Saturday, April 17, 2004

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 5:34:27 PM     From a comment at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3712 We were attacked on 9/11 by al Qaeda, which is a Suni Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization. Al Qaeda’s goal is to install Islamic fundamentalist governments throughout the Muslim world. Attacking America is a device to rally Islamic fundamentalist around the world to its cause and build its strength for its real goal. The secular Socialist Baathists government in Iraq (and Syria) was clearly a target that al Qaeda wanted to overthrow and replace with an Islamic fundamentalist government. With Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, that was impossible. Saddam Hussein had brutally repressed Islamic fundamentalist in Iraq, for example killing Moqtada al-Sadr's father. Syria also has brutally repressed Islamic fundamentalist. By overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his Baathists government in Iraq, we have given an opening to the Islamic fundamentalist to seize power in Iraq, something that al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist could never dream of accomplishing on their own. By not using enough ground forces to restore law and order, we have created the kind of chaotic environment that allows extremist to seize power. I think this is so vitally important. ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 1:24:35 PM     An important question: when the Iraq dust settles, will the Iraq government allow the US to maintain bases? If this is clear - and the answer is no - before the election, seems to me Bush hasn't a chance. That is why, just like the Hamas assassination, I am worried about Bush escalation - when in trouble, double your bet. ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 1:16:01 PM     Overheard We support Bush because he is doing a great job in the task we selected him for: the transfer of as much wealth as possible to us and our families and friends. About every ten years we need to get a president in power to do this. Bush 2 has been a champ, better than his father and as good as Reagan (when he gets his second term). I had not seen this far. I suspected that much of the vote for Bush was a desire to protect the wealth gained in the Clinton years. Bush was more likely to call outthe National Guard, for example, if WTO protest style deepened its hold on the country. But it hadn't occured to me that the real purpose might be to harvest the clinton gains from the few to the very few. ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 11:10:57 AM     One theme in the 9/11 article is that during Clinton the FBI was taken up with the issue of drugs. It suggests that in hindsight the drug issue was a distraction for america from the real issues of US impact on the world.   ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 11:02:23 AM     Very good article on the current state of the 9/11 commission. NYT sunday http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/politics/18SEPT.html?hp I once did a scenarios exercise within the CIA, and got to see and experience the atmosphere. I concluded that control was more important than conversation, isolated fact more important than story weaving and comparisons. I also saw, through that and other connections living in Washington, that the number of issues screaming for attention is huge.The two normal ways of dealing with overload, intuition and collegiality, both tended to fail. The first because intuition was not in touch with the salient realities, and second, collegiality meant contact with those who are like minded. The result is, it is almost impossible to feel smart in the higher positions. The real charge against Bush is that he was so dominated by a priori thinking, and supported by a staff of has beens who did the same, that responsiveness never had a chance. The charge against Clinton turns out to be a charge against the country: pursuing him to the point that personal facts like Monica broke to the surface and required massive defense. That is a complaint about the right, the press, and the public. ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 9:52:29 AM     History works perverse. If there is a real fight with the local opposition in Iraq, since most opinion is now to halt the violence and that Muqtada was wrong, the fight will give Bush the chance to act as part of an actual majority of world opinion, and by implication, be with the good guys. Indeed, as the strategy moves to save Iraq from a nasty civil war, and the broad support in Europe and Asia is clear (as well as in Iraq)  the fact of the US incursion will tend to grow dimmer. The balance will be things like the Woodward book, Kerry pushing, and the 9/11 hearings, that will keep the mistakes in front of us.   As I see it there are some emerging goals 1. a reasonable Iraq, part of a multinational alliance of multinational oriented regimes, in this case fairly democratic. 2. A real shift to multi nationalism 3. a reforming of the international economic game. This is made harder now that India and China are emerging winners under the current rules, and the US may be fading.  The elites in India and China will need to get satiated with their victories before real reform is possible. ********

Posted here Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 9:42:38 AM     This from Chomsky, Typically, military occupations are quite successful, even by the most horrendous conquerors. Take, say, Hitler's occupation of Western Europe and Russia's postwar occupation of Eastern Europe. In both cases, the countries were run by collaborators, security forces and civilian, with the troops of the conqueror in the background. There was courageous partisan resistance under Hitler, but without extensive foreign support, it would have been wiped out. In Eastern Europe, the US tried to support resistance (inside Russia as well) until the early 1950s, and of course Russia was in confrontation with the world dominant superpower. There are many other examples. Consider, in contrast, the invasion of Iraq. It eliminated two monstrous regimes, one of which we are allowed to talk about, the other not. The first was the rule of the tyrant. The second was the US-UK imposed sanctions regime, which killed 100s of thousands of people, devastated the society, strengthened the tyrant, and compelled the population to rely on him survival -- probably saving him from the fate of other gangsters supported by the current incumbents in Washington, all overthrown from within; that was a plausible surmise before the war, and is even more so in the light of postwar discoveries about the fragility of Saddam's rule. The ending of both regimes was certainly welcome to the population. The US had enormous resources to reconstruct the ruins. Resistance had virtually no outside support, and in fact developed within largely in response to violence and brutality of the invaders. It took real talent to fail. What is always difficult with Chomsky is the unspoken, the roads not taken, the mental states not considered. It is hard to point to any one sentence. In this case I think that he wants a local blame, as in the last few sentences that imply that we had a chance, at the late date, for a good ending.  But Chomsky's vie is large and we should not lose sight of the larger issues just to find blame. the blame is large, and solutions hardly at hand. The real question is, what is some guidance on longer term reasonable actions? Pakistan would be one issue, but Chomsky would be good to raise the issue to the higher level of how to get economic justice in a world full of competition?   ********