Iraqi Freedom

June 30, 2005
(posting early due to crazy holiday schedule)
      The current rational for the war in Iraq (bringing freedom to the Iraqi people) is, if anything, much more transparently stupid that the Weapons of Mass Destruction argument that precipitated the war.

     First, it raises the question: why should we give a fuck what Iraqis allow each other to do? We don't seem to give a fuck what strictures the people in Yemen or Syria live under. Or, for that matter, the people of Paraguay, Nigeria, Myanmar. Second the term freedom is a meaningless abstraction apart from institutions, concepts, and procedures designed to insure social justice, namely things like due process of law, separation of powers, sanctity of property, public safety, a consensual notion of the public interest, et cetera.

     Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqis didn't dare voice opinions lest a gang of Baathist goons appeared at their doors in the dark of night to take them away for torture and execution. Under the current system, Iraqis don't dare cooperate with the government (or worse, their US military sponsors) lest a gang of Jihadi (or Sunni or former Baathist) goons show up at their door and drag them off to execution.

     Why would we suppose that our notions of a civil society, based on Greco-Roman and Anglo-American tradition, would comport with one based on an even older and different Mesopotamian-Semitic culture with Mongol-Turkic-Persian overlays? After all, Iraq is the birthplace of the Code of Hamurabi, which includes such statutes as the following:

If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

     Now obviously Iraq has been under scores of different regimes and governances in its history, but one of the clearest lessons of the US military adventure there is the discovery that justice in Iraq is still almost completely based on a calculus of revenge, usually applied on a clan, sect, tribal, or gang basis against a member of another clan, sect, tribe, or gang.

     I think what George W. Bush generally means by "freedom" (and it's awkward synonym "democracy") is simply the process of holding elections. But obviously the ability to elect one gang or faction with despotic predelictions over another gang with same does not necessarily produce a free society. Of course, as a practical matter, after the invasion the US had the choice of either A.) selecting the Iraqis'civil leaders for them (and inviting further opprobrium from other nations), or B.) letting the Iraqis pick (much better PR value).

     It remains to be seen whether the artificial construct of "Iraq," a product of British administrative procedure in the 20th century, is governable as a unit, and the evidence so far is not encouraging, given the ethnic split between Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds within three fairly discrete geographical zones.

    Also troubling is the presumption that even if we manage to pacify this large, violent, desperate place, that such pacification will send a message to other dangerous nations in the region that such a state of coercive pacification is to be envied. Not to mention the assumption that once Iraq quiets down, all will be well Middle East, where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies.

     Compared to these painful and convoluted assumptions, the issue of WMD looks much more straightforward, even if you grant that the Bush adminstration had made up its mind to invade earlier than 2003 -- to wit, the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found does not mean that we didn't have to look. Not finding any was always one of the possible outcomes, especially when Mr. Hussein had months to move things elsewhere. The public's refusal to understand this equation is an impressive case of obdurate stupidity, but not as dumb as our kindergarten ideas about spreading "freedom" to places where it means the right to kick our stupid American asses.

Comments

[kd]

Great post, Jim. I totally agree with you on all points (especially about the pitfalls of "exporting" American-style Democracy), except perhaps the last paragraph, which I'm not sure I understood.

The way I see it is: Yes, compared to all this "liberation" sleight of hand, the issue of WMD looks straightforward, but that issue itself (I believe) was trumped up.

GWB's "use" of the word "freedom" is (as you said) really about holding elections. But I think his "concept" of freedom is more than that. It's about the "freedom" to move capital, the "freedom" to create, maintain, & deploy massive corporate structures subsidized by government. Tax payer's money. The Middle Class. He's counting on folks to get starry-eyed & emotional over the word, like a hypnotist using a trigger-word to send his subjects back into a trance.

Maybe I'm wrong on this, what do you think?

[Tad Johnson]

I think the crucial distinction that must be made regarding WMD in Iraq is that the evidence wasn't really there to begin with. The U.S. acted on very thin evidence of the existence of WMD--so thin was the evidence that the majority of the world's leaders refused to join in the hunt.

I disagree that we "had to look", as you put it, when looking involves a military invasion. I think we acted far too quickly and gave up on inspections and other means to gather real information.

[Toast]

Saddam's WMD's were a phony pretext from the start. Astute observers of the way the Bush administration operates suspected as much back in 2002, and the Downing Street Memo proves it beyond any shadow of a doubt. We most certainly did not "have to look".

Bush's own people -- including Powell and Rice -- are on record as having said at various earlier junctures that sanctions had worked, that Saddam's capacity to harm his neighbors had been virtually eliminated, and that his WMD programs were for all intents and purposes dead. Then they flipped 180 degrees when they decided they wanted to topple him anyhow.

Please don't do your readers the disservice of dignifying the WMD sham with a seriousness it does not and has never deserved.

[Rick Sullivan]

Mr. Kunstler, I enjoy your blogs and I think The Long Emergency is an incredibly well-done book. I found it extremely informative. I completely agree with your point about the pitfalls of exporting democracy and the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's attempts to do so in Iraq. One point you make in today's blog and also in your book I do, however, disagree with. You say the U.S. "had to take a look" for WMD's in Iraq. Wasn't the UN taking a look prior to the US invasion and not finding any WMD's? Even if you find the UN inspections flawed does that justify what the US has done in Iraq? Should the US "take a look" in North Korea, Iran or anywhere else our discredited, incompetent, corrupt intelligence apparatus tells us to look. Sounds like a recipe for more disasters in the future.

[Mewsician]

"The public's obdurate stupidity," of course, is the nexus of so much, here on Kunstler's site as in so many other places.

That aside, however, I find it odd that you're giving Bush the credence you do in this post, Mr. K. George Bush parsing details like "freedom = elections," as opposed to freedom as it might equate with something else? I'll take that bet. Bush and his cabal could ultimately give a rat's ass about "freedom" for anybody on the globe except as it comes in handy as rhetoric, to be used in serving their maniacal ends. America's sole purpose in any of this is getting set up across the Middle East and in former Soviet bloc countries; corporate ownership of foreign oil is our mission, military bases and all their presence implies about American motives are now the U.S.'s biggest export....

[Mewsician]

"The public's obdurate stupidity," of course, is the nexus of so much, here on Kunstler's site as in so many other places.

That aside, however, I find it odd that you're giving Bush the credence you do in this post, Mr. K. George Bush parsing details like "freedom = elections," as opposed to freedom as it might equate with something else? I'll take that bet. Bush and his cabal could ultimately give a rat's ass about "freedom" for anybody on the globe except as it comes in handy as rhetoric, to be used in serving their maniacal ends. America's sole purpose in any of this is getting set up across the Middle East and in former Soviet bloc countries; corporate ownership of foreign oil is our mission, military bases and all their presence implies about American motives are now the U.S.'s biggest export....

[ross]

In a otherwise worthwhile post, allow me to add my voice to those who disagree vehemently with the idea that "We had to look". Not only did we not have to look, since there was no credible evidence that WMDs existed, but since when is a pre-emptive invasion legal let alone moral? Yes, I know that pre-emptive invasions for the purposes of "national security" have occured before, (the Nazi's invasion of the Czech Sudetenland comes to mind) but that is not a historical precedent hardly one should emulate.

I also think Mr. K's the point about the United State's cultural traditions having different tributaries than Iraq is fair enough, but invoking the code of Hammurabi seems something of a cheap shot. We can easily unearth similar sorts of primitive rubbish from our own cultural past, but as in the Code of Hammurabi, I think it is questionable to what extent we can say it effects our present functioning.

[ross]

In a otherwise worthwhile post, allow me to add my voice to those who disagree vehemently with the idea that "We had to look". Not only did we not have to look, since there was no credible evidence that WMDs existed, but since when is a pre-emptive invasion legal let alone moral? Yes, I know that pre-emptive invasions for the purposes of "national security" have occured before, (the Nazi's invasion of the Czech Sudetenland comes to mind) but that is not a historical precedent hardly one should emulate.

I also think Mr. K's the point about the United State's cultural traditions having different tributaries than Iraq is fair enough, but invoking the code of Hammurabi seems something of a cheap shot. We can easily unearth similar sorts of primitive rubbish from our own cultural past, but as in the Code of Hammurabi, I think it is questionable to what extent we can say it effects our present functioning.

[Weaseldog]

The international community spent years looking. Early on, they found evidence of the WMD program that Saddam and Rumsfield started up.

At that point, as directed, Saddam had destroyed 90% of his WMDS. The international inspection team then oversaw destruction of the rest. When all was said and done, the inspection teams announced that 99% of the materials were known to be destroyed and that the last 1% were probably destroyed, but couldn't be proven on way or another.

Then many years later, after the weapons programs had long been abandoned and the sites cleaned up and rebuilt for peace time purposes, Bush demands that Saddam show all the discarded proof that the weapons were destroyed.

He was asked to provide proof that the program did not exist. And we know full well you can't prove a negative, you can only demonstrate absence of a positive.

Bush, Rummy, Rice Cheney, Powell, etc, all knoew the weapons programs were scrapped. But that wasn't the point. the point was the technicality. Prove a negative or face invasion.

To turn a phrase, consider how you would go about proving that you don't personally have a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere. How would you prove that you aren't hiding a nuke? Showing an absense of evidence isn't enough, you must provide evidence that proves a negative. Try it. Can you do it? How would you do it? Perhaps allow your entire city to be searched? Then how can we be sure it just isn't buried where we didn't look? If you can't prove it isn't true, then it must be true, correct?

[jy]

In a completely different vein, let me here interject my commendation of Andy R's link to the "Tragedy of the Commons" paper, which he posted lo these many hours ago, before Mr. Kunstler changed the subject (imagine the cheek of him, on his own blog no less!)

http://dieoff.org/page95.htm

It is definitely outdated, written before the "technical solution" of the birth control pill proved so effective, but valuable nontheless. I wish my fundamentalist Christian acquaintence who is now working on her eighth child might read it, if her husband allows her to read anything.

[Law-n-Order Liberal]

Guess we know who your audience is!

I would approach that last point from a corollary perspective: I never hear anyone citing the most obvious and sensible justification for the war -- namely, that Hussein chose to flagrantly violate the conditions under which we stopped bombing a decade earlier.

[Weaseldog]

Law-n-Order Liberal, what conditions were those?

[kd]

I just returned from seeing "War of the Worlds" at my local cine-plex. A good afternoon crowd, everyone inside to escape the Texas heat, & get their mind blown (we could have just as easily chosen "Batman Begins" or "Land of the Dead"; movies now are all about having your senses overwhelmed & stunned into submission; or, as the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami said, Hollywood movies hold the audience hostage).

I became a fan of H.G. Wells at age 7: read his books, treasured my Classics Illustrated editions of "War of the Worlds" & "The Time Machine". As a teenager I had an LP recording of Orson Welles' radio version, & of course saw the George Pal film version at the theater. Naturally, I wanted to see Mr Spielberg's version.

The coming attractions included a movie called "Stealth" about a super high-tech computer-manned stealth bomber that goes "nuts" & starts attacking American cities. A techno-nightmare: The machine we create to defend ourselves, turns against us!

Next, "War of the Worlds". Stunning special effects, editing, etc. Twice the child stars of the film ask Tom Cruise (as the aliens begin their attack) "Is it terrorists?" The question is more or less left hanging in the air. But of course all dialog in such films (except of course the opening & closing monologue, based on Well's own words) is quickly forgotten. We move on to the final sequence where it becomes clear that we didn't save ourselves, it was the tiny microscopic organisms that God in his infinite widom created that saved us. Indeed, we have the right to be here. The audience seemed mostly satisfied.

Did I mention seeing a trailer for yet another remake of "King Kong"? More American cities to destroy on celluloid.

[hopping madbunny]

Obdurate stupidity?

For once, the public may be more intelligent than it is given credit for!

Mr. Kunstler, while I normally approve of your writing, I find your rationale that Iraq 'may' have had WMD to be completely specious.

The country was placed under sanctions from the end of the first Gulf War to the outbreak of hostilities in 2003. This embargo reportedly killed a great many Iraqi children. British and American planes routinely bombed the country throughout the nineties and there was a 'no fly zone' where Iraqi planes would be shot down if flying in their own country's airspace.

Was this ever done in Germany or Japan after World War II? Why did we continue to bomb Iraq after the cessation of hostilities?

Your argument is that despite the bombings, and the no fly zones, and the sanctions and embargo, the Iraqi regime managed to assemble what Bush and company, a pack of notorious liars, say they had--and their inventory changes with the wind.

I don't believe a word that comes out of that Administration. I don't believe that there were any WMDS in Iraq after the first Gulf War. We could account for the earlier supplies...since we sold them to Saddam Hussein.
I don't believe that this war was started over WMDS. I believe Hans Blix, who says that there was nothing there. I believe that this war resulted from a childish desire by the leader of one country to overthrow the leader of another, whether to prove a point to his father, or simply to satisfy his infantile ego.

[kd]

Jim,

After reading all the comments, I too must chime in & take exception to the notion you present that we had to go into Iraq & have "a look" for WMD.

Dropping bombs is not "looking".

Imagine: My neighbor is reported to have illegal weapons, so maybe the police should just burn the place down & sift through the ashes. No proof? Well, we can't take the chance now can we?

I know it's an elementary analogy, but "the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found does not mean that we didn't have to look" is a simplistic statement.

I saw a pair of photographs in a magazine several months ago. On one page was a scene of downtown Baghdad before "shock and awe". Shop fronts, offices, pedestrians everywhere, traffic. On the facing page was a photograph of the same scene after the attack. Empty street, burned & bombed out buildings, rubble everywhere. I tried to imagine both views of mainstreet in any American city. Think of the number of "insurgents" that would crop up from our soil!

But I guess I'm comparing apples & oranges--
besides, empathy has no place in war, does it?

[bellumregio]

When I hear the word 'democracy' I reach for my…Mark Twain.

Mr. Bush is conjuring up the gunnysack burden of the long suffering White Man (Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden, 1899) and the not yet closed Blessings-of-Civilization Trust (see Mark Twain, To the Person Sitting in Darkness, 1901). It’s just nouveau seasoned for the rock-n-roll generation. Who, more than their Victorian great grandparents, know how to bestow LOVE, LAW AND ORDER, JUSTICE, LIBERTY, GENTLENESS, EQUALITY, CHRISTIANITY, HONORABLE DEALING, PROTECTION TO THE WEAK, MERCY, TEMPERANCE, and EDUCATION on the person sitting in darkness. Just substitute the old knotty 19th century word ‘civilization’ for ‘democracy’ in any of Bush and Company’s rhetoric and you have a speech right out of the Golden Age of William McKinley or if you are lonely and bored substitute the aluminum high-flying word ‘democracy’ for ‘civilization’ in Twain’s To the Person Sitting in Darkness to experience the magic of the time machine.

[Cambob]

I have much less respect for Mr. Kunstler after this post. How he could bring up the WMD argument is beyond me. How one can be a Peak Oil believer and a Bush apologist is beyond me.

[Baby Peanut]

Kunstler says that "technology is not energy" however Jimmy Carter pointed out that conservation is the cheapest, cleanest, safest way to have enough energy. In that way new technologies can be seen as energy sources that really work right now. Take

http://retrofoam.com/

for example. In the past it was not possible to retrofit insulation into the walls of old cinderblock houses and now it is.

Remember that airconditioning drives electrical consumption and about one third of electricity is made from coal and that coal is hauled by vehicles using diesel so your failure to insulate is driving up the price of diesel.

[Weaseldog]

Technology is a source of energy in the same way that eating is a source of food.

Of course, you can diet...

[anim57]

Mr. Kunstler -

Frankly, this post of yours is emblematic of what I didn't like about The Long Emergency (even though, I'll acknowledge at the outset, there's a great deal about the book that I did like).

In discussions about your work, I've described you to many people as "a neo-con in despair." What I'm attempting to get at here is my sense that you actually buy into all (or at least most) of the basic neo-con world view (more on that in a moment), but, that unlike them, you have no faith in the possibility that the actions they take in pursuit of those beliefs can actually succeed.

That is to say, your work is permeated by a blanket faith in the good intentions of the US in its actions in the world. The US, taken as a whole, could, in your view, never engage in criminal, rapacious actions as a matter of policy. The gulf between "us" (perhaps including our brethren in Western Europe, and, maybe even, say, Japan) and all of the various rogues of this world is total. THEY can and do act in a criminal and rapacious fashion. WE never do; we can't, in fact. It's against our nature.

The worst that WE can do, in your worldview, is to be naive, which is to say stupid. This stupidity consists of believing that we have the power to impose our (by definition) good intentions on THEM - - people who, through their criminality, depravity or backwardness - - or that of their leaders - - are manifestly unwilling or unable to conform to "civilized" norms.

Thus, your narrative of the Iraq war is as follows: The oil we need to fuel our stupid lifestyle just happens, in nearly all cases, to be under the ground of countries led by barbaric criminal rogues who, in addition to being criminal rogues, are for some reason united in their vehement dislike of us. The reason for this unanimity cannot possibly be the fact that WE sit at the summit of a world political/economic structure characterized by a drive to extract every drop of every "resource" (that is to say, every bit of wealth) from everywhere in the entire world. No, in the Kunstlerian worldview, that would be a "conspiracy theory", to which, you never tire of reminding us, you are allergic (more on this in a bit).

So, the oil we need is under their ground. We'd never just go in and take it (that would be roguish and criminal, and that's impossible for us). All we want to do is to insure that a nice, rational, orderly market for oil is maintained, to which we have access like everybody else. (Oh, and, for some reason, we're also pretty insistent that this market price oil exclusively in US Dollars.) THAT'S the reason for our setting up more than a dozen military bases in Iraq. (I'm assuming that this is what you mean by "We're trying to put up a Fort Apache in a really tough neighborhood.")

This is justified, in your mind, by the fact that all of these guys (Saddam, Hugo Chavez, the mullahs, the Taliban, etc., etc.) just happen to be really bad, barbaric characters, who seek to place an irrational chokehold on our access to oil, as well as, in some cases, to attack and terrorize us.

So, the US is just trying to bring enlightenment, justice and rationality - - in short, reasonableness - - to a crazy, violent, unjust - - unreasonable - - world. So far so neo-con.

It is on the question of what to do about this that you break with the neo-cons. To them, you say, "Look, your motives are reasonably pure and your effort is certainly well intentioned. However what you're doing is both stupid and bound to fail."

It is stupid (in your view) BECAUSE it's bound to fail, but also, because it fails to confront the appalling costs of the "cheap oil fiesta" that is about to end anyway. This fiesta - - the "American way of life," really - - is, itself, envisioned by you as primarily (but, in fairness, not completely) a reflection of a lack of culture, of dignity even, on the part of the great mass of American consumers. It is most certainly not seen as in the nature of a foundational strategy, refined over decades, intended to pacify ("strike a bargain with" if you prefer) the "great unwashed" so that the REAL fiesta - - the extraction of wealth from the entire world to mostly benefit US and allied elites - - can continue unhindered. Nope. This would be BOTH a conspiracy theory AND an ascription of criminality and rapaciousness to US leaders. Doubly forbidden.

This is what allows (perhaps even requires) you to say, of the fictional WMD, "We had to look." For you, it is impossible that Bush and company actually KNEW from the start that Iraq had no remaining WMD, but that they simply used this issue (and their compliant media bullhorn), to create an endlessly repeated pretext for doing what they wanted to do, which was to invade Iraq. To acknowledge this (indeed, to even suspect it) would require you to confront the possibility that our leaders invaded a sovereign country under false pretenses, shielded by a tissue of lies. Even putting aside their reason for taking this course of action, the mere fact of doing it would mean that the Bush regime (I know, you don't like that term in this context: THEY have regimes, WE don't; we have administrations, teams, etc.), acted in this instance in a criminal and rapacious fashion. But that can't be.

The neo-con course of action is bound to fail, in your view, because it's naive to believe that we can impose our civilized norms on the benighted masses of the world and, especially, their evil leaders. It will also fail because, even if global imposition of US dictates WERE possible in a cheap oil world, it most certainly won't be possible post-Peak Oil, when all hell will break loose, and all hope of global projection of US (or anybody else's) power will be dashed.

Fundamentally, your worldview is based on the false supposition that WE (here, meaning US and other Western leaders) are the grownups in the world, and that WE (same definition) have a right to seek to impose our will on everyone else. This imposition is seen as by nature benign, as previously discussed.

The unfortunate result of your determination to hold to this supposition, and to your broader worldview, come hell or high water, is that you, sir, you who see yourself as the ultimate savvy realist, are, in fact, in denial. In MY view, you are manifestly in denial about the role of the US in the world, about the aims of US power projection; indeed, about the nature of American society.

If we acknowledge that denial ought to be defined as lying to oneself, we can grasp the consequences of this for you. Your analysis, which is so brilliant in so many areas, is as dim as a neo-con blog when it comes to geopolitics.

One example will suffice: WHY is Hugo Chavez an awful guy in your view? You'd SAY that it's because he's an unstable mischief-maker, or something like that, which is basically a circular argument. You'd never say that its because the entire political establishment in the US despises him and wants him dead. Nor would you say that its because the mainstream media is unremittingly hostile to him, and will look the other way if the CIA manages to kill him. You most certainly wouldn't say its because he's swarthy.

Without even getting into a substantive discussion of Hugo Chavez, it seems to me that the reason you believe that he is a bad guy is because all of the people that matter SAY he's a bad guy. You know this because the anti-Chavez political and media barrage, alluded to above, tells you so. And the sad truth is this: it appears to me that ANYBODY who all of the people that matter call a bad guy, will be a bad guy as far as James Kunstler is concerned.

Finally, I want to note that the foregoing explains your conspiracy theory allergy. Let's be precise here: It's not really "conspiracy theories" per se that bug you. For example, if I told you that the mullahs in Iran are engaging in a sophisticated conspiracy to fool the world as to their intentions and activity with respect to WMD, I seriously doubt you'd have a sneezing fit. No, this would be no problem, because, in your worldview, THEY DO engage in conspiracies.

The fact is, it's only ascriptions of premeditated criminality (or even just bad motives), to US (or other Western) leaders that falls within your definition of "conspiracy theories." And professing your allergy thereto is your way of waving away ANY discussion of the possibility of such criminality or bad motives, whenever the prospect of such discussion emerges.

Mr. Kunstler, if you taken the time to read this, I thank you for that, and for your work, which I find to be very valuable on the whole.

[global yokel]

Anyone else wondering when our mainstream media is going to confront the fact that Bush was bombing Iraq in May 2002, while Congress did not grant him the authority to do so until October? This is an impeachable offense.

[kd]

COLD WAR REDUX

GWB's repetition of the word "freedom" makes me think of these words by W.H. Auden (during the Cold War):

"More deadly than the Idle Word is the use of words as Black Magic...For millions of people today, words like Communism, Capitalism, Imperialism, Peace, Freedom and Democracy have ceased to be words the meaning of which can be inquired into and discussed, and have become right or wrong noises to which the response is as involuntary as a knee reflex."

[R J Keefe]

Freedom, for GWB, means distance from undesirable people of every kind. Not just physical distance but the abrogation of any sense of responsibility for the welfare of undesirable people. This is how his "base" understands the term, too.

[kd]

Bull's eye, RJ.

And of course GWB & his "base" console their huge hearts with this sacred knowledge: "We live in a great country, by God, where everyone is free to become one of us if they just get off their asses and work for it!" That's freedom, folks!

[dangerbird]

Now look what you've done Jim. You got the natives all stirred up. And they've turned on you. Did you lose the manual again. Code language Jim; code language. Never say outright, (like in that last paragraph), what can be said with code language. Remember, esoteric knowledge is only for those of us in the clique. The rest of 'em can't handle it.
Your obvious and willful infraction of this cardinal rule of the Strauss neo-con cabal club, where WE RULE THE WORLD, has been duly noted and reported to the appropriate authority.
And at the next meeting of the Strauss neo-con cabal club, where WE RULE THE WORLD, you should expect to be ritually chastised, and fined an appropriate amount of shekels. Nanu Nanu.