in the southern province of Helmand, where it is estimated that over 50 civilians died. Meanwhile, the CIA continues to dole out millions in cash and arms to Afghan warlords, and the decidedly undemocratic Pakistani government, and Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, pledged that Australia's involvement in the region would be for 'as long as necessary'. He noted (and dismissed) the recent spate of civilian casualties:

It is very, very foolish for any person of goodwill to try to create some
sort of moral equivalence between NATO and what the Taliban does. (source).

Naturally, the equivalence is not to be found: the Taliban are a brutal regime who do their killing via bombs, and hand-to-hand fighting; whilst the US and NATO do it 'surgically', with tanks and planes. Moral outrage at 'Western' brutality, is therefore quite out of the question, especially as regards this, the most 'just' and 'necessary' of humanitarian interventions.

It is apt that the chicken hawks who condemn any anti-war Westerner invoke pre-World War II analogies, by referring to their ideological opponents as appeasers. Putting aside the fact that the Nazi war machine was nothing remotely like the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, perhaps we who oppose these wars could accurately term the chickenhawks as 'collaborators', propagandising invasion and ongoing invasion, in the manner of the most contemptible Vichy stooge.

Leaving Afghanistan for the moment, and turning to Iraq, two US soldiers have been charged for these charming little incidents:

Staff Sergeant Michael Hensley was charged with three counts of
premeditated murder, obstruction of justice and of wrongfully placing weapons
beside the dead bodies in an apparent attempt to cover up the crimes.
Specialist Jorge Sandoval was charged with one count of premeditated murder
and with putting a weapon by the body. (source).

But hey, who said democracy was meant to be easy? Perhaps, with a view to avoiding charges of 'moral equivalence', the US might consider having the said soldiers tried by the Iraqis themselves. But this would imply a degree of moral reciprocity, and for a Coalition that assumes its exceptionalism is self-evident and axiomatic, such things simply won't do.

Afghanistan remains on the brink of being a 'failed state', even according to the Americans, and bin Laden and the Taliban are still at large. At least the US thirst for post 11/9 vengeance was sated, albeit temporarily, and 'power' implied in the name of the world's last 'superpower' finally had an opportunity to vaunt itself.


UPDATE: The Age has a few things to say about Afghanistan and civilian casualties.

Don't know much 'bout history, Don't know much 'bout geography...

Polling at the commencement of the Iraq War found that a majority (75%) of Americans supported the invasion. When the same polling occurred in April 2007, a majority (58%) said that the invasion was 'a mistake'. Public opinion around the world was even less favourable about Bush's war.

With this in mind, take a look at another recent survey, this one by Newsweek. The survey examined the views and beliefs of 1001 Americans aged 18 or older. The results were not flattering.

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in
10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly
involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11,
even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.

The work of Republican speechwriters and Faux News has obviously paid off, then. One wonders what support for the invasion would be like if that 41 percent had their facts correct.

A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a
multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were
born. Just 43 percent got it right—and a full 20 percent thought most came from
Iraq.

The pollsters don't speculate as to why this might be: perhaps it is because Iran's (soon-to-be-invaded?) theocracy has taken the limelight from Saudi Arabia's brutal Wahhabist regime. The latter regime is, of course, of great concern to human rights organisations, but of much less concern to our bearers of 'Democracy', who count the Saudis among their allies.

And perhaps because most (85 percent) are aware that Osama bin Laden remains at large, roughly half of the poll’s respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against his terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much.

No military defeats (the Iraq War was declared 'mission accomplished' 4 years ago) and no recent terrorist attacks, yet the War on Terror is being lost; more cause for Washington (or Canberra) fear-mongering, no doubt. It is amusing to ponder the responses of the 15 percent who believe that bin Laden isn't actually at large. Osama's doing Elvis gigs in Vegas, perhaps?

Other results of the poll are also embarrassing:

Roughly half (53 percent) are aware that Judaism is an older religion than
both Christianity and Islam (41 percent aren’t sure). And a quarter of the
population mistakenly identify either Iran (26 percent) or India (24 percent) as
the country with the largest Muslim population. Only 23 percent could correctly
identify Indonesia. Close to two thirds (61 percent) are aware that the Roman
Empire predates the Ottoman, British and American empires.

It would be easy to interpret these results as evidence of 'dumb' Americans, and make reference to anecdotes of crass and boorish US travellers. After all, anyone in America (or Australia) with the inclination and resources can readily obtain a few basic facts about the world. Yet I think we should resist the 'only in America' interpretation, and sketch some possible explanations.

When discussing political matters, I often take the media to task. The reason for this is that, all that most people know about politics is what media agencies choose to tell them. Entire speeches are routinely condensed into soundbites, and state propaganda is allowed to pass unfiltered through a complicit media. This phenomenon has been discussed at length by the likes of Chomsky, who argued that US propaganda is as effective and pervasive as anything the Soviets employed with Pravda. Faux News and Australia's own Government Gazette differ from Politburo literature only in their sophistication. Clearly, the constant linking of Iraq and 11/9 by Governments and the media is a possible explanation for the results above.

Yet this is not the full story. Another recent (June 2007) poll that I found (courtesy of Ken L) found that respondents generally did not trust the media in America. Only 23% said that they had a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in television news. The figure was 22% when applied to the print media. State indoctrination cannot be the only explanation here. We might perhaps say of supporters of the war, after Žižek, that this is a case of 'they know what they are doing, yet they are doing it all the same'.

The next obvious target for criticism would logically be the education system, which, despite the bleatings of 'cultural warriors' here and in the States, has blatantly failed to educate its citizens with information that is damaging for the reigning regimes. Supposedly 'post-modern' teaching of history cannot be blamed for an ignorance of basic facts.

Whatever the explanation, it is likely that history shall remember the twin destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as the most significant political event of the early 21st Century. Like Lady Macbeth's spot, the stain of blood spilled for conquest is not easily washed off, even in the face of pervasive ignorance. This is especially true when the 'spot' of blood is often more reminiscent of a torrent.

Shakespearean analogies aside, the significant distortion of history by our pro-Government, chickenhawk cheer-squads ensures that where there would be tragedy, there is instead farce.

I am not optimistic, but perhaps a little knowledge would go a long way to slowing America's sabre-rattling towards Iran. The Venezualans too fear that the Coalition will seek to 'democratise' them. Whilst it may seem a little too interventionist for the weak-stomached libertarians out there, perhaps the following should be distributed to the public, as a kind of war prophylactic:

Today's Recipe: Zuppa di democrazia, all'americana

1. Stage elections in the Middle-East with the support of your client state.

2. Interfere with the elections so that your preferred result is obtained.

3. Should the election result go against your intentions, with a huge majority electing a party that dislikes the goals of you, and those of your client state, provide the losing opposition party with tens of millions of dollars worth of arms and funding.

4. Stir for months, until boiling.

5. Serve with garnish of propaganda.

Friends of democracy, enjoy! As one happy customer put it:

“I hope they’ll all kill each other,” said Yvette Bagdasrov, 48, who works in a Jerusalem music store...“Every war among Arabs is a good war because they end up killing each other rather than just killing us. Fatah isn’t better than Hamas,” she said. “’Treifa’ or ‘neveila’” — they’re both the same, Meytal said, referring to two kinds of ritually unclean animals. (source).

Buon appetito?

You who Philosophise Disgrace...

Perhaps somebody is familiar with an old Bob Dylan song, 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll'. In it, the narrator tells the (true) story of the wealthy, white heir to a tobacco farm, 24-year old William Zanzinger, who kills his black servant, Hattie Carroll, 'with a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger'.

The two central figures of William and Hattie are placed in sharp contrast throughout the song. William Zanzinger is the privileged son of politically-connected parents, and is bailed 'minutes' after being arrested for the killing. Hattie Carroll, on the other hand, is depicted largely in her status qua servant, and in her familial roles; she 'gave birth to ten children'.

The contrast between the two characters emphasises the sense of injustice that characterises the murder. No motive is given for the senseless killing, except that Zanzinger 'just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'. Nonetheless, depictions of injustice give way to a pending justice. At the end of each verse but the last, the narrator sings the refrain -

'But you who philosophise disgrace and criticise all fears/Take the rag away from your face. Now ain't the time for your tears.'

The justice of those who 'philosophise' and 'criticise' however, is not merely deferred, but does not arrive at all. The legal system dealing with Williams' crime, eager to show that 'the courts are on the level', delivers a judgement that is 'handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance'. This retributive 'justice' turns out to be a mere 6-month sentence, at which point the narrator closes: 'Now's the time for your tears'.

I was reminded of this song by some of the many articles one finds in The Australian and other papers on a regular basis. I'm not referring to articles on black/white inequality, or class difference, (one doesn't find these in the Murdoch media in any case), but the so-called 'war on terror'.

Our philosophers of disgrace remind us of the need to remain vigilant to the forces of senseless brutality, of the would-be terrorist that could be hiding in any mosque. One of our stalwart and evergreen keyboard crusaders, Greg Sheridan, put it this way:

The war on terror, the long war, just now is going badly. Very badly. Our
enemies are making solid progress, geographically, organisationally and in their
brilliant public relations campaigns. The West is divided and in key
battlefields losing resolve.

Mr Sheridan explains in greater detail just how the weakened West is being 'divided':

The Western commentariat, not least in Australia, has embraced the pro-terrorist
proposition that almost the only people not morally responsible for terrorism
are the terrorists. Downer's comments also show how very difficult it is to make
a strategic assessment of Iraq...The ability of the terrorists to create
dramatic international events that feed into its single narrative, and play on
pre-existing Muslim paranoia, which is greatly amplified by the anti-Western
bias of much of the Western Left and media (as outlined in the seminal book
What's Left by Nick Cohen), makes it extraordinarily difficult for the West to
win the hearts and minds battle at the centre of the war on terror.

I shall pass by the supposed 'pro-terrorist' tenets of the 'Western Left', and I will not ask, for the time being, what precisely it is the Mr Sheridan means by 'pre-existing Muslim paranoia'. Sheridan explains that the mission to put Right the injustice of Islamic terror had one, apparently self-evident and inevitable conclusion:

The US was thus impelled to go into Iraq for three separate sets of
reasons: traditional geo-strategic concerns about the extreme danger of Saddam
with WMDs; war on terror reasons concerning the danger of Saddam co-operating
with al-Qa'ida; and humanitarian reasons to rid the Iraqi people of the worst
and most brutal dictator of the past several decades.

Is it even worth the time of critiquing such a statement? About non-existent WMD's, or ties to terrorist groups? Or the even more brutally non-existent lack of humanitarianism in Iraq at the moment, as reported, for instance, by a fellow blogger? Or the fact that the chief architect of this 'humanitarian' intervention, the US government, has a track record on foreign policy that is only marginally better than Saddam's? Perhaps we intellectual ingrates should be content in the knowledge that the Great Powers are so concerned safety and justice.

Let us turn instead to another writer who philosophises disgrace, to the shame of the "western Left'. I refer here to Melanie Phillips, in self-imposed exile from progressive intellectuals, and, apparently, in self-imposed exile from reason and reality (which, like our ABC, reportedly has a 'Leftist' bias). Melanie presents an acute diagnosis of the malaise that has infected those who question Coalition tactics:

So much of our political class is paralysed by guilt for what it perceives
to be the West's original sin of colonialism. Throughout the West, there is
currently a major problem of political leadership. The political class is
incapable of disinterested statesmanship because it is no longer sure in what -
if anything - it still believes.

She cites, by way of counter-example, that man who is the very paradigm of principled politics; none other than our own John W. Howard. The courageous Howard, 'comfortable in his own cultural skin', like the US liberators in Iraq, is a role model sufficiently worthy to put the decadent Western Left, with their questioning, hesitations, and introspection, to shame.

After reading all this, I then, fortuitously, turned my attention to a non-Murdoch paper, paralysed by guilt at how the ever-divisive Left had impeded the noble missions of Howard and the US, and how intellectuals had wilfully hindered justice. Obviously, the mighty Coalition doing the killing is doing so for security and justice, and courageously, without fear or favour, as evidenced by this article:

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and
crashed, killing all 73
people aboard... Investigators in Venezuela, where the doomed flight
originated, quickly determined that a famous anti-Castro terrorist, Luis Posada
Carriles, had probably planned this attack. More than 30 years later,
however, Posada remains amazingly immune to prosecution. Instead of going to
jail, he went to work for the CIA.

The author concludes:

"If you harbour a terrorist, you are a terrorist," President Bush famously
declared after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The United States is now
harbouring Luis Posada Carriles. His continued freedom mocks victims of
terrorism everywhere. It also shows how heavily the "war on terror" is overlaid
with politics and hypocrisy.

So there you have it. Justice is entirely relative, and its appreciation requires that one be relaxed and 'comfortable' in one's own 'cultural skin'. Our system for dealing with international crimes is 'on the level'. Our lone prophets in the wilderness, such as Phillips or Sheridan, are warning the intellectual Left of its wicked ways. May these treasonous peaceniks heed that warning!

Or, perhaps, like Hattie Carroll, some victims are merely worth more than others, or are not even considered victims at all. As our troubadour might conclude:

'Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.'

Stoopidity

Intellect is often at issue when discussing the exploits of this guy:












Particularly in relation to the vexed question of Iraq:

This shouldn't be surprising, when we remember that this guy has given us such gems of oratory as:

'I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president'.

And:

'I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things'.

Among others.















Clearly, the guy isn't 'very analytical'. Beyond the apparent imbecility, it is often further presumed, both popularly, and among the more 'critical' sections of the media, that this guy is actually at the mercy of these guys:

The problem is, however, that this is precisely the message from the media that allows voters to identify with this guy - after all, most of us are a little incompetent at times, most of us are at times the victims of malevolent (and in Bush's case, moustachioed) forces. Being able to identify with a candidate is important when your elections are as much about 'personality' as they are about policy. And, as any psychoanalyst will tell you, identification can be a very powerful thing, irrespective of whether you are an average family person:

Or a core part of the right-wing constituency:

When we, who presume ourselves to be among the non-stoopids, characterise the likes of Bush as imbecilic, we tend to forget that, if we live in Australia or the US, we are part of an aggressively anti-intellectual, consumerist culture:

In short, we forget that stupidity, marketed well, can win votes. Bush has gone out of his way to promote himself as a 'down home', bumbling kinda guy. The non-stupids have, unwittingly and indirectly, made (the stupid) Bush more palatable, by facilitating identification with him.

The tragedy of this is two-fold; firstly, it means that scheming money-grubbers continually win elections (in the US and Australia).

Secondly, it means that discussion about things like the war in Iraq, far from being construed as ethical, is simply reduced to a debate over tactics (the latter being the practical manifestation of 'intellect'). Tactical 'debate' has been characteristic of popular discourse on Iraq for the past few years, whilst the media conveniently forgets that disarmament was the purported goal of the war. A debate that should have occurred on whether it is permissible to 'pre-emptively strike' (i.e. kill) was relegated to the sidelines, in favour of a debate on how the striking might cimply be made more efficient. When almost all of the disastrous consequences of the invasion were entirely predictable, it is only the most disingenuous of observers who can blithely attribute Iraq's 'problems' to 'resourcing' issues, or tactical blunders.

It goes without saying that, when protesters march in their thousands against Bush, from Beirut to Buenos Aires, it is not precisely in opposition to foolish tactics. Bush's stupidity has been one of his greatest strengths, and it has been one of the Western media's greatest achievements to (almost) completely transform Iraq's catastrophes into mere errors of judgement on the part of the West. This should (but inevitably won't) give food for thought to those lining up warships in the Persian Gulf, about whether the Western world wants to open another door it has no ability (or intention?) to shut.