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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (44591)	5/15/2004 1:38:19 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793717

Crunch Time for Civilization Roger Simon blog Look, I'm perfectly willing to admit that everything could appear magnified in our society because of the nonstop television/Internet communications we live under, through and with. The sky always seems to be falling and we are all, to some extent, "Chicken Littles". And with the NBA playoffs in full sway perhaps I am thinking too much in terms of "Win or Go Home!" But at this particular moment, it may be we are reaching a kind of Crunch Time. Two important journalists (hat tip: Catherine Johnson) appear to agree. Both, unfortunately, are writing in the Financial Times (serious subscription) only, so I will give you the telling excerpts. First, here's our Chris Caldwell: It could be that the US public has entered a period of reflection and will decide to cut its losses in Iraq and start afresh in November with a new president. It could also be that the US public has just emerged from a period of reflection, reconciled to the prospect that a war against al-Qaeda requires more brutality and less remorse than expected. And that political leaders will now cry bipartisan havoc and let loose the dogs of public opinion. Now here's the Brit Philip Stephens (who writes books about Blair): Tony Blair is swept away in October. George W. Bush loses in November. President John Kerry and prime minister Gordon Brown rush to pull US and British troops out of an Iraq descending into civil war. The Saudi monarchy falls before the triumphant march of Islamist extremism. The oil price breaks through $60 a barrel and the world economy heads for stagflation. America's growing isolation in the world makes way for the return of American isolationism, globalisation for global protectionism. None of the above is a prediction. I hesitate to characterise them as probabilities. But it is a measure of the perilously fragile nature of the international order that each and every doom-laden scenario somehow seems entirely plausible. We could easily add other chilling possibilities: a new terrorist atrocity on the scale of September 11 2001; a coup in Pakistan putting nuclear weapons within reach of al-Qaeda. Journalists, I know, have pessimism in their genes, but I cannot recall a moment when I have been quite so fearful about what may happen next. It feels as if we are standing at the very edge of the cliff. During the past week or so, the brutality of the Iraq war has filled our television screens. Revulsion at the debauchery of US guards at Abu Ghraib prison has been followed by the sickening shock of the filmed decapitation of the young American Nick Berg by self-styled Islamists. A conflict that seemed appalling enough, but still somehow distant, has now forced itself into the front of our minds. Earlier this week, someone said to me that we should thank the internet for bringing home the full horrors of war. Maybe. But there is something utterly revolting too about being directed by e-mail to a website promising the full unexpurgated recording of the murder of Mr Berg. Beyond such immediate horrors lies the dawning realisation of the strategic significance of the looming catastrophe in Iraq. We can argue all we like about who is responsible. To say all this is the inevitable consequence of American hubris, of Mr Bush's Manichaean fundamentalism or of Donald Rumsfeld's incompetence is to miss the point. Those who believe that Mr Bush deserves to be defeated in Iraq - and, increasingly, that seems to be most people - cannot escape the dire consequences of such a defeat. I don't agree with Stephens that Saudi regime (the financiers of Wahhabism) would be such a loss, but his general point holds. Defeat now would be deadly serious. We couldn't just get few new players and come back next year.

To: LindyBill who wrote (44591)	5/17/2004 4:53:50 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

I wish you'd URL these blogs. I'm trying to catch up and it takes time to do these things, whereas you had the URL right there when you copied the text. Anyway, the criticism of the US move to move the ME in a more modern direction often stems from how the difficulties certain aspects of culture and history there would make it difficult to move to democracy. They're right. But they ignore, for whatever reason, the possibility there are aspects of the same which might make it possible. ?The Bush administration?s notion of creating in Iraq something that even vaguely resembles a Wilsonian-style democracy, in a country where security has traditionally come not from the ballot box but from force of arms Organized violence has always been the winner everywhere and in the ME always for the rulers. "Security" has never been the outcome, and not surprisingly, because tyranny has always been the aim. Democratic forces there have never been able to organize their violence, except in Israel. In case of Iraq it seems the only folk who recognize this are Bush, some of the military there, Bremer, and the majority of the Iraqi people. Democratically organizing violence takes a lot more intricate processes and time than the tyrannical violence they've had. Europe and N America took @ thousand years. Iraqis don't have that time and they don't need it - what they need is security to get on with the project. And motivation to get on with the project with celerity - which they have in the possibilty of US withdawal and the loss of the security guarantee. The consensus seems to be that the Bush Administration overreached in its war aims and/or undercommitted to providing adequate resources for success. I don't believe either claim is entirely correct. The US appears to be having some success. It could not be having it if aspects of culture and history in Iraq were not supportive and if resources US has put into the country were not, to some degree, adequate.