Sacred Ignorance

In writing about the foreign policy of the United States over the past several years, I often feel as if I'm caught in an endless loop. The same issues arise time and time again. I and others offer numerous facts and many arguments to demonstrate how and why the standard assumptions are wrong and profoundly destructive. We offer examples from history, including recent history, to support our points. No one in the foreign policy establishment, and very few bloggers, even acknowledge what we've said. Then, three or six months or a year later, the identical issues come up still one more time, only now countless additional people have been killed and maimed. So I and others offer further facts and supplement our arguments with more details -- and once again, our modest offerings have no impact that is even noticeable.

Here is the most recent example of this phenomenon. It is one that clarifies once more some of the major points that those of us who oppose the aggressively interventionist foreign policy of the United States have been making since before the invasion of Iraq began. On May 14, 2005, I published an essay entitled, "Embracing Ignorance on Principle: And Still, We Will Not See." (I wrote a number of similar pieces well before this one, but I think this article summarizes the central points more effectively.) I stated the general theme of that article at the very beginning:

A recent pair of articles illustrates very powerfully the significant, and dangerous, differences between much of the reporting about Iraq in the American press and in the European press. Reading the articles side by side also reveals the enormous failures of comprehension of Iraq's history and culture exhibited by most Americans, including by the American government.

I examined an article by James Bennet in the New York Times, and one by Patrick Cockburn published in the London Review of Books. In introducing the Cockburn piece, I wrote:

Perhaps the point of greatest significance is that its author, Patrick Cockburn, has been reporting from Iraq since 1978. This makes all the difference in the world, but it is a difference our government seems determined to ignore, as a matter of some unstated principle. While Bennet relies on history from everywhere else in the world -- from Vietnam, from Greece, from Northern Ireland -- Cockburn appreciates and understands the central importance of the history of Iraq itself. One might be pardoned for not having thought that this stunningly obvious point would require explanation and justification, but such is the nature of our disastrously failed foreign policy -- a failure which is all too comprehensible, if one knows where to look for the reasons.

After examining the two articles, I offered some observations about the conclusions that were indicated:

The U.S., and most of the American media, have been and remain resolutely determined to look at the wrong history. They act as if Iraq's own history, including its long, bloody history of ethnic strife (pace Wolfowitz), is entirely irrelevant. It is hardly a mystery why they are then unable to grasp what is right before their eyes. They look at events in Iraq (to the extent they do look at them, which is far from comprehensive as Cockburn makes very clear) through the prism of ideas they have gleaned from other countries' histories -- and the reality of Iraq itself never assumes solid shape before them.

This determined refusal to look at and understand the relevant facts, including the crucially relevant history, is a significant part of the reason why Bush's repeated mantra that "everyone wants freedom," and moreover that everyone wants freedom in roughly the same form that we enjoy it, is so hollow and so unconvincing. It was not true in Vietnam, and it is not true in Iraq. Peoples' attitudes, objectives, alliances and enmities are uniquely shaped by their particular history -- not by ours, or by no history at all. And it is the latter that is unavoidably implied by the attitude revealed by Bennet in his article, and by the Bush administration: they seem to believe that "freedom" and "democracy" are abstractions that are plucked by people from the sky overhead -- and then applied by everyone in precisely the same manner, regardless of history, geography, culture and every other aspect of their specific lives.

...

[T]his is yet another reason why I maintain, as I explained yesterday, that we should leave immediately, or as close to immediately as we can -- and set a time limit of six months at the outside, for example, for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Not only are we a significant source of the ongoing violence, but we continue to refuse to learn about the nature of the Iraqis themselves, and what their perspectives and their aims are.

Because we are determined to remain ignorant of the actual nature and consequences of our own actions, and because this state of ignorance appears to be ongoing and unchangeable, the degree of the disaster will only increase. This is why we must leave now. The longer our withdrawal is delayed, the greater the devastation will be.

Ignorance is never bliss -- and it is especially not bliss when a huge military force is deployed against another nation, one which never seriously threatened us, and when we engage in torture, murder and devastation on a huge and unforgivable scale. Our actions are only made worse when they are supposedly "justified" by the indiscriminate use of terms such as "liberation" and "freedom," when those otherwise laudable and even glorious goals are used in a manner devoid of context and lacking in any specific meaning.

I repeat a critical point, one which those who seek only narrow partisan advantage are determined to avoid. Bush is a uniquely calamitous leader in numerous ways. Certainly, the abomination of the Military Commissions Act places him firmly in the annals of damnation, where one will find those leaders who have betrayed their own country's founding principles in ways that are never to be forgiven. And Iraq is an especially destructive episode in our history, and in the history of the Middle East as well as the world more generally.

But, in terms of the underlying foreign policy principles that Bush embraces and implements, he falls squarely in the U.S. interventionist tradition -- a tradition that stretches back to the Spanish-American War and the Philippines, to the Wilsonian "ideal" of "spreading democracy" across the globe, on through Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan and all the rest. The examples of Vietnam and Iraq together reveal the same dynamics, and the identical catastrophic results. Our overall approach to foreign policy, and the embrace of aggressive non-defensive intervention, knows no party: it is beloved by the entire entrenched foreign policy establishment, Republican and Democrat. Republicans and Democrats alike bleat that the idea of a nuclear Iran or a nuclear North Korea is "unacceptable" and "intolerable" -- a position that relies on the assumption that we, and we alone, have the "right" to dictate to the entire rest of the world the ways in which all other countries may act that are approved, and those which are not. Even if one were to grant the assumption, how do we propose to enforce our endless moral pronouncements, even about matters that do not directly implicate our national security? Short of militarizing our entire country and engaging in literally endless war, it cannot be done. But growing militarization and perpetual war is the policy that both parties ultimately support.

Added to this militant interventionism is our national narcissism, which springs from our belief in our own "exceptionalism," while we simultaneously believe that all of humanity wants exactly what we want. As I have discussed, the proponents of this view never reconcile these contradictory ideas, just as they do not want to face the obvious question: if everyone wants what we want, why then do we have to impose our "ideals" on them by bombing, murder, invasion and occupation? Our narcissism has the additional result noted in my earlier essay: if we are the model for the world, and if everyone wants what we want, then the histories, cultures, and aspirations of other peoples are of no consequence. We need not ever direct our glance outward -- to determine the goals and desires of those we subjugate. Why, they really want exactly what we propose to give them, at the end of a gun if necessary. If they don't, it is only because they are ignorant. And that is, in fact, what the foreign policy establishment believes, although it will rarely admit it honestly and unambiguously: to the extent other peoples resist our efforts to improve them, they are "less than," they are not as "civilized" as we are, they are not fully human. So if we kill thousands or even millions of them, what does it matter? It's not as if it is Americans who are being killed.

With this background in mind, the article by Jeff Stein in yesterday's New York Times (which has already been widely noted) is not at all surprising. Indeed, it was completely and entirely predictable:

FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: "Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?"

A "gotcha" question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?

...

But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

...

A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.’s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. "Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference," he said. "It’s important to know who your targets are."

That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. "The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following," he said. "And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following."

O.K., I asked, trying to help, what about today? Which one is Iran — Sunni or Shiite? He thought for a second. "Iran and Hezbollah," I prompted. "Which are they?"

He took a stab: "Sunni."

Wrong.

...

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

"Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: "One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something."

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. "Now that you’ve explained it to me," he replied, "what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area."

There are additional grisly details, but that gives you the idea. Stein concludes:

Some agency officials and members of Congress have easily handled my "gotcha" question. But as I keep asking it around Capitol Hill and the agencies, I get more and more blank stares. Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don’t care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we’re fighting. And that’s enough to keep anybody up at night.

Stein's article reveals this profound, determined ignorance in a manner that is especially stark and appalling. But I emphasize once again two critical issues: this ignorance is the inevitable and logical result of the basic premises that drive our foreign policy, and our government's blindness about the rest of the world has been staggeringly obvious for years -- and in fact, for many decades.

From the Philippines, through Vietnam, through Central America, through numerous other interventions (acknowledged and covert), through Iraq -- it's the same theme, repeated with endless variations. We never learn -- and we pride ourselves on the fact that we are not obliged to learn. We are unique and "exceptional." Everyone wants what only we have. It is our "right" to bring the rest of the world into line with our goals and desires, using military force as required.

And then we wonder why chaos, destruction and death follow in our wake.


[After my regrettable two-month absence, necessitated by health and related concerns, I am now doing my best to return to regular posting. In that connection, and given the impending arrival of another month with its associated living expenses (very minimal ones, I assure you), I must make one of my periodic appeals for donations. At the moment, my sole income is from the writing I do here and at The Sacred Moment, where you will find my numerous essays based on the work of Alice Miller, my series On Torture, and many other pieces. (I still intend to move all the essays at The Sacred Moment here as I have time, so that all my writing is in one place.) So if you find my writing of some value, I would be very grateful if you considered making a donation in any amount. Links will be found at the top right and on the main page.

If you use the PayPal button here, it appears that you're donating to The Sacred Moment. But donations to either site come to me, so it doesn't actually matter. I offer my gratitude in advance for your consideration.]

Distancing Evil, and Searching for Rescue

Patrick Cockburn is frequently an unusually perceptive and reliable commentator. I've cited his work on a number of occasions.

In his latest column, Cockburn writes:

The way in which the growing confrontation with Iran is being sold by the US, Israel and West European leaders is deeply dishonest. The manipulation of the media and public opinion through systematic threat exaggeration is similar to the drum beat of propaganda and disinformation about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction that preceded the invasion in 2003.

The supposed aim of imposing sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank, measures officially joined by the EU, is to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program before it reaches the point where it could theoretically build a nuclear bomb. Even Israel now agrees that Iran has not yet decided to do so, but the Iranian nuclear program is still being presented as a danger to Israel and the rest of the world.

There are two other menacing parallels between the run-up to the Iraq war and what is happening now. The purported issue is the future of the Iranian nuclear program, but, for part of the coalition mustering against Iran, the real purpose is the overthrow of the Iranian government.

...

In reality, sanctions are likely to intensify the crisis, impoverish ordinary Iranians and psychologically prepare the ground for war because of the demonization of Iran.

I obviously agree with all of this: it's what I said just the other day, as well as a few days before that.

But note what else Cockburn says, which is most definitely not similar to anything I've written. Writing about U.S. neoconservatives, the Likud Party and the Israel lobby in Washington, Cockburn states:

These are very much the same people who targeted Iraq in the 1990s. They have been able to force the White House to adopt their program and it is now, in turn, being implemented by a European Union that naively sees sanctions as an alternative to military conflict.

...

It is this latter policy [of toppling the Iranian government] that has triumphed. Israel, its congressional allies and the neoconservatives have successfully bamboozled the Obama administration into a set of policies that make sense only if the aim is overthrow of the regime in Tehran.

...

It is difficult not to admire the skill with which Netanyahu has maneuvered the White House and European leaders into the very confrontation with Iran they wanted to avoid.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. Obama was strapped down, blindfolded, deprived of all food and water for weeks on end, and tortured in numerous ways. Perhaps Netanyahu screamed at him nonstop for 10 or 12 days. (It would unquestionably work on me.) And then, on top of that, Obama was tricked. Tricked!!! How unbelievably dastardly.

Thus was Obama -- who happens to be the goddamned President of the United States, who happens to be the goddamned Commander-in-Chief of all the U.S. military forces -- "forced," "bamboozled" and "maneuvered" into taking actions he doesn't begin to understand and doesn't actually intend.

Poor, poor Barack. To be exploited, taken advantage of, and grossly abused in such a horrifying manner. Let us all bow our heads for several moments of contemplative compassion.

I repeat: Cockburn is often an unusually perceptive writer, and much of his work is of considerable value. But not when it comes to comments of this kind. I also have to say, if I may speak more informally, that I am absolutely exhausted by this kind of shit.

In addition to the arguments provided in the recent posts (here and here, in case you missed them before), let's hit a few highlights. It was Barack Obama who, in a major foreign policy address in the spring of 2007 -- five years ago -- proclaimed that America was still "the last, best hope of Earth," and that "the American moment" is to extend for "this new century." I described Obama's speech as the undiluted embrace of American exceptionalism, and discussed it at length in "Songs of Death."

Obama emphasized his worship of American exceptionalism in numerous utterances, none more famous (or infamous, in my own view) than his heralded speech on race. I analyzed that speech as well. In "Obama's Whitewash," I said:

Almost every politician lies, and most politicians lie repeatedly. Yet in one sense, Obama's speech is exceptional, rare and unique -- but not for any of the reasons offered by Obama's uncritical, mindless adulators. It is exceptional for this reason: it is rare that a candidate will announce in such stark, comprehensive terms that he will lie about every fact of moment, about every aspect of our history that affects the crises of today and that has led to them, about everything that might challenge the mythological view of America. But that is what Obama achieved with this speech. It may be a remarkable achievement -- a remarkable and detestable one, and one that promises endless destruction in the future, both here and abroad.

I seem to have been correct. Imagine.

For still more on these issues, see this essay, including the numerous links provided near the beginning.

Now, seriously. Seriously, godfuckingdammit. After all this -- and after the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and on and on and on -- an intelligent writer is going to tell me that Obama is being forced, bamboozled and maneuvered into a course of action that very probably will lead to regime change in Iran? And that result has nothing whatsoever to do with what Obama himself intends? That gentle, kindly, big-hearted Barack has been tricked?

What interests me about this kind of mental contortion -- and where I think its significance lies -- is what it achieves, and what unspoken premises it reveals. Among other things, it accomplishes a distancing from evil. If we acknowledge that Obama knows exactly what he's doing and that he intends the likely outcome of the events he sets in motion, we are compelled to conclude that he is engaged in a plan which can only be described as deeply, unforgivably evil. The effects of regime change, most likely accompanied by air strikes or military action(s) of some other kind, will include the widespread deaths of innocent human beings and vast destruction. As Cockburn points out, those same effects can be terrible and awful with notably harsh sanctions alone, but there can be no question that the results of sanctions followed by military action will be still worse.

This resort to "oh, poor Obama" argumentation also implies that, if only Obama were delivered from the clutches of those who "force" and "bamboozle" him into acting against his will, Obama would be free to follow his "true" convictions. It is further implied that those "true" convictions are far preferable, and more humane and just (and, it appears, more in line with Cockburn's own beliefs).

So I have to ask, keeping in mind even the brief recitation of Obama's own declarations as to his beliefs given above as well as his own record to date, where in hell is the evidence for those "true," better beliefs? Is there any evidence for them at all? All of the evidence to date supports only one conclusion: what Obama is doing comports fully and precisely with what he himself believes. The evidence permits no other conclusion.

To speak of Obama being "forced" and "bamboozled" in this manner may be regarded by some (although not by me) as a touching article of faith, but it cannot be considered a serious point of view, not if one is focused on the facts.

Another element of this form of denial merits mention. The implications of the "poor Obama" argument can be stated in a different way: if only we had a leader not subject to such wicked trickery and manipulation, we would be set on the right course. The policies of the U.S. Government would be vastly improved, perhaps even good -- and we will be saved!

To which I respond, as emphatically as I can: Absolutely not. You are not going to be "saved," not that way.

These issues -- distancing ourselves from evil, and the endless search for rescue by a savior (on a national and international scale, no less) -- are very complex and worthy of more detailed examination. And in fact, I'm planning such a discussion in the near future (and I've begun it, in part). So there will be more to come on these subjects.

Desperate to Lose, Part Gamillionth of an Endless Series

I will not take the time to analyze those parts of Alexander Cockburn's latest column with which I disagree, or that I find to be inaccurate or singularly ill-advised. I cite it for these passages in particular, which are absolutely correct:

Liberals, particularly women, maddened at the spectacle of attractive Governor Sarah embodying everything they loathe, flood the internet with frantic oaths and seize on every particle of gossip from Alaska suggesting that Palin is a hypocrite, a mismanager, a would-be burner of books, a bad mother and untrue to her man. Those scoffing only a few short weeks ago at the National Enquirer's "mere unverified gossip" about John Edwards' affair, now hasten to the supermarkets to snatch up the Enquirer's latest allegations about Palin and her family.

As the political news circuits began to buzz with news of improved polling numbers for McCain-Palin in the battleground states, Obama's ascent towards the status of a Sure Bet is stalled. After the triumphs of Denver the candidate relapsed into the nerveless mode of early August. He had the poor judgment to go on the cable news show of Fox's Bill O'Reilly and make the extraordinary statement that the so-called Surge in Iraq had "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams". He calls for 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan. Move over, Sarah Palin! You only want to shoot wolves from helicopters. Real men like Obama want more helicopter gunships to mow down Afghan kids from the air.

At a stroke, with that deadly concession about the success of the surge, Obama handed McCain the opportunity, in their upcoming debates, to congratulate his Democratic opponent for acknowledging McCain's superior political and military judgment. Simultaneously Obama foolishly threw over the side the reports of journalists on the spot like CounterPunch's Patrick Cockburn who have been describing how the present lowering of violence in Iraq owes little to the surge in US troops, as opposed to changes in local political conditions. It certainly confirms my view that Obama rarely has the stomach to stand his ground, when challenged from the right with any vigor.

...

Day after day McCain's escorts shielded Palin from any impromptu exchanges with the press, until the eagerly awaited 3-part interviews with ABC's Charles Gibson began last Thursday. I'll root for anyone against an uppity, patronizing network interviewer and so I was in Palin's corner when ABC's Gibson went after her about the Bush Doctrine, which he made sound as though it was something you learned in school along with the Gettysburg address. No one knows what the Bush Doctrine is, least of all President Bush. He's spent seven long years trying to define it. Basically the Doctrine says it's okay for employees or subcontracted agents of the US Government to kidnap people, lock them up in wire or concrete hutches for years at a time, regularly electrocuting them and beating their genitals until they go mad. Small wonder Sarah Palin didn't want to get too specific.

You will find more about Obama's view that "the Surge" is a great success in this entry. And note again this observation of Cockburn's: "Move over, Sarah Palin! You only want to shoot wolves from helicopters. Real men like Obama want more helicopter gunships to mow down Afghan kids from the air."

And there you have the deadly, mendacious hypocrisy at the heart of today's Democratic foreign policy prescriptions in conjunction with their attacks on the Republicans, a subject I have dealt with extensively here, here and here. Follow the many links for much more.

As for the "Bush Doctrine" and Gibson's insufferable, condescending game of "gotcha," consider the following in addition to Cockburn's lethally accurate comments. Set aside your knee-jerk reaction against any citation to The Corner; I offer the material only for the facts adduced. But you might legitimately be struck with awe and wonder that you visit a blog where you find links to Counterpunch and The Corner in the same post! Who else offers you such breathtaking treasures? Why, almost no one else at all.

So, from The Corner:

How would a real foreign policy sophisticate have replied to Gibson’s question?

Well, Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. She was interviewed by Alan Johnson, for a book titled: "Global Politics After 9/11: The Democratiya Interviews."

Here's how the exchange begins:

Johnson: What are the central differences, and what are the elements of continuity, if any exist, between 'the Bush doctrine' and the 'grand strategy of forging a world of liberty under law'?

Slaughter: Tell me what you mean by 'The Bush Doctrine.'

In other words, Dean Slaughter gave the same answer as did Palin.

A pause while you collect your thoughts. The pause that refreshes, as it were. I will not dispute the contention that Palin was buying time and trying to collect her thoughts -- but in fact, her question was the correct one in substantive terms. But virtually no one wants to talk in substantive terms.

A bit more:

In case you’re interested, the rest of the exchange follows:

Johnson: Let's say a fairly aggressive strategy of promoting democracy, a willingness to use military force, and a refusal to be put off from using that force because you haven't been able to put an international alliance in place. Plus the idea that the root cause of the threat is the stagnation – politically, economically and culturally – of an entire region, so the only serious response is to promote political change in that region.

Slaughter: The Bush administration at its best looks long term at a lot of problems – terrorism is the most obvious. The Bush administration sees terrorists as a symptom and thinks their defeat requires social and economic and political change to empower individuals to make the most of their lives. And that's the concept of liberty – the liberty to flourish as human beings. And in that sense the Bush administration is continuing the policy of the Clinton administration, which continued the policy of the Reagan administration, which continued the policy of the Carter administration. You really have to go back to Kissinger before you get a break. A lot of what's happened since Kissinger was in reaction to a purely 'realist' foreign policy. So there is continuity there. We agree that long term democratisation is the best hope of creating a safer international environment for all of us. And yes, that does involve thinking about political change. Similarly, we also think there is great value in liberal democracies being able to bolster one another. So we propose a 'concert of democracies' – which has gotten a lot of heat – the Chinese and some Democrats are equally furious.

And there is still some more.

The savaging of Sarah Palin has revealed a great deal, and much of what it has revealed is of special interest to me. Here, I refer to issues in addition to the unspeakably ugly hatred of women as such that has been uncovered. On that subject, you can start here and follow the numerous links. I've already written a good deal on that topic, and there will soon be more on the general subject of the cultural and political reaction to the Palin selection.

Our Genocidal National Narcissism: We Are the Very, Very "Bad Guys"

Patrick Cockburn:

The cautious words of the Baker-Hamilton report stand in sharp contrast to the savagery and terror that dominate everyday life in Baghdad. Many of the terrible disasters it fears may occur in future are in fact already happening. It states that there is a risk of "a slide towards chaos", but with almost 4,000 Iraqis being killed every month, the chaos is already here.

"Ethnic cleansing could escalate," the report warns but, in reality, it does not have to for Iraq to fragment into three hostile homelands for Sunni, Shia and Kurds. Baghdad and central Iraq has already broken up into heavily armed and hostile Sunni and Shia townships.

Some 170 individuals spoke to the Iraqi Study Group, including Tony Blair, President George Bush, Iraqi leaders and numerous ambassadors and senior officials. But the conclusions of the report at times give the alarming impression that Republicans and Democrats on the panel never really understood Iraqi politics.

The report says: "The United States should work closely with Iraq's leaders to support the achievement of specific objectives - or milestones - on national reconciliation, security and governance." The problem here is that Iraq has already fallen apart as a political entity. Supposedly national institutions such as the police, army and government ministries have been divided up between Shia, Sunni and Kurds.

...

Myths systematically promulgated by US civil and military spokesmen at a thousand press briefings in Baghdad and Washington are quietly dumped by Mr Baker and his group. Again and again, the spokesmen emphasised the role of foreign fighters in the war in Iraq but the report cites US military officials as saying that al-Qa'ida in Iraq is responsible for only a small portion of the violence. It says there are only 1,300 foreign fighters in the country. It notes that the Mehdi Army of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr numbers at least 60,000 men.

There is a further blind spot in the report. The US is in part responsible for the weakness of the Iraqi government. It never wanted an Iraqi administration dominated by the Shia parties with possible sympathies with the regime in Tehran. Such an outcome was a political nightmare for Washington. The US helped create a political system in which each community can paralyse united action. It has also tried to split the Shia alliance which won the most votes in the two elections in 2005.

On that last point, that the U.S. itself "is in part responsible for the weakness of the Iraqi government," see this earlier post, "A Genuine Mission Impossible," which excerpts another Cockburn column.

And with regard to the issue that the members of the Iraq Study Group "never really understood Iraqi politics," I wrote the following only two months ago (and this essay also relied on Cockburn's enormously valuable reporting):

From the Philippines, through Vietnam, through Central America, through numerous other interventions (acknowledged and covert), through Iraq -- it's the same theme, repeated with endless variations. We never learn -- and we pride ourselves on the fact that we are not obliged to learn. We are unique and "exceptional." Everyone wants what only we have. It is our "right" to bring the rest of the world into line with our goals and desires, using military force as required.

And then we wonder why chaos, destruction and death follow in our wake.

I obviously have a very high opinion of Cockburn's writing and his invaluable perceptiveness. So it is with considerable surprise that I must disagree with the concluding paragraph of his latest piece:

In terms of domestic Iraqi politics, the most positive aspect of the report is that it exposes the hollowness of claims by the White House and Downing Street that victory in Iraq is still feasible and it is all a matter of staying the course.

I wish it were true that these "claims" (aka "lies") were "exposed" -- but it is not. I recently discussed the ultimate purpose of the Iraq Study Group's work and recommendations, which is primarily to protect the foreign policy status quo -- a status quo that encompasses both Republicans and Democrats. I will have considerably more on that soon. And I quoted Andrew Bacevich on this very point:

[The ISG's members'] purpose is twofold: first, to minimize Iraq's impact on the prevailing foreign policy consensus with its vast ambitions and penchant for armed intervention abroad; and second, to quell any inclination of ordinary citizens to intrude into matters from which they have long been excluded. The ISG is antidemocratic. Its implicit message to Americans is this: We'll handle things - now go back to holiday shopping.

In fact, all the ISG recommends is that we "stay the course" -- and the newly-empowered Washington Democrats have already made it clear they will do absolutely nothing to change our direction in any manner that actually might affect events. In the near future, I will offer further thoughts on that as well.

The most critical element of the status quo that remains unchallenged is our alleged "idealism," the notion that we act out of the best of motives and that we "meant well." Most Americans refuse to seriously consider the idea that Iraq represented no serious threat to us whatsoever, and that our leaders knew it. If you doubt that point at all, I recommend you read this wonderfully argued Jacob Hornberger column: "They Lied About the Reasons for Going to War." You should read the entire article; here are Hornberger's concluding paragraphs:

Defenders of the war might argue, "By relying on faulty intelligence, the president and vice president just made an honest mistake, and therefore, U.S. officials are not morally responsible for the massive death and destruction in Iraq." But that’s just not true: even if the WMD intelligence reports had been faulty, the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly establishes that President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their associates were being dishonest with respect to the real reason they were sending the nation into war against Iraq. As Vice President Cheney pointed out, even if the president and vice president had known that the intelligence reports were false, they would have ordered an invasion anyway.

Is the WMD lie important? Yes, because it led an untold number of Americans to support a war and an occupation that have unleashed forces that have resulted in the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands, on both sides. Thus, while it is entirely possible that Bush and Cheney would have invaded Iraq anyway if the American people had known the truth about why they were invading, at least the war and occupation would not have received the moral sanction of a deceived people.

What this means is very simple, and the only possible conclusion is utterly damning: by invading and occupying Iraq, we engaged in a completely unjustified war of aggression. Our presence in Iraq constitutes nothing less than an unforgivable war crime. Critics of our viciously immoral war bemoan American casualties -- and those casualties are indeed tragic. But even most of those critics almost never mention the hundreds of thousands of dead and injured Iraqis -- or the fact that we have destroyed an entire nation beyond any hope of recovery in the foreseeable future. This narcissism is displayed almost as much by liberal and progressive bloggers as it is by the mindlessly robotic Bush and America defenders.

I freely admit that I find this national narcissism disgusting and sickening to an extent that far surpasses my ability to express it fully and accurately. It is absolutely nauseating. Underlying this narcissism, and an inextricable part of it, is a repellent streak of murderous racism in our national makeup -- and that, too, I will be writing about at greater length in the near future.

For the moment, I offer this prediction: five years from now, toward the end of the year 2011, there will still be approximately 50,000 American troops in Iraq. It will not matter in the least if a Democrat is elected President in 2008. The foreign policy consensus to which our governing elites subscribe knows no party lines: it is a Western and an American perspective.

That perspective is factually false, and it is morally detestable. And very, very few Americans even dare to question it.

AND: Still more on these topics, here.

(I apologize for my intermittent writing at present. But times are exceptionally difficult for me personally at the moment. Two good friends are very seriously ill. One friend has just been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, and her husband has been hospitalized for over a week with a worsening heart condition, and he will soon probably have to go into a hospice. I'm trying to help out to whatever extent I can, which unfortunately is not a great deal. But this is turning out to be a very grim "holiday" season here. Nonetheless, there is a great deal I plan and want to write about, so I will do the best I can. Given the circumstances, posting will be unavoidably sporadic for the time being.)

Perspective, and Values

Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, who write the blog, Iraq the Model, in an article published at Opinion Journal:

BAGHDAD--The new strategy to secure Baghdad has been dubbed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "Operation Imposing the Law." After weeks of waiting and anxiety it is finally under way, and early signs are encouraging.

The government information campaign and the news about thousands of additional troops coming had a positive impact even before the operation started. Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country. ...

This indicates that both the addition of more troops and the tough words of Prime Minister Maliki are doing the job of intimidating the militants. The extremists understand only the language of power, and any reluctance or softness on the part of the Iraqi or U.S. government would only embolden them. In this way the clearly voiced commitment of President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki was exactly the type of strong message that needed to be sent.

...

So after only a couple weeks we can feel, despite the continuing violence, that much has been accomplished. Many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city. This change in mood is something huge by itself.

The brightest image of the past two weeks was the scene of displaced families returning home; more than a thousand families are back to their homes under the protection of the Army and police. This figure invites hope that Baghdad will restore its social, ethnic and religious mosaic.

Marketplaces are seeing more activity and stores that were long shuttered are reopening--including even some liquor stores that came under vicious attacks in the past. This is a sign that extremists no longer can intimidate people and hold the city hostage. All of this gives the sense that law is being imposed.

...

It is true that not all of Baghdad has seen the same amount of progress, but we realize that patience is necessary.

Patrick Cockburn:

Iraq's minorities, some of the oldest communities in the world, are being driven from the country by a wave of violence against them because they are identified with the occupation and easy targets for kidnappers and death squads. A "huge exodus" is now taking place, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 30 per cent of the 1.8 million Iraqis who have fled to Jordan, Syria and elsewhere come from the minorities.

The Christians, who have lived in Iraq for 2,000 years, survived the Muslim invasion in the 7th century and the Mongol onslaught in the 13th but are now being eradicated as their churches are bombed and members of their faith hunted down and killed along with other minority faiths.

The report, Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq's minority communities since 2003, written by Preti Taneja, says that half of the minority communities in Iraq, once 10 per cent of the total population, have fled.
...

One of the worst affected minorities is the small, 35,000-strong Palestinian community, many of whom had been in Iraq since 1948. Seen as being under the special protection of Saddam Hussein, they have suffered severely since his fall. Umm Mohammed, a 56-year-old grandmother, said the militias "are monsters, they killed my two sons in front of my house and later shouted that we Palestinians are like pigs."

A suicide car bomb exploded yesterday near the College of Administration and Economics killing 40 and injuring more than 30, mostly students. The college is part of Mustansariyah University, which Sunni insurgents denounce as controlled by the Shia Mehdi Army.

Yifat Susskind, Communications Director of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization:

Last week, Houzan Mahmoud [the international representative of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, a partner organization of MADRE] opened her e-mail and found a message from Ansar al-Islam, a notoriously brutal Sunni jihadist group. The message read simply, "we will kill you by the middle of March." Houzan is an outspoken Iraqi feminist. The 34-year-old journalist and women's rights activist believes that hope for Iraq's future depends on building a society based on secular democracy and human rights. For this, she has been condemned to death.

Houzan is hardly alone in this regard. Since the US invaded Iraq, women there have endured a wave of death threats, assassinations, abductions, public beatings, targeted sexual assaults, and public hangings. Much of this violence is systematic-directed by both Sunni and Shiite Islamist militias that mushroomed across Iraq after the US toppled the mostly secular Ba'ath regime. We've heard about the brutality of the Sunni-based groups, but much less about the Shiite militias that are the armed wings of the political parties that the US boosted into power. Their aim is to establish an Islamist theocracy and their social vision requires the subjugation of women and the elimination of anyone with a competing vision for Iraq's future.

The "misery gangs" of these Shiite militias now patrol the streets of Iraq's major cities, attacking women who don't dress or behave to their liking. In many places, they kill women who wear pants or appear in public without a headscarf. In much of Iraq, women are virtually confined to their homes because of the likelihood of being beaten, raped, or abducted in the streets.

...

[Houzan Mahmoud] has seen first-hand that for all its talk of bringing democracy to Iraq, the Bush Administration has traded the rights of more than half of the population-Iraq's women-for cooperation from the Shiite extremists whom it wagered could deliver stability. With those hopes dashed, the Administration is now backing a different horse-one that is just as woman hating and anti-democratic. As Houzan said, "Perhaps Bush's speeches about bringing democracy to Iraq made people in the US feel better about the war. But the US has only replaced Saddam's secular tyranny with an Islamist tyranny. Iraqi women are paying the heaviest price for this and genuine democracy is still a distant dream."

The next two weeks are bracketed by International Women's Day and the fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Dedicate this period to listening to Iraqi women like Houzan and you will hear a re-telling of the Iraq war-one that amplifies the truth that women's human rights and democratic rights go hand-in-hand and that the Bush Administration-for all its talk-has only contempt for both.

Patrick Cockburn again:

The Iraq conflict is the great crisis of our era, but television has found it impossible to cover it properly. The dangers to correspondent and crew are too great, and the limitations of being embedded with the US or British armies subvert balanced coverage.

Watching Tony Blair claim progress in Iraq as he announced a partial withdrawal of British troops last week, I was struck for the hundredth time by the favour done to him and President George Bush by the Iraqi insurgents and militias. By killing and kidnapping journalists - and thus making so much of Iraq a media-free zone - they have ensured that the White House and Downing Street can say what they like and get away with it.

Blair spoke of British achievements in security and economic development in Basra, but there were almost no journalists on the ground to check the truth of this. One of the infuriating aspects of covering Iraq in the past three years has been to hear the US and British governments claim that there are large parts of Iraq that are at peace and know it is untrue, but to prove that they are lying would mean getting killed oneself.

Iraq has become almost impossible to cover adequately by the old system of foreign correspondents, cameraman or woman, and crew. It is simply too dangerous for a foreigner to move freely around Baghdad and the rest of the country. It is bad enough for print journalists like myself but cameramen, by the nature of their trade, have to stand in the open and make themselves visible.

...

Iraq is worse than previous wars. The Sunni insurgents kill or kidnap cameramen just as they do any foreigner. They regard an Iraqi cameraman as a possible spy. Important events now go unrecorded in a way that has not been true of any other recent conflict.

...

It has never been true that foreign journalists in Baghdad spend their time cowering in their hotels or in the Green Zone. If this was correct, far fewer would have been killed or suffered terrible injuries.

...

The Iraq conflict should be the turning point in television coverage of events abroad. Because of the hostility to foreign journalists, battles are being fought of which only vague reports and rumours reach the outside world. The only way the vacuum of information can be filled is by using local cameramen on a full-time basis.

And from Baghdad Burning...no further posts since February 20. I noted her most recent entries here.

A Genuine Mission Impossible

Patrick Cockburn, whose important work I've noted here and here, writes about the causes of the impossible situation we've created in Iraq, a situation with no "good" solution whatsoever. I recommend the entire column, but these excerpts capture the heart of the matter:

There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter.

...

Where did the US go wrong? Saddam Hussein's government collapsed almost without a fight. Iraqis would not fight for him. Iraqis may not have welcomed American tanks with sweets and rose petals but they were very glad to see the back of their own disaster-prone leader.

The greatest American mistake was to turn what could have been presented as liberation into an occupation. The US effectively dissolved the Iraqi state. It has since been said by US generals - many of whom now claim to have been opponents of the invasion all along - that given a larger US army and a more competent occupation regime, all might still have been well. This is doubtful.

...

One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years - the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted. All Iraqi governments, unelected and elected, have been tainted and de-legitimised by being dependent on the US. This is as true of the government of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today as it was when sovereignty was supposedly handed back to Iraq under the prime minister Iyad Allawi in June 2004. Real authority had remained in the hands of the US. The result was a government whose ministers could not move outside the Green Zone. They showed great enthusiasm for press conferences abroad where they breathed defiance at the insurgents and agreed with everything said by Mr Bush or Tony Blair.

The government can do nothing because it only came into existence after ministries were divided up between the political parties after prolonged negotiations. Each ministry is a bastion of that party, a source of jobs and money. The government can implement no policy because of these deep divisions. The government cannot turn on the militias because they are too strong.

As Cockburn notes at the end of his piece, the U.S. could leave Iraq, but only with a "great loss of face" that is intolerable to this administration. Thus, the chaos, destruction and death will continue -- because our leaders refuse to admit they were grievously wrong. That is the entire truth, and it is entirely awful.

More from Cockburn here: Give Up the Fantasies.

And so, still one more time: Get Out Now. Just Do It.

We Are Not Special, and There Is No Happy Ending: The Blood-Drenched Darkness of American Exceptionalism

You may not regard the two propositions in my title as deserving of any special attention. You may think, entirely correctly, that if we as Americans are special, it is only in the way that any human being is special: that each of us is unique and irreplaceable, that each of our lives, and the lives of all of us, demand reverence for the unrepeatable value of a person's brief passage in this world. And you may recognize, also correctly, that certain actions lead to destruction and loss in a manner and on a scale that forbid correction and amends, that on some occasions we can only accept the certainty of negative consequences that cannot be avoided. Human beings may be capable of remarkable, even wondrous achievement, but limits are inherent in existence itself. Sometimes those limits mean that wounds will never heal, that the pain will never end.

If you view these observations as unremarkable, even mundane, that is because in certain crucial respects, you are an adult. Such a healthy perspective -- "healthy" designating that which proceeds from demonstrable facts -- enables us to see the extreme nature of the delusions necessitated by an unquestioned belief in the myth of American exceptionalism. Despite the events of the last decade, the myth remains the heart of American culture, of American politics, and of the American State. Our politicians still regularly assure us that "America is the last, best hope of Earth," and that "the American moment" will extend for the entirety of "this new century." Americans remain "the Good Guys: "The emphasis is not only on 'Good,' but on 'the': we are the Good Guys in a way that no one else is, or can ever be."

When we believe that America and Americans are unique and uniquely good in all of history, we will also believe that there is no problem we cannot overcome. Our political leaders tell us this fable time and again; many Americans are eager to believe it, in the manner of a damaged child who appeals to mysterious powers to vanquish the dangers lurking in the shadows of his room. We witness this mechanism in connection with a wide range of problems, even when those problems reach the catastrophic level. Here is Obama on the continuing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico:

President Barack Obama struck an optimistic tone over the ongoing oil disaster Monday afternoon, saying that "things are going to return to normal" on the stricken Gulf Coast after much pain and frustration, and that the polluted waters will eventually be in better shape than before the leak began.

These are reassurances offered by parents to children whom they treat as doltish objects fit only to be manipulated. The parent or other authority figure -- here, Obama -- does not expect his words to be credited after a process of independent evaluation. He expects, in fact he demands, that you take his word for it, that you believe him without question or challenge. He demands that you obey. This is the way our political leaders treat their subjects both abroad and at home. (In addition to rejecting this method of forcible "persuasion," I also reject such reassurances for further, more specific and compelling reasons, as do many others. I recognize that we are provided only such information about the Gulf catastrophe as the government and BP, which are one and the same in this context, wish us to have. We have close to no idea what is actually going on, or the damage that has already been inflicted and that may manifest itself in the future. Moreover, I recognize the dangerous folly of entrusting any kind of solution to a crisis of this kind, or to the crisis of climate change however one may conceive it, to an inherently, fatally corrupted corporatist State.)

The pace of destruction on the domestic front is rapidly increasing at present. But the greatest destruction wrought by the exceptionalist American State will still be found in the realm of foreign affairs. The foundation of America's murderous prescription for large parts of the rest of the world remains as I have identified it:

In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this [exceptionalist] tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how "innocent" can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?

With this belief system as the unchallengeable foundation, a vast number of Americans render themselves completely unable to recognize the devastating consequences of the American State's actions abroad. Whenever those consequences threaten to announce themselves in an unavoidable manner, most Americans will explicitly deny or avoid them through an endless variety of stratagems. When all else fails, their ultimate defense will be the cloaked restatement of the myth's message: the lives of those other people are simply not of the same value as our own. Such recognition must be disguised to a degree, for an explicit statement to that effect would shock certain sensibilities (or certain people would at least pretend to be shocked). But -- and this is the critical point -- when we consider the relevant facts, the continuing refusal to acknowledge what the American State has done and still does today can have no other meaning.

A terrifyingly awful example of this phenomenon is the disappearance of the nightmarish tragedy of Iraq from our national conversation. Remember that Iraq never posed a serious threat to the United States, and that our leaders knew that it posed no such threat. Therefore, the U.S. invasion and occupation represent an ongoing series of war crimes. This is not an arguable point in any respect. Since it cannot be argued, it is ignored altogether.

And it is not just ignored, as malignantly evil as that would be by itself. The American exceptionalist myth tells us that the United States is unique and uniquely good. It is not sufficient to ignore negative consequences of our actions: we must transform any and all negative consequences into a positive good. This process has been rigorously followed for every American intervention ever undertaken (going back to the Philippines, then with the American entrance into World War I, on into many interventions after World War II, on into Iraq and Afghanistan today), and the identical process has been well underway for several years in connection with Iraq in particular.

Chris Floyd identified the operation of this mechanism in December of last year:

[T]he situation in Iraq is now being held up as a model, a goal, for Barack Obama's massive expansion of the war and occupation in Afghanistan. Obama himself has called the "surge" in Iraq "an extraordinary achievement," and has at every turn promoted and propagated the myth that George W. Bush's escalation of a hideous war of aggression was a resounding success. This myth is based on one thing only: the fact that the peak of the ghastly death rate produced by the American occupation dropped to a somewhat less horrific level. But as countless experts and analysts have pointed out, this drop had very little to do with the addition of some 28,000 American troops.

In that article, Floyd excerpted Patrick Cockburn, who identified this terrible truth:

The guerrilla war against the US in Iraq ceased because the Sunni community was being slaughtered by Shia death squads. "Judging by the body counts at the time in the Baghdad morgues, three Sunnis died for every Shia," Dr Michael Izady, who conducted a survey of the sectarian make-up of Baghdad for Columbia University's School of International Affairs, is quoted as saying. "Baghdad, basically a Sunni city into the 1940s, by the end of 2008 had only a few hundred thousand Sunni residents left in a population of over five million." Defeated in this devastating sectarian civil war, the Sunni ended their attacks on US troops and instead sought their protection. The "surge" of 28,000 extra US troops who arrived in the summer of 2007 had a marginal impact on the outcome of the fighting.

We must always remember the scope of the horrifying effects of the U.S. invasion and occupation, including the murder of over a million innocent people, together with the all-encompassing devastation of an entire country as set forth in that same article.

Such is the limitless power of delusion on this scale: a blood-drenched tragedy of world-historical proportion becomes "an extraordinary achievement," and a criminal war of aggression is transmuted by the alchemy of cultural myth-making into a "success." This is the evil to be found at the rotted heart of the myth: whatever the United States does, it will lead to good and only to good.

And all of it -- all of it -- is a damnable, unforgivable lie. Patrick Cockburn has written a new article about Iraq: "The Ruin They'll Leave Behind." Let us leave aside the fact that the U.S. isn't leaving, an issue I just recently discussed. In light of the great value of Cockburn's reporting, this is a comparatively minor point. I urge you to read all of Cockburn's piece.

Here are several key passages:

On June 14, this year, an interpreter for the US army called Hameed al-Daraji was shot dead as he was sleeping in his house in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

In some respects there was nothing strange about the killing, since 26 Iraqi civilians were murdered in different parts of the country on the same day. As well as working periodically for the Americans since 2003, Mr Daraji may have recently converted to Christianity and unwisely taken to wearing a crucifix around his neck – a gesture quite enough to make him a target in the Sunni Arab heartlands.

What made Iraqis, inured to violence though they are, pay particular attention to the murder of Mr Daraji was the identity of his killer. Arrested soon after the body was discovered, his son is reported to have confessed to his father's murder, explaining that his father's job and change of religion brought such shame on the family that there was no alternative to shooting him. A second son and Mr Daraji's nephew are also wanted for the killing and all three of the young men are alleged to have links to al-Qa'ida.

The story illustrates the degree to which Iraq remains an extraordinarily violent place. Without the rest of the world paying much attention, some 160 Iraqis have been killed, and hundreds wounded, over the past two weeks. Civilian casualties in Iraq are still higher than in Afghanistan, though these days the latter has a near-monopoly of media attention. But the killing of Mr Daraji should give pause to those who imagine that the US occupation of Iraq somehow came right in its final years...

...

American troops leave behind a country that is a barely floating wreck. Baghdad feels like a city under military occupation, with horrendous traffic jams caused by the 1,500 checkpoints and streets blocked off by miles of concrete blast walls that strangle communications within the city. The situation in Iraq is in many ways "better" than it was, but it could hardly be anything else, given that killings at their peak in 2006-2007 were running at about 3,000 a month. That said, Baghdad remains one of the most dangerous cities in the world, riskier to walk around than Kabul or Kandahar.

...

Corruption explains much in Iraq – but it is not the only reason why it has been so difficult to create a functioning government. Saddam Hussein should not be such a hard act to follow. Part of the problem here is that the US invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein had revolutionary consequences because it shifted power from the Sunni Arab Baathists to the 60 per cent of Iraqis who are Shia and in alliance with the Kurds. Iraq had a new ruling class rooted in the rural Shia population and headed by former exiles with no experience of running anything. In many ways, their model of government is to recreate Saddam's system, only this time with the Shia in charge. It used to be said that Iraq was under the thumb of Sunni Arabs from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home city north of Baghdad, while these days people in Baghdad complain that a similar tight-knit gang from the Shia city of Nasiriyah surrounds the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

In many ways, Iraq is becoming like Lebanon, its politics and society irredeemably divided by sect and communal loyalties. The outcome of the parliamentary election on March 7 could easily be forecast by assuming that most Iraqis would vote as Sunni, Shia or Kurds. Jobs at the top of government and throughout the bureaucracy are filled unofficially according to sectarian affiliation. In a crude way, this does give everybody a share of the cake, but the cake is too small to satisfy more than a minority of Iraqis. Government is also weakened because ministers are representatives of some party, faction or community and cannot be dismissed because they are crooked or incompetent.

Going back to Baghdad last month, after being away for some time, I was struck by how little had changed. The airport was still among the worst in the world. When I wanted to fly to Basra, Iraq's second biggest city and the centre of the oil industry, Iraqi Airways said they had only one flight during the week and they were none too certain when that would leave.

Violence may be down, but few of the 2 million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria think it safe enough to go home. A further 1.5 million people are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), forced out of their homes by sectarian pogroms in 2006 and 2007 and too frightened to return. Of these, some half a million people try to survive in squatter camps which Refugees International describes as lacking "basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity, and built on precarious places – under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps". A worrying fact about these camps is that the number of people in them should be shrinking as sectarian warfare ebbs, but in fact the IDP population is growing. These days refugees come to the camps not because of fear of the death squads but because of poverty, joblessness or because the prolonged drought is driving farmers off their land.

Cockburn has much, much more.

As deeply horrifying as these details are, perhaps it is that these facts are not hidden or completely inaccessible that is most unsettling. What the U.S. has done -- death and ongoing suffering on a monumental scale, that "Iraq remains an extraordinarily violent place" and "is a barely floating wreck" -- can easily be known, if we seek to know the truth. Yet almost none of our leaders will acknowledge the smallest part of this truth, and most Americans are unaware of almost all of it. This reveals a notable danger in what is often held up as yet another singular virtue of the United States: that we have a "free" press, and that there is no official censorship. As a result, people believe that they do know the truth. After all, no one is being actively prevented from telling even unpleasant truths.

Such simplistic appeals to what is supposedly another aspect of American virtue disregard the complex operations of cultural "truths" that are widely accepted. It is almost impossible to imagine how official censorship could more successfully and comprehensively obliterate the actual truth. And I repeat: since people delude themselves that their leaders and media are telling them the truth, they feel no need to seek further for it. Moreover, facts such as those set forth by Cockburn, facts that are accessible to anyone if he wants to find them, have no reality for those whose identity and self-worth are critically tied to the myth of American exceptionalism. It is the myth that is real; facts that conflict with and undermine the myth rarely penetrate the consciousness of most Americans. Such facts are never admitted by those who would lead the American State.

Even after the criminal catastrophe of Iraq, the myth prevails. Death and devastation become "success" -- and that "success" then becomes another justification for yet another campaign of death and devastation in Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and then perhaps in Iran...

Some critics of American interventionism abroad point to signs that the same critics think indicate a willingness to more seriously question American foreign policy: the overextension of the American military, the serious, possibly irreversible weakening of the American economy generally, and the like. Again, however, such facts, indisputable though they may be, fall into the category of facts that become non-facts when set against the power of the myth. I have sometimes remarked that myths which assume importance in the manner of the exceptionalist myth constitute life itself. It is crucial to appreciate that this is how it operates in psychological terms. In a contest between a belief system which provides identity and self-worth and facts which threaten that identity and self-worth, it is frequently the facts which many people choose to discard.

Occasionally, when the destructive (and self-destructive) effects of a belief system become sufficiently overwhelming, a person will decide to question and eventually dispense with the belief system. The process can be agonizingly difficult. Many people prefer to avoid it. Most of us are familiar with the tragic story of the individual who refuses to give up the myth that he still believes provides him consolation and meaning -- even when clinging to the myth leads to his own death. Countries can behave in the identical manner; history provides numerous examples of the same tragedy on a national scale.

For the present, and for the United States, the myth commands the controlling position. What will dislodge it? I'm convinced that only widespread devastation visited on the U.S. itself, through economic collapse, natural (or unnatural) catastrophe, or a final war of unspeakably awful consequence, will finally force our leaders and many Americans to surrender the myth that has sustained them for so long. And in such a case, it won't be a choice to acknowledge the truth at long last. The devastation will be so immense that the myth will be rendered entirely irrelevant, a kind of unutterably grisly, sick, pointless joke. I would be profoundly grateful to be in error on this point; I do not think I am.

Even now, we could choose differently, but there are almost no signs that most Americans are willing to consider the possibility. Certainly, our leaders are not. And even if we do not make a different choice, we may have years and even decades before the worst consequences are felt. It is impossible to know the details in advance given the huge number of variables involved.

For the moment, we are left with a nation and a government that is as I described it close to four years ago:

If you have ever wondered how a serial murderer -- a murderer who is sane and fully aware of the acts he has committed -- can remain steadfastly convinced of his own moral superiority and show not even the slightest glimmer of remorse, you should not wonder any longer.

The United States government is such a murderer. It conducts its murders in full view of the entire world. It even boasts of them. Our government, and all our leading commentators, still maintain that the end justifies the means -- and that even the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents is of no moral consequence, provided a sufficient number of people can delude themselves into believing the final result is a "success."

...

We can appeal all we want to "American exceptionalism," but any "exceptionalism" that remains ours is that of a mass murderer without a soul, and without a conscience. ... It is useless to appeal to any "American" sense of morality: we have none. It does not matter how immense the pile of corpses grows: we will not surrender or even question our delusion that we are right, and that nothing we do can be profoundly, unforgivably wrong.

Dispatches from the Asylum: All Propaganda, All the Time

I well understand that, especially at moments of national and military triumph so overwhelming in their scope and magnificence that mere mortals cannot even begin to comprehend them, pitiable facts are a highly unwelcome intrusion. The myths that sustain us in our delusions must themselves be maintained, and the myths underlying endless war and destruction are the most tenacious of all.

Nonetheless, let us take a few moments to consider several of Patrick Cockburn's observations about the meaning of Zarqawi's death, and what it might signify for the future of the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq. I am not naive, and I also recognize that Cockburn is singularly ill-suited for this purpose: he has spent many years living in and reporting from the Middle East, and he actually knows what he's talking about. Given the requirements for being granted a leading role in our national discourse, the possession of relevant knowledge immediately disqualifies one from participation.

You therefore should feel free to disregard the following in its entirety. Perhaps a commentator like Tom Friedman is more suited to your tastes. Friedman has been consistently, relentlessly wrong about everything. Moreover, Friedman is admirably and extraordinarily conscientious in his refusal to recognize even one of his errors, and believes that his time is far better spent in vilifying and marginalizing those who would dare to point out his mistakes, and their calamitous costs. In the race to destroy the few remaining vestiges of intelligence in our national debates, always having been wrong makes one especially well-qualified to serve as an expert with regard to what we should do now and in the future. If others happened to be right and, even worse, if they were right for provable reasons which were also correct, well, that only demonstrates their nefarious, ugly motives and that they are not to be trusted on even a single point.

I suppose this description might cause a few of you to wonder if you are living in a hospital wing devoted to the care of those who have suffered irreparable cognitive damage. Or perhaps it simply makes you think of an insane asylum. You would not be far from the truth -- but in this case, the hospital wing or asylum stretches the length of a continent.

With these severely limiting reservations in mind, let us listen to Mr. Cockburn:

In the days before he was tracked down and killed by US laser-guided bombs Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was living with almost no guards and only five companions, two of whom were women and one an eight year old girl.

US military were yesterday displaying the few tattered possessions of Zarqawi and those who died with him in the rubble of an isolated house half hidden by date palms outside the village of Hibhib in Diyala province north east of Baghdad.

The ease with which Iraqi police and US special forces were able to reach the house after the bombing without encountering hostile fire showed that Zarqawi was never the powerful guerrilla chieftain and leader of the Iraqi resistance that Washington has claimed for over three years.

...

The only resistance encountered by black-clad American commandos was from local Sunni villagers in the village of Ghalabiya, near Hibhib, who thought the strangers were members of a Shia death squad. Villagers who were standing guard fired into the air on seeing the commandos who in turn threw a grenade that killed five of the guards. American regular army troops later came to Ghalabiya to apologise and promise compensation to the families of the dead men.

The manner in which Zarqawi died confirms the belief that his military and political importance was always deliberately exaggerated by the US. He was a wholly obscure figure until he was denounced by US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the US Security Council on 5 February 2003. Mr Powell identified Zarqawi as the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein though no evidence for this was ever produced.

Iraqi police documents were later discovered showing that Saddam Hussein's security forces, so far from collaborating with Zarqawi, were trying to arrest him. In Afghanistan Zarqawi had led a small group hostile to al Qa'ida. Arriving in Iraq in 2002 he had taken refuge in the mountain hide out of an extreme Islamic group near Halabja in Kurdistan in an area which the Iraqi government did not control.

Over the last three years Zarqawi has had a symbiotic relationship with US forces in Iraq. After the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 Zarqawi was once again heavily publicised by US military and civilian spokesmen as the preeminent leader of the resistance. His name was mentioned at every press conference in Baghdad. Dubious documents were leaked to the US press. The aim of all this from Washington's point of view was to show that by invading Iraq President Bish was indeed fighting international terrorism.

...

It is not clear how far American or Iraqi government statements about how they located him should be believed. It appears unlikely that he was having meeting with his lieutenants, as was first suggested, given that only two other men died with him.

There are already signs that in propaganda terms the US military--as well as the media--is missing Zarqawi as a single demonic figure who could be presented as the leader of the resistance. A US military commander was already saying last week that Zarqawi's most likely successor was Abu Ayyub al-Masari, an Egyptian born fighter trained in Afghanistan whom it is claimed came to Baghdad in 2002 to set up an al Qa'ida cell.

The myth of Zarqawi, which may originally have been manufactured by Jordanian and Kurdish intelligence in 2003, was attractive to Washington because it showed that anti-occupation resistance was foreign inspired and linked to al Qa'ida. In reality the insurgency was almost entirely homegrown, reliant on near total support from the five million strong Sunni community. Its military effectiveness was far more dependent on former officers of the Iraqi army and security forces than on al-Qa'ida. They may also have helped boost Zarqawi's fame because it was convenient for them to blame their worst atrocities on him.

...

The killing of Zarqawi is a boost for the newly formed government of Nouri al-Maliki, but Iraqis noticed that when announcing it he stood at the podium between Gen George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, and Zilmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador. "It showed the limits of Maliki's independence from the Americans," noted one Iraqi commentator. "It would have been better if they had let him make the announcement standing alone."

In the wake of Zarqawi's death Maliki was able to announce that the names of his new Interior Minister Jawad Khadim Polani and Abdul Qadr Mohammed Jassim as Defence Minister. Both are obscure figures but also former members of the Iraqi army opposed to Saddam Hussein. They will have difficulty getting control of their own ministries.

Maliki has said privately that his biggest problem is that his cabinet consists entirely of ministers who are the representatives of different parties. They were only appointed after rancorous negotiations. He cannot dismiss them however disobedient, incompetent or corrupt they may be. Each minister uses his or her ministry as a fiefdom to be exploited for patronage and money.

By the time he died Zarqawi's list of enemies included the US, the Iraqi government, many of the Sunni tribes and insurgent leaders. The biggest surprise surrounding his death last week was that it took so long to happen.

Cockburn has more.

I realize this may be profoundly dispiriting, and I apologize. The fantasies and myths are much more familiar, and infinitely more comforting. I'm certain "democracy" and "freedom" are about to break out across the Middle East. I can see it now, just around the corner at the end of that tunnel. And pay no attention to the corpses and broken bodies that continue to pile up.

Futile, needless, utterly unjustifiable death and suffering are only facts - and fantasy overwhelms facts almost all the time nowadays.

"Cowboys" and Other Horrors of Empire, Version Obama 1.0

It is certain we will see many future iterations of Imperial Wars in the Age of Obama, together with additional locales -- but it always deserves emphasis that all those variations, under Obama or any of the presidents that preceded him, utilize the same general tactics, just as they pursue the same overall goal. That goal is the expansion, maintenance and consolidation of American global hegemony; I have documented the development and implementation of that policy in my "Dominion Over the World" series. (All of the installments in that series are listed at the conclusion of Part IX.)

I will be discussing various aspects of this policy and the means used to achieve the ruling class's goals in the continuation of the "Against Prosecution" series. I now want to draw your attention to some follow-ups concerning my article from a few days ago, "Barack Obama, Murderer and War Criminal-in-Chief." That post of mine described, among other things, how many "liberal" and "progressive" organizations have enthusiastically fallen in line to support the horrors of Empire, now that those depredations are directed by the political party with which they happen to identify. To say that such organizations and individuals who make those arguments are deeply unprincipled and utterly unserious about the positions they take is the kindest observation that can be made. My argument drew the predictable response from some partisan defenders of the bloody Glories of Obama, which Chris Floyd addresses here. Floyd also discusses the growing horrors in Afghanistan and Pakistan in this entry.

To those discussions, you may add this from Patrick Cockburn:

It is astonishing to discover that the same small American unit, the US Marine Corps' Special Operations or MarSOC, has been responsible for all three of the worst incidents in Afghanistan in which civilians have been killed. Its members refer to themselves as "Taskforce Violence" and the Marines' own newspaper scathingly refers to the unit as "cowboys".

The US military commanders in Afghanistan must have known about MarSOC's reputation for disregarding the loss of life among Afghan civilians, yet for 10 days, they have flatly denied claims by villagers in the western Afghan province of Farah that more than 100 of their neighbours had been slaughtered by US air strikes.

Everything the US military has said about the air strikes on the three villages in Bala Boluk district on the evening of 4 May should be treated with suspicion – most probably hastily-concocted lies aimed at providing a cover story to conceal what really happened. Official mendacity of these proportions is comparable to anything that happened in Vietnam.

...

Survivors from Gerani, Gangabad and Khoujaha villages say that there had been fighting nearby but the Taliban had long withdrawn when US aircraft attacked. This was not a few errant sticks of bombs but a prolonged bombardment. It had a devastating effect on the mud-brick houses and photographs of the dead show that their bodies were quite literally torn apart by the blasts. This makes it difficult to be precise about the exact number killed, but the Afghan Rights Monitor, after extensive interviewing, says that at least 117 civilians were killed, including 26 women and 61 children.

The US military has now fallen back on the tired old justification that the enemy was using civilians as human shields. This certainly is not satisfying infuriated Afghans from demonstrating students at Kabul university all the way to President Hamid Karzai. Whatever MarSOC troops thought they were doing in Bala Boluk, the killing of so many civilians will do nothing but strengthen the Taliban.

On Cockburn's final point, too, the Obama administration faithfully follows the Bush model, which again is the model followed by all administrations. I summarized certain of the basic principles involved several years ago, in "The Folly of Intervention":

Intervention always leads to more intervention: the first intervention leads to unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as the justification for still further intervention. That intervention in turn leads to still more unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences, which are then used as yet another justification for still further intervention. The process can go on indefinitely, and the ultimate consequences are always disastrous in the extreme.

...

These are only some of the very bitter fruits of foreign intervention: uncontrollable consequences are always set loose and, all too often, those consequences are directly opposed to what the original stated purpose had been. And yet, like the insane man, we repeat this behavior over and over again, insisting that this time the result will be different, and it will finally work -- and we'll get exactly the result we want, and no others at all.

Consult that earlier essay for details of the disastrous results of the Clinton administration's interventions in the Balkans, consequences which liberals and progressives uniformly ignore. In addition, almost all liberals and progressives continue to defend Clinton's interventions to this day; to do so, they steadfastly rely on a series of outright lies, which I detailed here and here (the latter post discusses Biden's notable lies about Bosnia, as well as most liberals' willingness to believe that we "succeeded" there -- absolutely none of which is remotely true; follow the links in those pieces for still more). And if you continue to offer the lie that "a genocide was going on," I suggest you study this post in particular. Unfortunately, it has been my repeated experience that most political partisans have no interest in the truth on this point or on most others.

The determined refusal of liberals, progressives and sundry other defenders of the U.S.'s interventions and wars of conquest and control (but only when those interventions and wars are directed by Democrats) to see that the Bush administration represented a continuation of what had gone before and was not in any significant way a "break" with the past representing some "unique" evil, results in commentary that is hopelessly superficial and completely useless in terms of political and historic analysis. As is true of Obama himself, all such liberals and progressives offer no serious challenge to the existing system of oppression, destruction and death; to the contrary, they are the most faithful representatives and adherents of the system that causes havoc in every area it affects, both abroad and at home. Anyone who expected otherwise hadn't been paying attention and had understood very little about world and national events, if anything at all.

As I say, I will soon have much more on these issues.

All Lies, All the Time

Patrick Cockburn on the vacuous allegations from officials who refuse to be identified, all offered in the effort to "solve" the present catastrophe by widening it:

The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the U.S. government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

Senior U.S. defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shiite militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officials speaking in Baghdad used aggressive rhetoric suggesting Washington wants to ratchet up its confrontation with Tehran. It has not ruled out using armed force and has sent a second carrier task force to the Gulf.

...

The allegations by senior but unnamed U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The U.S. has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 U.S. soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

...

The statements from Washington give the impression that the United States has been at war with Shiite militias for the past three-and-a-half years, while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein's elite military and intelligence units. ...

The U.S. stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position four years ago. Then, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device.

Washington is now saying Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.

...

It is likely that Shiite militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible the Sunni insurgents have received some aid, but most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.

The evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the United States and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shiites have been at war with the U.S., when in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.

I came to Cockburn's latest column by way of Chris Floyd. In another entry, Floyd offers these spot-on observations:

Just as the two main beneficiaries of the "war on terror" have been George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden (and the forces they represent: war-profiteering crony capitalism on the one hand, wilfully ignorant violent sectarianism on the other), so too the main beneficiaries of the current White House "surge" toward war with Iran are Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Both men are increasingly unpopular leaders who have recently been stingingly rejected by voters in off-year elections. Both are supported by a "base" of religious fanatics and militarists. Both belong to apocalyptic sects that believe the world will end with the coming of a saviour who will obliterate all enemies of the sect and establish it as the sole determinant of a transformed reality, forever. And both are wretched incompetents at governing, ruling by bluster and PR ploys while their bungled policies – based on blind ideological zeal -- wreak havoc in the lives of ordinary citizens and degrade their nation's standing in the world.

Both are utterly dependent on external threats – real or manufactured– to sustain their power; they cannot obtain it from the "consent of the governed," having lost the support and confidence of their people. All they can do now is to wave the bloody shirt and hope to rally their nations behind them.

Floyd has a lot more.

Anyone, anywhere who falls for this endless barrage of lies to even the most infinitesimal degree is, as they say, too stupid to live. That is doubly true since all this propaganda swamps us less than five years after the last, almost identical episode. On every point that mattered, it was all lies then, and it's all lies now. But as is almost always the case with the perpetually ignorant and willfully self-blinded members of our governing class and the corrupt media who are in their thrall, they will not be the ones to die. If a wider war should come, that fate will be suffered once more by a great many innocent people. In the case of Iran, that number could reach literally into the millions.

And despite the fact that it is fully empowered to take several critical actions, the Democratic-controlled Congress does nothing, except to offer empty platitudes and pompous denunciations that are equally capable of achieving nothing, and to propose deliberately toothless, "non-binding" resolutions. You just have to love our government now: when it comes to the gravest and most momentous of issues, no one in either the legislative or executive branch is willing to take responsibility for a single goddamned thing. In this manner, we may soon become a pariah nation, and the world will finally be that much safer. Our own fate will be one we richly deserve, but it will be nothing compared to that others will have to endure.

Still proud to be an American? I would think not at the moment, and not for some time. One of these days, we might first try to act like decent and civilized human beings.