Life became worse for large numbers of Iraqis in 2004. Suicide car bombings, gun battles, kidnappings, beheadings and assassinations killed thousands of people, sometimes more than a hundred on a single day....Speaks for itself.
Karim Wamidh, 54, an employee at the Ministry of Agriculture in Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad and the home town of deposed president Saddam Hussein, said he had high hopes for the country when 2004 began.
"We thought with the coming of the new year, we could have a new life, freedom, justice and security," he said. "But what happened during the year was very disappointing. A high level of unemployment, terrorism increased and poverty spread."
Wamidh said he would hope for better days in 2005.
"Maybe the situation will change after we get the elected government," he said, referring to elections scheduled for Jan. 30, "although I don't think anything would change with the existence of occupation in the country."
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Not much to celebrate
State failure in Iraq
In his late essay "Politics as a Vocation," (1918) Max Weber famously defined the state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." Legitimacy is, of course, the key word in the phrase, and Weber's definition begs the question of how to define legitimacy. One way to understand the legitimacy of the use of force is by considering how the civilian population reacts to the application of force.
Consider the paradigmatic case of the American state. Despite certain wobbles (as during the Rodney King riots, for example), the application of force by the state, in the form of the police, against civilians is universally accepted. An example illustrates the point: when Americans see the police applying force to someone -- say, on the side of the road stepping on someone's neck next to a stopped car -- they assume that the police must have some just cause for their action: an outstanding warrant, the smell of drugs in the car, whatever. Maybe they'll stop and look, maybe take some video, but even if they suspect that application of force may be unjust in a specific sense, people won't intervene because they generally speaking accept in some unstated, unreasoned way that the application of force has its social place and the police are the social institution that the American community vests with the right to apply force. Moreover, the police generally don't mind if you stop and look, or even videotape, because they know that the population generally supports them and believes in what they do, so that being scrutinized is okay.
This is what legitimacy looks like.
Now let's consider now what's happened in Iraq in the last two years. Two years ago, Saddam's murderous state, whatever else it was, was legitimate. The Iraqi people accepted when Saddam's secret police showed up and disappeared people. The Iraqi people didn't like Saddam's vicious regime any more than homeboys in Compton like getting their ass kicked by cops, but the Iraqi people accepted Saddam's regime in just the same way the Compton homies accept the police presence in their midst: sullenly, resentfully, but definitely. Moreover, under Saddam, Saddam's regime was the only institution in Iraqi society that had this ability. Common criminals couldn't drive up and shoot Baathists, Islamists couldn't execute cops in the street, and if anything like that went on it certainly would not have been accepted as more or less of a normal condition by the Iraqi population. Moreover, if you wanted to shoot a Baathist or a cop, you certainly wouldn't have the audacity to do it in broad daylight, allowing civilians to just walk by as you do it. In short, to reiterate: Saddam's state was legitimate.
(In fact, if one wanted to take the neocons' side, one might even argue that the Saddam regime's legitimacy was exactly why the U.S. had to invade: the Iraqi people were never going to overthrow Saddam, any more than the homies in Compton are going to overthrow the L.A.P.D. But that's another debate.)
Okay, that was the situation two years ago. So what's the situation now? A recently-released Al-Qaeda video provides stunning evidence, showing militants lining up five captured Iraqi security officers and executing them in the street. That would be just be an everyday example of the horror in Iraq and the barbaric nature of Al-Qaeda, except for this:
This is not to say that American or Allawist applications of force are not also considered legitimate by the population. No doubt they are. But that's the whole point: there is no longer a single institution in Iraq that has a monopoly on the use of force. Zarqarwi has it; the U.S. Army has it; the Iraqi police have it; in some parts of Iraq, even common criminals have it.
In other words, American military action in Iraq has replaced a (very nasty) legitimate state with a failed one.
And now I ask you, which kind of place provides more space for murderous anti-American terrorists: legitimate (albeit nasty) states, or failed ones? From what kind of place was 9-11 planned?
Mission Accomplished!
Consider the paradigmatic case of the American state. Despite certain wobbles (as during the Rodney King riots, for example), the application of force by the state, in the form of the police, against civilians is universally accepted. An example illustrates the point: when Americans see the police applying force to someone -- say, on the side of the road stepping on someone's neck next to a stopped car -- they assume that the police must have some just cause for their action: an outstanding warrant, the smell of drugs in the car, whatever. Maybe they'll stop and look, maybe take some video, but even if they suspect that application of force may be unjust in a specific sense, people won't intervene because they generally speaking accept in some unstated, unreasoned way that the application of force has its social place and the police are the social institution that the American community vests with the right to apply force. Moreover, the police generally don't mind if you stop and look, or even videotape, because they know that the population generally supports them and believes in what they do, so that being scrutinized is okay.
This is what legitimacy looks like.
Now let's consider now what's happened in Iraq in the last two years. Two years ago, Saddam's murderous state, whatever else it was, was legitimate. The Iraqi people accepted when Saddam's secret police showed up and disappeared people. The Iraqi people didn't like Saddam's vicious regime any more than homeboys in Compton like getting their ass kicked by cops, but the Iraqi people accepted Saddam's regime in just the same way the Compton homies accept the police presence in their midst: sullenly, resentfully, but definitely. Moreover, under Saddam, Saddam's regime was the only institution in Iraqi society that had this ability. Common criminals couldn't drive up and shoot Baathists, Islamists couldn't execute cops in the street, and if anything like that went on it certainly would not have been accepted as more or less of a normal condition by the Iraqi population. Moreover, if you wanted to shoot a Baathist or a cop, you certainly wouldn't have the audacity to do it in broad daylight, allowing civilians to just walk by as you do it. In short, to reiterate: Saddam's state was legitimate.
(In fact, if one wanted to take the neocons' side, one might even argue that the Saddam regime's legitimacy was exactly why the U.S. had to invade: the Iraqi people were never going to overthrow Saddam, any more than the homies in Compton are going to overthrow the L.A.P.D. But that's another debate.)
Okay, that was the situation two years ago. So what's the situation now? A recently-released Al-Qaeda video provides stunning evidence, showing militants lining up five captured Iraqi security officers and executing them in the street. That would be just be an everyday example of the horror in Iraq and the barbaric nature of Al-Qaeda, except for this:
The five prisoners — apparently captured in the insurgent hotbed of Ramadi, west of Baghdad — were shown sitting on the ground with five masked gunmen behind them, one reading a statement. A banner carrying the name of al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaida in Iraq, hung in the background.... The video then showed the five men lined up, their hands bound behind their back, and shot in a street in broad daylight. The militants repeatedly shot the men even after they fell to the ground. People and cars are visible in the video, passing by during the shooting, and some even stop to watch. [Italics and boldface added]That the Zarqawists commit this sort of outrage plainly and openly shows that population considers it legitimate. The fact that the Qaedists don't mind that people stop and watch means they feel confident that the population generally accepts their actions. (To be clear: legitimacy does not mean that the Iraqi people like this sort of thing; it just means that the local community accepts this kind of thing as being more or less within the horizon of reasonable expectation. "Nothing to get hung about," as John Lennon put it.)
This is not to say that American or Allawist applications of force are not also considered legitimate by the population. No doubt they are. But that's the whole point: there is no longer a single institution in Iraq that has a monopoly on the use of force. Zarqarwi has it; the U.S. Army has it; the Iraqi police have it; in some parts of Iraq, even common criminals have it.
In other words, American military action in Iraq has replaced a (very nasty) legitimate state with a failed one.
And now I ask you, which kind of place provides more space for murderous anti-American terrorists: legitimate (albeit nasty) states, or failed ones? From what kind of place was 9-11 planned?
Mission Accomplished!
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Ah yes, Modernization, that's the thing
Washington Post:
Abizaid believes that the Long War is only in its early stages. Victory will be hard to measure, he says, because the enemy won't wave a white flag and surrender one day. Success will instead be an incremental process of modernization of the Islamic world, which will gradually find its own accommodation with the global economy and open political systems.Haven't we seen this movie before? Wolfowitz, a latterday Rostow....
Think Local (as in, Texas), Act Global (as in, Iraq)
George Bush shows his statesmanship:
Actions? Like offering aid for 5 million (overwhelmingly Muslim) disaster victims in an amount equivalent to what we spend every day in Iraq between breakfast and lunch....Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or
making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.'"Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Admitting failure doesn't meant giving up the goal
Most people know that pride should go before the fall. And the wise know when they've made a mistake and can admit it. Did Reagan pulling out of Lebanon after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing cost America the Cold War? Did Israel pulling out of the Sinai make Egypt ever more arrogant in its effort to destroy Israel? Did the U.S. pulling out of Vietnam cause all of Southeast Asia to go Communist? Did France pulling out of Algeria destroy the French nation? Did South Africa giving up on apartheid lead to a genocide of the Souther African whites?
One could multiply the list endlessly, but the point is clear. Admitting that a strategy has failed does not necessarily entail a loss of the strategic goals. Indeed, it can often clear the way to achieving those very goals.
One could multiply the list endlessly, but the point is clear. Admitting that a strategy has failed does not necessarily entail a loss of the strategic goals. Indeed, it can often clear the way to achieving those very goals.
We're losing in Iraq
One line that American "hard power" enthusiasts like to parrot is (a version of the stab-in-the-back hypothesis) that the U.S. cannot lose militarily in Iraq. Leave aside that this is at best an irrelevant claim when fighting an insurgency, since it's the political battle that matters; it's also just not true, as this piece by Georgie Anne Geyer makes clear:
With that said, I suspect Geyer's timeline may be wrong: the United States can and (now that George Bush has been reelected) probably will hang on for a very long time without suffering a Dien Bien Phu, i.e. a final cataclysmic military defeat. The temptation for the Bush regime to hang on as long as possible is very high, for an elementary psychological reason: as long as one does not admit to defeat, one can always hope against reason that some deus ex machina will arrive to vindicate a losing cause. It's the same reasoning that causes people to stay in marriages for long after it is obvious they have failed, tailing into ever more interpersonally destructive behavior; or why companies engage in ever more reckless financial gambles as they see themselves sliding toward bankruptcy, with the result that the final balance sheet is even more catastrophic.
In this respect, the right-wing critique of Kerry may have been justified: since his own historical fate would not have depended on the perceived wisdom of the initial decision to go to war, but only on the proper handling of the postwar, he could have made decisions without the having to consider whether it would vindicate the original decision. In other words, a President Kerry would have been much more psychologically able to pull the ripcord on the burgeoning disaster. By contrast, Bush is in a much more tenuous position: just as Johnson had to keep escalating the Vietnam War to vindicate his initial decisions, Bush will be sorely tempted to keep raising the stakes on his own Mideast gambles.
Might an iota of historical consciousness have helped? Perhaps not, since the problem with this regime is not exactly a total ignorance of history, but rather an understanding of history just shallow enough to divine spurious lessons, but not deep enough to understand the contingency and sheer luck that underpins so many historical success stories. (Which is precisely why war should always be a last resort.)Today in Iraq... our "answer" has been that we can get out when Iraqi forces are trained, when elections are held, and when Iraqis themselves win back the country from the "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "guerrillas" (or whatever we finally determine they are).
But in only the last two weeks, American generals and civilian officials are, in fact, admitting that they have... problems. In Mosul, the Iraqi police force has "faded away." American generals speak of a "virtual connectivity" of the insurgents never seen before, as they use the Internet to pass along techniques, tactics and advice to one another. American generals now admit that almost all of them are Iraqis; we have created the Iraqi terrorists who were not there before....
American generals now speak in interviews about the "cellular expansion" of the insurgents. They see a constant spread of new, small cells with no clear command and control links that can form quickly, exploit and sacrifice, rather than relying on hard-core or closed, secure cells and forces. The Independent newspaper in London estimates there were at least 190 suicide bombers in the last 12 months (one might pause to think that they had something they believed in to take such a terminal measure)....
The truth no one really wants to deal with is that this war could very easily be lost by the United States. All the insurgents have to do is hang on another year. All we have to do is what the French and the British did in their colonies: Let themselves be exhausted and finally destroyed by their hubris, their delusions and their arrogant lack of understanding of the local people. (Emphasis added)
With that said, I suspect Geyer's timeline may be wrong: the United States can and (now that George Bush has been reelected) probably will hang on for a very long time without suffering a Dien Bien Phu, i.e. a final cataclysmic military defeat. The temptation for the Bush regime to hang on as long as possible is very high, for an elementary psychological reason: as long as one does not admit to defeat, one can always hope against reason that some deus ex machina will arrive to vindicate a losing cause. It's the same reasoning that causes people to stay in marriages for long after it is obvious they have failed, tailing into ever more interpersonally destructive behavior; or why companies engage in ever more reckless financial gambles as they see themselves sliding toward bankruptcy, with the result that the final balance sheet is even more catastrophic.
In this respect, the right-wing critique of Kerry may have been justified: since his own historical fate would not have depended on the perceived wisdom of the initial decision to go to war, but only on the proper handling of the postwar, he could have made decisions without the having to consider whether it would vindicate the original decision. In other words, a President Kerry would have been much more psychologically able to pull the ripcord on the burgeoning disaster. By contrast, Bush is in a much more tenuous position: just as Johnson had to keep escalating the Vietnam War to vindicate his initial decisions, Bush will be sorely tempted to keep raising the stakes on his own Mideast gambles.
Aceh quake may have made Earth wobble
Earth takes one on the chin:
The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation -- shortening days by a fraction of a second -- and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said Tuesday.
Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or one millionth of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.
When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross said.
Bush's "mandate"
The most unpopular just-reelected President since they started running the polls.
Just underscores what a poor candidate Kerry was.
Just underscores what a poor candidate Kerry was.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Susan Sontag Dead
Sontag wa one of the great ones, a true moral force, equally condemning of all imperial hubris, whether fascism, Stalinism, or America's own hegemonic pretensions.
Like everyone else who ever read or knew her, I had my beefs with Sontag (she once called my graduate advisor, the most excessively reasonable of liberals, a Stalinist), but in general her moral sensibility was far more right than wrong. In particular, her immediate response to 9-11, printed in the New Yorker, and the subject of almost endless howls on "anti-Americanism" on the part of the frothy-mouthed right, was as acute as anything that was written in that first week:
Damn right. And also sadly prophetic: not only is "strong" perhaps the only thing our country has been since 9-11, it is precisely the lack of even a shred of historical awareness that has led us into the inextricable disaster in Iraq.
Like everyone else who ever read or knew her, I had my beefs with Sontag (she once called my graduate advisor, the most excessively reasonable of liberals, a Stalinist), but in general her moral sensibility was far more right than wrong. In particular, her immediate response to 9-11, printed in the New Yorker, and the subject of almost endless howls on "anti-Americanism" on the part of the frothy-mouthed right, was as acute as anything that was written in that first week:
The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.
Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be.
Damn right. And also sadly prophetic: not only is "strong" perhaps the only thing our country has been since 9-11, it is precisely the lack of even a shred of historical awareness that has led us into the inextricable disaster in Iraq.
At least Bush is winning one GWOT
USA Today reported today that the Bush regime has decided not to renominate the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, the official responsible for internal auditing of departmental practices. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised, though, given that this guy (the impressively named Clark Kent Ervin) said in an interview last week that
Whenever the Bush regime is exposed for its failures in the Global War on Terror, the response is to re-up his offensive in his undeclared Global War on Transparency. That's one war where he's not afraid to put plenty of troops in theatre.
Damn backstabbing disgruntled ex-officials. Oops... except, he made these observations while he was still on staff.airport security isn't tight enough and that little has been done to safeguard other forms of mass transit. Ervin said ports remain vulnerable to terrorists trying to smuggle weapons into the country. He added that immigration and customs investigators are hampered in their efforts to track down illegal immigrants because they often lack gas money for their cars.
"There are still all these security gaps in the country that have yet to be closed," Ervin said. Meanwhile, he added, Homeland Security officials have wasted millions of dollars because of "chaotic and disorganized" accounting practices, lavish spending on social occasions and employee bonuses and a failure to require competitive bidding for some projects....
While in office, Ervin made some scathing findings. He reported that:
- Undercover investigators were able to sneak explosives and weapons past security screeners at 15 airports during tests in 2003.
- Federal air marshals, hired to provide a last line of defense against terrorists on airlines, slept on the job, tested positive for alcohol or drugs while on duty, lost their weapons and falsified information in 2002.
- Department leaders should have taken a more aggressive role in efforts to combine the government's myriad terrorist watch lists since the department was created in 2003.
- The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) gave executive bonuses of $16,477 to 88 of its 116 senior managers in 2003, an amount one-third higher than the bonuses given to executives at any other federal agency.
- The TSA spent nearly $500,000 on an awards banquet for employees in November 2003. The cost included $1,500 for three cheese displays and $3.75 for each soft drink.
Whenever the Bush regime is exposed for its failures in the Global War on Terror, the response is to re-up his offensive in his undeclared Global War on Transparency. That's one war where he's not afraid to put plenty of troops in theatre.
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