Of 270 suspected grave sites ...,
2004-07-20 00:27:43
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note to U.S. Military Personel...,
2004-07-21 23:25:18
hisi-fit:
Haiti and Iraq, Sudan and Iran: Fucked International Targets, pronounced as 'hissyfit', describing the tone of discussion between Republicans and Democrats and their preferred grouping of targets, respectively. Pardon me as I endulge them:
I've seen more than a few, mostly liberal, pundits and politicians and presidential hopefuls take potshots to the effect that we attacked the wrong country. They argue either we should be: intervening militarily in Sudan - analysis of the conflict sorely lacking, particularly with regards to our and Europe's political interests in the conflict and whether they cancel out to some basis for neutral policy, and details of such an intervention, manpower etc., left to the imagination; or bombing the shit out of Iran - based off the casual association of missing visa stampage as a few hijackers floated through Iran on their way to getting their visas stamped in the West.
As regard the links between Iran and Al-Qaeda, in the spirit of not shooting the messenger we'll quote Paul Craig Roberts, as the message is on target:
The U.S. Sept. 11 Commission has "evidence"
that "about eight" of the September 11 hijackers passed through Iran between
October 2000 and February 2001.
Think about that for a moment. Does this mean that any country – including
our allies – through which a Sept. 11 hijacker passed, without his intentions to
commit mayhem on the World Trade Center being detected, is a target for
destabilization?
If so, then the United States must be at the top of President Bush's list as
the greatest threat to the U.S. Only eight of the hijackers got through Iran, but
all 22 and a number of others passed through the U.S. Moreover, six months after
the World Trade Towers were toppled, the U.S. Dept. of State issued U.S. visas
to the dead terrorists.
Few people have paid enough attention to Haiti to have any idea what's actually happened their since the US, Canada, and France supported a coup against their elected president, and I haven't found anybody in any better a position to discuss the case for intervening in Sudan. In the case of Haiti the cause for intervention was fundamentally and directly the countries that were intervening; the casual linkage between the interventionists and the Sudan would be the consumption of oil that funds the war, now that the problem is escalating to a state of genocide - so we're told - we're left looking for somebody who has a solution. The standard solution, as it happens among the neocolonial West, would be to send in the former colonial occupiers of the country, in which case this is a job for the British. The farther Washington is from the conflict, with it's ideologically motivated soda conglomerates, oil companies, and Christian missionaries, we would hazard a guess that it's for the better: the problem here as in Rwanda was not that Washington did not act, but that it suceeded in preventing others from acting. On the other hand Washington is already there, doing god knows what.
Likewise we should point out that those calling for the US to intervene in the Sudan are usually the 'stay-the-course' sorts as regards to Iraq, which begs the question of where they dig up troops for the effort, unless of course the details involve Kosovo style bombing of the villages we're attempting to save, hardly a prescription for humanitarian intervention. A Dennis Kucinich or a Max Sawicky could make a credible argument, as they support withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, the others, the Kerrys and the Deans, are merely imploding their own skulls in wild conflagarations of the incomprehensible.
If we want to do something to help Africa, much of which is facing situations just as dire as Sudan, we might consider the obvious means of assisting: cut our ag subsidies, cancel the mostly odious foreign debt, deliver condoms and drugs and sex education instead of hot air and religious indoctrination, and give the subjects of IMF and World Bank policies the power to shape them. Doing nothing about those problems and then sending in the military every year to crush one side or another in a deeper conflict will be far more expensive, both for them and for us.
Assuming we don't have an election, as befits Krugman's "Last year's crazy conspiracy theory is this year's established wisdom", all this fashionable political hackery may just come true in the most incompetent fashion. Repeating the debacles of Haiti and Iraq in the Sudan and Iran, at present, doesn't sound sound.
