Elaboration: Iraq
K's basic argument for immediate troop withdrawal was that if Iraq is heading for civil war anyway, why continue to risk American (and other) lives in postponing the inevitable? My argument needn't be summarized, because I subsequently discovered George Packer did a much better job of sketching it out here. (And yes, one K sentence against eight pages of New Yorker, terribly unfair, but he's free to get his own blog...)
Anyway, the major difference between Packer's argument and mine is (1) other than concurrently conducting the kinds of local training he describes, I'd put all my eggs in the international-(UN?)-force-with-large-US-component basket, because (2) I don't think some of the other proposals, especially PRTs, will work. Not that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams aren't a good idea, but who will staff them? Deride diplomats as pinstriped cookie-pushers all you want (I'll help), but they aren't signing up, and shouldn't be asked or expected (or forced...) to. Nation-rebuilding isn't typical work for enlisted personnel, and Blackwater demonstrates why we can't leave it to contractors. So whom?
While you're poking around the New Yorker, check out this Gopnik piece. As per usual with Gopnik, it isn't the "what" of the article (Sarkozy) so much as the "what else" (the growing irrelevance of the United States).
I'm sure this will end up getting a further elaboration of its own, but, since coming back, I've had this inchoate feeling of unease that's just starting to settle into expressible thought. Part of it feels like a nightmare: flee a developing country and its hellish object lessons in bad governance and environmental breakdown, return to the homeland after nearly seven years away, only to discover: it's devolved into something that differs only by degree, not kind. In fact, I think I can now distill my feelings of dread into four words: Twilight of the Empire.
You may cry hyperbole. Each time, it seems, that I'm inclined to agree, a hurricane wipes out a city or a bridge falls down. There are smaller shifts, too; corrosions of civil society and associated fracturings that I don't recall showing as conspicuously the last time I lived here. And I think: can we really excise 1.8 trillion from the economy and not have it wound our standard of living? Or our place in the world? K gets annoyed when I make comparisons to how Soviet military overreaching in Afghanistan quietly ate that superpower hollow.
But he doesn't refute me.
Anyway, the major difference between Packer's argument and mine is (1) other than concurrently conducting the kinds of local training he describes, I'd put all my eggs in the international-(UN?)-force-with-large-US-component basket, because (2) I don't think some of the other proposals, especially PRTs, will work. Not that the Provincial Reconstruction Teams aren't a good idea, but who will staff them? Deride diplomats as pinstriped cookie-pushers all you want (I'll help), but they aren't signing up, and shouldn't be asked or expected (or forced...) to. Nation-rebuilding isn't typical work for enlisted personnel, and Blackwater demonstrates why we can't leave it to contractors. So whom?
While you're poking around the New Yorker, check out this Gopnik piece. As per usual with Gopnik, it isn't the "what" of the article (Sarkozy) so much as the "what else" (the growing irrelevance of the United States).
I'm sure this will end up getting a further elaboration of its own, but, since coming back, I've had this inchoate feeling of unease that's just starting to settle into expressible thought. Part of it feels like a nightmare: flee a developing country and its hellish object lessons in bad governance and environmental breakdown, return to the homeland after nearly seven years away, only to discover: it's devolved into something that differs only by degree, not kind. In fact, I think I can now distill my feelings of dread into four words: Twilight of the Empire.
You may cry hyperbole. Each time, it seems, that I'm inclined to agree, a hurricane wipes out a city or a bridge falls down. There are smaller shifts, too; corrosions of civil society and associated fracturings that I don't recall showing as conspicuously the last time I lived here. And I think: can we really excise 1.8 trillion from the economy and not have it wound our standard of living? Or our place in the world? K gets annoyed when I make comparisons to how Soviet military overreaching in Afghanistan quietly ate that superpower hollow.
But he doesn't refute me.
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Post a CommentAfter the Minneapolis bridge tragedy, my Indian professor-friend (who now teaches at a big Rust Belt state school) sent me the following: "Corrupt politicians, compliant media, collapsing bridges: this country is turning into India."
Civil society is eroding here, too. I blame it on consumer electronics that let us live in our own world even in public. We were at a comedy gig the other night and, during the interval, the Italian observed that everyone seemed to pull out his mobile phone: checking messages, texting, playing games. There was no opportunity to make small talk: "How did you like that first act?" etc. The iPod means that people can willingly ignore one another on crowded trains and buses in a way that is less possible when one is, say, reading.
Dear Ms. E:
Would you do me a favor, and pass this message to Mr. K for me? Regarding his feelings of annoyance at your opinions, yet he still doesn't (in your mind) refute them: Please tell him 'I feel your pain, K. Really--I do.' Thanks.
As for 'complete pull out' v. 'stay the (moronic) course,' I better go back to my fake name when I say this, but I can't support a complete pull out. As a former secretary of state (now long forgotten) once said 'If you break it, you've bought it.' Yes, I believe the 'Pottery Barn Doctrine' has firmly come into play.
But what course to stay? Vietnamization...I mean Iraq-ercising the conflict? Yeah, wake me up when THAT happens. The Repulic of Korea soldiers took to US training like the proverbial ducks to Pekingization, and fifty years later, ROK soldiers still haven't finished 'Koreanizing' the peninsula.
I do not believe that civil war is EXACTLY inevitable, but with the tremendous amount of 'lost' guns and highgrade plastic explosive (stolen from the UN locked wharehouses after the invasion--but we digress), it certainly doesn't look good. Still, here's some of my not quite random thoughts. If Iraq really IS the frontline on the war on terror, which demands 'sacrifice'--then damn it, let's see some real sacrifice for the good of the order. What do I mean by sacrifice? How many troops are really going to be needed to not only surge on through to the other side (cf Jim Morrison), but do what needs to be done? And I mean the REAL number. None of this B.S. hiding of numbers with Blackwater contractors. The number of contract shooters should be zero, not a secret 135,000+ or whatever--and those people should be under military discipline. So, you don't got that many GI Joes & Janes? Then get them: Either reinstitute a draft (a REAL draft, you college klowns), or up the stakes until you have enough volunteer numbers ie cough up the bucks and benefits. Next, screw the 'coalition of the piddling' cf John Stewart. Go to the UN Security Council, and sing the Calvin & Hobbes 'We Blew It' song. Get the UN blessing, and put a NON-AMERICAN in charge of everything. Nothing would say 'NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN' like a German, French or Italian head honcho. Third, get a real Parliament cooking in Baghdad, and that means a REAL distribution of oil moneys. Yeah yeah yeah. That's up to the Iraq people to decide that..blah blah blah. Well guess what: the Iraq 'people' can't even police American 'civilians' who commit murder. Now THERE'S what I call political sovergnty! Know what else? What is the Iraq Parliament doing in the middle of the Green Zone? I've seen more action from George Clinton's...oh never mind. Can't make an oil deal with the Sunnis, Kurds, and Turkmen? Maybe moving the Iraqi government into Baghdad's 'red zone' might help with the impasse. Next, as Mr. Thomas Freidman keeps squawking like a deranged parrot: Stop funding both ends of the war on terror. That means...TA DAH! A real energy policy, making fossil fuels obsolete.
Finally, we've got an 'official' $450 billion USD down the rathole, and what a fat boy ought to have for lunch to show for it. That means more money (especially with a REAL energy policy). I see only three options: Print paper money like a mofo--but that's not working so good in Zimbabwe. Or maybe play 'screw the kids,' and dump it on Gen X et al (which is what we're doing now). I don't care for that so much--because that's how you all are going to be paying for MY (and the rest of the Boomers) social security. Cough it on up, you selfish weasels! So no more room at that particular inn. That's leaves option three: tax the high & low living H E double hockey sticks out of everyone who's not in the army. You like them apples? Me neither. But as self-described conservative jerks kept screeching in my ear (pre-Reagan, of course) 'No free lunch! No free lunch!' If food stamps and health care aren't 'free' (and they aren't) then guess what--neither is any damn war on terror. It ain't Howdy Doody time, boys and girls: it's time to put your money where your fat mouth is! I know, I know: Don't blame me--I voted for McGovern. Well, democracy sucks sometimes (I lie. Democracy sucks ass pretty much all the time).
As for the Ever Divine Ms. E's lingering sense of paranoia ie Cry Hyperbole, and set loose the dogs of cheap alliteration! (My god, I've waited all my life to say that. You have no idea) about 'Twilight of the empire,' I have two brief (really, I swear!) comments. First, taking the long view, I remember Ms. E griping about empire twilightization as early as the Reagan administration. And that's only because I didn't know her before then. I'd bet that if you asked her mother, Mama E. would say that whenever then President Nixon's voice came over the television, she'd have to jump up and change the channel--or the in uteruo Ms. E. would kick up something fierce.
But this time (this ONE time), I have to say I share her trepidation. Everyone laughed when Che Guervera said that creating ten, eleven or twelve Vietnams was the only way to defeat Imperialism--but we may be getting there. I used to tell college kids that I got a law degree and attended two years of a small private liberal arts college for the tuition cost of ONE YEAR of private college today--but too many of them lunged for my throat for it to be funny.
Seriously--I feel a wildness in the air. As they say where I come from: there's something happening here--what it is, ain't exactly clear...
I remain--
Boring as ever.
Bill Abendroth nee Roth
PS to Ms. E: Your plant misses you, by the way.
PS to Ms. E's niece: Please tell your (overbearing) Aunt (don't ask how I know she can be overbearing) you ain't so brittle: You don't loose sleep over non-obscene slang for body parts. Oh, and please give a shout out if you've read Herman Wouk's 'City Boy.' I'm curious if a hip hop happening kid of today would find it too dated. I keep asking my own niece, only she's too busy reading books about vampires fighting werewolves over ownership of the Wall Street Journal--something like that.
I'm sorry--I know I've used up all my markers...But I have just heard these three stories (in short succession) on NPR's Morning Edition (9/20):
1. Phoenix, on the US-Mexico border. The Federal Government builds this big wall at the border (the name 'Stacheldrahtsonntag' was already taken, I guess) to keep the Mexicans in Mexico. Yesterday, some US border patrol guys notice a funny indent in the road...and discover the 'dent' is a tunnel reaching into Mexico--seven feet wide and twenty-three feet deep. That Wall sure was money well spent....
2. A new video tape by some bin Laden aparachniki was just released, claiming that the US was LOSING in Iraq and Afghanistan. HEY! Those are closely guarded military secrets! Find out who's responsible for the leak.
3. The President of Iran, on his visit to the UN, wants to express his nation's sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks by laying a wreath at ground zero. The US government REFUSES this request, saying (I'm not making this up) 'If Iran wants to do something about terrorism, stop supporting Hezbollah!' Right. I guess we showed them. Unfortunately, what we showed was 1) we're still too stupid to know that Iran, Saddam's Iraq, and pretty much EVERYBODY in the world not named Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and 2) Yes, we DO in fact hate and disrepect everything Islam.
I remember on September 12, 2001, the head honcho in Iran closed his session by NOT saying 'God punish the United States' or words to the effect--the first time since the Shah's government collapsed in what? 1979? Gee--I wonder if that was another opportunity pissed away.
Did I suddenly wake up in Stupidville? Or has the world always been this way, and I just didn't notice? CHRIST! O.J. Simpson is all over the news again!
It is insane that the U.S. refused the request, although I wonder whether the request was made precisely because the powers-that-be in Iran expected that the U.S. would refuse it.
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