Assessing the Situation in Iraq - Blog Response

I want to thank Napoleon B for his posting (LINK) that got me thinking about my thinking and others' thinking on Iraq. I do not believe that Gen. McCaffrey's report (LINK) constitutes a "very frank assessment of the situation in Iraq" and I do believe that very frank assessments (which are then taken due notice of by the government and by the public of America and her allies, including my country, Australia) are exactly what is lacking. So I am posting my response to Napoleon B's blog here...for my own reminder as much as anything:


Thanks for posting this NB. I really appreciate your measured analysis of the reliability (and intentions, perhaps) of the source. Couple of things - I'm not sure I fully agree that "McCaffrey's position as a retired general allows him great freedom to make a no-holds-barred call about the facts on the ground as he sees them." [I should note here that Napoleon B has since changed his posting to "greater freedom," which was apparently his intended meaning] As you note, his position (and background) is in fact sure to bias his view toward one end or another...but I would go a little further. I doubt very much that "the facts on the ground" were seen by him at all - before we even get to how he sees them. He was there for one week. ONE WEEK. The majority of that time would have been taken up with high-level military and political meetings and reviewing reports and statistics gathered and interpreted by American military personnel. I would not equate this with "facts on the ground" and indeed his report shows several inaccuracies even at first glance. For example there are, according to UNHCR (who themselves often underestimate) closer to 4 million refugees and IDPs in Iraq and the neighbouring countries as a result of the war (as opposed to Gen McCaffrey's 2 million - see: UNHCR LINK). I VERY much doubt that any time at all was taken up by visits to these displaced communities and camps, interviews with Iraqi civilian victims of "collateral damage" from American activities, interviews with the victims of torture, including the Abu Ghraib victims (have we forgotten already?! See: BBC News LINK) or even substantial interviews with low-ranking frontline US soldiers.

I do take your point that this is a military perspective, and can only really be viewed in that context. However it is my firm belief that viewing political and humanitarian crises almost solely from a "military perspective" is precisely what worsens and perpetuates these crises. In such a perspective there is no mention of the gravity of the situation in terms of long term individual, community, and national trauma - for Iraqis or for Americans. There is no mention of extensive damage to international reputation and diplomatic leverage that this war has done to the US and her allies. And, perhaps worst of all, there is no space for a humanizing of the voices of 7 or 8 digit numbers of people who are suffering the daily effects of this war and the US-led approach to "winning" it.

So...yes - this report is certainly not an optimistic view of the situation and yes it is framed within a language (and a paradigm) that may be more likely to be paid attention to by Washington (though who really knows who's advice is listened to in these insane times - the Pentagon strongly advised against going into Iraq in the first place after all). However I personally feel that any review of the current situation in Iraq that paints it as, summarily, US armed forces in a "situation of strategic peril" is a significantly lacking perspective. I also strongly urge those of us who are not constrained by position (though this is debatable), to question far more critically the use of the word "success" in relation to any exit strategy from Iraq.


[I also want to post here my response to another blogger's comment on Napoleon B's posting...]

Excellent NB... Too bad that "Washington" has been put on notice several times, and simply doesn't seem to care. Sigh. The Senate today, suprisingly, signaled support for a withdrawl of troops by March 2008, and Bush has said he'll veto that. Unbelievable that experienced military men get their orders from GHWB. Unbelievable. Posted by jumelle soeur On Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 6:42 PM

T

Exactly!! I'm with you Jumelle. It's not that we shouldn't work with what we have (ie. we're in Iraq and Bush is President and a strategic/military paradigm dominates the discourse) but there are broader structural and normative issues to be highlighted here, and to be radically altered if we don't want all this to happen all over again. Posted by T On Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 1:16 PM

Homeless in Iraq

Bad enough that we treat with such disrespect and disregard refugees and asylum seekers who seek protection and safety here (in the US), in Australia, in the UK, and in other affluent countries as they flee from the same wars that we've had a hand in starting. Bad enough that homelessness is out of control and yet continues to be ignored on the streets of the "great" cities of this "developed" country.
But to create conditions that cause displacement and homelessness in another country, and then deny that too?!
Bravo Bush. Brav-fuckin-o.
(see below...)

"There has been an abject denial of the impact, the humanitarian impact, of the war, the huge displacement within Iraq of up to 1.9 million people who are homeless because of the war, and those people who are homeless and never got back to the homes after Saddam Hussein was overthrown."
- UNHCR spokesperson Peter Kessler, as cited by the BBC, on the Iraqi refugee and IDP crisis.

Syria says it is home to 1.2 million Iraqi refugees, with up to 800,000 in Jordan. Damascus has repeatedly called for help to deal with the problem. On top of that, almost 2 million more people are displaced inside Iraq - people who have fled their homes to escape the violence. Kessler said the international community had to step in to help address their food, health and education needs.

You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace.

Classic music and lyrics by Michael Franti & Spearhead accompanied by some reminders.
(I found another version with a lot more graphic and disturbing war photos and a lot less hope. I opted for this one but am open to sharing the other one too....)

A reminder

http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/patriot%20act%20flyer.pdf

BE A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS

LOCKED UP CHILDREN.

How could we even think to detain children? What rights of life are we affording to humans? Or not human?!
not human. homo sacer.
Have we devolved this much to the government that we are fighting for our children's release from prisons?
LOCKED UP.
LOCKED UP.
CHILDREN ARE LOCKED UP BY THE GOVERNMENT.
Hutto - a private prison corporation in TEXAS.

immigrant = people
immigrant = human

FREE PEOPLE FROM THE PRISONS
FREE LIFE FROM THE PRISONS

BE A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS.

So Mexicans are taking jobs from Americans

Posting a few links to stories about the recent raids on factories near
Boston employing illegal immigrants and the detentions and family
break-ups that ensued. Similar bullshit has happened and is still going
on in Australia, where the government remains under heavy criticism
from Amnesty International, UNHRC, and the international community
for its prolonged detention of asylum seekers. Other "developed"
countries also have refugee detention as standard policy and practice,
in the face of international humanitarian and refugee agreements as
well as domestic laws against such inhuman treatment.

Following the links is a poem written 30 years ago by Jimmy Santiago
Baca. How true it still rings today....

"Illegal immigrants are here to stay" (Boston Globe)
"Children Stranded after Immigration Raid" (SF Gate)
"Prison-like Conditions at Hutto Detention Centre" (ACLU)


So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans
- Jimmy Santiago Baca

O yes? Do they come on horses
with rifles, and say,
                     Ese gringo, gimmee your job?
And do you, gringo, take off your ring,
drop your wallet into a blanket
spread over the ground, and walk away?

I hear Mexicans are taking your jobs away.
Do they sneak into town at night,
and as you're walking home with a whore,
do they mug you, a knife at your throat,
saying, I want your job?

Even on TV, an asthmatic leader
crawls turtle heavy, leaning on an assistant,
and from a nest of wrinkles on his face,
a tongue paddles through flashing waves
of lightbulbs, of cameramen, rasping
"They're taking our jobs away."

Well, I've gone about trying to find them,
asking just where the hell are these fighters.

The rifles I hear sound in the night
are white farmers shooting blacks and browns
whose ribs I see jutting out
and starving children,
I see the poor marching for a little work,
I see small white farmers selling out
to clean-suited farmers living in New York,
who've never been on a farm,
don't know the look of a hoof or the smell
of a woman's body bending all day long in fields.

I see this, and I hear only a few people
got all the money in this world, the rest
count their pennies to buy bread and butter.

Below that cool green sea of money,
millions and millions of people fight to live,
search for pearls in the darkest depths
of their dreams, hold their breaths for years
trying to cross poverty to just have something.

The children are dead already. We are killing them,
that is what America should be saying;
on TV, in the streets, in offices, should be saying,
    "We aren't giving the children a chance to live."

    Mexicans are taking our jobs, they say instead.
    What they really say is, let them die,
    and the children too.

Angry Young People - Educating to Inspire Action

We are angry young people. We are maddened, saddened, disillusioned, disunited, desperate. We look, hear, feel across spaces and places, across the "developed" and "developing" divide, the blatant and extensive abuses of power by those in power, and we learn how our legal and political systems keep it this way. In the US, Australia, and other "free" countries there is a tightening of legal and political constraints on voices, on previously enshrined and hard-won liberties, on identities, and on physical bodies. Elsewhere in the world, where there is chronic poverty, disease, corruption, and violence, to these places our governments send our troops, our liberal economic policies, our "national-interest." We take no steps forward and are powerless to stop the retreat into more and more maldistibution of wealth, funding, resources, services, information, privilege, and power. Education has not only lost value, it devalues people while truth, in the age of information, is harder than ever to find. Anti-racism, along with "social justice," has become a throw-away, cliche label of a lost cause and divisions, divides, tensions and misunderstandings grow and expand and push and worsen old and new conflicts. A focus on healing is sacrificed for a focus on forgetting; learning to empathise and to understand sacrificed for being taught to fear and to blame.

We are angry young people. We want to voice our anger and we want to act. We want to learn from each other, and from YOU, whoever you are, and we want to teach one another. This is only a beginning.