22 April 2004, Gabriel Ash, YellowTimes.org
excerpt:
There is a new "wisdom" that begins to unite some faux lefties and some old defense hands. According to this new wisdom, the failure in Iraq is the result of too much optimism, but optimism of a specific kind. Supposedly, had we only understood that Iraq was just "not ready for democracy," had we only sent twice as many soldiers, and given them a simple mission, such as to put in charge a friendly dictator and get out, everything might be different.
The warmonger's haven National Review now faults the Administration for the "overestimation in particular of the sophistication of what is fundamentally still a tribal society." Thomas Friedman's new tune is quite similar: we made mistakes, but the Iraqis failed to show up.
John Kerry follows the same line. He is critical of "the way" the war was fought. To prove his point, he has backed from calling the war crimes he, himself, committed thirty years ago "atrocities." Perhaps the new p.c. term for burning villages and their inhabitants should be "robust landscaping." Moral clarity is, of course, no longer a priority, now that Marine snipers are taking potshots at women, children and ambulance drivers in Falluja. But Kerry has an eye for the future, too. A candidate who prepares to spend his term in office burning cities should be careful how he describes burning villages.
It was just a question of time before the exhilaration of empire would turn into the melancholy of murder. In less than a year, giddiness morphed into somber anxiety. But the one thing that remained constant is the self-righteousness of the American public discourse. We're back to faulting the natives for their stubborn refusal to understand the purity of our hearts. And hell hasn't seen the wrath of a heart-broken colonialist. Iraqis must learn now, as did Native Americans, African slaves, Vietnamese and Palestinian peasants, and many others, that ingratitude is a capital offense.
Miracles apparently now happen in pairs. Just as the new anti-American wisdom in Iraq unites Shia and Sunni Muslims, so in the U.S. the neo "anti-Wilsonianism" unites populist racism with the cynicism of the old style imperialists. The dismal results of the neo-con coup are about to stir a wave of nostalgia for the good old days of Kissinger, Suharto and Pinochet. Bush's messianic lunacy is losing its luster, but only so that we can go back to what the U.S. knows best-- what William Blum calls "killing hope," i.e. destroying indigenous liberation movements and installing and supporting U.S.-friendly, mass murderers.
Although Bush understandably isn't very loud about it, the change of tune is even noticeable in the Administration's future plans for Iraq. Exit neo-con Paul Bremer; enter death squads aficionado John Negroponte.
FULL ARTICLE: The Disaster in Iraq and Constructive Criticism
The Disaster in Iraq and Constructive Criticism
