Iraq - Still, In Fact, Going On

[craner]

Vimothy:

1) "Conquest" has not been the aim, hence Nation-building.

2) Secular liberalism may not be the default condition of humanity, but this does not mean that tyranny, oligarchy or monarchy are either. Your suggestion is akin to saying that Middle Eastern societies are congenitally opposed to democracy, liberty, human rights, emancipation.

 

[craner]

Well, the original Iraqi TAL was a fine and radical precursor to the eventual Iraqi constitution, which was corrupted by clericalism rather than rampant capitalism. Iraq was capsized by corruption, which was not the aim of the Coalition. I think Ali Allawi's fine book 'The Occupation of Iraq' might verse you on some of that.

The idea of making Iraq safe for capitalism was not exactly ignoble, but the attempt to do that was piecemeal and naive, rather than Machiavellian or monolithic. See lack of post- war planning, as referenced above.

 

[vimothy]

It starts with conquest, though, doesn't it? Then it moves to liberation. Then the wrong thing gets liberated and more conquest is needed. And so on.

It's a fair point you make about the Middle East's congenital affinities. I'm afraid that I do think that western secular liberalism has deep roots in our culture and hardly any in the Middle East, so that western conceptions of human rights, liberty, democracy, etc, will have little meaning or purchase there.

 

[craner]

Well, in the sense that you must defeat their military apparatus, but that hardly pays justice to the full implications of the word (or concept of) 'conquest'. I think you chose the wrong word, frankly.

As to the latter point, you're flatly wrong, I think. Societies have been debating the merits of democracy, tyranny and oligarchy throughout history. Herodotus describes the debate between Darius and his co-conspirators after they murdered the Magi: they were arguing these very points, at the apex of Persian Empire, before history had even begun to be written.

 

[droid]

Yeah, nothing Machiavellian about the Bush penned Iraqi oil law specifically designed to take oil production out of the hands of the state and give long term contracts to Western oil companies or SOFA and its attempt to give legal immunity to US troops and contractors.

Nothing Machiavellian at all.

 

[droid]

Nation-building.

Lot of nice new nations around thanks the new humanitarianism, shining bright from the Danube to the Nile.

 

[vimothy]

The first result google gives me is, "the subjugation and assumption of control of a place or people by military force". I think that's a fair description of military invasion, but I'm not attached to the word; I chose it for cheap, rhetorical effect. (I suppose you could also argue that "liberation" doesn't really do justice to what happened in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Libya, either.) It could be replaced with invasion (or whatever your preferred synonym) without loss of meaning.

It's true of course that democracy goes all the way back to ancient Greece. But that doesn't mean that everyone shares the same conception of the world (the identity of the good, the proper role of religion, the nature of community, the place of the individual, etc, etc) as the contemporary westerner.

 

[craner]

As far as I recall, the Oil industry was very nervous about the Iraq war, due to the regional instability they thought it would cause (like you, in fact!). I don't know this for a fact, I must admit, but I don't think that Halliburton is currently on control of the Iraqi oil industry.

But, on another note, opening up Iraqi oil wells to international markets always seemed to me to be a good way of 1) breaking the Saudi monopoly and therefore weakening the disgusting House of Saud and 2) bringing some desperately needed revenue into a weak and poor Iraq after the stranglehold, abuse and neglect of the Saddam regime and the sanctions.

So, if it wasn't the driving motivation of the war, which it wasn't, it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad side-effect. But it wasn't even a side-effect, and I'm guessing that wasn't the desired outcome for the Bush administration either. So, uh, what's your point again, Droid?

 

[vimothy]

Foreign policy realists generally hammered the neocons for their idealism, as I recall. They're certainly a long way from what I'd consider "Machiavellian".

 

[droid]

As far as I recall, the Oil industry was very nervous about the Iraq war, due to the regional instability they thought it would cause (like you, in fact!). I don't know this for a fact, I must admit, but I don't think that Halliburton is currently on control of the Iraqi oil industry.

Yeah, things didnt work out quite as planned.

So, if it wasn't the driving motivation of the war, which it wasn't, it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad side-effect. But it wasn't even a side-effect, and I'm guessing that wasn't the desired outcome for the Bush administration either. So, uh, what's your point again, Droid?

You're on a roll today.

Yes, long term control of energy resources had absolutely nothing to do with the war, nothing at all. it was all about democracy promotion, nation building and humanitarianism.

 

[vimothy]

They're not mutually exclusive goals, though.

 

[craner]

Well, I was saying it goes back to ancient Persia, to make the point that it's not a recent Western idea, and pull a left-hook for universal humanism, which I am attached to.

In Iraq the subjugation and control of a people and place was explicitly not the intention which is partly why they didn't plan properly and why the Bremer occupation was a disastrous post- occupation mess. With Afghanistan, nation building was built into the plan, but never worked because they relied on the Rumsfeld plan of paying tribal militias and warlords to deliver it, but at least they tried. In Libya, they basically just fucked off straight afterwards, and when I say "they" I mean the UK and France, who drove the whole thing and promised the world. That was just unforgivable.

 

[craner]

No, like I said, Droid, it was largely, in the end, about security, and partly humanitarian. What it wasn't about was oil.

 

[droid]

I can understand the appalling cynicism which allows someone to cheer on an arsonist and then look at the burned husk of a building, charred corpses spilling onto the street and say 'well mistakes were made, but Id do it again'.

And I can understand the idealistic naivety of someone who allows themselves to be fooled by the known arsonist as he makes an impassioned speech about carefully demolishing a building and clearing space for better houses, petrol splashing his shoes from the hidden jerry can behind his back all the while.

What I dont understand is how those two qualities can co-exist in the same mind.

 

[sadmanbarty]

The social science's current understanding of democratisation would suggest that Iraq was not, and still is not, in a good position to become a functioning democracy. Oil wealth, lack of ethnic/sectarian homogeneity, relative poverty, low education levels, etc. are widely regarded as inhibitors of democratic transition.

 

[droid]

No, like I said, Droid, it was largely, in the end, about security, and partly humanitarian. What it wasn't about was oil.

Ludicrous. There was no security threat. They knew it then and its been confirmed since.

There was no humanitarianism. There was little or no regard for the people of Iraq, and neo-con idealism was a sham in a long line of shams.

As I said, like all wars, it was about long term control of energy & resources, strategic positioning, power projection, internal politics, and also (in this case at least), ego.

 

[droid]

The US has been at war for 222 of the last 239 years, they have to come up with a new routine occasionally. The neo-cons were simply the most recent shtick.

 

[craner]

Sure, Iraq is not in a good place to transition to democracy, and the scene was definitively set by Saddam and sanctions, which destroyed the Iraqi middle class and civic society in the 80s and 90s. The question is, did we and do we want Iraq to be a functioning, safe, stable democracy and could it possibly be? I say, yes.

 

[droid]

You scoff at Chomsky, but you should have this tattooed inside your eyelids.

No rational person pays the slightest attention to declarations of benign intent on the part of leaders, no matter who they are. And the reason is they’re completely predictable, including the worst monsters, Stalin, Hitler the rest. Always full of benign intent. Yes that’s their task. Therefore, since they’re predictable, we disregard them, they carry no information

.

 

[craner]

I remember anti-war activists claiming they knew something which UNSCOM inspectors and all the international security agencies and even the Ba'ath inner circles didn't know in 2003, which was that Saddam had no active WMD programmes. On a different day, though, and sometimes the same day, sometimes even from the same mouth, it would be said that the US should not invade Iraq because they'd be caught up in an apocalyptic WMD quagmire on the outskirts of Baghdad.