steve
Thanks for the Pallast piece...very funny.
It did occur to me that whatever form the trial of Sadaam takes, if it is open and publicized (or televised) as one would expect, then the US is going to have to prevent that whole area of potential defence argument. So they definitely aren't going to allow Johnnie Cochran anywhere near Sadaam.
Sadaam had pictures of Ben Franklin in the hole with him????? Can that be true? The irony of that is really extraordinary. Ben has come to epitomize the 'self-made American' regular guy (not an aristocrat, like the other founders)
Quote:Americans cannot seem to get enough of Benjamin Franklin. During the past few years we have had several Franklin biographies, of which Walter Isaacson's is the most recent and the finest; and more studies of Franklin are on the way. Part of the reason for this proliferation of Franklin books is the approaching tricentennial celebrations of his birth in 1706. But this isn't enough to explain our longstanding fascination. He is especially interesting to Americans, and not simply because he is one of the most prominent of the Founders. Among the Founders his appeal seems to be unique. He appears to be the most accessible, the most democratic, and the most folksy of these eighteenth-century figures.
from Dec 4 issue of NY Review of Books, no longer available online.
I will be flabbergasted.
If there is an open televized trial of Saddam. Was there one with Noreiga? He was on the payroll of the CIA on GH Bush's CIA.
A thought just occured that perhaps Saddam's daughters will be threatened. Wonder if he cares about them? My meaning is that maybe he will not be so forthcoming if they were threatened if he did so.
pistoff
There are similar possible PR problems with both men. But it wasn't difficult to lock Noriega away, and that won't work well in this case.
Saddam's first use will be as a dog and pony show that will stretch out to the elections next Nov.
gel
If democracy-minded folks get nothing else out of the tenure of this administration, we will at least get a lesson in how media management and control is a real threat to both truth and democracy.
A most encouraging element in this story was the broad and vigorous uprising against liberalization of media ownership rules. A very important thing to keep our eyes on.
Ge, I checked it out.
Bill Kristol said on TV today: He was too much of a coward even to shoot himself in the head before they took him.
Odd statement. I'd have thought it would have taken more courage to stay alive.
Kara wrote:Ge, I checked it out.
Bill Kristol said on TV today: He was too much of a coward even to shoot himself in the head before they took him.
Odd statement. I'd have thought it would have taken more courage to stay alive.
I'm sure Kristol said that out of dissapointment ... dead men tell no tales.
Did you check out the 'links' on 'watch'? There are a ton which is good but even better there is a pretty good blend on bias and even ... no bias
I've been there all morning.
all I meant Gozmo was that
Quote:Our crimes in Iraq should be as closely examined as will be those of Saddam.
whilst desirable, is unlikely to happen.
I was glad that Saddam was taken alive. We have enough controversy about his capture without having the added problem of why he had to be killed. His trial by a world court that will be televised will be good for this world to show how democracy works. That the guilty has the right to defend himself of all charges.
Politics, philosophy and society
By the left... about turn
There's a simple argument behind the convoluted prose of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, but the reality of Iraq shatters his looking-glass world, says Nick Cohen
Sunday December 14, 2003
The Observer
Buy Hegemony or Survival? at Amazon.co.uk
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
by Noam Chomsky
Hamish Hamilton £16.99, pp278
Whatever other crimes it committed or covered up in the twentieth century, the Left could be relied upon to fight fascism. A regime that launched genocidal extermination campaigns against impure minorities would be recognised for what it was and denounced.
Not the least of the casualties of the Iraq war is the death of anti-fascism. Patriots could oppose Bush and Blair by saying that it wasn't in Britain's interests to follow America. Liberals could put the UN first and insist that the United States proved its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the court of world opinion. Adherents to both perspectives were free to tell fascism's victims, 'We're sorry to leave you under a tyranny and realise that many more of you will die, but that's your problem.'
The Left, which has been formally committed to the Enlightenment ideal of universal freedom for two centuries, couldn't bring itself to be as honest. Instead millions abandoned their comrades in Iraq and engaged in mass evasion. If you think that it was asking too much to expect it to listen to people in Iraq when they said there was no other way of ending 35 years of oppression, consider the sequel. Years after the war, the Kurdish survivors of genocide and groups from communists through to conventional democrats had the right to expect fraternal support against the insurgency by the remnants of the Baath Party. They are being met with indifference or active hostility because they have committed the unforgivable sin of cooperating with the Americans. For the first time in its history the Left has nothing to say to the victims of fascism.
Defeat explains much of the betrayal. The past 20 years have witnessed the collapse of communism, the triumph of US capitalism and the recognition of the awkward fact that many Third World revolutions are powered by a religious fundamentalism so strange the traditional Left can't look it in the eye. The result of the corruption of defeat is an opposition to whatever America does; a looking-glass politics where hypocrisies of power are matched by equal hypocrisies in the opposite direction.
The contortions are almost funny. In the Eighties, when the US and Europe were the de facto allies of Saddam, the Left wept rivers for his Kurdish and Arab victims. The concern dimmed when Saddam spoilt everything by invading Kuwait and turning himself into America's enemy. In the Nineties, the tyrant of Iraq was no longer responsible for conditions in the tyranny of Iraq. Its suffering was the fault of UN sanctions. By the spring of this year, evasion had reached outright denial as the reflection in the looking glass completed its about turn and opposed the only means of overthrowing Saddam.
Noam Chomsky is the master of looking-glass politics. His writing exemplifies the ability of the Western Left to criticise everything from the West - except itself. He is immensely popular; but his popularity is mystifying on the first reading. His work is dense and filled with non sequiturs (here he seeks to use the Cuban missile crisis to explain the Iraq war, which is a little like using the first Moon landing to explain the dotcom boom). He claims to confront the comfortable with uncomfortable facts they don't want to face. Yet his audience is primarily a comfortable Western audience.
The appeal lies in the simple argument that underlies the convoluted prose. Capitalism, particularly American capitalism, is responsible for the world's problems, it runs. Resistance, however perverted, is inevitable. If the resistance is barbaric the barbarism is the fault of capitalism.
Most of the time, the argument is hidden because, although it can stand up in a many circumstances, it is an absurd universal claim. But every now and again, the veil lifts and the professor is explicit. 'Recognition that control of opinion is the foundation of government, from the most despotic to the most free, goes back at least to Hume,' he writes. 'But a qualification should be added. It is far more important in the most free societies, where obedience cannot be maintained by the lash.'
Got that? Not that propaganda is more subtle in the United States than, say, China, or harder to detect in Britain than say, North Korea, but 'more important'. To the far Left, accustomed to decades of defeat, Chomsky's account of the brainwashing of the dumb masses provides an excuse for failure. For others he presents a curiously ethno-centric and soothing view of the world.
The lesson of 11 September is that no constraints of morality or conscience would stop al-Qaeda exploding a nuclear weapon. If however, it is all our fault, as Chomsky says, perhaps we can avert catastrophe by being nicer and better people. Perhaps we can, but Chomsky is as reluctant to admit that al Qaeda is an autonomous movement as he is to admit the existence of the democratic and socialist opposition to Saddam Hussein.
He wasn't always so coy. In his younger and better days he condemned the dishonesty of intellectuals who went along with America's crimes in Indochina and South America. It would be heartening if he could apply the same standards to himself. Just before the war, Jose Ramos-Horta, one of the leaders of the struggle for independence of East Timor, looked on the anti-war protesters and asked: 'Why did I not see one single banner or hear one speech calling for the end of human rights abuses in Iraq, the removal of the dictator and freedom for the Iraqis and the Kurdish people?'
Perhaps Professor Chomsky would like to carry on his campaign against hypocrisy by answering him.
A good example of how two different news sources report: American and Arab.
AP
Al-jazeera
And the disconnect between the situation as the US sees it and the Arab world sees it:
Little Celebration
Quote:"arrogant" pro-Israeli United States.
Though officials in Kuwait hailed the arrest of the dictator who ordered the invasion of their emirate in 1990, those in other Arab states were subdued, expressing hope only that US troops may soon end their occupation of Iraq.
Palestinian officials refused to comment after having paid a heavy political price for supporting Saddam during the 1991 US-led Gulf War to free Kuwait.
Many people in the streets of Cairo and Beirut openly cursed a victory for a United States they see as an arrogant and unjust power, while some even refused to believe their eyes and ears.
Eyes riveted to the television screen in a Cairo coffee shop, customers worried about this "American victory" and feared it would ensure the reelection of President George W. Bush next year. "It's not Saddam that they should arrest," blurted Aziz Al Shaburi, a 34-year-old government employee, when he saw television images showing an American medic inspecting a bearded Saddam's mouth.
"They would have been better to capture (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon, the real war criminal," he said, eliciting applause from other patrons in the Awlad Al Hareth cafe.
Merchant Hassan Abdel Hamid, 34, refused to believe the news, dismissing it as "American propaganda and lies, just like the deaths of Qusay and Uday," Saddam's sons who were killed in a shoot-out earlier this year.
"Everybody knows who the real murderers are, they are the murderers of the Palestinians," Abdel Hamid said.
"Why did no Arab king offer 25 million dollars for Sharon's arrest?" he asked, referring to Washington's reward for the capture of Saddam.
Abdel Hamid shook his head scornfully while watching Iraqis celebrate Saddam's arrest. "Yesterday they shouted 'with our soul and our blood, we will defend you, oh Saddam'," he said.
Mustafa Bakri, the pro-Saddam editor in chief of the independent Egyptian weekly Al Osbou, said on the television: "It's a black day in the history of the Arabs. It's a humiliation.
"It's Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and Sharon who should be put on trial," said Bakri, who organized several solidarity trips from Cairo to Bagdhad before US troops invaded in March.
Mahmud Al Azzazi, 29, another patron, said: "It's the end of the Arabs. There will be a domino effect. His fall will lead to that of other Arab leaders who displease the Americans."
In Beirut, Doha Shams, a journalist with the leftist newspaper As-Safir, said: "It's great to be finished with Saddam but when will Bush's turn come? He is threatening world peace."
An elegantly dressed 70-year-old Lebanese woman named Lilie said she was sad "because it's a victory for the Americans whom I detest. It will increase their arrogance."
Her remarks were in sharp contrast to those of Kuwaiti Information Minister Mohammed Abulhassan.
"Thank God that he has been captured alive, so he can be tried for the heinous crimes he has committed" against the Iraqi and Kuwaiti peoples, said Abulhassan, who was Kuwait's UN representative at the time of the invasion.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said he told US Secretary of State Colin Powell when he received his phone call that he hoped the event will quicken the transfer of power back to Iraqis and the withdrawal of US forces.
However, he conceded "I don't think anyone will be sad over Saddam Hussein."
Arab League Secretary General Amr Musa said the Iraqi people should "decide the fate of the old regime and its old leaders," alluding to the discovery of mass graves after Saddam's fall during the US invasion in April.
In Riyadh, Gulf Cooperation Council chief Abderrahman Al Attiya told AFP: "The capture of Saddam Hussein is an achievement, a step on the road towards restoring stability and national unity in Iraq."
He added: "We hope that (it) will be followed by other achievements on the road towards transferring power to the Iraqi people, a rapid restoration of constitutional life in Iraq and the formation of an elected and representative government." Bahrain, a member of the GCC along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, said Saddam's capture opened "a new page" conducive to a prosperous "new Iraq."
A foreign ministry spokesman, quoted by the official BNA news agency, said it should restore unity and "cohesion" among the Iraqi people to build "a promising future in a prosperous Iraq enjoying security and cooperating with its neighbours to promote stability and development" in the region.
Monday, December 15, 2003
We can win military battles, but we seem to be determined to lose the important battle: The one for international trust and goodwill, without which we are dommed to failure.
"A great day for Iraq" (Zeyad, Healing Iraq, 2003/12/10)
A report from today's anti-terrorism demonstration in Baghdad:
"The rallies today proved to be a major success. I didn't expect anything even close to this. It was probably the largest demonstration in Baghdad for months. It wasn't just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba'ath and Saddam.
We started at Al-Fatih square in front of the Iraqi national theatre at 10 am. IP were all over the place. At 12 pm people started marching towards Fardus square through Karradah. All political parties represented in the GC participated. But the other parties, organizations, unions, tribal leaders, clerics, school children, college students, and typical everyday Iraqis made up most of the crowd. Al-Jazeera estimated the size of the crowd as over ten thousand people.
You can find a list of some of the parties that we noticed there at Omar's blog. At one point it struck me that our many differences as an Iraqi people meant nothing. Here we were all together shouting in different languages the same slogans "NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace".
I spent most of the time taking pictures. heh, I really enjoyed playing the role of a journalist. Everyone was tugging at my sleeves asking me to take their photos mistaking me for a foreign reporter. Some people recognized a reporter from Al-Arabiyah station and they started taunting him. One old man shouted to him 'For once, speak the truth.'" (Note: Zeyad also has pictures from the demonstration: First album, Second album and Third album. See also: "The Iraqi people spoke today" (Omar, Iraq the Model, 2003/12/10): "No body seemed to be afraid, in fact today I felt safer than ever. I didn't expect such a response from the Iraqi people after all the terror they have suffered - and still suffering - from. To me it was a total success. I hope more brave steps will follow.")
Went to google, typed in "Zeyad, Healing Iraq" and got it. It's really not that hard to do.
Iran is claiming the right to bring charges against Saddam for war crimes against Iran in the Iraq Iran war. Should that be allowed and if so, should charges against the U.S. for aiding and abetting also be allowed?
