Iraq through Iraqis' eyes

Last week, I responded to one major critique of my December 13 essay, "A Fighting Faith": that Islamist totalitarianism is not as grave a threat as Soviet totalitarianism and therefore opposition to it need not define what liberals believe. But there is a second critique, which focuses less on my argument than on my credibility--and the credibility of other liberals who supported the Iraq war. What authority do we have to propose a national security direction for our fellow liberals when we urged them to follow the Bush administration into Iraq?

It's a fair question. . .


. . . If Iraq doesn't prove that nation-building is futile, neither does it invalidate the connection between dictatorship and totalitarian Islam. In an operational sense, it's clearly true that Saddam had little to do with Al Qaeda (no matter what the Bush administration claims). But ideologically, secular dictatorship promotes jihadist extremism--both because secular dictators fuel the popular rage that leads people to turn to Islamist opposition movements and because secular dictators seek legitimacy by ceding control over civil society to Islamists. That was true of Saddam, and it is true of many of his counterparts throughout the Middle East. Which is why ending tyranny in the Muslim world must be central to U.S. antiterrorist efforts.

The danger is that, in the wake of Iraq, liberals will turn inward, as many did after Vietnam. They will abandon the belief that U.S. power can positively change the Muslim world and instead argue that the United States should merely aggravate it less while killing terrorists where we can. In a bitter irony, that will leave nation-building and democracy-promotion in the hands of conservatives like Rumsfeld, who never really believed in it. It will leave liberals on the sidelines of the great ideological struggle in which the United States is engaged. And, with liberals on the sidelines, the United States can't win.

Peter Beinert "
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041227&s=trb122704

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?

posted by Juan @ 9/22/2004 06:53:26 AM

Do you think the price we paid for our freedom in America was any less?

It's like seeing a little guy getting the **** pounded out of him by a big guy.

You ask, 'why are you doing that?'

The Big guy says, 'Because he's got a gun and will use it.'

You say, 'No, he doesn't.'

Big guy says, 'Hmm. Well, he has a program for buying a gun set up.'

You say, 'No, he doesnt'.'

'Well, he WANTS to buy a gun. So we'd better take care before he does, yaknow?'

'No, I don't know.'

'Well, he was beating up his family last week, he deserves it, Why are you so Unamerican? Goddamn crybaby liberals...'

My biggest contention, though, is the fact that I never for a second thought that the way I wanted our world to be had anything to do with the way it is. There seem to be a bunch of conservatives who cannot understand this fact; they don't want our soldiers to have done anything wrong, so they didn't. They wanted there to be reasons to invade Iraq and torture people, so they invent them. Hell, Ican has spent countless hours of his life doing exactly that....

When you invent a time machine to go back and change the justifications, let me know. Until then, they were right at the time.

Like I said...they are not looking for open-mindedness or objectivity...and in fact want the exact opposite...closemindedness and a lack of objectivity in favor of "we were justified"...and "it is working out just fine."

If you can't agree with that...and nobody with an open-mind and any degree of objectivity at all CAN...you might as well be whistling Dixie as arguing this stuff.