Tuesday, November 21, 2006
So the next issue of the New Republic is one of those woe-is-us Iraq extravaganzas. Personally I found the National Review's contribution to the genre a couple of months ago a little less nauseating. Here's the money quote from the New Republic's unsigned editorial:
Yeah, cry me a river...
Beinart, of course, gets in on the act with a braindead rehashing of the standard liberal line that the US can't pull out now because doing so will result in a bloodbath. He says the US should threaten to leave and use staying as a carrot on a stick to force Iraq's "political elite" to whip the rabble in line. Yes, Beinart is convinced that Iraqis -- at least Iraq's "political class" -- are quaking in their boots with fear that America will withdraw. He, for example, states directly "prominent Sunni leaders now actually want the United States to stay" citing no source beyond the wisdom of General Beinart himself.
Unlike Peter Beinart I don't have any Iraqi political elites on the phone but, the last time I checked, general Iraqi opinion looked like this:
The above is from a PIPA survey conducted less than two months ago, well after the Sammarra mosque attack and so forth. Perhaps opinions among Beinart's elite vary significantly from the above, but even if such is the case the point is irrelevant: the puppets in the Green Zone governed with little power to begin with and with even less now. Maliki is now the mayor of Baghdad as surely as Karzai is the mayor of Kabul. But even if such were not the case, even if Maliki's administration was all powerful and was begging the US to stay forever, wouldn't it be democratic and idealistic, and all the good things that the liberal hawks like to pretend to be, to side with the 70% of the population -- the 35% of Kurds for godsake -- that want the US out by September of 2007 at latest?
Beinart's instinctive faith in the power of enlightened insiders betrays a peculiar view of democracy that he shares with neoconservatives. Part of Peter Beinart's schtick as a commentator is peppering his writing with pretentious historical allusions. The one he picked this time around is pretty ironic:
The full Dewey quote is as follows:
Dewey, of course, in his day, argued against Walter Lippman's elites-know-best version of democracy (in the New Republic no less) and probably wouldn't have appreciated being quoted by chief spokesman for the gullible throng in an essay defending a Lippman-esque solution to the devastation wrought by a war aggression, ... but what do I know?
At this point, it seems almost beside the point to say this: The New Republic deeply regrets its early support for this war. The past three years have complicated our idealism and reminded us of the limits of American power and our own wisdom. [...] As we attempt to undo the damage from a war that we never should have started, our moral obligations will not vanish, and neither will our strategic needs.
Yeah, cry me a river...
Beinart, of course, gets in on the act with a braindead rehashing of the standard liberal line that the US can't pull out now because doing so will result in a bloodbath. He says the US should threaten to leave and use staying as a carrot on a stick to force Iraq's "political elite" to whip the rabble in line. Yes, Beinart is convinced that Iraqis -- at least Iraq's "political class" -- are quaking in their boots with fear that America will withdraw. He, for example, states directly "prominent Sunni leaders now actually want the United States to stay" citing no source beyond the wisdom of General Beinart himself.
Unlike Peter Beinart I don't have any Iraqi political elites on the phone but, the last time I checked, general Iraqi opinion looked like this:
The above is from a PIPA survey conducted less than two months ago, well after the Sammarra mosque attack and so forth. Perhaps opinions among Beinart's elite vary significantly from the above, but even if such is the case the point is irrelevant: the puppets in the Green Zone governed with little power to begin with and with even less now. Maliki is now the mayor of Baghdad as surely as Karzai is the mayor of Kabul. But even if such were not the case, even if Maliki's administration was all powerful and was begging the US to stay forever, wouldn't it be democratic and idealistic, and all the good things that the liberal hawks like to pretend to be, to side with the 70% of the population -- the 35% of Kurds for godsake -- that want the US out by September of 2007 at latest?
Beinart's instinctive faith in the power of enlightened insiders betrays a peculiar view of democracy that he shares with neoconservatives. Part of Peter Beinart's schtick as a commentator is peppering his writing with pretentious historical allusions. The one he picked this time around is pretty ironic:
"Were not those right who held that it was self-contradictory to try to further the permanent ideals of peace by recourse to war?" wrote John Dewey in The New Republic in 1919, confessing his despondency at the outcome of World War I. Yes, they were right then, and they are right now. War can be necessary, but, in the decade between the liberation of Kuwait and the liberation of Kabul, it became the repository for too many of our hopes for a better world.
The full Dewey quote is as follows:
Were not those right who held that it was self-contradictory to try to further the permanent ideals of peace by recourse to war? Was not he who thought they might thus be promoted one of the gullible throng who swallowed the cant of idealism as a sugar coating for the bitter core of violence and greed?
Dewey, of course, in his day, argued against Walter Lippman's elites-know-best version of democracy (in the New Republic no less) and probably wouldn't have appreciated being quoted by chief spokesman for the gullible throng in an essay defending a Lippman-esque solution to the devastation wrought by a war aggression, ... but what do I know?
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
As Atrios and Josh Marshall debate the true meaning of the latest missive by Knight of the New Republic, Lawrence Kaplan, I'd just like to point out how appalling his post is -- and no I don't mean the dog head thing (which sounds like bullshit to me -- but what do I know?).
Hawks like Kaplan simply refuse to admit the invasion that they advocated directly caused this civil war -- and all the horror that it entails. The "sectarian rage" now "tearing Iraq apart" came about because the US destroyed civil society in Iraq. Kaplan simply cannot conceive that US troops play any other role than "a vital buffer between Iraq's warring sects" and he seems to think the warring sects sprang forth fully-formed after someone sowed the earth with Richard Perl's teeth.
The US came in, wrecked the place, set up a puppet government dominated by one religious group oppressed for years by another religious group, outfitted the puppet government with a US-backed militia that goes around killing members of the other group, and then guys like Kaplan get surprised when civil war breaks out. People need to get it through their heads that Iraqis -- especially Sunnis -- think the US-backed government is a joke and are basically afraid of Iraq's so-called security forces. Iraqi blogger Riverbend has vividly described the "security" Sunnis feel when security forces come calling and in another post stated frankly, "[T]he Iraqi security forces are as much to fear as the black-clad and hooded men attacking mosques."
When events like the horrors Kaplan describes occur one must wonder to what extent the rage sunnis apparently feel toward Shiites is due to the perception that the shiites are actively collaborating with the conquerors of Iraq and due to the fact that Iraq's "security forces" basically act as a Shiite militia. Iraq's deputy prime minister made this point in an Al Jazeera interview commenting on Saturday's Shiite-on-Sunni rampage: (from the Times):
But, you know, I guess it's easier to blame it all on violent arabs who cannot "reprogram their coarsened and brittle cultures" to quote Kaplan. Which is nice for Kaplan ... regarding the debate between Atrios and Marshall, my take is that Kaplan is saying that he doesn't have blood on his hands because those people are just crazy...
Hawks like Kaplan simply refuse to admit the invasion that they advocated directly caused this civil war -- and all the horror that it entails. The "sectarian rage" now "tearing Iraq apart" came about because the US destroyed civil society in Iraq. Kaplan simply cannot conceive that US troops play any other role than "a vital buffer between Iraq's warring sects" and he seems to think the warring sects sprang forth fully-formed after someone sowed the earth with Richard Perl's teeth.
The US came in, wrecked the place, set up a puppet government dominated by one religious group oppressed for years by another religious group, outfitted the puppet government with a US-backed militia that goes around killing members of the other group, and then guys like Kaplan get surprised when civil war breaks out. People need to get it through their heads that Iraqis -- especially Sunnis -- think the US-backed government is a joke and are basically afraid of Iraq's so-called security forces. Iraqi blogger Riverbend has vividly described the "security" Sunnis feel when security forces come calling and in another post stated frankly, "[T]he Iraqi security forces are as much to fear as the black-clad and hooded men attacking mosques."
When events like the horrors Kaplan describes occur one must wonder to what extent the rage sunnis apparently feel toward Shiites is due to the perception that the shiites are actively collaborating with the conquerors of Iraq and due to the fact that Iraq's "security forces" basically act as a Shiite militia. Iraq's deputy prime minister made this point in an Al Jazeera interview commenting on Saturday's Shiite-on-Sunni rampage: (from the Times):
In comments broadcast on the Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera, Salam al-Zubaie, a deputy prime minister and a Sunni Arab, called the events in Jihad "a real massacre" and suggested that Iraq's Shiite-led security forces were to blame because they had been infiltrated by militiamen.
The government forces, he said, "coordinate with these filthy terror groups who are roaming the streets."
But, you know, I guess it's easier to blame it all on violent arabs who cannot "reprogram their coarsened and brittle cultures" to quote Kaplan. Which is nice for Kaplan ... regarding the debate between Atrios and Marshall, my take is that Kaplan is saying that he doesn't have blood on his hands because those people are just crazy...
Labels: Lawrence Kaplan, Shia, Sunnis, TNR
