Tag Archives: Juan Cole

Political Rants

Happy new war.

Leave a comment

President Bam-Bam has started off the new year with incoherent threats against Iran, and it appears as if the entire corporate media establishment is pretty much on the same page as him. I was greeted on New Year’s morning by the usual cavalcade of retired generals (e.g., Barry McCaffrey, etc.) and inside-the-Pentagon correspondents (e.g. Hans Nichols, etc.) that MSNBC (a.k.a. “the liberal news channel”) trots out whenever someone challenges the U.S. empire somewhere in the world. This time it’s Iraqis, and of course Iran is to blame … because we seem to want war with Iran. That’s why whenever they talk about our opposition in Iraq, these Iraqis are termed “Iranian-backed militias” or “Iranian-backed extremists,” though they would never call the forces we fund and train “American-backed militias”. Yes, Iran has substantial influence in Iraq – they share a long border and a troubled history with Iraq, so it’s no surprise. We, on the other hand, come from the other side of the Earth, and yet somehow we consider our enormous influence on Iraqi affairs more legitimate.

The Trump administration decided last week that it was a really, really good idea to conduct air strikes on an Iraqi Shi’ite militia group Kata’ib Hizbullah, killing 45 of them in supposed retaliation for mortar attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq that recently killed one U.S. contractor. (See Juan Cole’s blogpost on this for details.) The protests and intrusions at the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad were a predictable response to what General McCaffrey and others consider a proportionate use of force. (That was quickly followed by their assassination by drone of the Iranian Quds force leader Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad, a major escalation by Trump.) Not being a member in good standing of the American Empire Positive Propaganda Force, my first question is … just what the hell are we doing in Iraq in the first place? In all fairness, I think that question is on the minds of many Iraqis right now.

Okay, this isn't going so well.

In my humble opinion, there are a couple of things going on here. Of course, Trump likes to look tough, hence the drunken threat tweets and the rushing of 3000 more U.S. troops to Baghdad. But despite the fact that these threats are directed at Iran, I think deep in his tiny lizard brain he understands, albeit tenuously, that war with Iran would be a disaster for his presidency far worse than his impending impeachment trial or his failing trade war. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why. No modern president has had as high an approval rating as George W. Bush did in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and yet just a few years after invading Afghanistan and Iraq, his presidency was in tatters. His wars are still going on, metastasizing again and again into new, more toxic cycles of violence. And Bush’s wars were against one nation that was totally destroyed (Afghanistan) and one that was partially destroyed and starved to death (Iraq); we have essentially lost both of those wars. Iran would be harder to beat, and the events of this week demonstrate part of the reason why – the exercise of power by proxy, to put it in terms an imperialist might understand.

I have no doubt Trump’s foreign policy establishment is working towards war with Iran, whether or not that is their full intention. Smarter presidents than Trump (a category that includes every other president) have blundered into disastrous wars that have essentially destroyed their presidencies. Whatever Trump’s intentions may be regarding Iran, this escalation in Iraq may be the start of his ultimate undoing if he’s not careful. And the entire establishment – Trumpist and faux resistance – will wave him on into the catastrophe.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Persian rug.

Leave a comment

Trump and Macron had their meeting of the tiny minds this last week, and it doesn’t look good for the Iran nuclear deal (a.k.a. the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA). The French president appears to think he can save it by expanding it, but that’s not likely to happen; Iran may be less than a democracy, but its leaders have constituencies just the same as ours do, and I can’t think the Iranian people are going to be willing to trust this process a second time – not when they’ve checked every box, met every requirement, and continued to suffer as Trump calls them every name in the book and hires a National Security Advisor who gave a regime change address to the terrorist MEK last year.

There are also the other parties to the agreement to consider, two of whom (Russia and China) are adamant against changing the deal. As Juan Cole has pointed out, the Russians are calling bullshit on Trump’s vacuous claim that the U.S. gave Iran $150 billion as a kind of signing bonus. I heard some cat calls about this on Facebook when the deal was struck, and it’s frankly laughable. These were Iranian assets in U.S. banks, unilaterally frozen by the U.S. government as punishment for stepping out of line. Whatever you may think of the government of Iran, any capitalist should understand that they have every right to that money. (Good luck finding that kind of capitalist in Washington D.C.)

The unknown countryIt’s not hard to see why Trump is on the same page as practically every political leader in America in treating Iran like a muck room rug. Israel wants us to attack them. Saudi wants us to attack them. The UAE wants us to attack them. And the majority of Americans are under the spell of the propaganda campaign about the incomparable evils of Iran. We’ve been fed this with a fire hose since the immediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution and the “hostage crisis” – basically my entire adult life. It has been reinforced over the intervening decades, through the Iran-Iraq war years (recall the “hostages” in Lebanon), the confrontations in the 90s, their inclusion in the “Axis of Evil”, and so on. Trump is a product of the same smear campaign.

Scuttling this deal will likely make the current confrontation with Russia deteriorate even further. Worse than that, it sets us on a short path to the war John Bolton has wanted practically forever. That war would make the Iraq conflict seem like a folk dance, and could easily trigger a response from other world powers.

In short, let’s keep the JCPOA. If it’s a bad deal, it’s only bad for the Iranians. It gives us way more than we deserve.

Peace in Korea? Just a brief coda – I’m very hopeful about the prospect for peace on the Korean peninsula. When the dust settles a bit, I’ll return to this very important question.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Ramadi redux.

Leave a comment

The so-called Islamic State, ISIS, etc., took control (or at least partial control) of the city of Ramadi in Iraq’s Al-Anbar province, a place that was occupied by U.S. troops in 2005 and subjected to untold misery. In a week that was marked by remembrances of things past regarding the invasion of Iraq (to say nothing of Bin Laden’s prison memoirs), it was pretty amazing to hear the fulminations over the “loss” of Ramadi, with various politicians and talking heads referring to the city as fought-for land, suggesting that the sacrifices of our troops have been poorly served by Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq. They always yank out the troops when it’s convenient, just to raise people’s sense of indignation.

Here come the hot heads. Again.That’s just laying insult upon injury. Our troops suffered mightily alongside the people of Ramadi, and most of those now complaining did nothing to relieve their suffering in 2005; quite the opposite. The fact is, as Juan Cole has pointed out so adeptly, Ramadi was never ours to lose. It has always been a center of Sunni resistance against the United States and its various allies, including the new government in Baghdad. It was, in fact, the base of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, and as Cole points out, former Baathist made common cause with the Salafists in Al Qaeda in 2005-6 to fight off the occupiers. The “Sunni Awakening”, mostly the effort of Sunni tribal leaders, helped to tamp down some of the unrest, perhaps with the promise of a greater voice in Baghdad.

That broader government, of course, never came, and now we are back to 2005-land. Different name, yes, but I am certain that many of those old Baathist officers and tacticians are behind the ISIS advance, taking advantage of this large reserve of battle-hardened, fanatical fighters. The ex-Baathists are unlikely to fall for any new promises from Americans, assuming that their names are still in the CIA and JSOC address book. Fool me once, right? They would rather live with the fanatics fighting against Baghdad than Baghdad itself, whose security forces have treated them very harshly in recent years.

Of course, the military hammers in our ongoing national security conversation are now hunting for nails.  I heard a general this morning advocating an overwhelming force approach. But this problem does not have a military solution. Without a meaningful political stake in Iraq for the Sunnis, there will no longer be a unified Iraq. Bombs, troops, advisers, and drones won’t change that.

luv u,

jp