Response to CMR2

On Raed's blog I had a discussion with CMR2, in which he referred to a response on his blog.

My response to this is:

"I disagree that Germany was a puppet regime. Was the public influenced in its voting and priorities by having another nation devote so many resources its protection? Probably. But that just means Germans were voting with their own security in mind."

I think that a main misunderstanding is a different view of the connotations of 'puppet regime'. I would still argue that to a degree the German foreign, but most importantly the defence policies were not really made in Germany. Does this mean they were not in the German interest? No.
Puppet, to me, means that if you want to understand a certain behaviour of an actor on the international stage, you have to look somewhere else to find the explanation, namely where the decisions are made - in matters of German defence policy during the Cold-war it was NATO (practically the US), and in matters of the security situation in the current Iraq the coalition authority (practically the US).
As for how independent Allawi is in other areas of politics is hard to establish at the moment as you don't get a lot of information about anything else, but the security situation. Has Allawi backed Bremer's privatisation of everything but the Oil-industry? What are his plans towards economics? What sort of justice system (set of laws, other than the leader does what he wants - as it was under Saddam) will get installed?
To discuss how much of a 'puppet' he really is, I would need answers to questions like this, but they aren't that easy to find. So I guess my judgement will have to rest on 'how' or more precisely 'who' makes the policies - and pays the price militarily and financially - in terms of establishing security. And I'm sorry but I can't come to any else conclusion than that they are made in Washington rather than Baghdad. Is this necessarily bad? No, but it remains a fact, and therefore Washington, at the moment, carries the responsibility and if they do succeed they will also earn the praise.
Where I do think I significantly disagree with you is your optimism. I simply don't see this democratic, pseudo-western (as in similar state and society structure) capitalistic, (as the underlying economic principle, which despite my name is something I think is a good thing as long it is not the only means of shaping politics) and most importantly secular Iraq arise anywhen in the nearer future.
You wrote,
"The problem is that we can't get enough Iraqis (especially the Sunni Arabs) to take the initiative in reporting, let alone crushing, terrorist cells in their own neighbourhoods and mosques."
As much as I do agree with you over this, I simply don't see a plausible solution to change it. You are an outsider and as such you will find it incredibly difficult to explain to the general people why their some of their own people (the trouble makers, or however you want to call them) are more of a threat to them than you are. Riverbend is a very good example. She is by no means a militant and even comparatively educated, but you get the same nationalistic phrases and explanations. 'We' versus 'Them'. To break this is very hard, if possible in the short term at all.
But Riverbend & Co are your least problem. The real problems will be the millions of poor and very poorly educated people, to whom it is not so much a question of politics (negotiation, conversation and compromise) but of religion (ultimate believes, ideas of heretics, infidels and so on - unfortunately very little space for discussion and negotiation).
I don't think the elections will solve these problems, on the contrary I fear they will clearly bring them to the forefront, with people such as Al-Sadr and the like quite possibly winning or at least gaining huge influence. You mentioned the Imams, another group of people who would loose power in your future version of Iraq. At the moment, they have massive influence over the ordinary poor people, and I don't think they are going to give this up towards a 'civil society' without a fight.
T cut short a long argument,
I think that your (America's) attempt to transform Iraq out of a society that could be roughly equated with Europe of the Renaissance into a society of western modernism is at best not very easy at worst an impossible attempt that can go very wrong - An Iraq somewhere along the Iranian lines. Armed missionaries irrelevant of what they actually preached have a tendency to fail, at least in a historical context.

But, and you are very right about that,
"Europe has a lot at stake in seeing Iraq succeed as well".
And clearly it would be in the interest of Europe to see your future vision of Iraq come true - even if somehow my intellectual ego, wants to be right and therefore somehow feels justified by all the horror that is going on in Iraq. This is unfortunate, I hate it about myself, but I guess this is the price for being a political realist/pessimist (I'm not equating the two, but the concept of political realism is very pessimistic). Yet once I swallowed this, I clearly share your hopes for Iraq, and I do admit that Europe could have taken an, a bit more constructive path in Iraq, although I hope with the last summit this is still going to happen.
Yet I can try to explain it at least in parts.
A) Your administration has not behaved very diplomatically before the war, and to a certain extend European reluctance to help is the very direct result of this. If you boast around that you don't need multilateralism, and the point of view of others is irrelevant because you are the hegemon, then I'm sorry but it isn't very surprising, that if you do get into trouble, none is particularly keen to help you - this is very much disregarding the people of Iraq, I know, but this is politics not a charity shop.
B) That we didn't support the war in Iraq, had little to do with Kyoto - although the very hostile dismissal of it didn't make you a lot of friends in Europe - but that we didn't, and I personally still don't, see your future version of Iraq after taking out Saddam. To go into a country and taking out the power structure is easy - as long you have the military superiority. Replacing it with a new one, along the lines of what you think would be best, is a different and a very difficult operation (And Europe knows that first hand because we tried - and to a certain level succeeded - over two centuries). And quite frankly we did not share the same level of fear of Saddam. Yes he was little pathetic dictator who had killed a huge number of people. Many other dictators did and still do - often with the blessing of the west (Musharaf?) - the same. He started two wars. One with the explicit blessing of the west (Iran), and one where he clearly miscalculated (Kuwait). Was it particularly difficult to put him back in his place? Not really.
Yet he did clearly hold the power within Iraq and therefore as much as we might despise what he did, he was the person to deal with. I do share the view that a halfway controllable dictator is better than uncontrollable anarchy. This is not moral, but pragmatic. And even if Saddam was such a desperate inconvenience - and he never was a real 'threat' - at least just execute him, instead of invading the country with all the possible backlashes. (It's against international law, ok, but clearly it should have been able to get an assasin into Iraq?)
Yes I admit, I - and I think a good deal of continental politicians - were prepared to deal with Saddam, try to influence him somehow - and I think he was very influencable as long as he saw some possible gain for himself - lift the sanctions and hope that the economic development of Iraq would lead to a societal development that might eventually, presumably only after his death, lead to a somehow more democratic or at least less dictatorial Iraq. Just as Syria has improved (even if apparently unnoticed by Washington) under Assad junior a lot more than under Assad senior in terms of human rights and so on.
C) Now provided that we were right and you won't succeed in Iraq in establishing a democratic society (And for a moment just try to imagine the possibility) - maybe because imposing democracy from the outside doesn't work, or maybe simply because the Iraqi society wasn't quite ready for democracy - we will have to deal with the final outcome. Whether it might turn out to be a western friendly dictator or more distressingly a religious influenced class (the mullahs) or most distressingly a civil war.
This might to a certain extent explain European reluctance to be too closely associated with American Middle East policies in general and Iraq in particular. Because, as much as I hope for the Iraqi people that America does succeed in establishing a 'better' Iraq, if you don't, it might very well be in the interest of the west to have some force that is prepared to deal with, and might get accepted by an alternative outcome.
I hope I could clarify some of the 'Kerryite' views of Europe and you can better understand just why the world is not embracing America for something that is, and I don't question that, well intended. But good intention does not always lead to a good outcome.

That is brilliant!

I found a really good satire,
'Daddy why did we have to invade Iraq?'
Just a short extract to make you hungry

"DADDY: Well, you know, it doesn't matter whether or not they had those weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.
CHILD: And what was that?
DADDY: Even if Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invadeanother country.
CHILD: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his country?
DADDY: Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.
CHILD: Kind of like what they do in China and Israel or we did in Abu Graib?
DADDY: Don't go comparing China and Israel to Iraq. And Abu Graib is different. China is a good economic competitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshops to make U.S. corporations richer. Israel is our special ally and it has a right to defend itself.
CHILD: So if a country lets its people be exploited for American corporategain, it's a good country, even if that country tortures people? And if a country claims some special relationship with America, and it can call torture defense, than it can also torture people?
DADDY: Right."

Go read it, there isn't much I could say about, it's just too true!

A classic!
We will never leran it, will we?
A good old guy from Eaton feels compelled to inform his own government, that he is going out there to overthrow someone elses government (Equatorial Guinea's to be precise) because he thinks, there is some money to be made there. Next we are going to re-found the East-Indian Company, back them with a nice mercenarry army and send them out rebuilding the Empire!

And the most revealing point is that the government first denied anything in this direction!
"No we had absolutely no knowledge of any kind of involvement of British citizens in the coup etats at all. No never, exept, well we did sort of, eh ... well, we got a letter - but we didn't read it, we thought the content might be a bit too unconveniant to know about."
Lying and decieving is what this government is best at and they get away with it! Ok the opposition isn't any better, after all Mr Thatcher didn't only know about the coup, apparently - and at the moment he has still to be seen as innocent - he even planned it. And for some reason I can't believe the Torry-leadership didn't know about it.
'Well, ok the son of our former and still celebrated leader, planned to overthrow an African government, but obviously we wouldn't know about it!'

When are we going to realise that the days of the Empire are gone? Everyboddy seems so desperate to return to the good old days. Have you forgotten what the bloody thing had cost in the end? Retaking Iraq - with others to follow - , overthrowing african governments (And it is really embarasing that, if they knew about it, why didn't they inform the Guinean government?) I really feel like a bad throw back into 18th century politics.
Hasn't anything changed? Wasn't there some kind of acceptance that each country is sovereign and engages in its own affairs without others messing it up? Well apparently not.

I think Germany and France should invade Saudi Arabia to bring them democracy! After all they are brutally suppressing their people, oh and they don't take enough meassures to fight terrorism. And as Blair mentioned quite nicely, every country can take on another country if global security is threatened and Saudi Arabia clearly threatens the world (our interests). And maybe then the US and UK will wake up to which policies they are promoting at the moment.

the situation is depressing in any case!

I'm getting depressed!
I guess it's about time to just forget about Iraq. Not that I generally believe that ignoring the truth makes it any better, but once you reach the point when you can't keep up with your work, because reading news, comments and other blogs about the same situation, it's getting depressing. I can't change it, it is bloddy and it won't stop in the nearer future, but than the world has always been a bloody place, so we're just continuing the tradition. I wonder at what casulty rate the Americans will finally get out? 10 years like in Vietnam? Not a nice prospect for the Iraqis, and neither for the Americans, but they don't seem to comprehend it. They prefer being proud that they can kill more than the other side and for the moment, that seems to satify them. Well it's not exactly new, is it?
Still I don't understand why Europe only send it's foreign ministers to Arafat's burial. I mean if we are so concerned about democracy in the middle East, why don't we fully honour one of the people's leaders? Yes, the institutions he formed were democratically questionable, and yes he might have had an approach to peace that was less pragmatical - as in he wasn't prepered to compromise enough, namely he didn't accept that the refugees can't return to Israel (which admittedly is unacceptable to the Israelis) - than we might have wished, but he was clearly the choice of the Palestinian people.
Having some of our Heads of States there, would have indicated that we accept, even if we might disagree, the choice of the people and are prepered to deal with them. As it is, we only showed once again that we don't really know what we want and where we stand. It's not like Sharon is going to change his policy of scorched earth without preassure from the outside. So if we do disagree with ethnic cleansing, human rights abuses, and the right of the more powerful, why not openly saying so and letting some actions (even if only symbolic) follow? But I guess it's easier to sit back and still believeing in the Utopia that America will do this for us.
I guess that is what Blair is trying to achieve at his best friends Bushes place.
Blair: 'Ah hi George, well how is it, I mean, I gave you everything you wanted in Iraq, I even provided you a token force when you needed it for your election, couldn't you just say something to Israel that might help getting back towards a peace settlement? Just a bit, not much! You see at home they are asking all these nasty questions, and I'm slowly running out of smart ways to avoid answering them, so please, please couldn't you say something I could sell as a evidence that I do have some influence? Really not much, and it doesn't really have to be seriouse, just has to sound good??' (Looking at Bush with nice longing doggy eyes)
When is he finally recognising that the maximum payback he'll get is that Bush won't meet Howard and the occasional nice phrase about him in a speech. He is not going to compromise any of his policy, because he doesn't believe in compromise but in force. And so is Sharon. Both strongly believe that the best way to solve a problem is by dissolving it, and I can't really believe that Blair shares this view, but maybe I'm wrong.

It works again!

Something went significantly wrong,
a. Bush won
b. I couldn't write on my blog for a couple of days, because somehow this page was blocked.
(I'm not suggesting there is any conection between these events, but it left me with the unconvenient fact of not being able to tell everyone how pissed off I was by the american stupidity)
c. My structural development fund request at the world bank was refused, which unfortunately means this page will stay in layout terms as it is - sorry no latest technology available for commies in a capitalist world!

And now time has moved on and I better forget the past!
A major defeat for liberalism and intelligence shouldn't be kept alive longer than necessary, and I'm sure leader Bush will soon come up with some news that make his reelection seem harmless in comparison to what he actually does. How about to wipe out a city and follow gods order: "You shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword. You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square, and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God; it shall be a heap for ever, it shall not be built again." (bible, Deut 13, 15-17)
I can actually really imagine Bush reading the bible (or more acurately getting someone to read it to him - after all reading requires a certain intellectual capacity) and simply transferring some of the old testament into todays world.
Bushy thinking: "Falluja? these are infidels, the enemies of god. We have to gather all our strenght and "go in and take possession of the land which the LORD swore to your fathers " (Deut, 1)
Thought it and did it! My sympathy for anyone in falluja, whether fighting against the Americans or not. Give them a bloody nose, they more than deserve it.
I wonder at which point bush can compare the bible and todays real world and conclude that "we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed every city, men, women, and children; we left none remaining;" (deut, 2)
A bleak future for Iraq, and indeed for the rest of the world. The militarily strongest and most powerfull country is run by a bunch of religious fundamentalists who think they should take the bible literally as the word of god and act accordingly. The only problem with this is, that while that was the appropriate conduct of behaviour in 6000-4000 BC it is slightly out of touch with the ideas of modernism and enlightenment. Today you call this torture, warmongering and genocide (including all the niceties of rape, plundering ect.).
It's time for the rest of the world to wake up to reality! Not Bin Laden is our enemy (not that I think he is any better, he's equally fundamentalist in a different direction, but he has no real power that is seriously threatening). Ok a couple of thousands died in 9/11, but that was about the maximum he could achieve, 100000+ over the last year in Iraq alone are far more worrying because there is no sign that it's going to stop.
The real enemy of a enlightend modern peacfull world is America, which by now openly tries to establish world leadership . And don't forget since the election it is no longer Bush and the neo-cons, by now it is America herself (sorry for the remaining liberal parts, but if you can't see a chance to regain influence I would start considering asylum, because Bushes idea of uniting might quite well end up in simply taking out the part of the population that doesn't quite fit into his 'norm - biblical American'! I'm sure there is plenty of space in Guantanamo bay, the very center of neo-con moral values - the ones that alledgedly won them the election) The beauty of democracy is that you can actually make the people of a country responsible for the policies of it's leaders. And this means that any terrorist attack on civilians (as much I personally despise the use of violence under any circumstances) in America as a response to their policy in the Middle East would be a rational act of bringing it back to its source, and therefore philosophically somehow justified.
Quite a bleak future, but the one America choose!
Yet this does not mean that Europe has to continue following them down the route to barbarism! OK we might not have the power to stop them - at least not without risking a third world war, which wouldn't help anyone - but we definitely could start clearly separating us from their policy! I just hope our new memberstates eventually become truely independant - rather than just keeping up with the good old rule of supporting everything the current hegemon says, which admittedly during soviet-times was a legitimate way of survival, but which has gone since the end of the cold war, realise fully that their future is Europe - if only for geographic reasons - and so are their roots, interest and values. If Britain than eventually recognises that history means that things change over time and that althought the 'special relationship' was a very good tool for achieving Britains interest for the last century+, this does not mean that this will continue forever and that following America as it is at the moment, is by no means in the Interest of Britain.
Provided these two things happen - and I know that is about as likely as it was for Kerry to win-
Europe could eventually get itself together and at least provide an alternative in gobal politics to 'do what American/Christian fundamentalists tell you or get bombed.'
I still hope that it is possible for nations and peoples to live besides each other and despite all their differences not resort to violence and force! I still hope that Hobbes' world of everyone fighting everone is just a very pessimistic interpretation, and that it is possible to built a world that can sustain Kant's idea of 'perpetual peace' !!!!

the election - a late post

This was supposed to have been published earlier and i didn't realise it was eventually published at all. I assumed it was lost when i wrote the post above, because when I was originatelly trying to post it, I somehow managed to crash my Blog-page for a couple of days. But in any case it seemed to have survived and eventually got published!

Ok,
I think I cooled down long enough now.
I apologise for any possible injust generalisations, and that I won't keep up my diplomatic image.
So if you are American, easily offended, and voted for Bush, I would not necessarily advise you to continue to read, athought you're obviously welcomed, but it might collide with you 'moral values'!! (the ones according to which you apparently voted)
A Stupit president for a stupid people, that is what happened!
If a president is supposed to be the representative, Americans have just proven that they are absolutely, utterly stupit - as in not able to use the squashy white material that closely resembles spagetti, which god - or whatever - had orginately planted in the round thing on the top of your body, in order that you are able to understand the world around you and than act appropiately. - Yet as the election has proven americans are not able to understand the world around them, or they're absurdly masocistic. The next time a plane crushes in one of you're towers, sorry but that is only the logic - and not really unjust - of you're action.
Fashist policies almost insit on a violent response!
How was that again?
Moral values?????
Such as treating human rights with contempt (but than I'm sure most Americans would absolutely love to burn homosexuals alive, after all this topic was apparently more important than a couple of wars, economic mismanagment, lying to the public, isolating your country, oh and pursuing policies that if they go bad might end up nuclear. But after all the homo can't marry, and abortion doctors get publicly tared and feathered! So all's well if end's well!
- Come to the local bonfire, it's better than any hollywood movie, because it's real! Even better than the daily blood show on the news. We start with all books but the bible and than we come to the real evil of the nation the 'fag' - if you come over here you can burn it every day - oh and once we started let's just include all arabs, muslims, terrorists in general - anyone who voted the other way - as well.
Welcome to the new world, ignorance rules!