Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 10, 2003
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
Recent
Stories
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
10, 2003
Bush's
Conceptual Blunders
At
the Gates of Hell
By TIM LLEWELLYN
The American-British invasion and occupation of
Iraq has put the clock back eighty years and inaugurated a hellish
prospect for both baffled occupiers and benighted inhabitants.
The argument about whether the Iraqis will at some unspecified
future date and after who knows what suffering be better off
without Saddam Hussein, or whether the corrupt and violent order
he imposed should have been allowed to continue until Iraqis
could oust him themselves, is one that more concerns Western
intellectuals than the bombed, battered, powerless, sweltering,
diseased, thirsty, dirty, hopeless masses who are a majority
of Iraq's 26m. citizens.
After the assassination of the country's
most powerful Shi'ite leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim,
at the holy shrine of Najaf, an editorialist in a Jordanian daily
wrote, "the gates of Iraq have now opened to hell."
Even the most optimistic and moderate
Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war if the majority
Shi'ite population break loose and turn on their Sunni Muslim
brethren, elements of whom are being held responsible for the
bombings, or themselves fracture into warring factions. Or both.
As the death toll of Iraqis and Allied
soldiers continues, the question is: how can the occupiers and
occupied work to close those gates to hell and prevent the sundering
of Iraq into warring regions or areas at war with themselves?
There are already signs that if this happens among the Arabs
of Iraq the relatively stable Kurdish region in the north would
break away, exacerbating the collapse of the nation and over-exciting
the Kurds' watchful and nervous Turkish neighbours.
The prospect is awesome. The bulk of
Iraq's majority Shi'ite population and their leadership, under
Ayatollah Baqer al-Hakim's guidance, had with reservations decided
to co-operate with the occupation forces, and stayed calm, though
they resented the Americans' ineptness: the lack of security,
the failure, as ever, of the occupying forces to listen to let
alone heed advice, and their refusal to hand over as much security
as possible to the Iraqi Shi'ites and their militias.
Whoever blew up the ayatollah may well
have exploded this consensual and co-operative approach, intentionally.
Whether among the Sunni Muslims, in whose
strongest areas around and west of Baghdad the most persistent
resistance to occupation exists; or among the Shi'ite Muslims,
whose ranks include the firebrand Moqtada Sadr, a popular young
religious leader with his own little army, who believes in an
Iranian-model clerically ruled state in Iraq; or between Sunni
and Shi'ite factions, the ingredients for civil strife are plentiful.
The American occupation was misconceived
and misapplied: too few of the wrong sort of troops, combat
regiments with little or no peacekeeping experience; therefore
there followed crude or slack security and policing; little
known and unpopular exiled Iraqis were parachuted into positions
of nascent power---they are for the large part seen in Iraq as
collaborators, CIA stooges and exploiters; the failure to reconnect
power and clean water; the strong indications that Iraq's resources
were up for American industrial grabs; the deep Iraqi mistrust
of and resentment towards a superpower that seems preternaturally
suspicious of Muslims, even of Islam itself, and which persists
in virtually uncritical support of Israel and its brutal tactics
in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Of all the United States' conceptual
blunders in the Middle East, this failure to understand how deeply
the Palestinian tragedy is engraved in the Arab psyche, and how
it has become the starkest model of how the US grades the peoples
of the Middle East (Israelis good, Arabs and Moslems bad), has
been the greatest of them. It is even greater than the expectation
that with Saddam Hussein's regime toppled the Iraqis would crawl
out of their rubble, bereavement and misery and stand to, smiling
and cheering, to join enthusiastically and without delay the
American plan for free-market democracy (including Iraq's recognition
of Israel).
It is from this mire of ignorance and
self-deception that the United States (with Britain) has to extricate
itself. It may well not be possible. The chances must remain
great that the Americans will tire of the extraordinary expense
of occupation---tens of billions of dollars a year as L.Paul
Bremer, their proconsul, chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority,
put it (I estimate $56bn a year, including military costs); of
the deaths; of the concomitant prejudice to George W. Bush's
chances of re-election next year; and that the United States
will spin the perceived aim of the exercise as a successful military
operation to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and give a knock
to "terror", then cut and run.
This is tempting for Bush and his disappointed
but presumably wiser neo-conservative advisers, but will be difficult
to pull off. There are signs, therefore, that the Americans are
groping hopefully for ways of sharing the burden if not the power
more effectively with other nations, through the United Nations
or even Nato, and handing responsibility more quickly back to
the Iraqis. The US Administration is still obsessed with running
the whole show, and should this remain a sine qua non
the chances of a successful shift from occupation to liberation
are sharply reduced.
How could it work?
Security comes first. The prime need
is for a new United Nations Security Council resolution setting
out a UN Mandate for Iraq, with a clear timetable for a constitution,
a census, national elections within two years and speedy return
to full Iraqi rule and Iraqi-administered security. An essential
part of this initially will be a much larger international military
force, with representations from nations that publicly opposed
the invasion, including contributors from Muslim countries such
as Pakistan, Turkey and Jordan, and from other non-European countries
such as India; Nato could play an important role here; the existing
coalition force, primarily American, would have to remain the
core of this force, for the time being, but its (inevitably)
American chief could double as UN commander; a UN blue-helmet
force could protect particular United Nations agencies and institutions.
A priority for the UN force must be the
re-creation as soon as possible of the Iraqi Army (its disbandment
was one of the Americans' crasser actions) and Iraqi local police
forces, and tolerance of and co-operation with the main Shi'ite
militia in predominantly Shi'ite areas south of and even in Baghdad,
always assuming this opportunity was not blown away in the Najaf
horror.
Intelligence is the key to good security.
This comes from Iraqis, not outsiders. Most of us would prefer
our police to be fellow citizens than foreigners, especially
aliens who do not speak our language. Iraqis are no different,
and it is condescending to think otherwise. However, it is going
to be difficult to find reliable Iraqis to help publicly what
still, even under United Nations aegis, looks like an American
enterprise in disguise.
As all this-if it can---takes effect,
Iraq's public institutions and ministries must be reconstituted
and given back to Iraqis. Under Saddam Hussein there was, below
the upper echelons in which his suborned apparatchiks operated,
a perfectly respectable and efficient executive class of civil
servants and technocrats who delivered services to Iraqis---such
as the food ration, electricity, water and education---as well
as anyone could have given the near-13 years of privations and
depredations brought by war and Western-applied economic sanctions.
Iraq's civil society, lawyers, teachers, doctors, administrators,
lecturers---for there was one---must be resurrected. One of the
worst canards the British have been bandying about is that Iraq
has suffered thirty years of neglect. Whitehall knows better.
Even in 1990, after eight years' war with Iran, Iraq was still
one of the most advanced, best educated and healthiest nations
in the Middle East.
The idea that Iraq is some primitive
society that needs the wisdom of the West to bring it to civilised
fruition bears no close examination. There also persist among
our leaders misleading emphases: on the Ba'ath Party, as if Ba'athism
itself rather than Saddam's twisted and personalised version
of it was responsible for Iraq's plight; and on "Saddam
loyalists", as if to resent or resist foreign occupation
one has to be a creature of Saddam Hussein. To have been in the
Ba'ath Party does not automatically criminalise a civil servant
or lecturer and to shoot an American it is not necessary to be
a supporter of Saddam Hussein.
There are indications that this thinking
might be changing, at least among some Americans on the ground
and in certain corridors of the State Department. These are trying
to speed the political development of the Iraq governing council,
and though it is seen by most Iraqis as a creature of Washington
it does contain a minority of respected Iraqis: Adnan Pachachi,
for example, a patrician Sunni former Foreign Minister; Massoud
Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party; the Shi'ite
cleric, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, though he suspended his membership
after the Najaf tragedy. This body has now appointed a cabinet,
belatedly, though early comment indicates that some of these
ministers, many of them exiles or creatures of the exiles, are
seen as place-men in an American hegemony. What is needed is
an early prospect of elections and a provisional government that
brings Iraqis into governance. This can only happen effectively
under the guidance and supervision of the United Nations. However,
the killing of the UN Secretary-General's special representative,
Sergio Vieira de Mello, on August 19 sends an ominous message
to UN agencies and prospective UN personnel.
It is vital that Iraq produce political
leaders that are home grown, that many of the exiles fade away.
Few of them have much support inside Iraq---"they're little
more than carpetbaggers", one Iraqi professor told me. Again,
though, how can national figures emerge without the taint of
association with the American Occupation? The UN has to be visibly
in charge. Neither must the Americans horde Iraq's economic resources
to themselves---nations that risk troops and civilian aides and
experts in Iraq must share any rewards as well: they will have
earned them.
It is hard to be optimistic.
This intervention in Iraq was for the
wrong reasons by the wrong coalition, a former and an existing
colonial power . The United States needed a scalp after September
11, Saddam Hussein fitted the bill, it seemed, a saleable idea
in the US at any rate, and the now-muffled hawks in the Pentagon
seized the day to try out their fantasies of spreading American-fashioned
democracy throughout the Middle East, with Iraq as the model
and launching pad, and with Israeli domination of the region
a bonus.
How to disguise such a prospectus?
My fear is that the Iraqi people are
stuck with the consequences of an occupation that can neither
be deftly ended nor easily change its nature. Even if the Americans
make genuine efforts to redistribute power, the anger and dissidence
among the people may still deny them success, and ordinary Iraqis
could well either support insurrection or be sufficiently apathetic
not to resist it.
Reducing the US profile and content of
this enterprise and making real the prospect of an Iraq run by
and for Iraqis is the only hope; it is a forlorn one.
Tim Llewellyn
is a former BBC Middle East Correspondent.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|