About 17 more U.S. soldiers were killed this week in Bush’s splendid little war. They were no relation to Dubya, Cheney, or anyone important, so not to worry. I had to turn my local newspaper upside-down and shake it to find any mention of the deaths – they were buried (with full military honors) in the text of an article about some other grisly aspect of the Iraq enterprise, which itself appeared on the back page of the paper’s main section. (It’s kind of a general news section… though not really. These local papers are all about local news now, with a smattering of national and international stories dropped into the cracks, plus Krauthammer’s column and other useless bilge… then there’s the “local” section.) The 17 dead don’t fit the narrative, so they must not be emphasized… or perhaps even reported, as in the case of the Winter Soldier testimonies, which never found their way into my local paper. No, this week was handed over to general Petraeus and ambassador Crocker, who offered their blandly abstruse portrait of what’s happening with Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. It’s a kind of pointillist portrait, as Seurat-like mosaic of microscopic “metrics” worked into expansive-sounding abstractions like “battlefield geometry” and strategic frameworks. Step back a few paces and you can see uncle Reagan’s smiling visage in the dots… or a death’s head, depending on the angle.

For those of you who might have thought, on the basis of their recent contrition over pre-war lapses, that the major news organizations learned a lesson or two, prepare to be disappointed. The same dynamic is still at work – no one wants to call out the sainted general, particularly since the political class is fawning over him. So the media follow suit. Brian Williams’ interview with Petraeus was a good example. Williams played footage of Saddam’s statue being pulled down – a public relations exercise that was long ago debunked as such, with the square having been cordoned off to the general public and populated with some of Chalabi’s people. To Williams, apparently, this is still emblematic of an outpouring of gratitude among Iraqis for their liberation, and he asked the general, in a voice heavy with emotion, “What happened?” Petraeus met this slow-ball with some boilerplate about how some Iraqis had “come to see” Americans as enemies and occupiers, that certain areas had to be “re-liberated”, etc. Always, we are portrayed as a force for good, occasionally falling victim to misperceptions, often as the result of our own well-meaning blunders.

In Iraq, though, the reality is quite different. It’s not hard to discern, really. A look at Nir Rosen’s work, or that of Patrick Cockburn, is instructive. The country is now basically segregated along sectarian and ethnic lines, ruled by militias, and haunted by the prospect of more conflict to come. The conclusion that we have, through our actions, destroyed that country and brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its citizens cannot be obscured by technocratic happy talk. To say that matters have improved in recent months is like saying that murder and ethnic cleansing brings peace. The peace of the grave, perhaps… but nothing we should claim as a success. In any case, Petraeus and Crocker can only speak to how well the enterprise is going, not whether the enterprise is something we should be engaged in at all. Their charts, graphs, and statistics help to feed the general misimpression that the administration wants us all to focus on – that we are staying in Iraq so we can help ordinary Iraqis. The truth is quite the opposite… we affect to care about ordinary Iraqis so that we can stay in Iraq. By what the general and the ambassador say, there is apparently no circumstance (things going badly, things going well) that would allow us to leave – so it’s reasonable to conclude that the point of the whole business is to stay… and stay permanently.

We’re down to a basic policy question… the Clash question, if you will: Shall we stay or shall we go? In a democracy, that should never be left to generals or diplomats.

luv u,

jp

Is anyone as tired as I am of having the concept of “superdelegates” explained to you? I swear, if I hear one more sotto voce definition of that term on NPR, I’m going to toss my fucking radio right out the window. Enough! I know what they are, already. Enough with the profiles and interviews of superdelegates that invariably devolve into questions about whom they secretly support and whether or not they will change their minds. Knock it off, for chrissake, and report on something that’s actually happening in the world. Not so long ago, primary seasons routinely ran into the early summer months, but this year’s heavily front-loaded process put the news media into an early feeding frenzy. Now, with an insufferable three whole weeks left before the next primary, they’re behaving like a five-year-old in the back seat on a cross-country trip… or heroin addicts groping for a fix. Let’s face it, friends – you’re not going to call this one ahead of time. You’ll just have to wait for people to vote… like the rest of us. (And if I have to come back there again….!)

Idle hands do the devil’s work, I guess… and it seems the press will do anything to keep from talking about actual issues… like, if most of us want single-payer health insurance, why don’t our politicians advocate for it? And if most of us want out of Iraq, why are we still there? And if 70% of Iraqis want us to leave, what justification is there for ignoring that? This week we got to hear all about how Obama sucks at bowling. Now, there’s a useful piece of information. It took Amy Goodman to ask the freaking guy whether he thought we should comply with that 70% of Iraqis and pull out. Loaded question? Maybe, but at least it produces some useful information with respect to the presidential election. (His answer was cautious and evasive, so that’s good to know.) Hey, mainstream media: let’s put the question to the other two yo-yo’s as well. That will give you something to do… something more useful than yakking about how well (or how lame) each one came off on late night talk shows. (W.T.F., are they competing to replace Jay Leno or George Bush?)

As all this nuthin’ has been happening, Admiral McCain (retired) has been firing regular salvos at some pretty distant targets. I heard one ad tonight – a lift of Clinton’s asinine 3:00a.m. phone call commercial – that tries to position McCain as someone who will save our economy through free-market principles… like the ones we’ve been pursuing lo these past 20 years or more. This from a man who admits to knowing little about economic matters (objectively verifiable). Here’s a little free advice, admiral: if you’re going to hit them with something, don’t reach for “more of the same”, because that may not do the trick. Your good friend Dubya has very seriously bungled the economy (as he has every other aspect of his constitutional responsibility), so you might want to make sure that manly embrace is an exceedingly brisk one. Of course, the admiral is free to troll these waters undisturbed, because the press is really only interested in his biographical bus tour. Let’s hear his life story, one more time…. from the beginning. Jesus – they are just fundamentally incapable of focusing on the hard questions. It’s like PBS Frontline’s recent review of the Iraq war, talking about how Cheney was ordering shoot-downs on 9/11. Do you have to be Jim Ridgeway to ask why Cheney was giving orders in the first place when he had no constitutional authority to do so?

Never mind, PBS. Just stick to Obama’s gutter ball – that’s more your speed.

luv u,

jp

Well, it took another visit from Cheney to get the bottom to fall out of Iraq yet again. The man hasn’t lost his touch, to be sure. All kidding aside, it became a good deal more difficult this week for the administration, pro-war congresspeople, and the corporate media to act as though things are going swimmingly over there and that “life is returning to normal for ordinary Iraqis,” as John McCain suggested during his surprise (is there any other kind for prominent Americans?) visit. The escalation in violence was pretty strongly telegraphed by all the rhetoric about Iranian interference in the shape of arms and support for extremists (or “Al Qaeda”, as McCain bizarrely claimed on more than one occasion recently – you know you’re in trouble when Joe Lieberman has to step in to correct your reactionary fulminations). No doubt our trusty veep was giving Baghdad’s leaders a pep talk before they commenced their attack on what is likely the largest organized indigenous political force in the country – Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which had only just recently renewed its unilateral cease-fire.

No doubt the bombs are falling on Basra’s poorer quarters, though there are few reporters willing to take a close look (can’t blame them). Some stories were leaking out as of Thursday or so – casualty figures from area hospitals and some anecdotal stuff about how impossibly fucked up things are there right now. Basra and southern Iraq in general were floated as one of the relative success stories (i.e. it’s not on fire!) during the course of this disastrous war, but like all conventional wisdom on Operation Iraqi Freedom, this has proven less than reliable. The fact that Basra is run by militias is nothing new – Patrick Cockburn of the Independent has been reporting on that for some time. For christ’s sake, the whole country is run by one militia or another… it’s just that we don’t like this one, not because they’re religious zealots (so are our allies), but because they are nationalists who particularly want us out.

The al-Maliki government has issued ultimatums for surrender which has thus far been ignored, and as of this writing, the militias appear to control twice as much of Basra as do the government troops – this is probably based on U.S. military data, so it may be actually kind of rosy. Al-Maliki’s latest deadline for the Mahdi Army to disarm coincides with the day that General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker are slated to give their progress report to Congress. (Amazing coincidence.) Our military is muttering to the press that they are not heavily involved in this fight, but that they will not allow the Iraqi army to lose. There is no question that they are involved, to the extent that helicopter gunships and F-18s are bombing the living hell out of some of Baghdad’s and Basra’s most miserable slums. This is, frankly, an American fight, and no one should expect Iraqis to fight it for us. We have been antagonizing Al-Sadr since Bremer’s time, because he cannot be controlled. In this respect, we have been on the same page as Saddam – not surprising, since we appear to want what he wanted… a quiescent Iraq that we can happily pump oil out of.

So hang on to your helmets – we’ve got a ways to go on this one.

luv u,

jp