Tag Archives: Iraq

Political Rants

Short takes.

So many things going on in the news that it’s hard to pick which one to pull my blowhard routine on. So I’ll blow a little less hard this week, so to speak. Here goes.

Trust me on this. Again.TPP / MAI – It’s been a full court press on the Trans Pacific Partnership fast-track authority issue currently facing the House of Representatives. As it happens, WikiLeaks has released another leaked chapter of the agreement, this one dealing with “Transparency for Health Care”, so to speak. The more that emerges on this agreement, the more it seems like the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) that was killed in the early 2000’s – basically an investors’ rights agreement, written by corporate lobbyists seeking to elevate the status of their superhuman client conglomerates to a status above that of sovereign nations. The House has turned fast track legislation back, fortunately, but this is truly the thing that wouldn’t die. We will have to remain vigilant on this issue.

Boots in Iraq, Missiles in Europe – Obama is getting in touch with his more bellicose side this past week, with threats to base medium range missiles in Europe (with which to threaten Russia and counter their recent cruise missile deployment and “aggression” against Ukraine) and a promise to send another 500 or so “advisers” to Iraq’s Anbar Province to join the campaign against ISIS. One would think that these two items would be hard to reconcile – a thrust against unwarranted extraterritorial aggression … paired with unwarranted extraterritorial aggression. Still, when the empire does it, it’s not contradictory or ironic.

Jail Break – One of the biggest stories since the last sporting event our news organizations obsessed over. Pretty impressive display of ingenuity, getting out of that massive prison. I can’t help but feel sorry for their alleged accomplice, whose name and face are being displayed across the media with the usual abandon.

Texas Hold-em – This time, we have video of a police officer – a trainer, no less – wrestling a bikini-clad black teenager to the ground, pulling a gun on some other kids, doing a dramatic shoulder roll, etc. He has resigned, blaming his dramatic behavior on having had a difficult day responding to two suicide attempts. Wait … they send THIS guy to talk someone off the ledge? Hope to hell they were white.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Ramadi redux.

The so-called Islamic State, ISIS, etc., took control (or at least partial control) of the city of Ramadi in Iraq’s Al-Anbar province, a place that was occupied by U.S. troops in 2005 and subjected to untold misery. In a week that was marked by remembrances of things past regarding the invasion of Iraq (to say nothing of Bin Laden’s prison memoirs), it was pretty amazing to hear the fulminations over the “loss” of Ramadi, with various politicians and talking heads referring to the city as fought-for land, suggesting that the sacrifices of our troops have been poorly served by Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq. They always yank out the troops when it’s convenient, just to raise people’s sense of indignation.

Here come the hot heads. Again.That’s just laying insult upon injury. Our troops suffered mightily alongside the people of Ramadi, and most of those now complaining did nothing to relieve their suffering in 2005; quite the opposite. The fact is, as Juan Cole has pointed out so adeptly, Ramadi was never ours to lose. It has always been a center of Sunni resistance against the United States and its various allies, including the new government in Baghdad. It was, in fact, the base of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, and as Cole points out, former Baathist made common cause with the Salafists in Al Qaeda in 2005-6 to fight off the occupiers. The “Sunni Awakening”, mostly the effort of Sunni tribal leaders, helped to tamp down some of the unrest, perhaps with the promise of a greater voice in Baghdad.

That broader government, of course, never came, and now we are back to 2005-land. Different name, yes, but I am certain that many of those old Baathist officers and tacticians are behind the ISIS advance, taking advantage of this large reserve of battle-hardened, fanatical fighters. The ex-Baathists are unlikely to fall for any new promises from Americans, assuming that their names are still in the CIA and JSOC address book. Fool me once, right? They would rather live with the fanatics fighting against Baghdad than Baghdad itself, whose security forces have treated them very harshly in recent years.

Of course, the military hammers in our ongoing national security conversation are now hunting for nails.  I heard a general this morning advocating an overwhelming force approach. But this problem does not have a military solution. Without a meaningful political stake in Iraq for the Sunnis, there will no longer be a unified Iraq. Bombs, troops, advisers, and drones won’t change that.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Dancing around the flame.

The start of the Iraq war is back in the news again, and the guy who’s reviving the conversation is named Bush. No, not THAT Bush … the chunky one who used to run Florida (voted craziest state in the Union three years in a row – lookout, Texas!). Jeb Bush stumbled over a couple of questions about whether or not he would have done the same thing his imbecile brother did back in 2003. At first he seemed to suggest that he would have done the same thing, then later backtracked a bit, saying that, knowing what “we” know now, he would have done something different. A little later, he was invoking the name of our dead and injured troops to cover his ass, as his brother so often did

His brother's keeper.Okay, so first of all, “we” knew what we know now then. Brother Bush is just clinging to the mythology spun by his and his brother’s advisers. You remember the story – we had all this seemingly reliable intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, supplied by the CIA, that turned out to be unreliable. All their fault. Of course, at the time it was painfully obvious that the WMD story was bogus, as was the story about any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Yellowcake uranium story? Debunked at the time. Aluminum tubes? Again, thoroughly refuted at the time. Al Qaeda in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2002? Crap, reported at the time. I could go on.

It’s actually worse than that. Based on what seemed obvious at the time (and what we almost certainly know to be true), the Bush administration was fishing for the best available rationale to invade Iraq, something they had decided upon long before then entered the White House. They scrounged around for scraps of evidence, pushing the British and the Germans for details, torturing detainees for desperate incriminating confessions, and so on. You don’t water-board people dozens and dozens of times unless you’re trying to get something specific out of them, true or not. In the end, they got what they needed – some bullshit that momentarily added to their case.

The result? Hundreds of thousands dead, including more than 4,500 Americans, and a disaster that keeps metastasizing into new and more virulent convulsions of violence. That’s the eternal flame Jeb is dancing around.

luv u,

jp