Having stumbled rudely upon the latest from uber-puke Rush Limbaugh earlier today, well, first, I can't help but think what passes for brain matter in his drug-addled, thick as a brick skull must be revisiting recent nightmares from his pre-plea bargain (P.P.B.) days. Or maybe it was more of a Freudian slip/revelation of an inner fantasy that, c'mon, I sure as hell DON'T want think about any more...
Anyway--back in the reality based community, Patrick Cockburn dispenses with the surrealistic cheerleading:
The Iraqi government was voted into office by members of parliament meeting in a stuffy hall in the heavily fortified Green Zone. Anybody entering the zone has to pass through at least seven lines of sand bagged checkpoints, razor wire and sniffer dogs. At 6.30 am, a few hours before parliament met a bomb exploded in Sadr City, the impoverished Shia bastion in east Baghdad. It killed 19 and wounded 58 people, most of them day labourers who had gathered near a food stand as they waited to be hired. This atrocity was probably in retaliation for attacks by black- clad Shia gunmen, probably from the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, on two Sunni districts in west Baghdad the previous day. Loudspeakers on the minarets of Sunni mosques in the rest of the city announced that the al-Jihad and al-Furat neighbourhoods were being assaulted and called on people to go and help them.
The sectarian civil war in Baghdad is sparsely reported but from the mixed provinces around the capital there is almost no news. It is too dangerous for Iraqi as well as foreign journalists to go there.
There are sporadic police reports of the violence but they are impossible to check out. On the same day that parliament met, for instance, the bodies of 15 people, all tortured before they were killed, were delivered to the morgue in Musayyib south of Baghdad; nobody knows who killed them or why. Two months ago I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala, a province north east of Baghdad famous for its fruit, which has a mixed Sunni, Shia and Kurdish population. He said Sunni and Shia were killing each other all over Diyala. "Whoever is in a minority runs," he said. 'If forces are more equal they fight it out.'
And Juan Cole makes an interesting observation:
The US military in Ramadi fired four artillery shells at the train station, attempting to take out guerrillas who were off-loading weaponry there. AP says, "A hospital official, Dr. Omar al-Duleimi, said American forces killed five civilians and wounded 15. The U.S. military said the mission had "positive effects on the target," but it denied that civilians were killed or injured in the city west of the capital. " I suppose 5 persons are dead and 15 are wounded, but that it is unclear if they were civilians or guerrillas. Anyway, that guerrillas might even think they could openly offload weaponry at the train station in Ramadi tells me all I need to know about the state of security in the city.
Maureen Dowd (sorry, no link) notes the following ironies:
Before the war, America railed against the Iraqi leader for slaughtering innocent Iraqis. Now the Iraqi leader is railing against America for slaughtering innocent Iraqis.
Iraq is blustering about sending away American troops to make life better for Iraqis, after American troops were sent in to make life better for Iraqis...
American troops are under spectacular emotional pressure. They go out every day, not knowing Arabic, not understanding the culture, not knowing who the insurgents are, not knowing when they can go home or which of their buddies will be blown up before their eyes by an unseen enemy...
The troops were not trained for a counterinsurgency, because Bush hawks ignored the intelligence reports that predicted an insurgency and civil war. These kids were turned into sitting ducks because the neocon con to sell the war needed a gauzy prediction of Iraqi gratitude and a quick exit.
It is admirable that the Marine commanders want to morally sensitize the troops while they are in such a hostile environment, but it also seems a bit absurd, sending them to summer school in "core values."
There's no way to teach someone not to shoot an unarmed woman or child. If somebody doesn't already know why they shouldn't murder a baby, it's not clear that a refresher course will help.
The problem with brushing up on core values is that if you don't know them by a certain point you can't learn them. You can't teach remedial decency, any more than you can teach remedial ethics to White House officials who vindictively leak information about critics of the war after vowing not to leak.
As Norman Schwarzkopf said, in a quote that is part of the military's slide show on core warrior values: "The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."
From Reverend Dimmesdale to Bill Bennett to President Bush, people who righteously preach values and aspire to be moral exemplars often get bitten in the end.
The world is now looking askance at American values, even though W. ran on a platform of restoring values to the Oval Office and was propelled to victory by "values voters."
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld engineered the invasion of Iraq in part to revive what they saw as lost American values. They wanted to stiffen the squishiness about using force left over from Vietnam and the moral ambivalence left over from the do-what-feels-good 60's.
In their worry about a spineless America, they made America all spine — overly vertebrate. They started thinking with their spine.
They wanted everyone to be afraid of us, and now nobody's afraid. Certainly not the nutty president of Iran, whom the administration is forced to kowtow to, now that the American military is not a fearsome force in potentia, but a depleted, demoralized and disparaged force trapped in Iraq trying to police a civil war.
The invasion that was supposed to help terrorism has made it worse. The invasion that was supposed to make America more feared and beloved has made us more hated.
The invasion that was supposed to banish post-Vietnam syndrome has revived it.
The virtuecrats of the right thought they would demonstrate American virtue to the world as they imposed American democracy. But now, with murder charges expected against some marines, and a cover-up investigation under way, the values president is running a war that requires a refresher course on values. A bitter irony.
A bitter irony that's an expected result when you've got folks in charge who are mentally as well as morally stunted in growth.
I think the Democrats ought to consider an election strategy that focuses on putting adults in charge. Time to clean up the kids' mess.
Of course, the fact that Bush, who is to juvenile what Limbaugh is to puke, got elected in the first place, is more than a little ominous if you happen to agree with the adage that people get "the government they deserve."
Not that I'm religious, but I guess I've gotta think, "heaven help us."
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