Monday, May 10, 2004

Posted here Monday, May 10, 2004 at 10:45:33 PM     The shift in perspectives is quite dramatic. David Brooks writes a column in tomorrow's NYT that looks good because of his sift in viewpoint but tellingly naive. One part says http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/11BROO.html Now, looking ahead, we face another irony. To earn their own freedom, the Iraqis need a victory. And since it is too late for the Iraqis to have a victory over Saddam, it is imperative that they have a victory over us. If the future textbooks of a free Iraq get written, the toppling of Saddam will be vaguely mentioned in one clause in one sentence. But the heroic Iraqi resistance against the American occupation will be lavishly described, page after page. For us to succeed in Iraq, we have to lose. He says nothing about what this does to the war on terrorism (hopefully redefined to a more precise effort against a few with multilateral agreements). But earlier in the article he says Nonetheless, it's not too early to begin thinking about what was clearly an intellectual failure. There was, above all, a failure to understand the consequences of our power. There was a failure to anticipate the response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate. They resent us for our power and at the same time expect us to be capable of everything. There was a failure to understand the effect our power would have on other people around the world. We were so sure we were using our might for noble purposes, we assumed that sooner or later, everybody else would see that as well. Far from being blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism. Having traveled quite a bit, taken a number of anthropology courses and read a good deal of history, I find the naiveté in Brooks' prose amazingly uninformed, and hinting that his colleagues were as naive..., well,  that anyone could have believed this, just appalls me. From the start the bombing was not going to create friends, and the looting showed that the mission was unplanned, as was the threat to the supply lines very early. This is not just an intellectual failure, but a failure of imagination across cultural and class lines.   ********

Posted here Monday, May 10, 2004 at 4:55:31 PM     The following is slightly rough younger generation european talk, but important as part of the Iraq discourse, both for what it says about the culture of that group, but also for insights into the underlying larger factors at work. ----- fake newsreels depicting simulated torture of iraqi war prisoners ----- why i want to fuck george w bush ----- the optimal way to communicate white trash s&m fantasies ----- optimum wound profile of public iraqi sex slaves witch of bagdad grew up in a mobile home, the fat of her face rumsfeld "Iraq and sexual polymorphism of individualized relationships of a physical character. The need for more polymorphic roles has been demonstrated by television and news media. sexual intercourse can no longer be regarded as a personal and isolated activity , but is seen to be a vector in a public complex involving automobile styling, politics and mass communications.the iraq war has offered a focus for a wide range of polymorphic sexual impulses, and also a means by which the united states has re-established a positive psychosexual relationship with the external world.""The effectiveness of a number of political figures, e.g. george w bush and condoleezza rice, in mediating the latent sexual elements of the war indicates that this may well be their primary role." i wonder whether in secret, some of the senators questioning rumsfeld the other day actually enjoyed the photographs and have hence tried to get a hold on the movies. rumsy himself appeared as a ill-behaved toilet slave, desperately trying to contain himself in order not to stain the painfully polished floor.> These snapshots tell us more than we may perhaps want to know about> our society's heart of darkness. u kidding...... yawn yawn cut that prudish crapthere isn't anything new in that article, some psudo-ashamed rationalization of something that probably can't be rationalized.the author's attempts to cope are as perverse as the acts themselves, and aimed at an audience just as well, the bloody same way i'm typing this shit right here now.performance of some re-assuring ritual, like saying "hey, but, there's still some life in my loins, i am truly shocked"-- what's that gonna prove? that your tolerance levels remained pretty low despite the world we're living in? "now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions.the picture series of Lynndie England's ritualistic performace of the mutilation of iraqi sex slaves is in fact vital literature, a kindling of the few taste buds left in the jaded palates of our so-called sexuality" # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net ********

Posted here Monday, May 10, 2004 at 2:44:20 PM     This picture is our enemies? That was not smart. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/international/middleeast/10CND-IRAQ.html Iraqis Rebuild Cleric's Office Iraqis reconstructed the Baghdad headquarters of Moktada al-Sadr today after U.S. troops killed some three dozen militiamen loyal the Shiite cleric ********

Posted here Monday, May 10, 2004 at 9:56:34 AM     Part of the Iraq problem is that the number of actual "terrorists" has been very very small. Even the vast majority of the schools have not turned to terrorism. The problem with the Bush approach from the day of 9/11 has been to treat many as the enemy when it was only a few. That makes those treated as enemies - like detainees in Iraq most of whom are Innocent of any action toward the US - or were because pushed to it by immediate circumstances created by US presence - into confused normal people who are trying to get by. In Iraq, instead of befriending as many as possible, the attempt has been to define many as "the enemy" when they should Be just folks caught up in circumstances. ********