Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 10:17:08 PM     This kind of policy earns high marks in workability. The americans could have led with thsi kind of proposal, which is probably inevitable (unless things get really much worse), but again missed the opportunity for any kind of leadership. http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en65229&;F_catID=&f_type=source UNITED NATIONS: Germany wants Iraq to set up a national security council to resolve disputes about military action between US-led forces, the Iraqi army and the new interim government, its diplomats said on Wednesday. The proposal was part of an effort to resolve the most controversial section of a planned UN Security Council resolution on Iraq - the relationship between the Iraqi army and police and the US-led foreign troops. Basically there is no disagreement in the council that Iraqi forces can say "no" to participation in an American military operation, but German envoys told reporters there should be a "mechanism" for them to do this. The idea of some kind of coordinating body for security is shared by other Security Council members, said Pakistan's Ambassador Munir Akram, this month's council president. "Part of the discussion is the possibility of a sort of consultative committee in which there would be representation of all sides... and that the actual security policy would be coordinated," he said. ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 7:38:31 PM     The handoff. It is looking like Bush wants a fast turn around and is willing to shift oil revenue to Iraq, and much else, except the first appointments and the security forces. But I look for even these to be offered up in order to get UN/NATO support. That suggests that oil and strategy were not solid pieces of Bush strategy, that only being a bully was the driver. It was never thought through and all has been the instinct of a small group of amateurs at real power. The plot thins.   ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 4:38:07 PM     It looks to me like Democrats fear Republican pugnaciousness and lack of a culture of compassion, and the willingness to reduce the world to rubble to achieve some unspoken goal of family, money, and local control. But equally the Republicans fear the Democratic tendency to fill the world with bureaucracy and coercive programs that reduce the world to housing, health systems and education, also in the name of some unspoken vision of compassion, and abstract equity. The dems fear the blood of war and capital punishment, the republicans fear the blood of abortion and the bloodless death of bureaucratic enslavement. In this mix, for the Republicans business bureaucracy is OK, but state bureaucracy is bad. For the democrats, its the reverse. What is striking is that they are so hateful toward the perceived excesses of the other, and each provides plenty of evidence for such excesses, and hence the hatred seems rational. But in the whole system there is more to hate than to appreciate, embrace, and help develop. I remember at Berkeley in the early 60's the incredible gestapo tactics of the John Birch society and the Young republicans, and the Leninist meeting control of the SDS. Both were PC in dress, rep ties vs Ginsburg beards, scotch vs wine and grass, but both tough, much more convinced than convincing. It was a harbinger. We live in an entropic society. ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 4:18:39 PM     From Isaih Berlin's Vico and Herder,  quoting Herder, In 1802, in his periodical Adrastea^ he imagines a conversation between an Asian and a European: in the course of it the Asian (an Indian) says, * "Tell me, have you still not lost the habit of trying to convert to your faith peoples whose property you steal, whom you rob, enslave, murder, deprive of their land and their state, to whom your customs seem revolting? Supposing that one of them came to your country, and with an insolent air pronounced absurd all that is most sacred to you—your laws, your religion, your wisdom, your institutions, and so on, what would you do to such a man?" "Oh, but that is quite a different matter' ,"»  On this topic Herder remained uncompromising and passionate:' "Why are you pouring water over my head?" asked a dying slave of a Christian missionary. "So that you can go to Heaven". "I do not want to go to a heaven where there are white men", he replied, and turned on his side and died'.3 'By this means we, Europeans, are engaged in forging the chains with which they will bind us'. Herder is as certain as Karl Marx that those who oppress and exploit others and force their own institutions on others are acting as their own grave-diggers—that^one day 'the victims will rise against us and use our catchwords, our methods and ideals to crush us'.   ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 4:16:17 PM     Wesley Clark on what should be the US strategy, and what went wrong. He argues that we must prent chaos in Iraq, which means escallation. But Bush seems unable to make any correct decision. No eladership, no presence, weak on Israel, absent onmost everything that counts - and renaming the Abu Ghraib prison Redemption is so counter productive. Bush is the in your face grade school bully. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.clark.html ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 12:56:47 PM     Is the Sivits trial too fast? I so far do not trust it. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-IRAQ.html But Specialist Sivits said that one of the other soldiers participating in the abuses — he said he could not remember who — said the soldiers had been told by people with military intelligence, commonly referred to as M.I., to mistreat the officials. "They told me later they were asked to do this," the defendant said. "Who told you that?" the judge asked. "One of the six," Specialist Sivits replied. "They told me they were told by M.I. to keep doing what they were doing. It was working. They were talking." Specialist Sivits — who the father of two children and a Little League baseball coach — described conditions in the prison as "hell." "We were being attacked by mortars, rockets, small-arms fire," he said. "It was dark. The prison was overcrowded. It was dark. It was like hell, sir." ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 12:35:24 PM     Deterioration, such as in Iraq, always brings out activities that were below the threshold before. One now is, everyone is angry and upset. The kind of mood that can lead to the attack on might have been  an Iraq wedding party. Note that we have WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The situation in Iraq could become more violent after the June 30 handover leading up to elections, which could require the deployment of more U.S. forces, the head of U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday. That is, in order to calm hostility to the US, we will put in more troops. ********

Posted here Wednesday, May 19, 2004 at 11:07:27 AM     A good article on Kerry's strategy. Get the center, don't offer too much that can be shot at. http://www.bopnews.com/archives/000734.html#000734 ********