Behind the Madness in Iraq

By Tom Hayden, Common Dreams

14 June 14

s this immediate crisis unfolds, we must act to strip away certain delusions

The U.S. had no business invading Iraq. We toppled a dictatorship on a false 9/11 rationale, which plunged Iraq into a sectarian civil war inside a war with the United States. We left behind a vengeance-driven Shiite regime aligned with Iran. Now the sectarian war in Syria is enlarging into a regional one. The primary blame for this disaster is on the Bush administration, but also on all those who succumbed to a Superpower Syndrome, which said we could redesign the Middle East. There is no reason whatsoever to justify further loss of American lives or tax dollars on a conflict that we do not understand and that started before the United States was born.

Anti-war networks already are sending online messages to Congress opposing any U.S. military re-intervention in Iraq. Representative Nancy Pelosi already is there. Those voices need to be amplified to help President Barack Obama stave off the most irrational forces during this crisis.

Then we need to construct a narrative that blocks the hawks from blaming Obama for "losing" Iraq, and turns the focus on the neo-conservatives, Republicans, and Democratic hawks who took this country into a sea of blood. Most of them remain in power, unscathed and immune, even occupying high positions in this administration. What they fear most is not an Iraqi insurgency, but the risen families of the dead and wounded, on all sides, that increasingly ask who led them into an unwinnable, unaffordable war. The duty-driven bravery of their lost sons and daughters stands in direct contrast to shameless privilege of those who sent them into harm's way.

As this immediate crisis unfolds, we must act to strip away certain delusions. The least of these, though still irritating, is the view of many visible anti-war "radicals" that says the United States never really withdrew from Iraq, but instead secretly left behind tens of thousands of Special Forces in disguise. This silly notion was meant to refute the belief that Obama had "ended" the war. Where are those secret U.S. legions today? Not on the battlefield obviously. Now as we engage in the discussion of "losing" Iraq, it is not helpful to claim that the U.S. never withdrew. Instead we have to defend the withdrawal and its consequences, which will reopen deep divisions in America's political culture.

The second and far more widespread delusion is that of the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives that we could construct, through force of arms, a democratic and unified Iraqi state in which sectarian divisions would float away in a flood of free enterprise and oil revenue. The truth is that a sectarian struggle long preceded the American invasion, was held in check only by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and was reignited by the U.S. military overthrow of a Sunni-led regime.

It is profoundly shameful to hear American officials cluck-cluck about the supposed "excesses" of the Shiite al-Maliki regime that they installed; the thousands of Sunnis being marginalized, imprisoned, tortured, denied employment and political representation, when all this revenge was foretold and could not be forestalled forever. There is no doubt that Iraq was a Sunni-dominated dictatorship under Saddam, but it also had a middle class, higher education, and an economy that employed many people in state-owned enterprises. Though a dictatorship, it was prosperous for many, at least according to Middle East standards. Its enemies were very understandably the Shiite population, but also the crackpot Republican neo-cons with their faith-based privatization schemes, and many in the Israeli and American national security complex that long feared armed Arab nationalism. The latter group's support for the Shiites was purely opportunistic. It was based on yet another delusion, that religious Islam could be managed while Arab secular nationalism posed the greater security threat.

One of the leading militants on the road to Baghdad today is Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a Baath Party military commander who was on the also delusional "deck of cards" displayed by the Pentagon public relations officers. Al-Douri stopped yesterday at the grave of Saddam Hussein before resuming his vengeful ride with jihadists towards Baghdad.

Besides the delusions that blinded us there always was one lucid and Great Power agenda. It was not principally about oil, as Rachel Maddow and Dennis Kucinich have reasonably claimed. It was about imposing division and chaos on the Arab world. The dominant Western Arabist and former British intelligence officer Bernard Lewis was a leading proponent of dismembering Arab nationalism. He wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1992:

If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity...The state then disintegrates...into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.

A not dissimilar point was made by the very liberal Israeli foreign ministry official, Shlomo Avineri in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece on December 4, 2005, titled "Israel Could Live with a Fractured, Failed Iraq":

An Iraq split into three semi-autonomous mini-states, or an Iraq in civil war, means that the kind of threat posed by Hussein...is unlikely to rise again.

This is what is presently happening. Because of the sectarian war in Syria, the Sunnis of Iraq have a massive "rear base" from which to launch their insurgency. By one estimate in the New York Times, their fighting force is only 3,000 to 5,000 combatants, a tiny fraction of the massive and rapidly crumbling Iraqi army. The march to Baghdad may well be blocked militarily, unless the al-Maliki regime simply crumbles from within. But Iraq will be divided between its Sunnis in the northern provinces, the Kurds in Kurdistan, and Shiites in the south, who may at any time split and revolt against al-Maliki under the lead of the Sadrists.

From the Bernard Lewis perspective, that would be "Mission Accomplished." From another perspective, it will be Machiavellianism run amok without term limits.

Since the real scenario cannot be explained to the American public, the scapegoating will begin.

Can Progressives Learn From Eric Cantor's Defeat?

By Ralph Nader, The Nader Page

14 June 14

he stunning upset defeat of House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) by Professor David Brat, an economist from Randolph-Macon College, in Tuesday’s Republican Primary has several takeaways for progressives besides envy and shame over why they do not directly take on the corporate Democrats.

First, among all the reasons for Cantor’s fall, there were the ones encapsulated in the Nation’s John Nichols’ description of Brat as an “anti-corporate conservative.” Repeatedly, Brat said he was for “free enterprise” but against “crony capitalist programs that benefit the rich and powerful.” David Brat pointed out that Cantor and the Republican establishment have “been paying way too much attention to Wall Street and not enough to Main Street.”

Brat supported “the end of bulk phone and email data collection by the NSA” and other government agencies on constitutional grounds.

Professor Brat attacked the Wall Street investment bankers who nearly “broke the financial system,” adding the applause line: “these guys should have gone to jail. Instead of going to jail, where did they go? They went to Eric Cantor’s Rolodex.”

An advocate of ethical capitalism, with religious-Christian overtones, Mr. Brat went after the deal-making in Washington, such as Cantor’s close relationships with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. He especially berated Cantor for weakening the proposed bill to ban insider trading by members of Congress by exempting their family members and spouses.

He chastised Cantor on immigration, taking advantage of the latter’s wavering appeal to voters who believe that large corporations, represented by Cantor, want a never-ending supply of cheap foreign labor to hold wages down. On the other hand, Brat opposes a minimum wage on libertarian grounds.

In addition, David Brat, described as a “commanding orator who mixes fiery rhetoric with academic references and self-depreciating humor,” wants a balanced-budget amendment, a “fair or flat tax,” and is opposed to federal educational programs such as “No Child Left Behind.”

Brat is a mixed bag for progressives. But in that mix is a clear populist challenge by Main Street against Wall Street and by ordinary people against the corporate government with subsidies and bailouts that the Left calls corporate welfare and the Right calls crony capitalism. Therein lies the potential for a winning majority alliance between Left and Right as my new book, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State, relates in realistic detail.

Second, Professor Brat spent about $230,000 to Eric Cantor’s $5.7 million. However, David Brat more than made up for the money deficit with energy, focused barbs and the shoe-leather of his committed followers. On election night, Brat made the point that progressives would do well to heed, as they obsess over big money in politics; “Dollars don’t vote,” he said, “people do.” Interestingly, Tea Party forces and donors claim they thought Cantor was so unbeatable that they didn’t even fund David Brat even though he had two national radio talk show hosts speaking well of him.

Can’t progressives find that kind of energy with their many broader issues and larger support base? Can’t they find capable so-called “nobodies” with hidden talent to become publically heralded champions? There are fresh voices everywhere who can take on the corporate Democrats, like the Clintons, who work with Wall Streeters and espouse crony capitalism and with neocons to advance militarism abroad, along with corporate-managed, job destroying trade agreements and off-shore tax havens?

Unfortunately the driving energy of progressives, including the dissipating Occupy Wall Street effort, is not showing up in the electoral arena. The political energy, the policy disputes and the competitive contests are among the Republicans, not the Democrats, observed the astute political commentator and former Clinton White House aide, Bill Curry.

The third lesson from the decisive Cantor upset is not to embrace the political attitude that calls for settling, from the outset, for the least-of-the-worst choices. Progressives have expressed and harbored strong criticisms of the Democratic Party establishment and their adoption of corporatist policies, but election cycle after election cycle, fearful of the Republican bad guys, they signal to the Democrat incumbents that the least-of-the-worst is acceptable. Like the liberals they often consort with, progressives do not ask: “Why not the best?” with the plan that they will either win or at least pull their Party away from the relentless 24/7 grip of big-time corporatism.

The final takeaway from this fascinating Virginian contest in the 7th Congressional District near Richmond was that Cantor’s tactics backfired. The more Cantor spent on TV, radio, billboard ads and mailings, the more David Brat became known and the more people were reminded that Washington and Wall Street really do not care about people on Main Street.

That is truly the nub of a Left-Right alliance. In recent decades, pollsters would sometimes pose a variation of the question: “Do you believe that X candidate or Y party or Z in Washington cares about people like you?” The responses revealed a sizable majority of people, regardless of their ideological or political labels, said “no.”

With the interest of the public, the community and the country in the forefront, those “nos” can become “yeses” for a long-overdue rejuvenated and just society driven by reality and edified by its ideals.