war

Just a note as I saw this in google news: Al Qaeda No. 3 Man Killed.

It just jogged my memory, because here’s the version from 2005, and here’s 2003. Indeed, this Times of India story from ’05 notes that the subject of its piece was the sixth number three to date. I wonder what we’re up to now? Moreover, the Times of India has the temerity to throw quotes around “senior” in the phrase “‘senior’ al-Qaeda operative,” and to note:

Although, no one officially described Al-Yemeni as a No.3, the joke in media circles here is that will be the nomenclature for any al-Qaeda suspect besides Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, the one-two who have evaded capture for more than three years.

I do love the Times of India. So disrespectful of our holy cows.

The point is not that these stories are lies, but to say they are stories, and that their value is as such — comforting narratives of progress — not as sources of information. This is generally true of non-investigative press reports based on sources within the military.

It’s nothing new, but yet another reminder that you are surrounded by propaganda.

Sadly, six years later still feels a lot like one year later:

I can’t help but think that a raw wound has a lot more use to those in power than a healed one, and while I don’t believe that there’s some vast conspiracy with malicious intent to keep the American people in a constant state of worry and fear, I do believe that’s something the media does. I don’t believe that Bush, Cheney and Co. are really evil people, but I do believe in the seductive power of subconscious desire, the human ability to rationalize. I certainly don’t trust these people to do the right thing. They don’t represent my interests or share my view of the world. They’re not doing what I would do, and I don’t believe in the end that they know better than me.

In some important ways things have changed. I certainly no longer feel like an island of rational dissent adrift in a sea of vengeful insanity — that’s one nice thing — but the sense of utter frustration and resentment towards our political leadership and opinion-shaping elite persists.

On days when I think big and let myself remember, my gut feeling is still for ¡revolucion!. These morons and cowards — and that includes most of the figureheads I will end up supporting politically, most likely — have been fucking things up left and right for six years running, with no end in sight. They don’t deal in honest public dialog and their perception of the challenges we face not only as a nation but as a motherfucking species is, frankly, retarded.

Logistically it would be nearly impossible, but I think sometimes we’d be better off cleaning the slate and starting something new. I don’t believe a popular movement will form to do this anytime soon, but a slow downward spiral into the Red Dawn might, our Empire collapsing like a flan left too long in the cupboard.

America the beautiful, America the beautiful… wake up you stupid bitch. Our way of life is sad and greedy, and can’t be shared by our brothers and sisters around the world. We need to change, and change requires leadership. Precious little of that out there these days, and most of it pulling us in the wrong direction.

Perhaps this kind of action (clicky clicky, it’s good) can have an impact, but I’m not feeling too optimistic. Glenn’s the man, and Matt, Jane and Chris certainly know how to keep it real, but the reality is that they’re outsiders, and in spite of their collective audience, their ability to pierce the fog that surrounds the establishment has been proven to be limited.

Sigh.

I’m losing my faith, I guess. I don’t doubt the importance of national politics, but I’m seeing it more and more reactively. E.g. we’ve got to keep the truly insane people at bay in case there’s another watershed inflection point, but it really honestly doesn’t feel like very much progress is possible. The creeping monstrosity that is the Corporate American Consensus seems to have little opposition on the national scale, so we’re back to the lesser of two evils argument. Although I would frame it as “dangerously unhinged vs. disgustingly complacent,” it’s kind of depressing.

The tao of the New Freedom Movement (nee the New Cultural Movement) is not to be oppressed by this. Conventional politics is one of many tools in our arsenal, and wherever we meet serious resistance, the maxim is to move laterally, make like an Apostle and route around the problem. I honestly don’t think beating my head against the 2008 presidential election will do much good, so the question is what will. What can we do to make ourselves and our fellows more free?

NY Times has published an editorial by seven non-commissioned officers in Iraq, which is absolutely piercing in its insight:

…it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

If you’ve been picking up even a fraction of the current yammering going on over the value of the Surge — which is going to get a renewal sometime after Labor Day, I’d wager — the contrast set by this piece couldn’t be more stark. Not just in terms of opinion, but in specificity and linguistic clarity as well.

In my business, we’d call the likes of Kenneth Pollack and Bill Kristol “hand wavers.” Salesman, essentially, as opposed to people who can actually write code. They understand a lot of things in theory, and they have a good jive, managing to sound credible to the uninitiated. But if you pay very close attention and/or know very much about the underlying issues, you can tell when someone is speaking from a place of direct and real experience, and when someone is speaking from a place of theoretical vision. More importantly, you can tell when they’re feeding you a line of BS.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with theory. The world needs architects as well as carpenters. But if you’ve got an architect who’s built a giant shitpile trying to sell you some new trim as a fix, and you look over at the actual builders and see them shaking their heads, and they can tell you exactly why and how the whole thing is fucked, well, I know how I trust in that situation.

Seriously, read the op-ed, and tell me it doesn’t make just about every other damn thing said about this war sound like bullshit hand-waiving.

Out in the realms of opinionation, there’s a nascent offensive brewing against the casual imperialism which defines the outlook of “Serious People” in the business of creating foreign policy. The architects. The Hegemon becomes most militarily active in its period of decline, and I really do hope that this pushback is successful. Our militarism and national decline are mutually-reinforcing trends, and I’d rather not see them continue.

Along the lines of the above, one of the most terrible things about this theoretical class is that, perhaps just keeping with the current vogue in DC, there appears to be no accountability in their ranks. They also seem to fit rather seamlessly into what can only be described as a militaristic propaganda operation.

Here’s what’s touched off the latest row, of which the op-ed I’ve been talking about is a part:

• Some “liberal hawks” who vigorously advocated for the initial invasion of Iraq took an eight-day tour “over there.”
• Their itinerary was set by the Pentagon.
• The Iraqi sources they talked to were selected by the military.
• Excursions outside the green zone were stage-manged and made with a significant escort.
• These folks return, and write a number very positive reviews of the situation.
• They are presented as “Iraq war critics,” despite having no such credentials.
• Regular journalists, who aren’t over there on a US Army junket call bullshit, but the show goes on.

I don’t know what you can really call that. The people involved seem to have some internal sense that they ain’t really doing right; but it seems like they’re willfully playing along. They probably think it’s for the greater good too, being a militaristic propagandist.

Strange and sad, what war makes people do.

The Bush administration much have some kind of wardrum 808 going, with DJ Dick Cheney on the wheels of steel.

The political calculus is slick. Everyone “supports the troops,” whatever that means. It gets standing ovations from the full house. If the warmongers can successfully create the perception that Iranian arms are being used to kill the troops, they can then make the case that those who oppose bombarding Iran aren’t “supporting the troops.”

The kool kids call this casus belli.

It’s garbage, but so was last time. JMM says “it’s a distraction” like this wasn’t also true before. I worry that they’ll still do it. Bombing is a lower bar to clear than invading — though it would still almost certainly have terrible consequences. These people are, if anything, worse than Nixon, who did bomb Cambodia (next door to Vietnam) without really asking or telling anyone in Congress.

I don’t know what I’d do if this happened.

A marketing effort for Aqua Teen Hunger Force is mistaken for a Terrorist Plot.

I feel safer already. I also love that the kids who were charged w/crimes here made the most of their press time.

If they’re actually prosecuted for this, it will be a dangerous precedent, because it furthers the line of authoritarian thinking which basically goes “any time we think we’re being threatened, we’re being threatened, and we can strike back with deadly force.” That’s obviously bullshit. It’s manipulative paranoia.

Note to all the people in charge: this is what’s coming. There are millions of us out here who have no respect for the delusional way you do business, who realize the Emperor has no clothes, and we’re going to have fun with it.

FWIW, I’d love to see Frylock zap OBL.

Meanwhile, the slow build viz Iran continues. Deja vu indeed.

Escalation is underway:

ome 25 U.S. troops in Iraq were killed in a single day this weekend, making it the third bloodiest since the war began….

Twelve of the 25 were killed in the crash of a Blackhawk helicopter northeast of Baghdad. Some were killed in Anbar province by Sunni insurgents. Five were killed in Karbala, in Shiite territory… In the current phase of operations, as more troops move into Baghdad, the increase in troop strength is less significant than the increase in the tempo of operations. As the U.S. military becomes more aggressive, it will incur more casualties.

I picked up this because of an AP piece in the local paper that I read while getting lunch. It quoted a couple anonymous Iraqi officials on how good American intel was, “The Americans don’t act on rumors but on accurate intelligence…” Yeah, right, buddy.

Anyway, those troops killed in Karbala were trying to have a meeting to make security plans. The meeting was blown up. Not a good sign.

The rest of the Stratfor analysis is semi-bunk. They posit a few hypotheticals, and opine that Sadr may be playing into Bush’s hands, as the Decider is ostensibly trying to restart “the political process” by threatening militia organizations with a crackdown.

First of all, I find it hard to believe that this is Bush’s actual goal. I think his goal is to run out the clock on his term in office without having to face the consequences of his actions. This escalation is best understood less as a “surge” and more as a “punt.”

Second of all, while Sadr is a big player in the demolition derby that is Iraqi militia ownership, everything I’ve seen strongly suggests that the authority structure there is very decentralized. Many of the actual fighting cadres who go under the banner of the Madhi army have often done the opposite of what Sadr says. In addition, that loose network of forces accounts for at best 30% of the combatants in this multi-polar civil war. Sadr simply isn’t important enough to pull it together. At this point, no one is.

Finally, building on that point, the “political process” in Iraq is poisoned by the fact that the official government is the creation of an occupying power (e.g. us) which is universally unwanted. Prime Minister Malaki has very little legitimacy, and his government can’s keep the electricity on. Not only is there no one person (or group) to bring thing together, there’s also no place or process to bring it together around.

As long as we’re holding down the Green Zone against insurgents and Baghdad doesn’t have reliable street-lights, the whole pretense of a political process is pretty much masturbatory, as is the occupation in general. We’re prolonging if not exacerbating the situation. It’s going to be bloody awful any way we play it, but we can’t pull out (oh no!) because that would be… well… like admitting we were wrong to go there in the first place.

So the tragedy marches on, an almost mythical take of hubris.

UPDATE: And this:

Well, it’s on now. Bush will double-down more troops. Nancy will go all-in to beat it back, but Bush will veto and the House and Senate don’t have 2/3rds majority to come over the top. Maybe in the time it takes to do this, more Republicans will flip, but it still seems unlikely that this can be effectively fought with procedure.

After all, Bush already started the escalation, sending more troops yesterday as a matter of fact. He’s the decider!

I don’t know what to make of this. It’s kind of chilling that the President can keep surging forward even though everyone knows it’s not really going to work out. It seems like a pretty big failure that there’s no check or balance here, because this is moronic and (considering that people are dying) also somewhat monstrous.

The other spooky thing is sending those aircraft carriers, putting a Navy man in charge, and talking up the Patriot missile batteries (which are no real use against IEDs). That all points to Iran. But he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try that, would he? Would he? Could we stop him if he was?

Not a fun line of thought to consider.

UPDATE: Shitters. I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about all this. It’s very very Nixon part deux, but kinda worse in some ways.

Bush is reportedly set to roll out his plan to escalate the occupation in Iraq, following along with the heir-apparent “McCain Doctrine” and explicitly rejecting all the elements of that big bipartisan “we’ve got your ass covered, George” committee that family consigliare Howard Baker fixed up.

Cocksucker.

Whether or not Nancy’s House and/or Harry’s Gang stomps on this will be a major test for the new year. Bush has no public support for this or any other plan of escalation, and nobody with a shred of strategic insight believes it will do anything but get more people killed quicker. This shouldn’t happen.

Stomp it. Stomp it right now and make it the spine-breaker for this pathetic lame duck asshole. The C-in-C is drunk, or at least acting like it. Take his keys.

Also, to all my neo-hippie kin: this summer would be a great time to ramp up some big old protests. Climate’s right, and it plays into a lot of evolving dynamics. Let’s get on top of this and have someone with brains organize it rather than leaving it up to ANSWER, eh?

O’Reilly suggests it may be time to put down the White Man’s Burden:

Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No. I don’t care. Let’s get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they’ll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq.

My only quibble w/O’Reilly here are that in-context he’s not talking about the country as a whole. Basically saying let’s make the trouble-spots TAZ’s for the civil warriors, hope they run out of bloodlust, and then “we” can have a nice country in Iraq.

Personally, I don’t think “we” should have any kind of country there. But then, I’m opposed to American Empire.

Anyway, it’s interesting to see this line from him and Limbaugh. Signals that the last bedrock of the pro-war base is all but eroded away. Indeed, all popular measures say that the occupation should end. Give the people what they want.

I’m not paying real close attention, but my scan of the news reveals two big statements by Secretary of Defense to-be Robert Gates:

1) We’re not winning in Iraq.

2) We’re going to be required there for a “long time.”

Does that seem nonsensical to anyone else? How long do we have to keep losing (killing and dying) before we meet our “requirements?”