Losing Iraq
With an epidemic of public apologies sweeping the nation — Alberto Gonzales and Don Imus apologizing for themselves, CBS and NBC apologizing for Imus, and now NBC apologizing for running the Cho videos– let’s hope that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t decide to retract what he said earlier today.
That the war in Iraq is now “lost” is perhaps the most authentic thing to date that Reid has said about that conflagration. It’s at least 1/3 of what the Dems ought to be simply saying about the war i.e. that it was wrong from the beginning, that there is no way to win, and now it is time to leave. Period.
As we talk ourselves to death over Imus and Cho, we have mostly overlooked the fact that Wednesday was the bloodiest record: 230 people murdered or found dead in 24 hours. That’s more than seven Virginia Tech massacres in a single day. And that’s without counting the equal number of wounded.
So much for the U.S.-backed “surge and security” plan. We temporarily reel in the Shiite death squads embedded in the police and the Sunni respond with terrorist car bombings of civilians. Delusional, my friends.
The best that U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates can do is to flitter into Baghdad, warn that the American commitment isn’t “open-ended” and then urge the Sunnis and Shia to garage their car bombs and work for reconciliation. Sure, just as soon as the body parts are swept up from the alleys, gutter and market places.
Meanwhile, the kabuki continues in Washington and over American dinner tables there’s endless wanking over whether or not the Cho footage on NBC was too violent. Excuse me while I laugh.
April 19th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
As I said elsewhere its even “better” than that. When US and Iraqi officials tried to hold a joint press conference, outraged locals picked up stones and other rubble from the bombings and pelted the flacks till they had to cancel the event (according to Al Hayrat as reported on Juan Cole’s site).
And then there’s Sadr having his deputies pull out of the Government. Sistani wanting us out and, voila!, David Ignatius notices that the Kurds could be causing trouble in the North! They already are balking at sharing any oil revenues from the fields in Kurdistan with the rest of the country.
Yep that surge is sure working out just fine. And did you catch those wierd remarks from the “Decider” today in Ohio? Saw them on HUFF POST – he’s losing it!
OFF TOPIC: Any schadenfrauede on your part over the sexual harrasment charges against the Mgr at KPFK? Complainant says she was called a “Stupid White Woman” and that “we don’t listen to Gringos” by the station honcho who is Black, Gay, and an African Immigrant. Neither side wants to settle. Ah Pacifica! Nothing like “Progressive Radio!”
April 19th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
It sounds more like a radical Los Angeles Waiver Theatre company. Yes, I know, and no, don’t ask.
April 19th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
We’ll know America has really “lost” Iraq when they actually have to take their military bases out of the country, and don’t get to be the prime exploiters of Iraq’s hydrocarbons. I don’t see that taking place.
America won the war, because it will, by hook or by crook, control Iraq’s economy. The Reid rhetoric is simply a statement of “OK we’ll keep our bases, but no longer fight a war, and we’ll get points by acknowledging our battlefield losses and lack of control of the situation.”
April 19th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Thanks, Marc, for summing up the absurd and vicious mindset that engulfs the nation! Hard to do anything but laugh, and perhaps poison oneself with one’s drug of choice.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Is Iraq about to become Poland (of 1795)?
April 19th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
The idea that Harry Reid won’t “retract what he said earlier ” is absurd on its face. Of course he will, if he hasn’t already.
Without the overwhelming approval of Democratic party Senators and Representatives, we never would have gone to war in Iraq in the first place. Without the on-going dishonest, bad-faith, conditional Democratic approval/disapproval of this war, it would be shut down in a heartbeat. The Democratic majority can choose to defund this war whenever they want. The fact that they won’t do so is the ultimate study in cowardice. There is nothing wrong with standing up and being counted. Democracy depends upon it.
I supported this war from the onset and I continue to support it. We need to put another 200,000 to 300,00 troops in Iraq.
Colin Powell was absolutely right. We should either fight with overwhelming force or decline the engagement.
This is now the Democrat’s war, and apparently, they will neither support it nor oppose it.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Nice try. Thanks for showing up, Samuel. Go see somebody if the voices in your head get any louder. (Remember when you could get thousands of little soldiers for just a couple of bucks by sending in that coupon on the back cover of GI Joe comic books ?)
In an interesting aside, SecDef Gates admitted in the same context mentioned above, that this Congress has been useful to efforts toward pushing the Iraqis to get their act together. Of course Gates is an immigrant to this administration from the reality-based world and totally out-of-touch with the necessity to demonize Democrats in the wake of BushCo’s failure.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Marc, my thoughts exactly. How self-absorbed and narcissistic have we become that the entire country is expected to stand somberly at attention today to remember Virginia Tech, and simultaneously we manage to forget that 200 Iraqis were blown to bits the same day in our dirty little war. This exercise is at least as racist as Imus’s vile crack.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:02 am
“I supported this war from the onset and I continue to support it. We need to put another 200,000 to 300,00 troops in Iraq.”
Would your plan be to just kill everyone in the country?
April 20th, 2007 at 8:22 am
> We need to put another 200,000 to 300,00 troops in Iraq.
You’ve already lost a decimal place to attrition, even before the end of the sentence.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Rob G, what an interesting question. 1795? I have to refresh wrt the history of Poland’s metamorphosis (god, it’s been eons), but maybe you’re right. If so, well, … ouch.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Everything Samuel Stott says about the Dems above is right, but here’s the part I want to argue with:
> We need to put another 200,000 to
>300,00 troops in Iraq.
>Colin Powell was absolutely right. We
>should either fight with overwhelming
>force or decline the engagement.
I would bet even money that this is what the future holds, but it is going to be a disaster. Powell, who among other things was the author of the Army’s official whitewash of the My Lai massacre, knows perfectly well that “overwhelming force” failed in Vietnam. In that war we used more explosives than in the entire preceding history of warfare, killed between 5 and 10% of the total population of the country, destroyed the industrial infrastructure of NVN, poisoned the agricultural land, and bogged down all the troops we could find for ten years. We still lost, and this strategy isn’t going to work any better in Iraq.
Here are some plain historical facts:
1) The US was well established as an enemy in the minds of the Arab population, and to a lesser extent even among the Kurds, in Iraq long before 2003. This is because a) we bankroll Israel; b) we intermittently propped up Saddam Hussein; c) we sold weapons, including precursors of poison gas, to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war in order to make the slaughter even worse; d) we bullied the UN into following the first Gulf War with ten years of sanctions that wrought devastation on the economy of Iraq.
2) People in Iraq have about the same feelings about our occupation of their country as you would have if the US were occupied by Iraqi troops. Worse, because of our identification with Israel, they have a sneaking suspicion that we are going to kick them out and resettle foreigners on their land.
3) Our presence is the problem, not the solution. The one plank that all the disparate insurgent groups (and even some of the parties in government) agree on is that foreign troops must leave. The more troops we send, the sharper the problem will get.
4) We could, as you advocate, send enough troops and hardware to win most of the battles, wipe out the current personnel of the insurgent groups, and massacre their civilian supporters with air and artillery attacks, as we did in VN. This won’t change the political struggle. As we saw in VN, military control of an area is not politically decisive if the population is determined to reject your authority.
5) Our allies in Iraq-the reactionary Iran-aligned Shiite religious parties we are propping up-are not worth fighting for.
6) This war is the best recruiting propaganda in the arsenal of the only military enemies we should really worry about-the radical Islamists. It also diverts resources away from the war in Afghanistan, which is more meaningful from the point of view of the military security of the Uited States, and which, unlike the Iraq war, might still be partially winnable.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Well said, Marc, but I’d argue there’s a fourth thing the Democrats would need to add. “When we leave, get ready for a bloodbath.” Let’s at least be honest about it.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am
“When we leave, get ready for a bloodbath.”
So what do you describe what’s going on there now?
April 20th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Oh, and for the record. Just what did you learn from the Cho video that you didn’t know before?
April 20th, 2007 at 11:32 am
The debate over whether NBC was right to broadcast the CHO Manifesto and its addenda is like the debate over torture. We should not be having the debates.
It should be common knowledge that torture is heinous, barbaric, uncivilized and outdated in civilized countries. So it should not be debated.
For the media “ethicists”: It should be common knowledge that when a perpetrator of a mass murder incorporates into his crime a justifying manifesto, its publication is acting as accessory and collaborator to the crime. So it should not be debated.
The fact that the two subjects are in fact debated shows how debased this country has become.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:51 am
The fact of the matter is that the die is cast in Iraq. Because of the depths of fecklessness and arrogance of this administration, the bloodbath if we leave that Bush warns about IS happening and will happen whether or not we leave.
This country may not recover from the Bush regency. The economic crash over the horizon caused by blind faith in globalization and another defeat in war may be omens of a country that once was…and is no more in fact.
April 20th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
The debate on whether video coverage on TV is too violent is absurd. The problem with the news is that it’s not violent enough. I want the American public to see young American soldiers (dead Iraqis just won’t do it) getting blown to bits and then getting their parts zipped up into body bags for their return trip home. Maybe then people would start to wake up and demand an end to this madness. Though even then I still wouldn’t be too optimistic about that happening.
And Stott, whoo buddy, you got some problems. All you can think about is how you can blame the Democrats for this? Wow. Though I might agree with you about the extra 300,000 troops. That is, if the year was 2002 and there happened to be some 300,000 troops just laying handily about somewhere. Even if we had the troops to put there now, as mentioned in other posts above, it’s way past that. An honest reading of a current newspaper would relay these facts to you.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
In May 2005, with about 1,600 U.S. soldiers dead, Marc trashed Norman Solomon and explained that he “wasn’t that bright,” for his position in favor of withdrawal from Iraq.
Today twice as many U.S. soldiers are dead– not to mention untold numbers of additional dead Iraqis– and I see Marc seems to favor withdrawal (pardon me if this development is not exactly new, I don’t check in that often.)
Somewhere Marc changed his tune. Did Solomon get brighter? If not, then perhaps he should explain why coming to the same conclusion well after Solomon and millions of others, was worth the additional barrels of spilled blood.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
“So what do you describe what’s going on there now?”
Yawn… let’s not get into a pretend argument over semantics. You know what I’m saying – whatever is happening now will be far worse when the Iraqis are left to “police” themselves. One of the very legitimate complaints about Bush on this war is that he’s never acknowledged what is happening and what is likely to happen in the future (at every step of the way). If the Democrats manage to take some of the reins for this war they shouldn’t make the same mistake.
April 20th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Wil what I am implying that the time when anything resembling a decent outcome (dubious proposition at best) has long passed. The only question now is what is the strategy that will lead to the least bad result. I do not see any way to forstall an Iraqi Civil War. The parties mean to have one and we will not be able to prevent it.
The best we can probably hope for is some coalition government that has the support of the neighborhood (Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria) and that means some kind of regional conference. It makes talking to Tehran and Damascus. And that means a new administraion as the current one has nixed that.
But I’m under no illusions that will lead to a peaceful outcome in the near future. It took Lebanon ten years to burn itself out. And Iraq is far more complex. Look, they’re still at in in Somalia.
Will the GOP try to pin it on the Dems? Sure. But that is inevitable. Right now the polls suggest that the public sides with Pelosi and Reid on this. This is Bush’s -and now McCain’s – war and they and their party will reap the blame.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
“An honest reading of a current newspaper would relay these facts to you.”
John McC – Read a current newspaper ? Are you suggesting that Samuel Stott consort with America’s enemies ?
April 20th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I’m not at all sure we can discount Cummings here, there is virtually nothing in the press about how the oil companys and the war profiteers have made out in all this misery, it certainly encourages one to think the wrost.
Aside from his laughable political partisanship (another culpret in the massive disaster) Stott raises some interesting issues. However, if it turned out mismanagment and lack of overwhelming force have led to faliure, why aren’t the Republican supporters of the war calling for said force?
If the current approach is pointless, why sacrifice additional
American lives for face saving or something worse?
If the noble cause of destroying Islamofacism requires a national draft, you better start saying so, Scotty old boy. The troops are dying for your current half assed, politicaly carefull approach.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
What I learned from Samuel Stott: Bush could win this war. The fact that he won’t is the ultimate study in cowardice.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
The liberal left has been on the wrong side of history in every american conflict. The goal of defeating totalitarianism to free enslaved, or even containing its spread by helping a people stay free from its aggression, has always been opposed by the liberal left…..because, well, freedom should just be free. It is just not worth fighting over.
What has changed in their attitude about this latest conflict people? Tell me something that is new here……..anyone?
Some want to blame it on their unnatural hatred for Bush and the jealous loss of elections due to stupid american voters that don’t know what’s good for them. I agree both of these things have make them very angry, behave in highly immature ways, and even believe in the strangest of conspiracies. But until you can tell me what has changed in this oppositon to this conflict, then I rather believe it is history repeating itself.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Such preening, self-delusional horseshit, it ain’t even worth a response.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Yeah, FDR and the WW2 Dems just didn’t know how to deal with right-wing nationalists in Germany, Italy and Japan, sheesh!
Like right-wing nationalists in the US have any balls to begin with, 9-11 happened and they shit themselves, attacking everything excpt tha assholes who did it.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
The outstanding question at this point in history, is whether or not the liberal left will succeed in defeating the free Iraqi people and their helpers, the US. unleashing a genocide on innocent people in the region and dooming them to a never ending totalitarion future, as they did in their glory years, Vietnam.
It’s not an easy thing to do, working against your own country in favor of totalitarian regimes and brutal terrorists. It requires breaking the spirit and moral of the Iraqi and American people with propaganda such as “All is lost, “You cannot win”, “The cost is just not worth it”, “It will be better if you change direction”, all code words for accepting defeat.
It will require propaganda that depicts the US as an aggressor, a foreign country after Iraqs natual resourses, a brutal force of its own, an international pariah up to no good. It will require the seeking out and publizing of any and all mistakes made by the Iraqi and US Gov’ts and their military. It will require suppressing all positive events and blowing all negative events out of preportion by a friendly liberal left press.
It’s not an easy thing to do, but it is possible. It’s been done once. Good progress is being made again. Think about the lives that will be saved if the liberal left succeeds again.
April 21st, 2007 at 2:15 am
Well said, Jim R, but hopeless to argue with people who won’t stipulate that Communism and the USSR and their understudies across the world were a genuine threat, who won’t defend their democratic and liberal and left-wing comrades across the Arab and Muslim lands.
Their only insight is that a treacherous coterie with undue influence in the US disturbs the natural peace of a benign world.
These folk don’t get angry about teachers at schools for girls in Afghanistan getting assasinated, gays getting hung in Iran, bloggers getting arrested in Egypt, Arab Christians getting run out of Bethleham, liberal Palestinian journalists murdered, 300,000 Darfurians dead, with a million to follow. They don’t care that Libya and Syria have seats on the UN Human Rights council; they don’t care about Food for Oil; they don’t care that the UN was delivering millions to Dear Leader in unmarked bills. They don’t care.
They don’t even have the decency, like honest isolationists from across the political spectrum, to admit that the world is a genocidal cesspool.
World events are just an excuse for talking about the guilt of the democratically elected government of the United States of America.
And in response to K Nardy’s substantive points:
I do support a draft. It would be harder for us to get into a war but less likely that the symbol-manipulating elite would then seek to undermine it from day two.
We should have a special service, at least a half-million strong, for port security, and those subject to the draft should include a certain percentage of able-bodied men and women up to the age of 65.
Bush and the Republicans are absolutely guilty for not explaining what is at stake and for not consistently pressing for the force necessary to police and pacify the territories we occupy.
I don’t defend Republicans and this administration. They aren’t defensible. I attack Democrats and Leftists. They aren’t even coherent.
They stand for nothing, beyond hoping that the problems of the world, somehow, will go away.
April 21st, 2007 at 3:39 am
Stott – I was stopped on the street yesterday by some cretin pushing the views of Lyndon LaRouche. I walked on. Why do full-blown ravers like you or Jim R deserve any more consideration ?
Iraq is being destroyed and cretins such as yourself who defended the unbelievably inchoerent “grand strategy” of the Bush administration after 9/11 have the blood on your hands. Something you’ll have to live with the rest of your lives. None of your ninth-inning fantasy reparations of this monumental failure can compensate for that, no matter how many times you post and re-post them as pixels. Insofar as I care at all, the thought I offer for the marginal cretins who mentally masturbate to allegations of perfidy by we war critics is that this stuff should interrupt your sleep, even if it’s in the form of fighting these “Demcorat” phantoms to whom you’ve transferred your guilt.
The Afghan mission is in danger of collapse and that, too, is a product of the over-reach and diversionary “strategy” (too wrongheaded not to keep that word in quotes) of fools such as yourself. Learn to live with it. And then, preferably, shut the fuck up. You’re not even remotely capable of even describing the beliefs of liberals such as myself. That you can’t defend your chosen allies, while lashing out wildlly at war critics with a bitterness that’s only matched by the near-total lack of acuity, is telling.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:57 am
Hmm.. I guess when The Nation magazine led the fight to enter WWII, it was another example of the liberal left being on the wrong side of History. How big a Hitler fan are you, Jim R?
Oh, I see Jim simply ignores refutiation of his “history” arguement and moves on to Iraq. O.K., Jim, you say progress is being made, I say you are delusional and can’t face the fact that your party has put the Free World in the hands of a hapless bungler who can’t accept the utter mess he has created any more than you can. Get us out, get a halfway decent President in, and start over.
Scott, I would say given your apraisal of Bush it is your take on the left that lacks coherrance. I am quite familiar with the double talk offered by leftists (damn the U.S. if they invade, damn them twice if they don’t) but your own double talk is no better. Like Jim R, you have a somewhat shaky grasp of history, it was Reagan who played ball with the Taliban when it suited his needs, and for years the only people griping about the abuse of women in Afaganstan were liberal feminists.
When you ask Americans to submit to the draft and commit to a worldwide effort to wipe Muslum extreamists off the face of the globe, I suggest you get your ducks in a row. Young Republicans abandoning spring break to go sit in the desert may find themselves getting history savvy.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:20 am
The liberal left has been on the wrong side of history in every american conflict.
Name me a pro-axis member of the liberal left during WWII. Name me a pro-confederate member of the liberal left.
Cretin.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:36 am
Geesh reg. I didn’t know you was one of those leftist. I didn’t know you resembled my comments. I thought you was one of those common sensed americans who realize Bush did fuck up, by taking on sicko Saddam and Sons so soon while Afganistan was still in limbo and Binny boy was still on the lose, but understood mistakes get made in wars and the more important thing is was the goal good and what is best for the Iraqi people and the stability of a religously radial region that manufactures suicidal terrorist america and the world have been living with for the past 40 or more years. Almost as long as saddist Stalin and company.
I didn’t intend to incur your poison pen. I am not a masachist.
Btw, what to heck is a cretin? I know it’s got to be some’n bad, and I ain’t as read as you, but my old fashion school marms taught me it was the good citizens of Crete. I’m now suspect’n she must’a been wrong.
She also taught me that america is good and worth supporting and worth giving the benefit of the doubt to. But after listen to the liberal left, who are all more educated and well spoken than me and my kind, I’m think’n she must’a been wrong again. She must’a been just to simple.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:54 am
“was the goal good” ?
To be honest, I don’t even know what the hell the “goal” was, given all of the double-talk and endlessly shifting rationales. Now it’s “having opened Pandora’s box, we’ve got to avoid the worst outcome”. Pathetic. I know one thing – when you’re as clueless as this crowd, motives don’t even matter. The results they’ve produced do matter, and they’ve done more damage to this country – and Iraq – in the enormity of their over-reach and ultimate failure, frankly, than bin Laden did.
April 21st, 2007 at 9:38 am
Btw, what to heck is a cretin? I know it’s got to be some’n bad, and I ain’t as read as you, but my old fashion school marms taught me it was the good citizens of Crete. I’m now suspect’n she must’a been wrong.
They’re called Cretans.
Still waiting:
Name me a pro-axis member of the liberal left during WWII. Name me a pro-confederate member of the liberal left.
Can’t stand by what you say? Par for the course for the nonsense you routinely blow out of your ass into the comments section of this blog.
April 21st, 2007 at 11:01 am
BTW the latest bit of right wing nuttery comes from London where someone called “Melanie Phiilips” claims that WMDs WERE found in Iraq but the Bushies let them be stolen away to Syria!
April 21st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
“the Bushies let them be stolen away to Syria!”
Can we be sure this operation wasn’t coordinated out of Nancy Pelosi’s office ?
April 21st, 2007 at 1:23 pm
No reg, the Dems were in on it because they didn’t want to be shown up for claiming that there were no WMD’s. Come on!Its not a conspiracy if it doesn’t involve everyone. I understand, from the SALON column by Glenn Greenwald, that this is now all over the right-wing net. Including our friends at Pajamarama!
Well, as they say:
“The Truth is Out There.”
April 21st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
so the american plan is not an open ended agreement with the iraqis. they must show acceptable progress apparently.
Meaning what exactly? that if they dont meet some benchmarks we do what, leave? But i thought we cant leave till the jobs done and they are standing up, so we can stand down?
So how will this ever be resolved?
Methinks we have no say in whether the iraqis are making progress or not.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Jim R needs to study some history.
Conservatives opposed entry into WW II. It was a liberal war.
As far as Vietnam goes, liberals got us into that conflict. So they were on the wrong side of history on that. But they did change course, something conservatives are incapable of. So I give the libs credit on this.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Samuel Stott
Conservatives are the least bit outraged by how Western corporations behave in the developing world. Many times that includes supporting horribal regimes or terrorist groups. Let alone sweatshops, biopiracy, environmental destruction, etc… All of this ads up to a lot of suffering.
Conservatives have NO problem with US companies moving over to the communist nation of China. Nor do they object to human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indo, etc… ANY one of our “allies.”
Yes liberals did oppose communism. Remember Cold War Liberalism? The Anti-Stalinist Left? When did libs have a widespread solidarity campaign with North Korea or the USSR?
Reagan gladly supported radical Islam and Saddam. This is all a creation of the Republican brand of intervention.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:10 pm
“Remember Cold War Liberalism?”
3 Million Vietnamese sure as hell do.
“The Anti-Stalinist Left?”
Sure as hell not liberal, and not Cold War liberal either.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:15 pm
What liberals “Changed course” on Vietnam…Was it those best and brightest who repented not unlike neocons to Vanity Fair?
To back a war then “change course” is not historically acceptable and/or a proud achievement for any philisophical mooring that claims virtue. The Democrats were the ones behind loyalty oaths, Truman hired former Nazis for the CIA and NASA, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Dominican Republic. There was no change of course. Rather the public turned against it and hte liberals mounted a PR campaign to absolve them and make Nixon -a thug who was a far more progressive man than Kennedy – the guilty party.
Liberals are as, if not more guilty for American Imperialism over the last half century as conservatives, starting with the “Truman Doctrine” of backing fascists agains non-Stalinist (Titoist) Greek Guerillas.
At least conservatives oppose liberal wars wiht more fervor than Liberals oppose conservative wars.
April 21st, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Its only the Left, as a historical American movement, that have been right every time on foreign policy (and no I’m not talking about the tiny minority who hewed the Soviet line during the brief Stalin/Hitler deal which at least allowed the Soviets to build up their strenghts and beat the Nazis)
April 21st, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Actually Cummings, the Democrats aquested to loyaty oaths under extreme political pressure from conservatives, just the sort of thing the likes of you and our host never tire of misrepresenting. It’s how the likes of Lindsey Graham ends up good guys.
George McGovern and others would not be wrong in viewing their actions in the Vietnam years with a certain degree of pride, I can’t speak to “historic acceptability”.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:29 am
Extreme political pressure still doesn’t cut it. The Dems of the early Cold War were scum, who hired Nazis and fought on the side of the “Bad Guys” from WW2 in Korea and elsewhere. They make Hillary Clinton look like a decent human being.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 am
McGovern was a Henry Wallace supporter…just to show who was right and who was wrong at the onset of the “Cold War”
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 am
cummings has to argue Henry Wallace and even George McGovern out of the history of liberalism in order to have any credibility in this argument, that, you know George Kennan was wrong about Stalin and Julius Rosenberg got it right.
Incidentally, St. Henry repudiated the “Progressive” party line on the Soviets within a few years and voted for Eisenhower.
The notion that what cummings calls “the left” was either prescient or coherent about the fundamental issues related to the Cold War is little more than religious belief. While I don’t accept that the Liberal establishment nor many leading intellectuals wrapped themselves in glory and integrity during the Cold War, neither is it credible that the Marshall Plan was simply a sinister plot or that the USSR wasn’t an enemy of human freedom, brutally expansionist and driven by Stalinist opportunism rather than any “ideals” that a sane or honest person could embrace.
Anyone who can’t recognize the fundamental difference between Eastern and Western Europe over the five decades after WWII or the abject failure of nearly every regime and revolutionary ideology touted by the anti-liberal Left during the same period is absorbed in an irrelevant intellectual construct, not historical or political analysis. The “revolutionary” movements and figures who have maintained relevance – like Mandela and Martin Luther King – embraced liberal ideas with greater fervor than “establishment liberals”, which has been the key to their success. Those who repudiated liberal traditions, like Mao, Castro and Mugabe, became contradictory figures who oppressed their own people at best and unambiguous monsters at worst.
Cummings acts as though the only sin of the Cold War was apology for imperialism and – except for one brief moment in 1939 what he defines as “the Left” was clear-headed, trustworthy in both analysis & motives, and morally pristine.
Bullshit.
cummings version of the Cold War is about as credible as that wing of unflinching Cold War “liberals” and “Democrats” represented by Henry Jackson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle and Marty Peretz.
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Damn, jcummings….you gonna let reg bitch-slap you like that?
Damn, Home Boy…grow a pair, “The People” need you!
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Y’all are simply too much.
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I’m not sure how, given Cummings standards, McGovern gets the clean bill of health, having voted for Vietnam at one point as well.
More odious to me is the implication, a full six years into Wland, that the right’s “libertarian” streak makes it more likely to do good. The Cummings progressive is married to a dogma he can’t release; but beyond that, it smacks of it’s own armchair warriorism. If only the liberal would fight with naked fury for on all the things that, ah, I’m going to let the the right off the hook for anyway.
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I’m not gonna argue with Reg. We have different points of view. Its not a mater of who was right about whom, but a matter of what policies did what person implement. Hiring Nazis that killed my relatives for the new CIA is far less egregious than making sure the US didn’t have a nuclear monopoly.
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Its not “St. Henry’s” line on the Soviets…he recanted his “Friendship” but his belief (later shared by Kennan et. al) that .nemies in order to fight “communism” which was in reality a series of disparate squabbling movements….The Cold War was a disaster for mankind…(and yes, I place some responsibility on the Soviet side too)
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
mistake that should have been belief (later shared by Kennan et. al) that the Soviet Unino was not at all threat to world peace any more than the United States.
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Reg: “, neither is it credible that the Marshall Plan was simply a sinister plot or that the USSR wasn’t an enemy of human freedom, brutally expansionist and driven by Stalinist opportunism rather than any “ideals†that a sane or honest person could embrace.”
Nothing I said contradicts this notion – except even Kennan and Kissinger and other realists recognized that the Soviets were not expansionist, they were doing what any power would do with another hostile power gaining on them – creting a buffer zone. Theit Eastern Europe was the US’s Latin America. …wrong on both fronts…but not classically “expansionist”.
Otherwise I agree with the above-stated notion. PEople having the wrong idea, temporarily, about Stalin, are far lessh istorically guilty than people who had the right idea and decided to re-empower fascists to fight him.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm
“Their Eastern Europe was the US’s Latin America.”
Without going much deeper into this, I don’t think that’s an appropriate analogy. I think that the U.S. was clearly economically imperialist, as well as overtly neo-colonial acting as a political “enforcer” to back up right-wing movements and tin-horn dictators, in Latin America – but I don’t see Latin America as any kind of “buffer zone”. Mainly it was a crass and predictable opportunity for economic exploitation. By virtue of its geography the U.S. doesn’t really need buffer zones. And I’ll agree that the motivation for Stalin’s expansionism in Eastern Europe was to create a “buffer zone” – holding the countries on it’s western border hostage to its political imperatives – archaic as that notion soon became in the age of nuclear missles and “MAD”. That’s a classically imperialist and expansionist strategy, although not in the “Leninist” sense of “imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism”. And like most imperial ventures it created strains on the “great power” itself over time. But whatever the motivation, the Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe was marked by heavy-handed and brutal dictatorship, an almost absurdly short political leash and a counter-productive, ideologically imposed economic backwardness. Very ugly. In any event you seem to acknowledge that a liberal like Kennan had a pragmatic view of the Soviet Union and U.S. interests that wasn’t driven by the desire to unleash Nazis on struggling revolutionaries. The truth is that both sides grabbed up as many high-level Nazi operatives for intelligence and military research purposes as they could get their hands on. Do you think that Nazi apparatchiks weren’t quite comfortable and useful in the East German “People’s Democratic Republic” ?
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Reg
Why do you keep assuming that by criticizing the US role in battling “really exising socialism” as it was once called, one is supporting in any way shape or form supporting anything about the Soviet Union’s political control of East Europe (which to be fair, legitimately saw communists as heirs at the close of second world war, as they fought fascists mos valiantly – yes people were duped but this wasn’t jus some takeover – there were sweets and flowers, as it were…) – its complex. My point is not in any way support for that style of government or hte disgusting cynicism of all of their bureaucracies.
It is simply stating that the US could have had a different approach, and I believe a continued peace after the second world war would have creaed a far better world than the one created by Truman who didn’t need to act against people in Greece who had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, adn all the ancilliary issues that masked the fact that the Soviet Union as threat helepd build up hte Military Industrial Complex and further, that while the Soviets were indeed assholes in power and to their sphere of influence, there was relative – and often extreme in Third World settings – heterogeneity among communist movements, many of whom started out wanting American, not Russian support.
So criticism of Truman isn’t support of Stalinism, and yes, Latin America was literally a buffer zone…they would have allowed more democratic autonomy in the region if not for the percieved Castro influence and all that that meant.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 am
Since my last comment is “on moderation” I’ll simply state that Keenan was all for the hiring of Nazis and fascists, particularly in Greece.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:37 am
Sorry jcummings Kenan wasn’t. Read “Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin or his memoirs.
It was a great tragedy when FDR, sick and feeble, allowed the party bosses to convince him to dump Henry Wallace in ’44. But it could have been worse. Many of them wanted James Byrnes for Veep!
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
It should be said, regarding Greece, that the Greek Stalinists bore most of the responsibility for their own failures and the ability of the monarchy and right to emerge dominant after WWII (assuming it wasn’t Churchill or Truman’s job to make sure the Greek Left got dealt a winning hand.) They pretty much did everything wrong from boycotting elections to launching an ill-conceived military operation AND got screwed from every possible direction – including by Tito. Markos Vafiades was one of the more honorable and competent figures of the Stalinist Left and might have been able to successfully navigate those waters if he hadn’t been subordinate to a bunch of apparatchiks.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Somebody please, HELP! WWII Was a liberal war.
Most conservatives followed Lindberg’s support of the Nazis and were, therefore, isolationists.
The pre-war chronicles are replete with examples of pro-fascist American Conservatives, Dos Passos, etc.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Kennan worked in government during the time of Project Paperclip. His own personal views on the matter mean as much as Colin Powell’s after-the-fact opposition to Buhs’s policy…in other words, fancypants bullshit.
The Greek Left were communists, socilaists, Greek Orthodox types, liberals – not Stalinists – and even if they were (history is contentious on this issue – a prof. of mine who was friendly with the Schlesinger crowd assures me that Stalin sold them out because they were close with Tito – and sold Tito out because Tito wanted Trieste)
I would like to read Kennan’s memoirs. A masterful – if mistaken – theorist.
Watch a great old Firing Line featuring young Chomsky vs. Buckley on this issue. Its on Youtube.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Again, I get ahead of myself – I meant “even if they wre Stalinists……….their enemies were reactionaries. I’ll take Stalinists over reactionaries at that historical juncture.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm
From what I’ve read Stalin had no interest in Greece or any of the Balkans. His concerns were with the states border mother Russia like Poland that had been the invasion route from Napolean on.
Yes, Kennan was a State Dept functionary. He was one of those young diplomats around William Bullit that, first in Riga, and then after 1933 in Moscow formed the nucleus of US Foreign Service officers who made a career out of understanding the USSR.
Kennan was the author of “Containment” but made it quite clear that he was speaking of political and diplomatic containment and not military. And his difficulty with the Truman Doctrine was it universal application when he felt it should have been applied to Greece and Turkey alone. And, besides, Truman and Acheson blundered by placing a line in 1950 that didn’t include South Korea and Stalin – and Mao – misread that. Mao was as surprised as Harry when the Russian Advised N. Korean Army marched south of the 38th parallel in June.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Of course Truman – and Marshall and Acheson as well as Kennan and Bohlen and Harriman – were lightyears ahead of the current crowd that make mere incompetence seem like something to be devoutly wished for.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Guess he’s not gonna back down. Lifted from cnn.com
Reid defends calling Iraq war ‘lost,’ calling Bush ‘a liar’
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended calling the war in Iraq “lost” in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.
“General Petreaus has said the war cannot be won militarily, he’s said that,” Reid said. “And President Bush is doing nothing economically, he’s doing nothing diplomatically, he’s not doing anything even the minimal requested by the Iraq Study Group, so I stick with General Petreaus. I have no doubt the war cannot be won militarily and that’s what I said last Thursday and I stick with that.”
His comments have triggered angry backlash from the White House and a number of Republican congressmen. Some have said that his comments send the wrong message to the troops.
“I do what I think is right, and I think this war is headed in the wrong direction,” Reid said. “And I’m going to speak out as often and as regularly as I can.”
Reid has been an outspoken critic of the president, calling him a loser and a liar in the past.
“I don’t back off that at all,” he said. “So if you say something that is untrue to me and in the right circumstances, I will call you a liar. I have no regret having called him a liar, because he lied.”
In a speech in Washington Monday, Reid said Congress would sent a war supplemental spending bill that would require a withdrawal of troops to be begin by October 1 and be completed by April 1, 2008, according to the Associated Press.
President Bush on Monday reiterated his vow to veto any legislation that includes a withdrawal timetable.
– CNN’s Dana Bash and Lauren Kornreich
Posted 4/23/2007 05:53:00 PM
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:24 pm
jc – the Greek resistance was overwhelmingly dominated by the “mainstream” Communists. I don’t think there’s any question on this. After ELAS essentially had gained control of the country, they proceeded to make every miscalculation and bad decision possible – across the spectrum – mostly due to the Stalinist sectarianism of the leadership.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
The House-Senate Conferees agreed today to a bill that included the House Benchmarks with the Senate Timetable. Voting will be tomorrow and Wed. Reid is saying to Bush’s veto: “BRING IT ON!”
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
On a sad note – David Halberstam, one of the great reporters of this or any era is dead at age 73. I have more to say about this elsewhere. RIP Mr Halberstam – you are sorely missed!
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I’ll take Stalinists over reactionaries at that historical juncture.
Most of us would probably take neither one. Mores the pity that you limit your choices to one extreme or the other.
As for the Greek civil war, as in the case of all civil wars my thoughts lie solely with the civilians.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
reg-
As I know some people who were around back then, the issue is contentious – “mainstream communist” leadership did make mistakes, but that hardly absolves the United States from backingthe radical right (or anyone) and fascists against communists, to whomever they tipped their hat. Communism in its mainstream mode was not at all uniformly Stalinist at the time of WW2, particularly the parties in countries – like Greece, YugoslaviaItaly, etc. – that fought a fierce – and popular Anti-fascist resistance. All churches have a picture of Ratzinger, but there are plenty of critics of hte pope…
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
RLC – perhaps you don’t know of project paperclip, championed by Kennan et. al – this was the specific project to help Nazis either escape Europe and get to Latin America and/or integrate old Nazi intelligence groups, like that of Reinhard Gehlen, into the CIA and late rthe BND. Others showed up in Latin America, like Klaus Barbie, protected by tthe CIA.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Communism in its mainstream mode was not at all uniformly Stalinist at the time of WW2, particularly the parties in countries – like Greece
The Stalinist side won out in Greece, when Tito broke with Stalin, leaving the Greeks to choose sides. Zachariadis chose Stalin.
As a matter of fact, when Kruschev was burying Stalinism, he also effectively neutered Zachariadis, who sepnt his last days in Siberia.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:17 am
I think Sherman killed too many civilians, but I’d be squarely north in the American civil war. Randy may be right that hearts should be with civilians during these conflicts, but – much of the time – there are “good guys” and “bad guys”. Take Angola, or the US civil war. Take El Salvador.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Which is precisely why war should be a last resort.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:49 am
jcummings “Project Paperclip” was the effoirt by US intelligence to sweep up as many German scientists and engineers as we could before the Soviets got them. You know “Our Germans can beat your Germans” and all that. The best known catch was Wehner Von Braun whose autobiography was entitled “I aim at the Stars”. Some wags said it should have been subtitled “But sometimes I hit London!”
Gehlen, was head of “Foreign Armies – East” for the Abwehr. His value is debated to this day.
Since Kennan was in Moscow at the Embassy I fail to see what he had to do with any of this.
Maybe he wrote the “Long Cable” because he had some idea of who Stalin was. If you’d like a clue you could start with the “First Circle”.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Interesting story about Werner Von Braun: For years he was head of the Marshall Space Flight at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, AL. I lived in Huntsville for a number of years and my brother and I saw him once in public: he was running into a Montgomery Ward’s wearing a swim suit t-shirt and flip-flops and was buying a chaise lounge.
The Germans have always been sun worshippers.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:22 am
RLC – your context doesn’t make it defensible….I’ve read the “long telegram” and much of Kennan’s work – I think he was brilliant and prescient – but like Heidegger , turned a blind eye to others comitting evil. Just because he wasn’t in the department of government that was responsible for Paperclip doesn’t absolve him. As far as I recall – and I could be wrong – the social set with which Kenan was involved – if not Kennan himself – ie the old OSS crowd- was happy and even mischieviously joyful at playing this our Nazi is better than your Nazi game. Read Chrisopher Simpson, Simon Wiesenthal, others on this issue.
To even debate the value of Gehlen (though I’m told that his whole network was penetrated by Russians anywaay) is to implicitly endorse the idea that it was somehow OK for the US to protect Nazi war criminals, many of whom – Otto Skorzeny, Klaus Barbie, some (Simon Wiesenthal) even say Josef Megele – were far worse even than Gehlen. Again I refer people to Christopher Simpson’s work.
Yes, war should be a last resort, but I’m no pacifist, and I’ll side with those fighting fascism or slavery any day, regardless of their motivation.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
My father worked for the Post Office at the time. Does make him “Responsible” for “Paperclip?”
I had a cousin, on my mother’s side, who was an engineer at Hunstville working under Von Braun. Does that make him a Nazi Sympathizer?
April 24th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
And Kennan was in State. But if you want to talk of the OSS, yes, it included such well known “Nazi Sympathizers” as Herbert Marcuse, Julia Child, and William Sloan Coffin!
April 24th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Don’t forget Paul Sweezy…
April 24th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
All those leftists (Julia Child?) left that part of government due to McCarthyism and genuinely diverging belief systems in foreign policy. OSS did heroic stuff. I totally differentiate it from what came afterwords. The whole Frankfurt School was saved by US Intelligence!! And yes, Marcuse was at State until 1951. None of this mkes Marcuse or Kennan a Nazi sympathizer. What makes Kennan historically far more guilty than this crowd is that he was an implementer and shaper of policy that led to this nazi co-optation by US inelligence. Coffin was laer on, and my understanding is that he had severe reservations about what the agency was doing.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Sweezy did work for New Deal agencies in economic planning, some of which was in an intelligence capacity. He remained close with his comrade (and lifelong Monthly Review supporter who idolized him and copped to cribbing from him) Galbraith for their whole lives.
That doesn’t make him a spy because he was long out of government (and accuse of KGB connections) by the time of Paperclip.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
For what it’s worth – which is zilch – Sweezy left the OSS in late ’46 and “Paperclip” was initiated in late ’46. He edited an OSS publication out of London.
April 25th, 2007 at 7:39 am
It is worth much…I find the whole OSS/CIA transition period fascinating.
April 25th, 2007 at 7:53 am
From Montly Review’s obituary of Sweezy:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/paulsweezy.htm
The London branch of the Research and Analysis section of the OSS had been publishing for some time a newsletter that was a weekly summary about what was happening in the Axis countries, derived mostly from the German press, but also other occupied areas—information that was collected in Portugal and then channeled into London. Sweezy began working on the newsletter and turned it into a monthly magazine with a cover, called the European Political Report, including not only information that was collected through the above procedure but also also information from the most diverse sources. The Research and Analsyis section would write articles and analysis of developments in particular countries. This was then distributed to several hundred military agencies and commands in the European theatre of operations. The newsletter took an explicitly left (New Dealish), anti-fascist stance. For example, it adopted a very anti-British position on the Greek affair, when the British went in and started destroying the Greek resistance.
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