The US, UN & Iraq III

I said it a long time ago, Kara will remember, what happens if they tell us to shove our democracy?

Gun point democracy?

They have to choose .. not be chosen for.

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From the "Democracy in America" Department as of 10:27

Democracy might be impossible, US was told

By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2003

WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime -- as a model for the rest of the region -- was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible."

That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on Feb. 26.

The question of how quickly, and easily, the United States could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security. The administration offered few assessments of its own but dismissed predictions by the army chief of staff of a lengthy occupation by hundreds of thousands of troops.

Now, frustration among Iraqis about a lack of stability and the slow pace of reconstruction -- and new evidence that Islamic militants are slipping into Iraq to take up arms against the Americans -- are leading the administration to lengthen its plans to keep troops in Iraq for up to four years. And the Pentagon is moving to lower expectations for a shift to democracy, suggesting that a liberal democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, but acknowledging the difficulty of creating one.

"The question isn't whether it is feasible, but is it worth a try," Lieutenant Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday.

The intelligence community's doubts were fully aired to top Bush administration officials in the months before the war in multiple classified reports. The National Intelligence Council, which represents the consensus view of American spy agencies, reported to top policy makers at the start of the year that "what the administration was saying was a rosy picture," said a senior intelligence official who read the report and asked not to be named. "The report's conclusions were totally opposite."

The vision the Bush administration has for the Middle East has been honed at least since 1996, with the writing of a paper entitled "A Clean Break." The paper was written by Douglas Feith, now the Pentagon's policy director; Richard Perle, a senior Pentagon adviser; and others for then-incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It provides an early window into some of the current administration's thinking. For one, it predicted that toppling the Hussein regime could be the beginning of a larger rollback of autocratic, terrorist-supporting states such as Syria and Iran, blamed for supporting Hezbollah guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon and accused of terrorism against Israel and the United States.

It said a new Iraqi regime, coupled with pressure on the Syrian government, would also open up the opportunity for Lebanese Shi'ite Muslims to reconnect with Shi'ite religious leaders in the southern Iraqi holy city of Najaf, "to wean the south Lebanese [Shi'ites] away from Hezbollah, Iran and Syria." The document noted that the Lebanese Shi'ite community has historically identified with their Iraqi brethren, who during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s fought against the Iranians who share their faith.

A senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration's view of a postwar Middle East begins by breaking current governments down into three categories. First are countries like Saudi Arabia, where the ruling class is relatively pro-Western but its people are increasingly anti-American; second are countries like Iran, whose governments are opposed to the United States but whose people are increasingly open to stronger ties with Washington; and third are those like Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, in which the government and the people are largely pro-American as a result of broader political freedom. He said a Middle East in which all Muslim countries fit the third category is the long-term goal.

But intelligence officials and specialists have long been uncertain whether reform-minded Arab intellectuals who embrace the US approach can overcome those who have shown little regard for it so far. Their suspicion has only grown in recent months as the postwar situation in Iraq raises serious questions about whether democracy can flourish there, let alone elsewhere in the region. Many leading clerics are calling for a religious-led government, frustrating the efforts of US allies to establish the foundations for democracy.

The intelligence community's cautious view of the administration's broader vision for the region was highlighted in a series of reports and briefings to top policy makers.

The CIA's March report concluded that Iraqi society and history showed little evidence to support the creation of democratic institutions, going so far as to say its prospects for democracy could be "impossible," according to intelligence officials who have seen it. The assessment was based on Iraq's history of repression and war; clan, tribal and religious conflict; and its lack of experience as a viable country prior to its arbitrary creation as a monarchy by British colonialists after World War I.

The State Department came to the same conclusion.

"Liberal democracy would be difficult to achieve in Iraq," said a March State Department report, first reported by the Los Angeles Times. "Electoral democracy, were it to emerge, could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements."

A June risk assessment of the situation in Iraq by Kroll and Associates, an international consulting firm, raised anew doubts that representative democracy can take root there. It said a leading possibility would be that "Iraq experiences frequent lurches into serious disorder and instability, with changes of leadership, religious, and regional clashes and interventions by neighboring states. It seeks order in a military-led regime that provides a minimal level of stability in areas crucial to the economy and high levels of disorder elsewhere."

The report, "Iraq Risk Scenarios," described a pro-western, liberal, capitalist democracy as "very unlikely, although it appears to be the general goal of the US."

Critics of the administration's approach have said that pushing too hard for democracy could spark an anti-American backlash, increasing the risk of terrorism against the United States.

"US efforts to impose a US vision on the area could lead to instability in countries like Jordan and Pakistan, and could result in further strengthening the hand of fundamentalism and terrorism," Edward Walker, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the Clinton administration, warned in a prewar speech.

If the US presence is seen not as liberating, but rather as hostile to Islam and Arab culture, insensitive to the suffering of Iraqi people, and arrogant in its lack of consultation with other countries, "pressure will build on Arab governments to distance themselves from us; anti-Americanism will grow; new recruits will flow to fundamentalist causes and some will wind up in terrorist operations against us, against Israel and against moderate governments in the region; and the war on terrorism will suffer reversals," Walker said.

Top US officials have tempered their optimism, with the president saying last month that he never expected a Thomas Jefferson-type figure to emerge in Iraq overnight.

But the Bush administration remains committed to its vision. Last week, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that "much as a democratic Germany became a linchpin for a new Europe . . . so a transformed Iraq can become a key element of a very different Middle East in which the ideologies of hate will not flourish."
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ge, I know all of that. We read it every day. Yes, democracy will take years to sprout in Iraq. They must learn what it is, be educated about it, hear it from the imams, slowly change from a mindset that has known only a dictatorial regime. They must also learn that Islam and democracy can work together.

It would be foolish to hold elections for some time, maybe a few years. The worst would bubble to the top.

I am convinced and have heard nothing to the contrary that we are woefully undermanned in Iraq, and thus no leader can lead nor any plan be made to work.

Ge, many millions of us were totally against the war. I wore a NOT IN OUR NAME tee-shirt for months and put a first-ever bumper sticker on my car. I went to demonstrations and to the peace march in DC. I wrote dozens of letters and e-mails to the adminstration.

The war happened anyway, a natural outcome of the neo-conservative view that the pres has bought into. Now, we are stuck with the results. It would be totally against everything that America stands for if we pulled all of our troops out of Iraq now, after creating chaos and anarchy by destroying the country. The problem is that our administration doesn't have the vision or guts to admit its mistake and then look and think five to ten years down the road and create a plan -- which may or may not work, like many long-range plans -- and then do the nasty job of alienating public opinion by sending 100,000 more troops plus whatever else is needed. Yes, many in the public would be outraged if we increased our troop strength. The effect may topple George Bush. Why did he think he could play with nations as if they were men on a chessboard?

If we sent a massive infusion of troops, the killing would stop. We would be truly occupying the country. We should install a King, or some other locally respected figurehead that appeared to be in charge, as the Brits used to do, and then get about the business of restoring the country . Only then would the Iraqi people see progress in their daily lives with jobs and paychecks, electricity and water restored, oil and gas networks operating. Then we would not hear just the occasional happy shout about liberation; there would be respect for the fact that we followed up our destruction with the promised restoration and the we might see the beginnings of understanding of a long-range US plan, with a goal of occupation only until order was restored and the idea of democracy taught in the schools and discussed in the public forum. An Iraqi democracy, down the line, might look like nothing we would recognize, but some Islamic thinkers think it could work in Iraq as they think it would work in Iran.

We made one enormous mistake already, and now in the after-war we are making another.

a
Will there be an Iraq Memorial in DC?
Will it bring back our dead?




The first U.S. helicopters arrived in 1961, carrying death and destruction. Thousands more were to follow.



Lessons of the Vietnam War: Part I

Back to the Stone Age

By Edward S. Herman


The United States has used its enormous military superiority with great ruthlessness in the post-World War II era. During the Vietnam War, it dropped more bombs on the Indochinese peninsula than were employed by all sides during World War II. The U.S. also employed vast quantities of the cruellest weaponry, including phosphorus and fragmentation bombs, napalm, and chemicals that damage humans while killing vegetation.

The U.S. attack on Vietnam was one of the great holocausts of our time. But since it was perpetrated by the United States, it is not regarded as such. It may therefore be useful to review the basic facts of the war and its long-term consequences.



The U.S. ignored the Geneva Accords, the rights of the Vietnamese, and the U.N. Charter by installing a dictator of its choice in what came to be known as South Vietnam.
Southern puppet

The arrogant men who ran the United States in the years following World War II denied the Vietnamese their right of self-determination, because it was incompatible with western control. The United States and England supported French reoccupation of its former colony during 1945-54. After they were once again thrown out, the U.S. refused to abide by the Geneva Accords of 1954 which stipulated the unification of Vietnam through free elections.

It was widely acknowledged at that time, and later even by the U.S., that the great majority of Vietnamese in both the southern and northern sections of the country supported Ho Chi Minh and his party. But the United States, ignored the Geneva Accords, the rights of the Vietnamese, and the U.N. Charter by installing a dictator of its choice in what came to be known as South Vietnam. Legally and morally, however, there was never more than one Vietnam.


The Kennedy administration began a vicious war against the majority of the population.
When the puppet government began to lose control in 1962, the Kennedy administration began pouring in helicopters and thousands of "advisors," to supervise a vicious war against the majority of the population. This included the use of chemicals to destroy crops and the establishment of concentration camps ("strategic hamlets") in an attempt to control the rural population.

When this strategy also failed, the administration of President Lyndon Johnson fabricated a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. spy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, then used this false episode as an excuse to begin the systematic bombing of the North and a massive invasion of South Vietnam in 1965.

During the early 1960s, U.S. officials vehemently opposed any political settlement that would mean an end to domination of the south by a U.S.-controlled faction, despite the widespread acknowledgement that this faction had no substantial political support.



What followed was one of the most vicious and cowardly wars in history.
Raining bombs on peasants

What followed was one of the most vicious and cowardly wars in history. The greatest military power on earth, with the most technologically advanced arsenal, concentrated its full power against a poor peasant society lacking aircraft or a modern technological base. It dropped millions of tons of bombs on Indochina, raining napalm and fragmentation bombs on hundreds of peasant villages that lacked medical facilities, and used massive quantities of defoliants to destroy forests and crops. Large areas of South Vietnam were designated as "free fire zones" where thousands of peasants were shot in the course of military operations, or just for fun on "skunk hunts."

The U.S. invasion force of 500,000 troops was supplemented by mercenaries from South Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and Australia. Their assigned task was to "pacify" the country, which they did by carrying out merciless "search and destroy" operations in which domestic animals and crops were destroyed, villages burned down, and large numbers of innocent people were raped, killed and made homeless. It was soon discovered that the "enemy" had deep roots among the people, who were therefore treated as enemies.


The country was devastated. a great many of its finest men and women were killed.






The death toll may be as high as four million; the numbers injured and traumatized also run into the millions.
Under the charmingly entitled "Operation Ranch Hand", the United States used Agent Orange and other chemicals to destroy the rice crops of Vietnam's peasants and the country's mangrove forests. (The witty slogan of the chemical-spraying pilots was, "Only you can prevent a forest"). Vietnam was truly bombed back into to the Stone Age, in the sense that the country was devastated-- a great many of its finest men and women were killed, and a heritage of damaged land, infrastructure, and people made recovery extremely difficult.

But the U.S. was not satisfied with returning Vietnam to the Stone Age: After the war, it maintained an 18-year-long embargo to prevent its victim's recovery. Due to U.S. power over the "international community" (including the IMF and World Bank), the embargo was effective. It was based nominally on an alleged Vietnamese failure to co-operate in the recovery of U.S. prisoners of war (POWs), and personnel missing in action (MIAs). But, in fact, there were never many POWs and all of those for whom Vietnam could be held accountable were returned on schedule (see H. Bruce Franklin, M.I.A. or Myth-Making In America). Needless to say, the parallel issue of Vietnamese MIA has never been of any concern to the United States.

The final toll in Indochina will never be known, but it continues to grow. The death toll may be as high as four million; the numbers injured and traumatized also run into the millions. Since the formal conclusion of the war in 1975, thousands have been killed and wounded by some of the millions of unexploded bombs still littering the ground. There are also a great many victims of the ecocidal Agent Orange program, and the land destroyed by that and other chemicals may never recover.



The U.S. won a significant partial victory: It ravaged Vietnam and sent a message to the entire Third World: Don't cross the United States.
Lessons of the war

It is a conventional fallacy that the United States lost the war in Vietnam. It is true that the U.S. did not achieve all of its objectives. The Vietnamese were able to outlast the aggressor, and to prevent the permanent imposition of a minority government in the southern part of the country. But the United States won a significant partial victory: It so ravaged the land and people of Vietnam that the alternative route to development that the Vietnamese revolution had threatened was effectively cut off. In addition, the Third World was given an early and important lesson: Don't cross the United States.

Another lesson of the Vietnam War, is that the mainstream media shine the most favorable light on U.S. actions, no matter what. In that light, U.S. intentions in Vietnam were always benevolent-- based on "noble" motives (Stanley Karnow) and "blundering efforts to do good" (Anthony Lewis). The U.S. always strove for democracy and self- determination, opposing aggression, according to this perspective.


The obligation to clear millions of land mines and pay reparations to the victimized people of Indochina has never been seen as a humanitarian issue for the U.S. establishment, its media, or the international community.
The U.S. was never portrayed as an aggressor fighting against self-determination, although this was the reality in Vietnam. Noam Chomsky has pointed out that while a Moscow newsman, Vladimir Danchev, denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as aggression-- calling on the rebels to resist over Soviet radio for five successive days in May of 1983, to the applause of Western media which became outraged at his subsequent, temporary removal-- "there was no Vladimir Danchev in the United States during the American wars in Indochina. . . or since."

Following the official line, and in accord with classic principles of atrocities management, the mainstream media found that only the enemy committed atrocities and had evil plans. The murderous acts of the United States were invariably portrayed as responses to somebody else's acts or threats, and occasionally as "errors."

The Vietnamese enemy was quickly labelled "terrorist" and aggressor-- allegedly committing "internal aggression"-- and was effectively demonized. The media averted their eyes from all but a minuscule fraction of the enormous U.S. violence, focusing instead on the relatively minor and more selective acts of the "terrorists." This helped make the almost unlimited use of force and high-tech warfare against the distant peasant society acceptable.

After the war, the media's apologetics never flagged. The Vietnamese were villainized for an alleged failure to co-operate in the matter of the MIAs, which the media interpreted as a "humanitarian issue." But the obligation of the aggressor country to clear millions of land mines and pay reparations to the victimized people of Indochina has never been seen as a humanitarian issue for the U.S. establishment or media, and therefore has never gripped the international community.




Edward S. Herman is a member of Levande Framtid's Advisory Board. See also his book, Triumph of the Market (South End Press, 1995)

continue to part 2 ..

gel

That Leno joke is VERY funny!

perc

Thumb my nose at authority?! Me? I LOVE authority. It is the source of everything that is good and true.

Blatham, yes, and inscisive

Ge, that is a powerful and sad piece of writing.

When will we ever learn?

The resolution to involve the U. N. in the reconstruction of Iraq was drafted by the Bush Administration, Truman being dead. I believe you will find the palaces of Iraq being occupied by U.S. military and officials in the current occupation. Perception, indeed. More like deception.

Ineption also comes to mind, Light.

Yes, Gelis -- I'd like to have a mobile (rail, probably) "stocks show" set up, and put in the stocks those officials and members of Congress who have let us down, and make it a fully bipartisan show.

Talk about "bringing the country together"... To see DeLay and Lieberman in adjoining stocks would be very refreshing. And Cheney with his secretive energy commission in a row on one of those flat cars. Maybe the stocks would be slightly less uncomfortable than the cells in Guantanamo, though...

Gelis

I had no idea the constitution of the United States still applied. Surely no one but a lunatic goes around demanding their constitutional rights these days? Hasn't it fallen by the wayside long ago like Magna Carta or my right to drive a flock of sheep over London Bridge?

Steve -- Membership in this organization has risen dramatically during the past two years -- go figure! http://www.aclu.org/

Too late Tart, they're all gone.

Well perhaps not. not if good people around the globe keep kicking

Gel,

This interview sounds so like Bush. I can just see him saying it now. His lips smirking and his eyes a little bit blank. So of out of control of himself. It's been reported of him many times. His behavior defines the term, pathological narcissism. It's amazing, really that he could be considered to be the President of the United States.

And I agree with dafdaf. It was the responsibility of those planning the war to anticipate the consequences and have a plan for the aftermath of the destruction they decided to cause. I think the most likely reason there was no security for the Museum is because this crowd is so unsophisticated, they didn't think about the importance of the artifacts, there in the cradle of civilization, and all. Well, really, how were they to know? Funny. How could they have overlooked it, is a more relevant question IMO.

Armageddon ?????

Bring the troops home or suffer their loss. Tens of thousands of demonstrators are ready to die over a banner ... not hyperbole, fact!!

What are we willing to see our finest die for ... what are they dying for?
What are we willing to kill for ... what are we killing for???

George Bush's legacy .... WAR FOR THE HELL OF IT!



U.S. in war on Islam, clerics say
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Shiites warn troops to stay out of district

Robyn Dixon
Los Angeles Times
Aug. 16, 2003 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - Shiite Muslim clerics in a poor neighborhood of northeast Baghdad said Friday that the U.S. military had declared war against Islam and warned U.S. forces to stay out of the district, where U.S. troops opened fire on a crowd this week.

Tens of thousands of worshipers carrying religious banners gathered at Friday prayers in the center of the slum, sending a powerful signal about the level of anger in the community over Wednesday's shootout between protesters and troops, which occurred after a U.S. helicopter dislodged a religious banner from a tower.

"America and Zionism have declared war against Islam and its sanctuary. That is why one of their helicopters tried to remove the banner of righteousness," Sheik Abdul-Hadi Darraji told the crowd before prayers.

"I call on everybody to condemn this flagrant aggression of this sacred place."

But the clerics sent a mixed message, employing inflammatory rhetoric yet stopping short of calling for violent resistance. They warned troops to stay out of the neighborhood, but also called on residents to stay calm and show restraint. Some in the crowd were swathed in white banners with red script, symbolizing they were ready to die for their cause.

Darraji is loyal to Muqtader Sadr, son of a Shiite leader who was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1999. Sadr's views on the helicopter incident are seen as a key to whether the issue could become inflamed, leading to further Shiite violence and protests, or whether the community will become calmer. On Friday, Sadr was urging a peaceful stance toward coalition forces.

But Sadr also has called for the formation of an "army," and clerics who spoke Friday described their plans to patrol the neighborhood's streets in place of U.S. troops.

Shiites and U.S. military officials differ on what happened Wednesday in the Thawra neighborhood, popularly known as Sadr City in honor of Sadr's slain father, Mohammed Saddiq Sadr. People in the neighborhood say a soldier in the helicopter leaned out and cut the banner off the tower. But military officials say the banner accidentally was dislodged by the helicopter, triggering angry protests below. Troops opened fire, killing one person and wounding four, after members of the crowd fired small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, the Americans said.

The Americans say the patrol shot the RPG gunner, while Shiite leaders say a young boy was killed.

The incident illustrates the delicacy of military operation in Iraq and the danger of inflaming local sentiment by upsetting religious or cultural codes. The neighborhood, neglected and oppressed under Saddam's regime, initially was somewhat supportive of the U.S.-led coalition for its role in toppling the former government, but Darraji on Friday likened coalition forces to the former dictatorship.

"The Americans, who say they are trying to secure human rights are in fact . . . doing things just like Saddam's regime," he said, adding that the situation in postwar Iraq was "going from bad to worse compared to Saddam's era."

A local U.S. military commander has sent a written apology to religious leaders over the removal of the banner and announced they were scaling back patrols in the neighborhood. Darraji asserted Friday that the removal of the flag was not accidental, but must have been the result of an order issued from military leaders, a viewpoint later echoed by those who attended prayers. He insisted the apology was inadequate and demanded another one from a higher-level military official.

Lola, I have a feeling that the ones looting the museum were hired by the ones who started the war. They needed the diversion and cover to commit their crimes :sigh:

Lola wrote:
his interview sounds so like Bush. I can just see him saying it now. His lips smirking and his eyes a little bit blank. So of out of control of himself. It's been reported of him many times. His behavior defines the term, pathological narcissism. It's amazing, really that he could be considered to be the President of the United States.

Wow Lola, if you've jumped on the wagon of Bush bashers maybe I'd better take a second look

Don't brush off Lola's perception of Bush. Individuals who need very badly to please others quite often will find themselves in jobs from which they are alienated and for which they're psychologically unsuited. It's a bad situation to be in, and bad things can come of it. We've all seen it even if we don't know we have. It can be seen in every appearance Bush makes.

It may well be pathological narcissism for him; it's big trouble for everyone else when the narcissist has power and is being used. Before you dismiss this, try to look at him with fresh eyes, and do some reading. Lola isn't wrong, isn't exaggerating.