[Three notes on the war in Iraq (at a moment when the first serious attacks on British forces in the south — six dead, eight wounded — have just occurred):
Whose war movie is this anyway department? Reuters offered the following description of American soldiers preparing for a counterinsurgency operation in an urban area of northern Iraq — (or do I mean southern Vietnam?):
“U.S. troops psyched up on a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now before crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen on Saturday, as Shi’ite Muslims rallied against the U.S. occupation of Iraq With Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ still ringing in their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers rammed vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided houses in the western city of Ramadi after sunrise as part of a drive to quell a spate of attacks on U.S. forces.” (Alistair Lyon, Reuters, ‘Apocalypse Now’ Music Fires Up U.S. Troops for Raid)
Here’s a Vietnam term to learn: “Hot pursuit.” Try pronouncing it until it rolls off your tongue. You might find it useful in the coming months, since we now know that last Wednesday, American planes connected to a secret commando unit chased a convoy of trucks right across the Syrian border, based on “solid intelligence” of course, that perhaps Saddam Hussein and his son were well, at least high officials of the former Iraqi government were well, at least, we wounded some Syrian border guards and blew some trucks off the road. And here’s your mind-bender foreign affairs puzzle of the day — can you detect what’s wrong with this paragraph from the front-page New York Times piece on this operation:
“A Bush administration official acknowledged that the wounded Syrians had been recovered by American ground forces on the Syrian side of the border. But the official said it was unclear whether American troops or aircraft had crossed into Syria during the combat operations itself. ‘We’re still trying to ascertain the facts of the incident,’ a State Department official said.” (Douglas Jehl, Syrians Wounded in Attack by U.S. on Convoy in Iraq)
Finally, you read it here first department: Patrick Tyler of the Times (U.S.-British Project: To Build a Postwar Iraqi Armed Force of 40,000 Soldiers in 3 Years) also reports today on the announcement of the formation of a new Air Force-less Iraqi military — 40,000 troops trained by an American major general and “defense contractors” (i.e. rent-a-mercenary companies), only 12,000 “light infantry (emphasis on the “light”) next year. In addition, despite Paul Bremer’s previous statements — and here’s an understandable switch — the demobilized army, the other 388,000 men assumedly, will be offered back pay and pensions not to get angry and become guerrillas. (So in Iraq anyway, protests work.) Here’s the paragraph you could have read here first, a week or two back, “The projected size of Iraq’s first postwar military seems to reflect the reality that a large contingent of American and British troops will be positioned in Iraq for some time, as the guarantor of security.” Of course, to give myself credit, I was relying on my own sources of “solid intelligence.” I refer to them as Agents Math and Logic. If you did your math on the size of the future Iraqi military and the logic of the situation was obvious long ago.
And, oh yes, check out Paul Krugman’s latest, Denial and Deception, which ends:
Here’s a Vietnam term to learn: “Hot pursuit.” Try pronouncing it until it rolls off your tongue. You might find it useful in the coming months, since we now know that last Wednesday, American planes connected to a secret commando unit chased a convoy of trucks right across the Syrian border, based on “solid intelligence” of course, that perhaps Saddam Hussein and his son were well, at least high officials of the former Iraqi government were well, at least, we wounded some Syrian border guards and blew some trucks off the road. And here’s your mind-bender foreign affairs puzzle of the day — can you detect what’s wrong with this paragraph from the front-page New York Times piece on this operation:
“A Bush administration official acknowledged that the wounded Syrians had been recovered by American ground forces on the Syrian side of the border. But the official said it was unclear whether American troops or aircraft had crossed into Syria during the combat operations itself. ‘We’re still trying to ascertain the facts of the incident,’ a State Department official said.” (Douglas Jehl, Syrians Wounded in Attack by U.S. on Convoy in Iraq)
Finally, you read it here first department: Patrick Tyler of the Times (U.S.-British Project: To Build a Postwar Iraqi Armed Force of 40,000 Soldiers in 3 Years) also reports today on the announcement of the formation of a new Air Force-less Iraqi military — 40,000 troops trained by an American major general and “defense contractors” (i.e. rent-a-mercenary companies), only 12,000 “light infantry (emphasis on the “light”) next year. In addition, despite Paul Bremer’s previous statements — and here’s an understandable switch — the demobilized army, the other 388,000 men assumedly, will be offered back pay and pensions not to get angry and become guerrillas. (So in Iraq anyway, protests work.) Here’s the paragraph you could have read here first, a week or two back, “The projected size of Iraq’s first postwar military seems to reflect the reality that a large contingent of American and British troops will be positioned in Iraq for some time, as the guarantor of security.” Of course, to give myself credit, I was relying on my own sources of “solid intelligence.” I refer to them as Agents Math and Logic. If you did your math on the size of the future Iraqi military and the logic of the situation was obvious long ago.
And, oh yes, check out Paul Krugman’s latest, Denial and Deception, which ends:
“But even people who aren’t partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration’s dishonest case for war, because they don’t want to face the implications. After all, suppose that a politician – or a journalist – admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability – and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It’s a scary prospect.
“Yet if we can’t find people willing to take the risk – to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy?”]
Having dealt with the geopolitics of the “arc of instability,” east branch, yesterday, let me turn to the west branch today and offer a series of provocative pieces on the “road map” to nowhere anyone, except maybe Ariel Sharon and the Israeli settlers in the occupied territory, wants to go. (By the way, if you want to check out the Israeli version of our administration’s oil dreams, take a look at Netanyahu says Iraq-Israel oil line not pipedream from Reuters:). First, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Tom Segev, the well-known Israeli revisionist historian and author of One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, offers some provocative comparisons between the Jewish situation under the British before 1948 and the Palestinian situation under the Israelis today. Then in Ha’aretz, the estimable Meron Benvenisti devastatingly sums up the road map as a dead-end solution that would, if successful, establish a Palestinian state “of a totally new sort: its ‘sovereignty’ will be scattered, lacking any physical infrastructure, without any direct connection to the outside world, and limited to the height of its residential buildings and the depth of its graves.”
Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus then discusses the “consistency” of Ariel Sharon (who has just told the settlers to keep building, but quietly), suggesting that this is not a “road” at all and that if there is a “map” it’s basically Sharon’s, one he’s been focused on for decades. Finally, I include a piece from Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis on the Iranian part of the “road map” the Bush administration is developing for the region. Tom
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History Repeats, With Roles Reversed
Ben-Gurion’s problem in ’40s now haunts Palestinians.
By Tom Segev
June 20, 2003Jerusalem – In one of those extraordinary turnarounds of history, the position of the Palestinians today mirrors the position the Jews were in nearly 60 years ago, between the end of World War II and the founding of the state of Israel.
In those years, there were two Jewish paramilitary organizations in Palestine – the Haganah and the Palmach – affiliated with David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency, which represented the mainstream of the Jewish community.
At the same time, there were two other, more militant organizations – the IZL, commonly known as the Irgun, and LHI, which was also known as the Stern Gang. Demanding free immigration for Jews and national independence, the Irgun and the Sternists used tactics that went far beyond those of the Haganah and the Palmach: They killed British security personnel and government officials
Tom Segev, a columnist for Haaretz in Israel, is the author of “Elvis in Jerusalem, Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel” (Owl Books, 2003).
Road map to perpetuating the status quo
By Meron Benvenisti
Ha’aretz
June 23, 2003The rude awakening from the illusion of the wings
of history flapping over the Aqaba summit and its
launch of the road map was particularly traumatic,
and all those who waxed poetic about the new dawn
would now prefer not to be reminded of their
historiosophic enthrallment.Opportunities missed, whether
maliciously or stupidly, and
festive occasions that turn
into fiascoes, are among the
characteristics of the
Israel-Arab dispute and the
road map won’t be the last.But in all its wiliness, history
summons occasions that have a
seemingly self-evident significance, but in
retrospect they signal contradictory and
opposite processes.
To read more Benvenisti click here
Road Map: Sharon & The Record
By Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy in Focus
June 20, 2003One thing to keep in mind about the current push for peace between Israelis and Palestinians is that Ariel Sharon is one of the most consistent political figures in the Middle East, and he keeps his word. It is a deeply chilling observation.
Back in the early 1970s, when Sharon engineered the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, he was always clear that they were permanent, and that their primary function was military. “They guard both the birthright of the Jewish people,” he told the newspaper Ha’aretz, “and also grant us essential strategic depth to protect our existence.” For all his talk about “painful concessions” in the present “road map,” those priorities have never altered a whit.
However, like any good general, deception is always central to his strategy.
Conn Hallinan <[email protected]> is the provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a political analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
To read more Hallinan click here
Iran’s in the crosshairs of Bush’s bombsight
By Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor
The Toronto Sun
June 22, 2003Montreal — President George Bush, who assured Americans on March 17 there was “no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” now warns Iran is working on nuclear weapons.
Bush seems determined to press his crusade against Muslim nations. But another important reason impels him on. He is running a political Ponzi scheme: diverting the public from the Enron and stock market swindles by invading Afghanistan, then covering that mess by invading Iraq, and now trying to cover up the growing Iraq disaster by fanning a new crisis with Iran.
Soon after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for the U.S. Army to march on Tehran, his American neo-conservative supporters launched a get-Iran campaign, featuring the identical propaganda they used to fan war fever against Iraq
To read more Margolis click here