Iraq

I’m never sure what to make of things I read at Debka. Some of the time, it appears to be little more than rumor mongering. At other times, it’s been accurate. That said, this is interesting:

Richard Armitage performed his last major mission before stepping down… This mission took Armitage to Damascus with nine American demands:

1. Start repealing Syria’s 40-years old emergency laws.
2. Free all political prisoners from jail.
3. Abolish media censorship.
4. Initiate democratic reform.
5. Speed up economic development
6. Cut down relations with Iran.
7. Announce publicly that the disputed Shebaa Farms at the base of Mt. Hermon are former Syrian territory.
8. Hand over to US or Iraqi authorities 55 top officials and military officers of the former Saddam regime, who are confirmed by intelligence to be established in Syria and running the guerrilla war in Iraq out of their homes and offices.

Then Bush lays the big stick on the table:

9. Syria had better make sure that none of the Kornet AT-14 anti-tank missiles which it recently purchased in large quantities from East Europe turn up in Iraq. US intelligence has recorded their serial numbers to identify their source.

Just in case any are found in Iraq, General Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq has already received orders from the commander-in-chief in the White House to pursue military action inside Syria according to his best military judgment.

This is fascinating and probably necessary. Bashir Assad learned much from his father Hafez. Chief among the lessons learned at daddy’s knee was the value of a skillfully executed proxy war. The Syrians have been waging a proxy war against Israel, via hamas, for over 20 years. Of course, they’ve also occupied Lebanon for 30 years, but since they’re not Americans or Jews, the UN and EU don’t really seem to mind. Move along, nothing to see here.

Proxy wars have two chief advantages for the sponsor:

1. Plausible deniability.
A) You’re being attacked by guerrillas and terrorists? Why that’s terrible!
B) Where could they be getting those rockets and mines? We have no idea.
C) Where are they getting their funding? Swiss bank accounts? Got us.

2. It’s highly effective. For minimal cost, your opponent can be attacked relentlessly. Each attack may be, in itself, militarily insignificant. But it erodes morale and political support. Death by a thousand cuts.

Clearly this is the strategy, the proxy war, that the Syrian Ba’athists have pursued against the US in Iraq. Having pursued it virtually without cost against the Israelis for decades, it was natural the method would present itself as first choice to confront, hamstring and confound those damned Yankees next door. We’ll make their life a living hell, and if accused, we’ll dust off our halos and feign outrage that our unassailable moral character could be questioned. Perfect!

Except for one little flaw. One tiny little oversight in Bashir & Co.’s perfect plan. The US is not Israel. Whatever level of escalation the Syrians can threaten in Iraq pales – no, dwindles to nothing – in comparison to the punishment the US can inflict on Damascus and its surrounds in a single night of conventional high intensity bombing. A couple of weeks of it might just give them a whole new outlook on things.

At the risk of degenerating Chicagoboyz into Fox or CNBC, let’s note CBS reports a verdict at Ford Hood, where

Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of a band of rogue guards at the Abu Ghraib prison, was convicted Friday of abusing Iraqi detainees in a case that sparked international outrage when photographs were released that showed reservists gleefully abusing prisoners.

This CBS story, like most, doesn’t give the context to help us pass the test at the Mudville Gazette. However, it does seem to purposely mislead and choose interesting phrasing in an attempt to blow CBS’s horn. “The deck was stacked against him once charges were filed, especially after his supervisors refused to back him up” their legal expert notes. A network enamoured of “cover up” chooses “back him up” here?

Apparently the jury decided men in their thirties were capable of choosing evil on their own. It saw neither noble savages nor a need for aluminum tinfoil beanies.

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Since the removal of Saddam Iraq has been compared to several different countries in order to put the situation there in context. Most named post-WW II Germany and/or Japan, while some others came up with South Korea just after the Korean war. I don’t think that these comparisons really fit, for a number of reasons, and for my own part nominate South Africa as the closest if by no means perfect fit:

– Iraq and South Africa alike are basically are Third World countries with some modern parts

– both countries were ruled by privileged minorities, and denied freedom and rule of law to the vast majority, with the predictable consequence of widespread lawlessness

– the population of Iraq and South Africa is mostly very young, which unfortunately means that they have to accept a pretty high baseline of violence, for the number of teenage boys and men in their twenties is one of the most important indicators of violent crime.

– both are in transition, especially as their institutions are concerned, which makes it harder than it otherwise would be to impose rule of law

– the population of both countries is made up by rivalling ethnic groups and of roughly the same size

I think that compared to these similarities the religious affiliation of their respective populations is quite irrelevant. For example, the behavior of the inhabitants of the slums of Djakarta, Durban or Calcutta very likely would not differ all that much from that of those of Sadr-City in Baghdad, given a large foreign force within shooting range, and with extremists agitating among them and handing out weapons.

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Former US Attorney General (and current anti-American publicity-hound) Ramsey Clark has joined Saddam Hussein’s legal defense team.

It’s that season and I’m grading final essays where my students try to struggle with Melville’s Vere and the choices he made. Melville’s ambivalence leads close readers to doubt he approves of Vere’s choice, but his “The Housetop” (about the race riots of 1863) shows the chaos when the rule of law breaks down. Vere is no straw man. An intelligent reader can make his case, too.

And so, taking a break, I turn to Citizen Smash. There I find a description of the consolation he feels that his friend’s death has met not with revenge but with justice: indeed, the rule of law, the rule of Iraqi law. And we look at his muted and sad pleasure and are struck by the hope that order may arise from the Mesopotamian chaos.

The factor of Juan Cole, on the other hand, leads us to the chaos in minds closer to home – minds that apologize, apparently, for not only murders of those who “look Jewish” but find in the persecuted Baha’i faithful the evils of fundamentalism. (Thanks to Belmont Club, in a rather strange post that mixes identity fraud with its complaints about Cole.)

But let’s concentrate for the time on the glass that is certainly half empty with the loss of Smash’s friend, but is half full with those steps toward civil society. And we can be thankful that, even with all the hoopla about the Peterson trial, we live in a society that is, by and large, governed by laws.