(Part one can also be seen on the Guardian's website : http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,2125978,00.html )
Smith follows US troops through Anbar province in the second part of his graphic series. The first cultural clash in the latest film is between what the troops think of their mission and what President Bush says in the voiceover. The soldiers on the ground see little point in what they are doing while the commander-in-chief talks of victory.
Next is a disconnect between the troops' culture and that of the ordinary Iraqis they meet, made worse by an Iraqi interpreter. .An Iraqi has a complaint against the Americans for killing his two brothers in their beds. The translator makes out that the Iraqi is confessing that he's in trouble.
In the following sequences neither side likes or understands each other. Frightened villagers abandon their homes out of fear of the Americans. The Americans say they are just doing their job.
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Comments: 28
The Iraqis' disdain for American troops, and the blame placed on Americans for pretty much everything that is wrong, is manifest in this video.
You are obviously quite correct in noting the disconnect between the American troops and the Iraqis.
If I were an Iraqi MP and saw this and gave half a crap about the welfare of my countrymen I would move for Iraqi management of security operations, and insistence on removal of Americans if this were not acceptable.
When I think about the competing pressures on Iraqi MPs, it appears that the success of security concerns ultimately rests on an issue that does not appear on the radar of America war planners: the gulf between the demands of secular law and slavish adherence to the sharia canon.
Where in the HE double LL do these yo yo politicians get there ideas...?
Angela, are you a person?
You wrote: "When I think about the competing pressures on Iraqi MPs, it appears that the success of security concerns ultimately rests on an issue that does not appear on the radar of America war planners: the gulf between the demands of secular law and slavish adherence to the sharia canon."
>>>>
It is important to understand there is nothing at all religious about the present civil violence in Iraq. It is not 1572 in France or 1618 in Germany, in which both sides accuse the other of heresy and preach crusade to purify the true faith. The issues under contention have to do with caste and tribal privileges.
The Sunni insurgents stem largely from the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who have no particular religious objection to the Iraqi Shi'ites. They simply wish to rule the country as they have since the British invaded Iraq. For over 1000 years the same factions fighting in Iraq today had shared power in various ways at different times.
The Shiite cleric Muqtada as-Sadr has in the past year portrayed himself as a nationalist who can unify and lead a post-occupation Iraq. He has maintained communications with some Sunni resistance groups all along. He knows that only a leader who has opposed the occupation and America can hope to have sufficient legitimacy to restore an Iraqi state.
America could covertly support Muqtada as-Sadr's rise to power and allow the feckless puppet government in the Green Zone to disappear. The chances are slim he can restore a state, but it's probably our best choice remaining. As long as we remain in Iraq our presence is more likely to fuel the civil war than prevent it. Until we make clear to the neighbors and to other nations and organizations such as the UN we have a strategy to withdraw, we cannot expect any cooperation in assisting Iraq to establish order and security and protect it from foreign interference.
It is our moral responsibility to do whatever we can may prevent a failed state. The alternative to a failed state well might be a state hostile to the United States.
Clarke,
Thank you for clarifying the issue re religion vs caste and elites. Do you think anything like Biden's plan for partitioning will be possible. I can't imagine that it would -- and would be a surefire recipe for continued disaster. I also have a difficult time imagining that we will come out of this, no matter what we do, without lingering hostility that will take much to undo. Moving in the direction of the elections that favored the Shiia seems to me to be the only sensible thing to do at least for the short term and perhaps for the long run.
Disconnect between the fighting force and the planners: Just watched Jon Stewart interivew Robert Dalleck re his book on Nixon and Kissinger, who had agreed in 1971 that the war in viet nam was lost. Nixon actually wanted to pull out, but Kissinger advised against it because of the impact on the next election.
It is interesting that when al-Sadr marshaled the support of a majority of MPs including Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, to call for US withdrawal of US troops, the call was not for an immediate withdrawal. The slow painful violent crawl of the US presence provides a tableau for the playing out of the conflict amongst these sayyids.
Post-VietNam, America experienced a growth in interest in Buddhism; we can expect quite a lot of growth in Islam here, as well, I expect. Time to do some googling.
I still say, we're in for some kind of USA widening of the window of Islamic thought and practice in our group consciousness.
Some years ago while trying to figure out a way to summarize some event-complexities, I devised for myself what I ended up by calling the method Conceptual Tetragrams. They are basically word analogs built into a semi-logical mode that basiclly raises a set of KEY questions!. In High School we used the logic A : B :: C : D.
'A' is to 'B' AS 'C' is to 'D'.
Here, as I watched these two awesome presentations, I was throughout, ready to be 'angry' and then 'sad'. I was moved by the seeming hopeless situation for both OUR TROOPS and OUR TORTURED FELLOW HUMAN BEING IRAQI FOLK. I started to think in these tetrrgrammic terms----
UNDERSTANDING : ARROGANT IGNORANCE :: QUEST FOR PEACE : PROFOUND AGONY
I thank you for helping me to further 'UNDERSTAND' more fully, as I (really) experienced in myself a feeling of 'PROFOUND AGONY' and pain (contributed some by my recollections of WWII) for all the human participants (soldiers and civilians) in these present Iraqi horrific events provided by Sean Smith with both technical and compassionate skills.
Dick
To perhaps oversimplify, America is supporting the Shia , and this suits them. The Parliament is controlled by Shia and Kurds who won't cooperate with or give money for recontstruction to the Sunni. America is in between. We can't withdraw unless the Shia cooperate because they control the south: they can cut our supply lines. Any politician who doesn't "earn credits" for being against the occupation is going to be eliminated after we leave. To get 160,000 military and 180,000 private contractors out might require a year in the best conditions.
I think the US would support a ham sandwich if they thought it would get them oil contracts and maybe a few less market bombings in Baghdad. How do you define "support," anyway? It seems at best de facto support for al-Maliki and with nose held at that.
Al-Sadr isn't getting US support, and he is perhaps the most nationalistic Shiite leader around. There are obvious reasons--the early days (2003-4) of more overt military confrontations (described as a terrorist by Bremer and targeted for "kill or capture" according to Sanchez and Abizaid in some of those bizarre press conferences). Al-Sadr, learning from his mistakes and growing into a master politician, has gone increasingly "uptown" in the political scene, sort of an Iraqi Gerry Adams.
Maybe "support" is defined by the conduct of joint operations with the Iraqi Army, which is jammed with Badr and some Mahdi militia fighters. We saw in the video how well this formulation works when "rooting out al-Qaeda" in homogeneous Sunni areas. It doesn't work much better in South Central (where there is tension between SCIRI leadership and Mahdi elements) or Baqouba (where Shia political leadership is at odds with a Sunni minority). I agree the US is "in between," in between several rocks and several hard places.
The failure to recognize our presence and continued pursuit of a military agenda are counterproductive is the point. A figure like the cleric Sadr symbolizes our inability to influence events until we make clear we will withdraw and allow other nations to assist.
The vast majority of the thousands of Muslims who have come to Iraq to fight Americans since before the invasion and continue to do so want us out of the region: they have no interest in attacking America . Bush, insulting the intelligence of his audiences, calls "al-Qaeda," in Iraq a threat to America ; 90 times he mentioned "al-Qaeda" in his most recent speech to a military audience !
Less than 5% of those who have come to Iraq to fight the Americans have sympathy with any "al-Qaeda," bin Laden philosophy of fighting the "far enemy," that is America outside Muslim lands.
As long as our bases and the elephantine Embassy in Baghdad exist , they will be considered symbols of America's intention to dominate the region. They will attract Arabs from every country to come to Iraq to oppose American occupation and invasion.
Even someone with a very modest understanding of the ME like myself can see this. If one views the video, or thinks through the issues, it is inescapable. I simply can't see how or why GWB continues this line of BS (as our troops and many innocents continue to die). The sole reason I can think of is short-term political purposes to get him through the next, sorry year. It makes me angry.
There is Cheney's wish to widen the war and the weak Bush's delusions.
Remember Bush's promises at their meeting in 2003 to the Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Nabil Shaath? "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq ...'. And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And by God I'm gonna do it."
"I simply can't see how or why GWB continues this line of BS"
There is an aspect to "creating realities", as Mr. Rove puts it, which is quite troubling when one contemplates those 90 mentions of Al Qaeda; It is the last set of impressions before a major shift in the status quo, which generally becomes the accepted "history" which led up to the paradigm altering events. This cause/effect illusion is the basis for virtually all of the shenanigans which have been perpetrated upon us. Consider the acceptance by the bulk of our citizens that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 911, for example. Once a causal link was established in peoples minds, everything was easily defined and explained in terms of that myth.
I believe we are witnessing the groundwork being laid for a large scale "terrorist incident", which will be attributed to Al Qaeda. And the myth of the surge's success will then become a major stumbling-block to any attempt to "look back" realistically at what is now to us the present floundering, in the face of the subsequently introduced notion that the "attack" was a reaction to progress generated by the "surge". One simply must never stop being aware that these fellows are NOT politicians any longer. They are myth-makers and propagandist manipulators, with the power to alter the general focus of our attention at will.
If you want to engage in the blood sport of picking the next tour stop in the "Long War," I'm leaning toward a horn-locking incident with Iran. False flag or true flag, a horrific incident causes the deaths of many Americans, and is traced to Iran. The US has no choice but to unleash the might of the three carrier battle groups now (conveniently) lined up opposite Iran, sucking the entire tattered US military into the maelstrom.
I'll be interested to see the film "No End in Sight," a serious look at how US policy has gotten us where we are now, by Charles Ferguson, who has a doctorate in political science from MIT and has consulted for the US Trade Representative and the DOD.
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"Ferguson delivers the calm, meticulous survey of U.S. policy that legions of critics of Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' have been waiting for," wrote reviewer Robert Koehler in show business newspaper "Variety."
www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN2621910320070726
www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977068448
I would quickly have agreed with your first choice for what would be about to happen a month ago. But there has been a deep and steadily intensifying re-introduction of the boogeyman into the flow of propaganda. Ninety mentions is not incidental, nor is the recent drop off in rhetoric aimed at Iran. One is hard pressed to stick with "the plan" as it might have once been.
Congress, in concert with others, is most certainly stalking the "beast" in a most ingenious and timely way. I worry that we are entering an alternate plan's envelope, which was held at the ready, just in case. Things are getting rather dicey for the Administration and the neocon boys. I believe the window for implementation of the "state of national emergency" fail-safe plan, has just been significantly altered by several highly relevant events.
Mr. Gonzales has been eliminated entirely as a plausible independent co-signer of the document which would initiate Marshal Law, the President will be essentially alone in terms of legal authority. Several Republican leaders have taken aggressive postures in opposition to the Presidents action and authority. Some heads of his own government agencies are releasing info actually causing people to see the possibility of dark and devious behaviour by our government, and even testifying in clear opposition to others close to the President. And reports from Iraq by highly respected sources are all painting the same bleak picture, which of course is what makes Mr. Bush's rhetoric so incongruent.
I believe the "throne" is being assaulted, and the ramifications of that are all too clear to the "gang". They cannot allow it to succeed.
Good points. It's hard to explain what I sense happening, and certainly not something I'm sure of at all, but I get the impression that things are shifting from defense to offence in terms of how the resistance to the imperial Presidency is behaving. In that "war room" this might have a rather significant impact on how the big picture is viewed. It also implies a sense of urgency, since there is really no hurry in terms of the gradual disintegration of this gangs inherent power, which will most certainly continue to be eroded. Something seems to be known or strongly suspected by a good number of players in this drama, and the heat is rising rapidly. I suggest a very broad mindset is called for in attempting to comprehend what may occur, and will look forward to your thoughts in the coming weeks and months.
This is from the text of the testimony offered by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007 :
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976901034
"...If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.
This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran -- though gaining in regional influence -- is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.
One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture.
It is obvious by now that the American national interest calls for a significant change of direction. There is in fact a dominant consensus in favor of a change: American public opinion now holds that the war was a mistake; that it should not be escalated, that a regional political process should be explored; and that an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation is an essential element of the needed policy alteration and should be actively pursued."
In subsequent comments, as at the press conference afterwards, ZB was more explicit on several points. He noted that only five people in the administration had been making decisions, with little discussion with others.