Okay, so the world of Washington is mad, and madly imperial, and already bizarrely schismatic. Yesterday, for instance, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld held a vigorous news conference (with Gen. Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) defending “the plan” and attacking those creeps who won’t support our boys (and girls) in the field in wartime. Was he attacking the antiwar movement (the obvious Vietnam analogy)? Not at all. He was attacking all those retired generals on TV and elsewhere, speaking up for the “community” of high military officials still in the service who clearly can’t bear Rumsfeld or his way of war; and he was attacking the officers in the field who had publicly criticized “the plan.”
As Tom Lewis, author, well-informed reader, and long-time political observer, wrote recently in the conclusion to a private email to friends,
“So when a senior general in Quatar or a battlefield colonel criticizes Rumsfeld, they are criticizing not a somewhat removed Pentagon bureaucrat but their immediate war-fighter boss. There are only a few levels between these critics quoted in the Times and Gen. Tommy Franks, and only one person, Rumsfeld, between Franks and the President.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a praetorian revolt in the US military before. Reported rather freely by the embeds everyone loves to criticize. And on the battlefield at the edge of the empire, too. Sort of like the third century when the Legion commanders in Gaul decided they’d rather be running Rome. Truman firing McArthur. Toward the end of the Vietnam War, the complaints from the soldiers about having lost the war because the civilians didn’t have the stomach for it. But these are different circumstances. This is very interesting to watch.”
And while we watch this proto-praetorian revolt in a militarized land, a “coup d’etat,” is already underway in the postwar future, as Brian Whitaker of the Guardian reports Beyond Baghdad). Yesterday we learned that the departments of the new “Iraqi” government being formed in Kuwait – the Americans haven’t yet even bothered to declare a slice of Iraq “liberated,” and import a government – were going to have an all-American cast to them. (All the better to bring you democracy, dear.) It’s the kind of direct rule over conquered territory that might have made the Brits wince even in their days of imperial glory.
Now we learn of its earliest plans – to give the Iraqis a really recognizable currency.
“One of the first concerns of this government-in-waiting is what to do about Iraqi banknotes which – horror of horrors – carry a picture of Saddam Hussein. Their solution, according to the Washington Post, is to scrap the Iraqi dinar and replace it with the US dollar. This will doubtless be viewed by all Iraqis as conclusive proof of America’s imperialist intentions.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a praetorian revolt in the US military before. Reported rather freely by the embeds everyone loves to criticize. And on the battlefield at the edge of the empire, too. Sort of like the third century when the Legion commanders in Gaul decided they’d rather be running Rome. Truman firing McArthur. Toward the end of the Vietnam War, the complaints from the soldiers about having lost the war because the civilians didn’t have the stomach for it. But these are different circumstances. This is very interesting to watch.”
And while we watch this proto-praetorian revolt in a militarized land, a “coup d’etat,” is already underway in the postwar future, as Brian Whitaker of the Guardian reports Beyond Baghdad). Yesterday we learned that the departments of the new “Iraqi” government being formed in Kuwait – the Americans haven’t yet even bothered to declare a slice of Iraq “liberated,” and import a government – were going to have an all-American cast to them. (All the better to bring you democracy, dear.) It’s the kind of direct rule over conquered territory that might have made the Brits wince even in their days of imperial glory.
Now we learn of its earliest plans – to give the Iraqis a really recognizable currency.
“One of the first concerns of this government-in-waiting is what to do about Iraqi banknotes which – horror of horrors – carry a picture of Saddam Hussein. Their solution, according to the Washington Post, is to scrap the Iraqi dinar and replace it with the US dollar. This will doubtless be viewed by all Iraqis as conclusive proof of America’s imperialist intentions.”
Truly, Monty Python couldn’t make up stuff like this. Oh, and that coup taking place in Iraq’s government-in-waiting:
“Pentagon hardliners appear to be mounting a coup d’etat even before the government has any territory to control. Apart from the attempt by Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, to install Ahmed Chalabi, the failed Iraqi banker, and his cronies in advisory positions (since all the ministerial posts will be filled by Americans), the Pentagon has also ousted eight senior officials nominated by the US state department.
“The Pentagon is seeking to replace the state department people, who include several ambassadors, with a bunch of neo-conservative hawks – most notably James Woolsey, a former CIA director.”
Woolsey, need I add, falls somewhere far on the rabid side of the right-wing’s world. It used to be that the hard “realists” of the right attacked the left for utopianism, for imposing dreams of perfect worlds on a very imperfect Earth. That is, in fact, exactly what we’re dealing with here. Men with utopian dreams – of world domination admittedly – about to impose them, very imperfectly, even idiotically, on a world that, for all its hideous imperfections is far too good for them.
What follows are two columns from yesterday. George Monbiot of the Guardian considers postwar possibilities, one grimmer than the next; and James Carroll, in an April Fools’ Day column in the Boston Globe, turns back to the past to remind us that even an unstoppable war machine can suddenly bump up against unexpected movements and moments of resistance – and here I’m talking about antiwar movements and moments – and find itself in an awkward place. With all those generals, active and retired, on television, with the Democrats mute, with arguments about the war today – see Si Hersh’s recent New Yorker piece on the Rumsfeld plan (Offense and Defense) – only between military schools of thought and their various supporters over whether there should be less or more troops in the field, and in a “homeland” militarized beyond our wildest dreams, where even public health is now a military project (or forget the funds), there is as yet no call for “withdrawal” of American troops from Iraq. But this, I believe, is the position of patriotism, genuine American-style patriotism, for any antiwar movement. Withdraw our boys and girls (and they are mostly adolescents) before, if nothing else, their health is wrecked on a battlefield that increasingly has become an environmental hazard in its own right.
Here, as a conclusion, are three quotes from yesterday’s New York Times, which catch, it seems to me, aspects of this god-forsaken war:
The war was meant as a lesson to the world in American dominance, and American war planners picked the enemy they considered least capable of defending itself. Hence, this reasonable comment from a “retired general”: “What’s troublesome is the loss of deterrent value. A month ago everybody in the world looked at the U.S. military as being 10 feet tall. We’re not 10 feet tall.”
The administration is locked into its own historical analogies. Administration spokesmen have been trying to explain American “success” so far – we’re not behind schedule – by making reference to the fact that it took nearly a year after D-Day to destroy Nazi Germany. Here is a sane response to a ludicrous analogy from a “retired Air Force general”: “Someone ought to tell these guys that we’re taking out a failing, rogue regime, not the conqueror of all Europe.”
Finally, for all those of you who have noted the proliferating photos of Iraqi prisoners with their hands pinioned behind them, often kneeling uncomfortably, and with sacks over their heads – the kind of treatment that you might think would get a little media attention here, given all the talk about Iraqi mistreatment of prisoners – Jim Dwyer, an embed with the 101st Airborne Division, offered this explanation in a piece headlined On the Road to Baghdad, Scenes of Devastation:
“A group of five Iraqis came out with their hands up; another man was killed while hiding in a bunker. The prisoners were led to the side of the road, hands cuffed behind their backs, and their heads were covered with sacks, a tactic military officials say is meant to keep both the prisoners and their captors safe by making it hard for observers to identify soldiers in custody, and to keep the prisoners from knowing where they are being taken.”
It’s the sort of incomprehensible imperial explanation that George Orwell, bless his soul, would have appreciated. Tom
It will end in disaster
By George Monbiot
The Guardian
April 1, 2003So far, the liberators have succeeded only in freeing the souls of the Iraqis from their bodies. Saddam Hussein’s troops have proved less inclined to surrender than they had anticipated, and the civilians less prepared to revolt. But while no one can now ignore the immediate problems this illegal war has met, we are beginning, too, to understand what should have been obvious all along: that, however this conflict is resolved, the outcome will be a disaster.
It seems to me that there are three possible results of the war with Iraq. The first, which is now beginning to look unlikely, is that Saddam Hussein is swiftly dispatched, his generals and ministers abandon their posts and the people who had been cowed by his militias and his secret police rise up and greet the invaders with their long-awaited blessing of flowers and rice.
To read more Monbiot click here
An April Fools’ Day surprise – and hope
By James Carroll
The Boston Globe
April 1, 2003On April Fools’ Day 35 years ago, morning newspapers trumpeted the exceedingly unlikely story that Lyndon B. Johnson had announced his intention not to seek reelection as president of the United States. It was not a gag.
In a speech the night before, the beleaguered president had insisted on his determination to bring the war in Vietnam to an end. He said he was ordering a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th parallel and was ready for negotiations. Johnson emphasized his wish for peace by renouncing his own political ambition. It seemed that an end to the war was at last possible.