This is a response to AG’s post “Obama’s Real Challenge: America’s Survival” below, where among other things, he claims we are all locksteppers for not praising the Obamagod and agreeing with the Bush ala Bama Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against “terror.”
First of all, lets touch on what is arguably the WORST foreign policy decision EVER in the history of the US: Going into Iraq.
People who live there publicly recall the years under Saddam as “the good old days.” They had jobs, schools, houses, air conditioning, a life. We have destabilized that region in the most insane way ever… the inevitable sectarian violence when/if we leave is going to be unimaginable. The response of American/Western hatred in the WHOLE region is going to be exponentially raised if we stay.
If nothing else, Iraq was a nonsectarian area buffer zone between the wildly Shiite Iran and the wildly Sunni Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and Saudis. When they start going at it, the Iranians will protect Iraq’s majority Shiite, with the largest standing army in the region, and then all the people with their finger on newly freed A.Q. Khan’s weapons will be awfully twitchy about protecting the Sunnis.
Peer closely at the map, its blurry, but legible.
What we should have done, is seal the border and march through Afghanistan shoulder to shoulder until we rooted out Bin Laden and the extremists on 9/12. The people there didn’t much like them anyway, they FEARED them.
Going back further, what we should have done, after arming them to the teeth to kick Russia’s ass out of the region is invest ourselves in rebuilding and stabilizing the region. It is the direst of circumstances that bring people to follow extremists. We pulled out and left Afghanistan in shambles, and the religious whack jobs had all the guns. Brilliant.
But as much as I’d like to, I’m not here to re-write history.
Lets talk about where the ball is now.
Waziristan:
This hostile, mountainous area that lies on the Afghani/Pakistani border is where the problem lies. Officially Pakistan’s, rest assured though while just as “officially condemned,” our strikes there are being orchestrated by Pakistani intelligence and orders.
Like the almost impenetrable Vietnam in daunting geography, they also share a history of being overran and fucked by wave after wave of people trying to determine their lives for them. Truly, the people trotting between the two countries in this region couldn’t give a fuck about borders anyway. They are THEIR mountains.
Its not called “Where Empires go to Die” for nothing.
Go back to the first map. Both countries are predominately Sunni, and are bordered by a very Shiite Iran. Pakistan also shares a border with their mortal enemy to the south, India.
Now think about Israel, Pakistan and India having nukes, with god knows how many other illegally smuggled ones elsewhere.
Hold that thought.
Now lets look at who has the oil.
Top Ten Oil Exporting Countries
* Saudi Arabia (8.73 million barrels per day)
* Russia (6.67)
* Norway (2.91)
* Iran (2.55)
* Venezuela (2.36)
* United Arab Emirates (2.33)
* Kuwait (2.20)
* Nigeria (2.19)
* Mexico (1.80)
* Algeria (1.68)Top OPEC Crude Oil Producers (in million barrels per day)
1. Saudi Arabia … 9.35
2. Iran … 4.09
3. Venezuela … 3.13
4. Kuwait … 2.57
5. United Arab Emirates … 2.38
OK. Now try again to argue the point this is about our oil security? Tell me again why Israel has anything whatsoever to do with it, AG, when we get most of our oil from the Saudis? Why we’re in Wazaristan has NOTHING to do with oil production.
It has do with DELIVERY and who controls it.
(While we’re at it: Tell me why you think it brilliant to not get off the greasy black oil tit instead of spending all our money fucking up an area with a dwindling supply in the first place?)
Its about oil routes that go directly to Russia, and the whole Eastern Bloc without having to use tankers out of the Gulf.
Now think harder, about all the Saudis flying those planes, and the fact we flew the Bin Ladens out in a hurry after 9/11.
OPEC doesn’t want Russian oil to have an easy way out, or their oil an easy way in, not under their control.
Do you honestly think that out of some sense of loyalty to the people in Pakistan (to protect them from the nasty Tally-ban) we are bombing the shit out of birthday parties because “suspected” terrorists lie there?
BULLSHIT.
As usual, we are the consummate whores, only in it for the money interests and will prop up whomever gives us the biggest cut. The Saudis are in this ass deep, and as our biggest importer of oil, a stable and profitable Pakistan and Afghanistan would cut directly into their profit margin.
Not rocket science.
Here’s some simpler versions of the proposed pipelines, the first oil, the second, gas.
Its always war for oil, always war for profit.
The job of the right-wing Military Industrial Complex and Big Oil money who run the Shadow, Perma-gov is to tell us WE ARE IN DANGER to justify their kleptocracy.
We are fucking around in quicksand.
We are doing everything counterproductive to making the Middle East a stable region that CAN be done.
1: Instead of denouncing Israel’s abominable treatment of the Palestinian people, we support them. (sub-mistake, not recognizing and dealing with the Palestinian elected leadership)
- We destabilized Iraq, and rather than rebuild it, we are arming both sides to the teeth and paying them not to kill us. We are not negotiating a secular government with protections for the minority there.
- We are saber rattling (at Israel’s bequest, nay demand) at Iran, whose Shiite majority is our best defense against the Sunni Al-Qaeda. (Iran being the most stable and arguable most Westernized Arabic country in the region, with whom we SHOULD ally ourselves) ~they consider themselves Persian, not Arabic, anyway, but that subtlety is lost on the US & Israel.
- We are committing war crimes by bombing an area with which we are NOT at war in Waziristan, Pakistan; thereby CREATING more sympathy for the extremist jihad-types.
- We are not investing in a post-war economy in Pakistan, nor involving ourselves in negotiating a cooperative Indian alliance with them.
The BIGGIE?
6. We have not stabilized Afghanistan by investing in rebuilding and normalizing their infrastructure. The shambles in which they were left after Russia was beaten, created in part by our actions there directly caused the counter reaction of extremism.
I am not stupid, nor lockstepping. There are levels to this you cannot even FATHOM, and not ONE of them has to do with “BROWN SKEERY PEOPLE OUT TO GET US!”
Militarism, especially indiscriminate use of drone bombings has proven totally ineffective every time someone goes into the Paki/Afghani region.
People generally want to be autonomous, and want to be able to make a living.
If we truly wanted to rid ourselves of enemies and create allies, we would not be following the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes and perma-war, civilian casualties be damned.
We would be using Diplomacy.
If we spent one tenth of what our Military presence costs us on rebuilding regions that are unstable, we would have allies and relative peace; not an increasingly negative reaction from the Islamic world.
Military attack there has been a proven failure time and again:
WHERE EMPIRES GO TO DIE.
Our GOAL was never “safety” from them, “protecting ourselves” from them, nor PEACE, dude.
That is not our goal.
That was never Bush’s goal.
It apparently isn’t Obama’s goal either.
The goal IS to keep the profits running for the MIC, the Oil Interests and the Shadow Government.
That goal is attained easily, when people like you, AG, parrot the Limbaugh lines of “Kill them there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Bush Doctrine = ‘Bama Doctrine
DON’T YOU GET IT?
WE ARE THE TERRORISTS TO THEM.
We may not fly planes into buildings and die, we just drop bombs from drones on Weddings.
Have a nice day in Reality.
~~~~~~~~
From my various comments at WWL:
I CAN see what are the most productive and LEAST productive modus operandi.
Investment, not drone bombings.
Go ahead, repeat your history.
Failed Histories.
I will always push for a new way
~~~~~
I am rather big on humanitarianism, but you know you can’t take the hippie chick out of me, either….
~~~~~
I have to believe that there are choices we can make at this moment in time that could deflect the coming Armageddon, and I have to speak for that. I have to counter the propaganda fairy tales.
Is Obama set against “those who hate humanity” itself real or another myth?
Has he allied himself with those who don’t really ‘hate us,’ as such, but merely see us as penny ante chips in a never ending poker game for all the chips, in a billion dollar bid hand?
~~~~~
peace out…
“the wildly Sunni…Syrians…“
Diane, while I agree with you that invading Iraq has to have been the worst foreign policy decision every, I must take issue with some important specifics here.
The Syrians are hardly “wildly Sunni”. Syria is, as Iraq was, non-sectarian both as a state and as a society. It is a secular state with a very diverse population and very high acceptance and integration among the different ethnic and religious groups.
The party that rules Syria, the Ba`th party, was founded by a Christian and an `Allawite Muslim as an explicitly non-sectarian nationalist party, and remains non-sectarian to this day. The ruler of Syria is, and has been for decades, an `Allawite Muslim the`Allawite branch of Islam being an offshoot of Shi`ism.
I also take strong issue with your statement that sectarian violence is inevitable when/if the United States leaves. In fact you can go back as many centuries as you like and you will not find anything in Iraqi history that comes anywhere close to what we have seen there since 2003.
What has gone on in Iraq over the last six years was a direct result of the invasion and occupation and the manner in which they were conducted, and not, as the propaganda goes, something inherent in Iraqi society that has been held at bay only by the iron fist of Saddam or some such nonsense. Iraqis have lived together peacefully for many centuries. They will do so again once the Americans stop meddling in their business.
PPS The Lebanese are also anything but “wildly Sunni”.
I overspoke, I apologize. I was referring to the demographics as charted on the map, the people not the governments.
I do however opine that left without a strong secular government, both the religious differences and the animosities enflamed by our presence will leave Iraq in a massive civil war.
Well, the people of Syria and Lebanon are not “wildly Sunni” either. In fact, Lebanon (despite its terrible political strife), and even moreso Syria, are remarkably pluralistic societies, as Iraq used to be for centuries.
It is a mistake to assign too much significance to having a Sunni or Shi`a majority. Those distinctions are generally not as big a deal as the publicity here would have you think.
And I could not disagree more with your assumption about Iraq. On the contrary, it is only after the occupation is ended (by which I mean all troops withdrawn, and the controlling U.S. presence altered to normal diplomatic relations) that Iraqis will have the space to mend relations. And while my preference is for a return to a secular state, as long as Iraq has a government that is more concerned with Iraq as a nation than they are with petty sectarian interests, the country will do fine.
Despite all the hype to the contrary, Iraqis across all ethnic and religious groups (including most Kurds) have traditionally had a very strong sense of identity as Iraqis. Before there was a Republic of Iraq people had a strong sense of regional identity. That has not gone away, it has just been temporarily buried in a struggle for power that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis did not and do not join into, nor have any real interest in.
I like your optimism, but when was the last time prior to 2003 when Shi’ites ruled Baghdad? It seems to me that we’ve opened a Pandora’s box that isn’t so easily closed by the Americans leaving.
The pluralistic nature of Iraq prior to the invasion in not separable from the ultimate Sunni control of the country. Saddam Hussein led a party that was secular in nature and that incorporated people of all faiths (Tariq Aziz was a Christian, for example) but it was ultimately a Sunni-dominated country that was repressive of Shiites (especially of the devout variety).
The question is, will the Sunnis of Iraq (and of the region) ever truly accept Shi’a rule? And it just gets more complicated from there when you add in issues of ethnicity (Persian, Turks, Arabs, and Kurds), control of Kirkuk, control of other oil producing areas, and international relations with their neighbors.
Iraq was a memory that can aid them in settling their differences, but they have no road back to the conditions that facilitated their pluralism.
It is not so much optimism. I do not expect the road to be smooth or for things to return to exactly what they were, nor is that necessarily desirable in every way.
The Pandora’s box you opened will never be closed until the Americans leave. What happens after that is and should be entirely up to the Iraqis.
The Sunnis of Iraq are not some monolithic entity that wholesale either accepts something or does not accept it. Left to their own choices without ignorant outsiders manipulating everything to benefit themselves and without regard for what is right for Iraq, Iraqis will find their way, and a suitable system will evolve. We have already seen some evolution in this last election where there was movement toward nationalism, centralism, and unity and away from the more divisive, theocratic model.
As for the conditions that facilitated their pluralism, those are not some recent phenomenon, but extend back centuries. It has been the nature of Iraqi society for a very, very long time. In the centuries prior to 2003 there were three episodes of violent conflict between Sunnis and Shi`as. All three were precipitated by foreign invasions, and in all three cases relations returned to normal after the invaders left. Based on history, if on nothing else, I will trust Iraqis in this matter.
During the period of Ottoman rule, the Sunnis ran (what is now) Iraq. Prior to that, (meaning, prior to 1534) Baghdad was not really a place of pluralism but a place periodically sacked and burnt to the ground. And then, before that, it was founded by Shiites who were conquered by Turkish Sunnis.
So, yes, during 400 years of Ottoman Rule and 80 years of Iraqi rule, there was a degree of harmony. But that also coincides with 500 years of uninterrupted Sunni rule of Baghdad and environs.
Now that the tables are flipped, pluralism may not come so easily.
I should be more accurate. Baghdad wasn’t really founded by Shiites, more like with Shiite support.
That’s a pretty gross oversimplification, and overlooks far more than it accounts for.
As I said, my money is on the Iraqis to work it out, but they will never be able to as long as the Americans are there keeping their fingers in the pot stirring.
The Americans do not understand or know anything about Iraq, and in any case, they do not care. They are there for their own benefit, and not for anything to do with Iraqis.
I’m with you.
You seem to think that pluralism and being “periodically sacked and burnt to the ground” are mutually exclusive. They are not.
And by the way, what are you suggesting? That the Americans should occupy Iraq indefinitely in order to protect the Iraqis from themselves?
I’m suggesting that Iraq might have functioned with an authoritarian government ruled by Sunni elites (be they Turkish or Arab) but it remains to be seen whether it will function with the Shi’a in control.
That’s all. The Shi’a are much more accustomed to eating shit from their Arab rulers than the Sunnis. And the Shi’a elite tends away from the secular.
Glad you are not suggesting the U.S. should stay!
You appear to be making a lot of assumptions, though, for which there is scant or no evidence, such as the idea that Sunni rule has been a key ingredient in Iraq’s many centuries of pluralism, that a secular government is necessary for pluralism, and so on. I do not find any of these suggestions convincing. I do not think any of these factors has been or is now a necessary factor.
And we might merely be differing on the definition of “elites”, but while most of the ruling regimes in Iraq have consisted mainly of members of the elite, Saddam and his family and cronies in no way qualify as elite in any traditional sense. On the contrary, they are from quite the other end of the scale, though some members of the regime, such as Tariq `Aziz, do qualify as elites.
And your characterization of the Shi`a elites as tending away from the secular applies only to the religious elites that Bush (unwittingly?) enabled and empowered. There are plenty of secular Shi`a elites, some of whom have very recognizable names, who for various reasons were unable to grasp the brass ring this particular time around.
What we do seem to agree on is that it will be very interesting to see how things evolve over the next decade or two or three. I would suggest that if the western powers, just for once, keep their fingers out of things, what will evolve will be the right thing for Iraqis. If the western powers keep meddling and trying to turn Iraq to their own benefit, it will be every bit as negative as it has been for the last century or so.
The Shi’a give a lot more deference to their religious leaders than the Sunni (especially, the secular Sunnis that ran Iraq for the last 40 years or so). I’m not suggesting that there are no Shi’ites that are ‘secular elites’, but they are not going to be calling the shots in a democratic Iraq.
I think the secularism of the Ba’athists was an absolutely key ingredient in the pluralistic society that existed in Iraq prior to the invasion. The fact that they repressed the religious elements of the Shi’a only helped to reinforce that. Now everything is turned upside down. Without conditions favoring secularism, sectarianism becomes much more important.
I don’t want to see my predictions come true, but I don’t share your optimism that things will improve in the short-term when America leaves.
You are right that the Shi`a give more deference to their religious leaders. That has everything to do with the structure of Shi`a Islam.
The Shi`a secular elites are not going to be calling the shots in a “democratic” Iraq (if such a thing ever comes into being) in large part because the invasion and occupation resulted in the empowerment of certain Shi`a groups.
Certainly one of the positives about the Ba`th party is that it is a secular, pluralistic party. However, pluralism in Iraqi society predates the Ba`th party by a very, very long time, and Iraq had been a secular, pluralistic state for decades before Michel Aflaq founded the party. In fact, Saddam and his regime did more to create and widen rifts within Iraqi society than any previous ruler, and in a number of respects set up the conditions that allowed the Shi`a religious parties to flourish and grow and eventually come to the power they have had since Bush’s “liberation”.
And I have not said things will improve in the short term. On the contrary, I think there is a good chance that the short term will be quite a bumpy ride. However, it will not be worse than it has been with the Americans there, and ending the occupation is the number one prerequisite for healing to take place.
Tragically, I do not think Iraqi society will ever return to the rich diversity it has had for virtually all of history. The ancient peoples who lived and thrived there for millennia are no doubt gone for good. The Christians will not come back, nor the Mandaeans, nor certainly the Jews, nor any of the other numerous groups who made up Iraq.
I think you should also factor in the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Iran-Iraq War as major contributors to the rise in fault lines in Iraqi society. Saddam didn’t act against the Shi’a in a vacuum.
You are quite right that Saddam did not act against “the Shi`a” (in quotes because “the Shi`a” is rather too general to reflect reality) in a vacuum. He did not act out of any kind of sectarianism. He was not concerned about anyone’s religion or ethnicity, but about opposition to his regime. He acted, as any dictator always will, against individuals and groups whom he perceived – realistically, in this case – to be a serious threat to the regime.
The first such group was the Da`wa party, whose goal was to overthrow the secular Ba`thist regime and make Iraq into an Islamic (or Islamist, if you like, though I dislike that term) state. However, the idea that the Da`wa party was a sectarian party with sectarian goals is mistaken. The schism there was not between Shi`a and Sunni, but between religious and secular. The Da`wa party had members who were Sunni and formed alliances with Sunni religious groups who shared their goal of promoting religion, and ultimately an Islamic state in Iraq.
The problems between the Iraqi government and “the Shi`a” began in the early seventies, well before the revolution in Iran, and were a direct result of the party’s open, and sometimes violent opposition to the regime. The Islamic revolution in Iran came nearly a decade after that, and of course the war with Iran even later.
You are correct, of course, that the revolution in Iran and the war with Iran must have played some part in the dynamics within Iraq. However, there were far earlier and more important factors that were purely Iraqi and not connected with Iran.
With respect to the war with Iran, it is too tempting now that the world has discovered the Sunnis and the Shi`as to believe it was to some degree a war between the two sects. It was not. It was a war between two states over territorial and other disputes, and that is how it was overwhelmingly viewed by Iraqis and Iranis alike. To the best of my knowledge Iraqi Shi`as did not go into battle feeling they were fighting their “fellow Shi`as”, but that they were fighting a foreign enemy. I know less about the Iranian side of it, but I have never heard anything to indicate that there was any significant feeling of kinship with Iraqi Shi`as.
The bottom line is that while I would never say that Iran was not a factor, I would not give it too much importance relative to specifically Iraqi factors.
One thing further, BooMan. I would remind you that Syria, a majority Sunni state, has been run for a long time now by Shi`as – `Allawis to be specific. So far being ruled by Shi`as has not been the biggest complaint most Syrians have about their government. Granted, Syria is, thank goodness, still a secular state, and hopefully that will not change.
And as I said, Iraq appears to be moving away from the heavy sectarian configuration it was forced into in the beginning.
My money is on the Iraqi people to work it out for themselves. And just about the last people who should be involved are the Americans.
PS The idea that the United States has done anything to reduce the sectarian conflict that it stirred up is incorrect. On the contrary, as long as the occupation continues, the United States continues to perpetuate the problems it brought into being.
That’s what I was saying…. the US has, and is continuing to do more damage than good.
We agree completely here, of course.
And therefore, the U.S. needs to leave completely, and the sooner the better.
Diane, I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I have to correct something else:
“(Iran being the most stable and arguable most Westernized Arabic country in the region, with whom we SHOULD ally ourselves) ~they consider themselves Persian, not Arabic, anyway…“
Iran is most definitely NOT an Arab country, and the majority of Iranians are most definitely NOT Arabs. They don’t just consider themselves Persian, not Arabic, they ARE Persian, not Arabic.
Persians are from a completely different ethno-linguistic group than Arabs. They are Indo-European as opposed to Semitic. They did not originate in the Arabian peninsula, but were part of the Indian migration. The Persian language (aka Farsi) is completely unrelated in origin to Arabic. Their social, cultural, and political history is very different from that of the Arabs.
And while I would agree that making an enemy of Iran is the height of stupidity, I would hardly say it is the most westernized country in the region. Under the Shah Iran was far more westernized than it is now, but Lebanon certainly was more westernized then, and now is a good deal more westernized. And virtually very Arab country is westernized in some ways, particularly in the urban centers.
The question is, so what? Why do so many nice, progressive Americans place such a high value on being westernized? What is wrong with accepting other countries as they are without this need to impose a western model on Middle Eastern and South Asian countries? Hasn’t this urge caused enough problems already?
Americans are stupid. They don’t get that, and I said as much, I was using a literary technique to point that out.
As for “Westernized” I was speaking to the what the US government values, not me as an individual.
Honest to god, somehow we have this idea of “exceptionalism” and superiority in this country right from our very roots in genocide of the Native American peoples, rather than any semblance of respect for other cultures.
We never even consider that we might learn from them.
I guess, Hurria, something was lost in the translation when I cross posted this essay here, because it was written in response to specific arguments AG and I had been having on my blog, WWL.
I was trying to make a case against the Israeli/US saber rattling at Iran in a way that most people would understand. His meme of they are all fundamentalist Muslim Arabs out to annhilate the Jews had to be corrected. I simplified. I was propagandizing FOR Iran in a way most Americans would relate to. Playing the western card sells.
I also wrote at 6 am without a good editor before leaving for my kid’s friends bday party.
The US is nothing short of an Empire trying to use the rest of the world as pawns in a ponzi scheme, or at least the powered elites behind the government are.
Me? Personally think that white european influence, i.e. westernization” has been the very BANE of humanity. (yeah, i’m irish & polish, so I imagine my roots are included)
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Speaking about transport of oil and monopoly of pipelines …
Gerhard Schröder, who never visited Iran when he was German chancellor, from 1998 to 2005, began his unofficial four-day visit to Tehran. His office said it was a private visit.
The Russian media said Schröder was on a mission to Iran representing Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly. Schröder is one of the main executives of Nord Stream, the Russian-German gas pipeline project that will run under the Baltic Sea, allowing Russia for the first time to send gas directly to Western Europe. Gazprom holds the majority stake in Nord Stream. Besides meeting Ahmadinejad, Schröder also met Ali Larijani, the speaker of Parliament.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."There is a very interesting discussion on Afghanistan on Democracy Now from this past Monday. It covers a number of items that are little-known, and poorly understood. I strongly recommend it for anyone who wants to expand their knowledge and understanding of just what Obama is increasing U.S. involvement in. I found it quite enlightening in a number of ways.
Thanks!