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 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?   ********